A Look At Universal Pictures Blu-ray Strategy - In Closing Universal have also announced one more Blu-ray title; this years megaflop Doomsday, coming out on July 29th in the U.S. The disc also features a generous extras package, including DTS HD Master Audio and a picture in picture making of.

Ben Gourlay TweakTown Published Wed, May 21 2008 11:00 PM CDT Updated Tue, Nov 3 2020 7:04 PM CST Producer Publisher: none Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit Email to a friend Quick Navigation A Look At Universal Pictures Blu-ray Strategy A Look At Universal Pictures Blu-ray Strategy - Cont.

A Look At Universal Pictures Blu-ray Strategy - In Closing A Look At Universal Pictures Blu-ray Strategy Whilst Universal Pictures Home Entertainment in Australia still have not issued details on the first local Blu-ray titles, the U.S.

Blu-ray.

Prior to this, Universal Pictures were a staunch advocate of the HD-DVD format with studio heads declaring it as an imminent failure, and publicly decrying the format.

Of course, now the tables are turned and I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Universal came slinking to the Blu-ray Disc Association, which seemed to have occurred slightly before Toshiba ceded.

I should note as well, that Universals VP of strategic marketing Ken Graffeo was also the co-president of the HD-DVD consortium, which disbanded in March.

This coincided with the departure of Graffeo from his post, in the same month.

But I digress; lets take a look at the confirmed specs for both titles.

Step-up features from the original HD-DVD release are in bold.

A Look At Universal Pictures Blu-ray Strategy - Continued Because Universal were the last to step up to the Blu plate, they know they have a lot of lost ground to make up.

But reading the list of specifications for the two Mummy films gives me a lot of hope that they will do the right thing, albeit finally, to the Blu-ray customer.

Whilst they didnt look terrible on HD-DVD, they also didnt look stellar.

Universal copped a lot of flack for releasing quantity rather than quality; so if Uni can slow it down a little and focus more on quality, this would be a good thing, and this is certainly a good sign for the future.

That said, dont expect full re-masters for every Blu-ray release.

Now, the audio. Universal have already publicised their intention to use the DTS HD Master Audio encoder for all their Blu-ray releases, ending their agreement with Dolby laboratories.

This to and fro of lossy and lossless is almost certainly due to the lack of available disc space on a 30GB HD-DVD.

Now that there is an extra 20 GB available, these extra bits will be used to ensure the best possible audio presentation, and importantly to consumers; a standard expectation for lossless audio, as per almost every other studio.

Next, the extras.

Universal cultivated a pretty good standard of porting over all the DVD extras onto the HD-DVD release, and this in turn seems to be continuing.

This alone is comforting, and I wish other studios would follow suit (I am looking at you, Fox).

For HD-DVD, Universal featured on many discs a U-control feature, which at its heart utilized picture in picture and branching elements available in the iHD environment (iHD was to HD-DVD what BD Java is to Blu-ray.) At the time, the grace period for Blu-ray manufacturers was still in effect, and no players had secondary video decoders, necessary for this type of feature.

This was to come with BD profile 1.1, which is now in full effect, and can be found on the PlayStation 3 (on new firmware) and almost all Blu-ray stand alone players moving forward.

So, its a relief that Universal is not only including these features, but in the case of The Mummy movies, creating new ones where the HD-DVD had none.

Again, it would be wrong to assume that all Universal Blu-rays will have these features, but again, its a good sign.

A Look At Universal Pictures Blu-ray Strategy - In Closing Universal have also announced one more Blu-ray title; this years megaflop Doomsday, coming out on July 29th in the U.S.

The disc also features a generous extras package, including DTS HD Master Audio and a picture in picture making of.

Film The Mummy Return 3Gp Codec