300palooza
Have you entered the Join the 300 contest yet? Perhaps you'll rush off and do it as soon as you know what you stand to win - a trip to Comic-Con and a Watchmen set visit. Some sites have reported you'll get a part in Watchmen - well, maybe, if being a background artiste counts as having a part. That's irrelevant though: you'll get on the set of Watchmen, the most anticipated genre film of next year. You might even see a naked man covered in blue body paint.
The contest works as a points game, with points earned by taking on a number of challenges. Two finalists will be chosen from those who score 300 points (exactly how isn't clear - names in a Spartan helmet, maybe?) and those will be given a special task to complete during Comic-Con. Winning that will send you to the Watchmen set.
I'm guessing there'll be plenty of extra prizes for the runners-up too.
All of these jolly japes are in aid of promoting 300 on DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Looking at the various disc specs, it's looking like 300 is going to be one of the first titles to really put a gulf between standard def DVD releases and those for the next-gen formats.
Both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will feature all of the standard def set's features but in high def plus Who Were the Spartans, about the cast, and the production podcasts. HD-DVD comes with some exclusives, however: a picture-in-picture comparison between the raw greenscreen footage and final film; the Vengeance and Valor game; the Pick Your Favourite Scenes montage maker.
The sooner Blu-Ray just wins the format war and puts HD-DVD to bed, the better for all of us. That will stop the division of quality and content between releases in the only definite way - by making sure there's only one version in the first place.
Score one for HD-DVD in the meantime, I suppose.
4 comments:
Why you gotta hate on HD-DVD? Why can't both formats co-exist or better yet why can't HD-DVD defeat Blu-Ray?????
I'm absolutely convinced that Blu-ray will win. Unless there is no winner because the whole generation gets bypassed by consumers.
I'm hoping for the latter thing you said Brendon: as in that this damn format war gets bypassed. Can't we just wait until al this HD business has setteld in and THEN switch formats. Really, maybe America is getting used to HD. But here in Europe the HD-Ready tv's have only just begun selling for a price that's reasonable for a wealthy man. But certainly not for the average day consumer. Let alone full HD tv's.
Actually, in my experience is HD is more of a going concern in the UK than the US, just like 16:9 was a few years ago.
The US is more DVR friendly, though.
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