Adventures in High Definition

So, this weekend was a glorious time spent enjoying the recent purchases I had made for home theater. Namely, my HD-DVD player, and the HD-TIVO box.


HD TIVO has paid for itself numerous times over in the last few weeks, not only because of the dual tuner aspect, but also the increased hard drive space that makes my Unbox account actually worth a damn. I now own all 11 episodes of NBC’s fantastic cop drama Life, in my opinion the best show on Television right now. I have introduced the Ballard crowd to the show, and they are quite hooked. There may need to be supplemental viewings of the remainder.

While not presented in Full HD, the digital downloads are crisp, precise, and the sound is simply amazing. It really pops at 1080i, somewhat better in fact that DVDs shot with the same clarity and production values. So despite some claims to the contrary, I have indeed won the format war.

Downloads. Plus, I’ve got that wacky computer, which will also down convert my purchases into MPEG4s for use on my phone.

Technology is teh R0xx0r5.

But I digress. On a tip from tbclone47, I signed up for Netflix’s lowest level of participation, and am sampling their HD catalog. Not only will it stop me from shopping nearly as much as I do, I also won’t need to worry about having too great an inventory on the new format discs if I do indeed lose the side battles. Additionally, Netflix periodically sells off it’s inventory at vastly reduced rates to subscribers.

I like sales.

First in the queue was Payback: Straight Up-the Director’s Cut. Somehow I missed this release two years ago, and I’m glad that I saw it in the NetFlix Archive. The movie is markedly different than the version I saw in the theaters, and much truer to the “Parker” novels of Donald Westlake.

I watched it on a Saturday afternoon, though. The perfect Saturday for me involves waking up, eating Breakfast, puttering around the house for a bit in leisure activities, and generally following the 4th Commandment. Most days, I don’t even leave the house. By the time 1 or 2 PM rolls around, I’m usually sitting on a couch, watching something on television.

Or rather, listening to something, as the odds are high I’ll be stretched out, “resting my eyes.” I’ve been doing this since I was a wee thing, and it’s really come to be a cherished ritual.

So I do this while watching my new rental. It’s a good movie in its own right, and the commentary from the film’s original director was spot on. I love commentary tracks. To me they are the reason to have a DVD player/LD Player/Home theater, and the true advantage that a physical disc has over downloaded content. (subtitles for the hearing impaired are another)

So, I watched about half the movie, listened to about ¾ of the movie, and spent the entirety in food coma after eating my delicious Frozen Yogurt.

However, HD-DVD really fails with this release. Aside from 1080p capability, this disc is pretty lame. The standard features available of the player (like enhanced scene tracking, on screen menus) are nice, but not always necessary.

Because 1’s and 0’s are free, let’s examine.

Here are the listed special features of this HD-DVD release (stolen from the intarwebs)

  1. Commentary by writer/director Brian Hegeland – Hegeland chats about the true vision he had for Payback and the changes from the theatrical version versus the one we’re seeing now.
  2. Paybacks Are a Bitch – Two documentaries about shooting in Chicago and shooting in Los Angeles that give insight into how the movie came into being and how long time screenwriter Hegeland got his chance to direct his first feature.
  3. Same Story, Different Movie: Creating Payback: The Director’s Cut – A very interesting look at how the theatrical movie became what it did and how this version finally saw the light of day. You really get an idea of how studios and studio heads (Mel Gibson in this case) act when they see a final product and why there’s hardly any studio movie with and open ending.
  4. The Hunter: A Conversation with Author Donald E. Westlake – Author of the book on which this movie was based talks about the character of Parker (instead of Porter) and the novels that he wrote about him. He speaks briefly about his books and the movies made from them.
  5. Previews – Where would we be without these?

Not bad, not bad at all. However, not really good, either. Nothing here that different from a normal DVD release “special edition”

Wait, we have the internets! Let’s go see what comes on the regular version of the disc.

