First off, I'm using a Panasonic BD-30. I watched "Beowulf" last night along with The Rolling Stone's "Shine A Light" (another new Paramount title) and discovered a couple issues, one being the biggest problem I've had with a BR disc since I got into the format late last year.

When I tried to access the pull-up menu during program play (on both movies), the movie freezes until you make a selection. I don't have that problem on any other BR with that feature that I can think of - "Batman Begins" being a recent example.

Most annoying on Beowulf, the movie seems to lock up the player when using "scene selection" from the pull-up menu. It would go to a chapter, haltingly play for a couple seconds and freeze up. After a couple attempts at selecting a new chapter, the movie completely locked up and I actually had to turn off and turn back on the player to get the movie to play. Interestingly, if I just started the movie form the beginning and used the remote's chapter "skip" function, I didn't have any lock-up problems. I also noticed image "stuttering" as if playback was either dropping frames or the player was just having a real tough time processing data during the scene where Beowulf swings from the rafters onto Grendal's back during the fight.

Anyone else having this problem?

T.B.

I watched Beowulf on PS3 last night and no problems that you spoke of happened to me. It sounds like a player issue, but could also be a disc issue if other users using the BD-30 are not having any problems.

how is the quality on the Blu-ray version? Is it worth ditching the HD-DVD?

how is the quality on the Blu-ray version? Is it worth ditching the HD-DVD?

I never had the HD-DVD version but the Blu-Ray picture quality is very good and sharp (8 on a 10 scale, imo) if a bit dark compared to the standard dvd version in a few indoor scenes.

T.B.

I thought the Blu-ray image and sound quality were excellent. I watched it on a 52" Aquos from about 8' away and I didn't have any complaints whatsoever.

Well... I do have one complaint. Paramount has switched from the Sony cases to the Warner cases but they're still making labels for the Sony cases, which means they get bunched up in the Warner cases. Thankfully, I had a bunch of Fox titles from when they switched the other way and had the same problem. Cloverfield, The Sum of All Fears, The Ruins and Beowulf all had labels that bunched up and warped in their cases until I switched them out.