As mentioned in the last post, the new design for The Look And Sound Of Perfect site has an area where you can get more information about recent and upcoming movies.

One of the highlighted movies is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which is due on December 11, both by itself as well as in a box set that includes the previous movies. This is the latest of the Harry Potter movies, and there hasn’t been a ton of information out yet about this HD DVD disc. In fact, you couldn’t even pre-order it at Amazon until very recently.

The information for this movie at TheLookAndSoundOfPerfect.com mentioned a “Live Community Screening” feature which is described as follows:

Gather your own army of fellow wizards for a live community screening party. Invite other owners of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix HD DVD to simultaneously watch from their own internet-accessed players and text with your remote, PC or cell phone. When you host an invitation-only viewing, you control the film by pausing and playing the feature on everyone’s machine. You can chat live with your friends as you watch.

That last sentence is really important. (more…)

HDi, Microsoft’s implementation of the interactivity layer (developed with input from Disney) for the HD DVD format now has an official logo program. This means that products which support or feature HDi can display the HDi logo so that consumers can make better-informed purchases. This is an important point to note because LG’s first dual-format player did not support HDi, which is actually a mandatory feature on all HD DVD players.

All Toshiba HD DVD players have supported HDi, and in a couple of months the new third-generation units will sport the HDi logo. Movies that have HDi features will also display that logo on their packaging, which will make it easier to figure out whether a movie has any kind of advanced interactivity in it or not.

All HD DVD movies already have some kind of HDi, even if it’s just the live menus during movie playback (instead of stopping the movie to go to the menu). What’s more interesting is the web-enabled aspect. (more…)

New Line Home Entertainment is following in the footsteps of its parent company, Warner Bros., and supporting both high-definition DVD formats. It’s great to hear that New Line is starting their disc business, because they’re the ones who will ultimately put out the long-awaited Lord of the Rings.

New Line’s first disc will be this summer’s hit comedy, Hairspray, but there’s a catch for the HD DVD release: Instead of coming out “day and date” (simultaneous release on all formats), New Line will release the HD DVD version next year because of HD DVD’s lack of region coding.

Region coding is something that’s common in the video game world, and has also made its way to DVDs. It works like this: If you try to play a movie or game from a foreign region, your player will refuse or reject the disc if region coding is enabled. There’s nothing wrong with your machine, and there’s nothing wrong with the disc. It’s just that the content provider has elected to enforce how and when the content should be enjoyed in your region.

One of the supporting reasons for region coding is that (more…)

In recent news, we’ve heard that Toshiba’s upcoming HD-A35 and Onkyo’s DV-HD805 players will feature HDMI 1.3a which enables “Deep Color” output. It’s always nice to brag that your gadgets have the latest gee-whiz features, but it’s even better when you actually understand what you’re bragging about. It’s even more important to know whether you might have been misled about how cool or useful the feature is. “Deep Color” is one of those features that sounds great, but let’s see if it’s all that you think it’s made out to be.

Let’s make this a practical lesson so that you’re not left with more buzzwords and confusion. These steps are for Windows XP, but the same ideas apply to all computers.

Right-click on your desktop, and select the last item, “Properties,” so that you can examine how your video is set up. On the dialog box that comes up next, select the right-most tab for “Settings.” Here, you’ll see the resolution that your screen is currently set at – the higher the numbers, the more pixels and detail you get. Low numbers like 640×480 correspond to the picture quality of ordinary TVs and DVDs. Higher numbers, such as 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1900×1200, and so on, move you into HDTV territory.

“Color Quality” is at the bottom right of the dialog. The available settings depend on your video card and monitor. In the old days, this would be set to 8-bit graphics because some games only worked properly in that mode, and some computers or cards were so slow that 8-bit actually made things go faster. The other extreme is 32-bits of color, and there is usually a 16-bit “medium” option as well. These numbers refer to how much data it takes to represent a pixel – a single dot – on the screen. More bits means more colors (i.e. more shades for each color), but it also requires a little more speed and performance from all of the components involved.

Voila! You’ve just understood the basic principles about Deep Color. Standard HD DVD (and Blu-ray) discs are made for 24-bit color, and the HDMI 1.3a specification allows colors to be represented by 30, 36, and 48 bits.

Now for the “gotcha!” in all of this: (more…)