  1. Available Subtitles: English
  2. Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
  3. Commentary by: Brian HelgelandDolby Digital 2.0
  4. “Same Story, Different Movie – Creating Payback: The Director’s Cut”
  5. “The Hunter: A Conversation with Author Donald Westlake”
  6. On Location In Chicago
  7. On Set In Los Angeles

that’s, that’s…Exactly the same. They did nothing extra. NOTHING.

So I found a disc only copy of the movie online for $2, and am shipping it in.

Now, it’s around 4:20. I get a phone call, and spend a few minutes trying to make the phone work. I do so, and make soft plans for the evening.

Then I am reminded that I have hard plans. For tonight (Saturday) is the night when we are watching MANLY CHICK FLICKS at the Temple of Technology. Casablanca awaits us.

At 5 PM.

I am reminded of this by checking my e-mail around 4:30. In my brain, I had cast this as a Sunday Activity.

It is clearly not Sunday. And I told folks they could show up 30 minutes before the event.

Like, Now.

Time to clean.

I clean fast and hard. I also put on pants.

As a warm-up, we watch episode two of the aforementioned Life, and then I load my Standard definition version of the film into my up-converting, multi-region dvd player, and the HD version into my main (now) HD-DVD player. After a brief sync, I show it on another video feed, and swap a few times through the presentation. The final minute of this movie is some of the best cinematography ever presented, and we displayed the two cuts side by side.

I had read online that the HD transfer and remastering for this disc was good. I had heard that HD-DVD takes Black and White to an entirely new level.

I was not lied to by the internet. I now refer to HD-DVD as “pore-vision” The transfer was achingly beautiful, and the mellow glow of the wine made it very manly indeed. It was shard, crisp, and almost too good. The sound was amazing, although not quite as “warm” as I remember.

But the special features, the special features are the win.

All of the following had been previously presented on the 2 disc special edition that came out in 2003. But now they are all on one disc, and the transfer from 5 years ago is really the transfer I already had, with an extra disc of features added.

  1. English Monaural
  2. French Monaural
  3. English Subtitles
  4. French Subtitles
  5. Spanish Subtitles
  6. Audio Commentary by Film Critic Roger Ebert
  7. Audio Commentary by Film Historian Rudy Behlmer
  8. Introduction by Lauren Bacall (2 min.)
  9. The Children Remember (7 min.)
  10. Additional Scenes (1 min. 40 sec.)
  11. Outtakes (5 min.)
  12. Scoring Stage Sessions (8 Musical Selections)
  13. Bacall on Bogart (83 min.)
  14. You Must Remember This: A Tribute to Casablanca (34 min.)
  15. Screen Guild Theater Radio Show – 1943
  16. Television Adaptation – 1955 “Who Holds Tomorrow” (18 min.)
  17. “Carrotblanca” (8 min.)
  18. Production Research
  19. A Great Cast Is Worth Repeating
  20. Cast & Crew
  21. Awards
  22. Theatrical Trailer
  23. Re-Release Trailer 1992

Freaking fantastic. Pulling up the special features sub menu fills the entire screen with very small type.

And I have a very big screen.

Pie is ordered, and the tribe speaks in favor of watching Key Largo. I have no problem at all with this, as These two movies occupy two of the spots on my 10 top movies of all time.

In case anyone was wondering, a regular Black and white film up-converted to 1080i is also FREAKING AMAZING. Just not as sharp as the full transfer.

Now that, that’s a Saturday. How can Sunday possibly compare?

Well, it doesn’t. But it was not so bad at all. I finished my puzzle, I watched 9 episodes of Life, the Super Bowl (Thank you, TIVO!), Two episodes of Cold Case, Categorized things, and cooked a fantastic Roast Beef.

Nope, not so bad at all.

Tonight, Tonight I will hopefully do a little writing, and watch what I am told is an amazing 2-part episode of Enterprise, in which the Mirror Universe is born.

Life is good. Life with toys is better.