JsARCLIGHT

I was having the same problem as you were with my PS3... it was doing the audio decoding unbeknownst to me and I kept pulling my hair out trying to figure out what was wrong and why those "little magic lights" where not coming on. That was when someone told me about changing the PS3's audio output from LinearPCM to Bitstream, which basically told the PS3 "don't decode the audio, just pass the information along". After that the data just moves downstream through the HDMI to the receiver and the receiver (which is the true decoding powerhouse) decodes and plays the True HD 7.1 audio. Actually I have a counter question for marimba: How do you like your Pronto? I'm in the market to get a "rich man" LCD touch screen remote and have been looking at the Logitech Harmony 1000, mostly out of seeing one in use at a friends house and hearing how easy it was for him to set up. Anyone else have any input on this? My new TV shows up next week and I want my ultimate superjerk home theater to be in high gear for my big birthday bash next month.

There is a caveat to letting the player decode your audio though... some players cannot decode a 7.1 mix and thus downgrade it to 5.1. The PS3 is one such player. If you let it do the audio decoding and dump the signal through Linear PCM the best you will get is 5.1 sound... hence why I avoid letting my PS3 decode my audio when I have a perfectly fine receiver capable of decoding 7.1 right there. My receiver is an Oink TX-SR805 and it replaced my older Denon a while back. And yes the PS3's one real weak spot is it's stupid Bluetooth crap. What kind of moron doesn't put an IR port on something they sell as a "valued home theater component"? Seriously.

You need to do what I do: First run your Blu Ray player's HDMI out into your receiver, then run the receiver's HDMI out pass through to your TV. Second you need to have a receiver that can receive and decode True HD or DTS HD from your player. I always try to make my receiver do all the audio processing thus I pick the output options that grant me complete data pass through from the player to the receiver (which in my case is a Sony PS3 HDMI out, to which you set it's audio to "bitstream"). Lastly and almost without saying, you will also want to be running that over HDMI 1.3a spec cables... 1.3a spec in, 1.3a spec out, which means you will want a receiver that can "inbetween" jumper HDMI 1.3a. But from what I've seen most of the True HD and DTS HD decoder receivers are running a 1.3 jumper setup anyway.

I think it's the dash. I've noticed that on some forums I haunt the search feature does not recognize the "-" character as a viable search character and it either ignores it or throws an error. I just did a test and searched for YF-19 and got dick, but when I omitted the dash and just searched for YF19 I got something in the ballpark of 600 hits. Methinks it is that dastardly dash.

It's only downfall is that it's a clone and not a "real" Match. It does however have a "real" match weight, adjustable trigger and target sights (trigger and sights not installed yet, waiting on HK to give me the go-ahead to mail it in for install). It has a Jarvis match barrel with O ring that is traditionally rifled which allows it to fire a wider gamut of ammo though. It's scary accurate but heavier than holding a barbell at arm's length.

My holiday haul pretty much in it's entirety: Pixar Cars toys from a secret santa, Dune on HD DVD from one of my employees, Road Warrior Blu Ray from one of my friends and the HK USP Match in .45 Auto from myself... and pretty much from my wife as well because she said I could "waste more money on guns".

I could have sworn Aliens was one of the movies Fox dropped hints to releasing on Blu Ray in the coming year. And when you think about it we will probably be getting the first three Indiana Jones movies on Blu Ray near the end of next year as well... they can't very well release Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on video without releasing the others in support, right?

Well, to be honest the picture is crap. Lots of grain, lots of dirt specs and even a stray hair or two. The colors are quite muted, the detail in objects simply is not there and the sound quality is somehow tinny but still dull. The only reason I have this movie is because I got it as a gift for Christmas this week. I didn't ask for it, I asked for The Omega Man on HD DVD but they got me this instead... It is not a HD DVD I would have purchased myself. Out of curiosity I opened it and watched it. The movie itself it is the 2 hour long normal theatrical release. In it's special features it has a section it calls "deleted scenes" in which the producer, who just happens to be Dino De Larentiis' wife, goes on and on about how there "is no 4 hour long cut" of the movie and that it is apparently all a fever dream cooked up by someone who had access to the unused footage. As the unused footage plays, she goes on to talk at length about how Lynch shot so much footage... then just decided "you know what? I'm going to condense that ten years of footage I just shot into one five minute scene"... which is what gave the movie it's herky-jerky feel. So to sum up: Dune on HD DVD is not worth the purchase. Picture quality is bad, audio quality is bad, it is ONLY the bumpy theatrical cut of the movie and in the special features (the rest of which are kind of weak) the producer goes to great lengths to convince us that there is no other cut of this movie.

