warner bros
Latest
Warner Bros. to release TEN high definition movies September 26
Going dual-format certainly has its benefits. You can put up cool press releases about slating a record number of high definition media releases on one day. Luckily, Warner hasn't just stopped there. Among the six Blu-ray and four HD DVD discs are a few particularly notable items. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride makes its HD debut on blu-ray, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines will include Warner's In-Movie Experience (IME) on HD DVD and they will debut their Ultra-Resolution technology by transferring over the animated Bugs Bunny flick The Adventures of Robin Hood. All of the movies will carry an MSRP of $28.99 and except for T3, contain the same extras as the original DVD releases. No details on if any of the Blu-ray discs will be encoded in anything other than MPEG-2 but we will keep you posted.Blu-ray releases: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride Swordfish Space Cowboys Lethal Weapon 2 The Fugitive House of Wax HD DVD releases: The Dirty Dozen Grand Prix Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines The Adventures of Robin Hood You can also check out our Google Calendars for all the dates.HD DVD release scheduleBlu-ray release schedule
Warner Blu-ray releases may switch to VC-1 codec soon
A lot of the criticism leveled at early Blu-ray releases cited their use of the MPEG-2 video codec for compression on 25GB single-layer discs. According to Home Theater Spot, a Warner rep confirmed to them that Lethal Weapon, Blazing Saddles and Firewall will all be encoded with the Microsoft codec. Full Metal Jacket however will still ship as MPEG-2. With fixed Samsung BD-P1000 players and properly next-gen encoded titles, perhaps Blu-ray can stand up to HD DVD and show why it is worth the investment. No word on any new extras to take advantage of all that extra space however, we guess we'll just take one order of increased video quality at lower bitrates to go, thank you.[Via HDBlog]
Warner Bros. queues up three new HD DVD titles [Update 2]
Warner just likes surprising people, announcing that they will be releasing three new HD DVD movies June 6, including one day-and-date with the DVD release, Harrison Ford's Firewall. The other two movies are Constantine and The Perfect Storm, which will list at $28.99. Firewall will be the second hybrid HD DVD/DVD disc after Rumor Has It (thanks WiFiSpy) and cost $39.99. Their HD DVD release plan must make sense to someone, but since you can't even pre-order them from Amazon.com or queue some of them on Netflix just a week before release, it will be hard for potential customers to keep up.[Updated price of Firewall, combo disc]
Dirty Harry coming to HD DVD in 2007
Dirty Harry is back, hitting your screen in high definition in a couple of different ways. First up is a new Dirty Harry videogame coming to next generation consoles (360, PS3, Wii?). To coincide with the game, Warner will be re-releasing all the Dirty Harry movies -- Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool -- on HD DVD as the definitive Dirty Harry Collection, along with a host of (mostly unspecified, but expect audio upgrades and behind the scenes featurettes) extras. No Blu-ray release mentioned, however the films will on a moratorium of at least a year starting September meaning two things. If you want them on DVD buy them now while you can still find them, and expect the game and movie pack next fall.(You have no idea how difficult it was to write this post without including some "Do you feel lucky, punk?"-related humor.)
Warner Bros. keeps pumping out HD DVD movies
A couple of titles we already knew were coming to HD DVD but didn't know when, have gotten a date. May 16 the few, the proud, the...$800/$500 lighter in the wallet can look forward to high definition copies of Unforgiven and Full Metal Jacket coming to stores near them. The price is set to $28.99, and will include the bonus features in SD just like previous HD DVD releases. Since these titles are also slated for Blu-ray release, it will be interesting to see if bonus features for that format will be included in HDTV resolutions as some Blu-ray supporters have suggested.
WoW: Coming to a Theater Near You?
Well, we knew it had to be on the drawing board somewhere. It seems that Legendary Pictures, producers of both the latest Superman & Batman films, are interested in bringing World of Warcraft to the big screen, according to this IGN article. The film would likely hit screens via Warner Bros., as they have handled most of the distribution for Legendary's releases so far.This could be exciting news for all Warcraft fans, but we all know just how well video games usually survive translation into the film medium. Alone in the Dark, Doom, Silent Hill....Super Mario Brothers, anyone? Still, just by the law of averages, they have to get one right sometime...here's hoping the best for WoW's big-screen maiden voyage.
Warner Bros. to team with BitTorrent for movie sales
It looks like BitTorrent has really cleaned up its act ever since it bowed to movie studio wishes and swore to remove pirated content from its search last year. Not only have they managed to send plenty of downloaders elsewhere, but have gotten friendly enough with Warner Bros. to start distributing movies and TV shows via the BitTorrent tech in the US. (Disclaimer: Engadget's parent's parent company is Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Bros. Entertainment.) Just like old Napster vs new Napster, this isn't your father's BitTorrent movie download, since the files will be saddled with BitTorrent's very own DRM tech that won't let you copy the file around, or burn it as a DVD. Luckily, Warner Bros. is claiming that they'll be offering content on the day of its retail availability. On the flip side, it sounds like pricing for TV shows will be similar to that of Apple and Google (though the Reuters mentions $1 per episode, so maybe there is hope for a BitTorrent discount), and DVDs will match retail prices. Seems kind of lame considering the fact that you're saving them bandwidth costs, and obtaining a file that you have less rights to than a traditional disc, but dems the breaks. The service should go live this summer, and provide around 200 titles at launch, including "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and "Babylon 5." BitTorrent says they're also in talks with other studios, but that's all they'll say about that for now.
Seven major studios line up to sell movies online
We have no idea why they chose today to do it, but today seven major movie studios announced they'll be selling movies online through Movielink and CinemaNow. Warner Bros, Universal, Sony, Paramount, Fox, and MGM will all be distributing first-run titles online -- definitely something they've never done before -- through Movielink for between 20 and 30 bones (way, way too much if you ask us), with older movies going for between $10 and $20. Lionsgate (and Sony) also announced distribution through CinemaNow. Really this was only a matter of time -- for these guys it was either sell these things online DRMed all to hell for way too much money (see above), go the subscription route (like Vongo, for example -- not likely) or continue whining without any justification whatsoever about pirates stealing movies in the Internet. At least now they can say they've legitimately offered their digital content up online (hey, you can even make a DVD backup for use only on Movielink-authorized computers), even though they still can't account for the artificial demand they try to create by releasing movies for purchase months after the films have gone out of theater.[Thanks, Phil]
