Releases from 2nd Feb 2009 UK
Rocknrolla
Death Race: Extended Version
Chronicles Of Riddick: Director’s Cut
Pitch Black
Quo Vadis
Brief Encounter
Pink Panther (1963)
Immortal Beloved – Gary Oldman at his best
Light Sleeper
Kramer vs Kramer
There have been rumours for a few months now that the Star Trek movies might be coming to BluRay most coming from The Digital Bits web site. The general consensus seems to be they will appear around May time to coincide with the release of JJ Abrams new Star Trek movie.
Personally I’d rather see a remastering of Babylon 5 on BluRay
Marantz announces it’s entry into the high end BluRay market with the BD8002 BluRay player.
The player features high quality SHARC DSP’s for processing HD audio streams including Dolby TruHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. For video the BD8002 features HDMI 1.3 with Deep Colour with 12bit 297 MHz video processing coupled with the 10-bit Silicon Optix Realta processor with HQV processing.
In addition to its compatibility with both Blu-Ray and DVD discs, the BD8002 can also handle VCDs, SVCDs, MP3s, WMA and DivX video files, and display JPEG image. The player also features a SD card slot for viewing images and video from cameras and camcorders.
For high end installations the player features a RS232 serial port allowing control as part of a complete installation.
The profile 1.1 BD8002 is available now for an estimated price of £1,799
The inquirer is reporting the first Blu-Ray plant has opened in China. If addoption in China takes off it can only be good news for bringing the price of hardware down.
I have to say I was looking forward to this movie, lots of ‘a’ list stars and an interesting premise. However the story turned into a poor rip off of an old Rambo movie, perhaps intentionally as a parody but others have done it better. A test of a good movie is how long my kids (Ben Stiller fans) stay to watch, this looked like our typical family viewing. In this case of the three (I have four but the eldest was out) one left within ten minutes and another in fifteen, not a good sign. A giggle was heard a few times but there was a severe lack of anything stirring in the belly region. Most of the time we could not understand Robert Downy Juniors poor black voice imitation and the less I say of Jack black the better. Everyone is raving about Tom Cruise’s appearance and he really stole the show. However, player – this movie is not
Picture quality was mixed. The jungle setting had great promise but a lot of the time was dark and lacking in detail, the opening scenes did look good but like most of the movie it was downhill from there. The audio fared better good explosions and good base extension but not quite demo material and I’ve already mentioned the dialogue. I doubt many will use this to show off their systems as your customers or guests will think you need a center channel upgrade.
Extras are the usual however I’ve not been through all of them yet and to be honest I’ve no interest to do so after the movie. One thing that impressed was the digital copy. I have a few disks that have promised this, some you down load from the web and the sites don’t work (if they do work they only work with Internet Explorer) and most others are playable via a PC only which I guess is OK for laptop users and travelers. The good news with this release is at last we have a digital copy that works with iTunes so you can load it onto your iPod or iPhone. It’s a little strange that they give you the movie on a DVD and then you have to download it from the iTunes store – sounds like Apple getting their pound of flesh to allow this functionality, anyway it is a welcome feature. If you’ve sat through he movie I doubt you will want to watch if again on a portable device.
Perhaps one to rent..
You can now get Sky+HD installed for just £49, you still need to pay £26.25 a month for the basic package.
Great now you can see all those cheesy low budget Sci-Fi movies that have not come to BluRay yet in HD on the all new (cough) Sci-fi channel HD. Channel 214 on your SKY+HD box. Seriously this makes 31 channels on SKY+HD which is great news – you can’t watch anythingbut BluRay all day! Some good series on Sci-Fi however some (Heros & Eureka) are in HD on other channels, hope we get some good compelling new HD shows
The new Nad T587
NAD has introduced the T587 BluRay player. As well as promising on audio and video quality the new NAD also boasts of being able to load your BluRay disks fast cutting the annoying waiting which many fans bemoan when they press play to watch a disc.
On the video side of things the NAD T 587 also supports Deep Colour and xvYCC Extended Colour Space giving outstanding colour fidelity as well as 1080p upscaling. UK price expected to be around £850
For more information – click the image above
Grab the latest PS3 Firmware
Sony have released version 2.6 of the PS3 firmware. No changes for those using it primarily for BluRay but there’s a new photo viewing app (whoop) and DIVX 3.11 video support for those of you using it view from a media server or creating your ovm DIVX encoded disks.
A sad day (well actually I didn’t know they were still making them). Pioneer announces the end of Laserdisc player production after the next 3,000 units. Production started in 1980 so for a consumer movie format 28 years is pretty good going.
Boo Hoo
I actually still have a CLD-515 and around 50 movies, maybe I’ll get them out and dust them off, I’ve replaced most of them by DVD and BluRay anyway. How many copies of Star Wars and T2 do you really need 
More info click on the image
Check this out at Gizmodo. Sharps latest TV’s with BluRay built in
(click the image)
Well this is it. Welcome to TheBlueView. This blog is intended to be your one daily stop site for all the latest news on whats happening in the world of BluRay, we may also cover a little home cinema news, BluRay and keeping you up to date with the latest developments is the goal.