I'll have to second that. I just got finished watching The Road Warrior on Blu Ray on my PS3 and it loaded lightning fast and when I skipped ahead a chapter it skipped lightning fast. Earlier today I watched Dune on my Xbox HD DVD drive and once again super fast load, play and skips. Now, if you are including the time that it takes for the console to completely turn on from being "off" then I can sort of see the complaints but from the moment I insert a disc to when I start watching a movie I'm never once looking at my watch saying "why the hell is this taking so long?".

I like to pride myself on being patient... but waiting for this set is eating out the back of my eyeballs. Mine finally shipped from Amazon today with a predicted delivery date of the 24th (like that will happen) so it will most likely be after the holidays before I get to see it. BUT what gives me hope is I ordered my new TV today and it is supposed to getting into town about the same time... so Blade Runner may be the first Blu Ray to be seen on my new 1080p set.

There have been errors in both camps, both in packaging and content. One notable screwup of Paramount on HD DVD was the "Jack Ryan Collection" HD DVD set that listed tons of special features on the box but the discs themselves contained zero special features.

Yeah that mistake is on Warner Brothers and not the format. This is the second "goof" in a row for them on high profile HD media sets. The first was the Blu Ray Harry Potter 1-5 set which some accidentally had an HD DVD stuck in them instead of a Blu Ray disc. IMHO Warner needs to improve their quality control a tad more.

Count yourself lucky. Mine has yet to even ship. I'm almost to the point of just canceling the Amazon order and just driving to Best Buy and buying it. If it doesn't ship today I may just do that. Edit: An interesting note for those like me who ordered off of Amazon and have yet to see their movie ship. Their site has updated with this message on the Blu Ray Collector's edition:

The final cut is more a "feel" thing for me. I fully expect to gain most of my "wow" simply from the HD Blu Ray media and to see the few tweaks. Then hopefully to see a decent semi clean workprint.

The director's cut omitted the narration, changed the ending and added in a few new elements from the '82 theatrical cut. The original theatrical cut from 1982 is far more "general audience accessible" than the newer director's cut. The narration, while not Ridley Scott's intention, clears up a lot of things as well as adds "movement" to the film's slower spots. IMHO I am waiting to see the "final cut" on this new set... I have always felt the original theatrical cut was a bit too hoaky and the director's cut was a tad laborious and plodding. It will be interesting to see how the "final cut" feels.

I'd have to agree. Brazil is very "quirky" and very Terry Gilliam. Gilliam himself has said that Brazil was a "spiritual successor" to Time Bandits, which itself preceded Blade Runner by a year. So if anything Brazil was only marginally influenced by Blade Runner. If you watch Time Bandits you can see a lot of the same visual cues and "flavors" that get expanded upon in Brazil. While the two movies (Brazil and Blade Runner) have somewhat similar subject matter (dystopian future, out of control corporations, etc.) they diverge quite drastically in tone and flow. As for folks "not getting" Blade Runner or finding it "boring", I agree as well. It is a very niche title that bombed on it's original theatrical release. Blade Runner is a modern success story illustrating the power of home video and how it can give a good movie that audiences ignored originally a second chance to shine. I personally feel that as time has gone on and Blade Runner has molted time and again into it's "true form" it has become less and less "mass market acceptable". Each new version of the film that I have seen has retreated further and further into it's own style, lore and "world"... while that is not a bad thing, IMHO the movie is becoming more and more "aloof" and difficult for general audiences to watch and understand. I mean, if I were to show my mother the original '82 theatrical cut with the narration she would probably understand it... but if I was to show her the director's cut she would probably be completely lost and disinterested. To a degree the Blade Runner audience has "grown up" beside the movie as it itself has "grown up", we the fans have evolved with the film and as such there is this kind of deep bond that exists that people coming to this "world" now probably will not understand or appreciate.

High Def Digest just gave all versions of Blade Runner on Blu Ray and HD DVD five out of five stars for nearly everything and have rated it a must own. I think I just got wood.

I'm more than happy to wait... I just don't want my set going missing like my last order. Amazon is good about sending out replacements, but it really bums you out to watch your tracking info go from "in transit" to "exception" to "contact shipper".

I'm watching my Blu Ray set on Amazon like a hawk... it hasn't shipped yet. Then again Amazon just lost a package of mine recently so here's hoping this one gets through on the first attempt.

It would appear that Wikipedia has boned me again. Edit: On second thought that explains quite a lot. Willard Huyck directed Howard the Duck and Jeffrey Boam wrote The Phantom and two of the Lethal Weapon movies. Now it all makes sense... Hurin has his root of evil.

