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Anything apart from Criterion Eclipse material will do...

Awesome Welles wrote:Courtesy of the nice folks at MovieMail I have heard these will apparently be dual format releases - DVD/Blu for the films featured in each package. How they will be paired I don't know yet.

My understanding is that the films will be Blu-ray when source materials justify it, DVD when they don't. Which logically means that the Blu-ray titles will be heavily biased towards the end of Ozu's career and the DVDs towards the beginning, but that's based on educated guesswork - I don't know the precise breakdowns.

Either way, it looks certain that these will be very considerable improvements on the previous UK releases - the Blu-rays certainly won't be NTSC-to-PAL conversions unless something goes very very badly wrong indeed.

perkizitore wrote:Anything apart from Criterion Eclipse material will do...

Absolutely, I agree. I'm just not optimistic. BFI will presumably be spending quite a bit to make the Noriko Trilogy presentable in Blu and we already know the sad state of Tokyo Story elements. So the easy route would be to license the Criterion Eclipse silents complete with the scores. I'm not blaming them because it's understandable economically. But I do hope I'm wrong. 8-[

MichaelB wrote:Either way, it looks certain that these will be very considerable improvements on the previous UK releases - the Blu-rays certainly won't be NTSC-to-PAL conversions unless something goes very very badly wrong indeed.

Are you speaking primarily of the old Tartan boxes?

What else would I be referring to? Tartan has released virtually all the British Ozu DVDs to date.

MichaelB wrote:What else would I be referring to? Tartan has released virtually all the British Ozu DVDs to date.

I wasn't sure. Sitting on the left side of the pond, my knowledge of the UK DVD catalog has yet to reach the encyclopedic. Sorry.

MichaelB wrote:What else would I be referring to? Tartan has released virtually all the British Ozu DVDs to date.

In all fairness, the two last Tartan Ozu-volumes [three & four] were at least as good as Criterion's Eclipse releases - i.e. NOT unconverted NTSC-PAL.

MichaelB wrote:

Awesome Welles wrote:Courtesy of the nice folks at MovieMail I have heard these will apparently be dual format releases - DVD/Blu for the films featured in each package. How they will be paired I don't know yet.

My understanding is that the films will be Blu-ray when source materials justify it, DVD when they don't. Which logically means that the Blu-ray titles will be heavily biased towards the end of Ozu's career and the DVDs towards the beginning, but that's based on educated guesswork.

I'm not quite sure whether I understand this correctly, knowing nothing about Blu technology. Does dual format mean one disc with two different layers (i.e a hybrid disc that plays on both systems, like SACD which also plays as a normal CD)? Or will there be an either/or-policy a la MoC, i.e. some films will ONLY be available as Blu, and others only as DVD?

Play.com descibes them so...

Late Spring (w/ Bonus DVD) (2 Discs) (Blu-ray)

Either the bonus DVD is a duplicate of the same material as the BR in a different format, or it's an extra disc containing as a bonus the second silent film as a DVD, with the main feature as the BR...

That's what Moviemail made it sound like when they sent me a message via Twitter, above.

You confirm my worst fears. Both Play.com and amazon list "Late Spring" only as a Blu ray disc, with no DVD version in sight. This would be the second label then which switches over to Blu-exclusives for some releases... MoC must have made quite an impression.

Tommaso wrote:You confirm my worst fears. Both Play.com and amazon list "Late Spring" only as a Blu ray disc, with no DVD version in sight. This would be the second label then which switches over to Blu-exclusives for some releases... MoC must have made quite an impression.

I asked the BFI's press representative whether or not this is true. It is not. They have no plans to release BD only titles.

Tommaso wrote:You confirm my worst fears. Both Play.com and amazon list "Late Spring" only as a Blu ray disc, with no DVD version in sight. This would be the second label then which switches over to Blu-exclusives for some releases... MoC must have made quite an impression.

Is is so hard to spend 100 euro to buy a blu-ray player???
It eludes me how people can spend hundreds a year buying discs, but cannot spend money on a player that will enhance their viewing experience...

perkizitore wrote: Is is so hard to spend 100 euro to buy a blu-ray player???
It eludes me how people can spend hundreds a year buying discs, but cannot spend money on a player that will enhance their viewing experience...

Because in order to achieve said enhancement, you also need to spend a rather more substantial sum on a hi-def television that's big enough to make a difference. Claiming that it only costs 100 euros to get into Blu-ray is disingenuous to say the least.

Anyway, this discussion belongs elsewhere, because all 32 of the Ozu titles will also be made available on DVD.

Even if you don't get better quality due to your technical limitations, at least you can pay a bit more for people's hard work so everyone can enjoy more classics on blu-ray!

I feared very much that this discussion would start again, but actually everything I have to say about the pros and cons is in the respective MoC-thread, including the current prices for a regionfree blu player if you don't live in the US or in the UK. But thanks, Michael, for confirming the availability of all the Ozus on SD. Will certainly get me some of these, then.

perkizitore wrote:Even if you don't get better quality due to your technical limitations, at least you can pay a bit more for people's hard work so everyone can enjoy more classics on blu-ray!

If you have money to burn, I'll very happily send you a list of BFI projects looking for backers!

If i was rich, i would be more than happy to help! O:)

OK, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that I've been authorised to reveal the full specs of the April Ozu releases...

...but the bad news is that I won't be able to get my hands on them myself until the office opens tomorrow.

But watch this space.

perkizitore wrote:Even if you don't get better quality due to your technical limitations, at least you can pay a bit more for people's hard work so everyone can enjoy more classics on blu-ray!

Actually, I'm one of the loons with a Blu-ray player but no HDTV. Not even a flatscreen, just a regular old CRT, not even a big one. It's actually a very economic decision. This way I can buy Blu-rays now and don't have to double-dip later. So I'm actually saving money.

And let me tell you, those Blu-rays do actually look better on my old TV already because of the better compression. Definite improvement over DVD. And yes, I've upgraded a few DVDs so I can directly compare both. It's absolutely worth upgrading even without a HDTV.

Judging by his post, Tommaso is probably like me in the sense that he refused to upgrade to Blu unless he'd be region-free.

TMDaines is our region free release of aox.

mfunk9786 wrote:TMDaines is our region free release of aox.

Wha? I just didn't see the sense in buying a Region B only Blu-ray player when 50% of the releases I wanted were Region A only. That's common sense to me.

This ain't got anything to do with buying only region free releases or anything.

I was just commenting on the fact that seemingly every one of your posts has some mention of "region free" in it the way aox's once always contained a mention of "blu-ray" in them.

jbaart wrote:Actually, I'm one of the loons with a Blu-ray player but no HDTV. Not even a flatscreen, just a regular old CRT, not even a big one. It's actually a very economic decision. This way I can buy Blu-rays now and don't have to double-dip later. So I'm actually saving money.

I'll go you one better, I have bought a few blu-rays but have no blu-ray player! I'm quite happy to wait a few months (or more) before I can watch stuff. As you say it's definitely a money-saver.