And that is really all I was looking for. I mean, it's easy to spot the hoakiness in Crusade but the hoaky corniness in Raiders is subtle... but it's still there and it's there in some large quantities. I think it is on par with the shift from the subtle ham humor in the original Star Wars movies to the more blatant burp and fart jokes of the new movies. I blame Lucas. The man can't write. He can barely direct. Raiders of the Lost Ark was "thought of" by Lucas but it was actually written by Lawrence Kasdan... Whereas Temple of Doom and Last Crusade were directly written by Lucas. Lawrence Kasdan has had no further involvement with the Indy franchise... strange that all this "buffoonery" started with Temple of Doom. I wonder why? It should also be pointed out that Kasdan wrote the screenplays for Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as well... but I have a feeling Lucas was the one who inserted the Ewoks.

BDP 1.1, finally.

I agree with you both that Crusade and Temple drastically upped the goofy-crap-o-meter with the series, I was only taking issue with Hurin's blanket statement that Raiders was somehow "goofy free". Raiders is filled to the rim with tons of physical comedy and goofy stuff. One needs look no further than "uh oh sieg heil monkey". That monkey was the Short Round of Raiders... but thankfully they had the good sense to kill him off. I'd pay good money to see the mangled, poisoned corpse of Short Round in an artsy "through the ceiling fan" shot.

It's the end of the big truck scene when Indy drives the truck into Omar's and Beloch and the Nazis drive up only to have completely lost him. A street vendor shoves his melons in the head nazi's face, you hear a barking dog off screen (thank you, foley artist) and he snatches the melon from the vendor and chucks it at the unseen dog resulting in some nice splat and whimpering foley. Edit: On afterthought I probably should have included the whole "basket chase" scene in the goofy list as well. I mean, come on... it's plain ham. Indy tipping over everyone's laundry.

You know, I actually sat down and watched Raiders today all the way through due to lack of other meaningful things to do (plus it snowed a lot here and I prefer to stay inside until Monday) and I have to really disagree with Hurin on his points. Raiders is chock full of hammy, corny goof-ball one takes, goofy characters and outrageously bad dialog. Well, just to add in all the corny stuff you left out, Raiders contains: - the "sieg heil" monkey who says "uh oh" when ducking into the truck - the girl in his class who wrote "Love You" on her eyelids - The big curly haired guy in Karen Allen's bar who just falls over drunk with a big goofy smile on his face - the Cairo muggers who accidentally impale their cohort only to have two apples stuck on their sword along with him shish kebab style - Karen Allen's whole "frying pan" fight with one of the muggers - The constant whining and screeching "Iiiiiiiinddyyyyyyyy" of Karen Allen closely matches Kate Capshaw - The whimpering Gestapo guy who runs out into the snow to put his flaming hand out - The "screaming" mummies in the well of souls that surround Karen Allen - The lead SS guy throws a melon at an off screen dog in frustration - Sullah was (and still is in Crusade) a big goofy lummox who walks around singing songs from HMS Pinafore, gets scared by the statue in the Well of the Souls and mugs, steps and fetches for the SS and Waffen troops when they goose him - pretty much everyone but Indy is an idiot (his south American "comrade" falls into the light trap, he plugs the Cairo swordsman, the army intel guys are played off as "bureaucratic fools" (Indy's own words), Belloch is only "one step ahead" of Indy out of chance and dumb luck, as are the Nazis) ... and these are only the ones I remember. I guess what I'm trying to say is that every single Indy movie is chock full of goofy, corny bits. While I agree that Crusade seems to have a lot more of them and they are more, shall we say "everyman" than the ones in Raiders, you can't deny that Raiders is not "goofy free". I mean come on... a monkey throws a nazi salute and the nazi returns it. But that is just part of the corny haw haw flair of the Indy movies. It wouldn't be Indiana Jones if it did not have this child-like whimsy about it. I think that is what makes the movies so entertaining is that they don't take themselves seriously... such as the scene you mentioned with the guy on the windshield. That in and of itself is goofy, but the "Indy moment" of that scene follows the guy on the windshield when Indy and the Waffen Sargent exchange this brief "huyck huyck" smiling glance at each other in recognition that that poor dope on the windshield was funny. And of course everyone has to laugh when he just shoots the Cairo swordsman... but you have to admit that that scene was goofy. Not so much "duh" goofy but still it was corny goofy and it gets a laugh out of the audience. And in the end that is all it's about... getting the audience to laugh. To diffuse the seriousness of it all. If the Indy movies did not have all their goofy nuttiness they'd probably be kind of depressing.