I see that Reign of Fire HD-DVD is available for Pre-Order from YesAsia. However, it says Region 2. Before I drop the $45 on a non-compatible DVD, aren't all HD DVD Region Free?

Yes they are

Pre-ordered mine.

I pre-ordered mine to.

And I also found this, that I pre-ordered : XXX (Japan Version) [HD DVD] :D

Cool! Thanks for the heads up. Just ordered my copy.

And I also found this, that I pre-ordered : XXX (Japan Version) [HD DVD] :D

Somewhat tempting but I'd like to hear what the quality is like first.

Are you sh%$tting me! :eek:
I have to pre-order. How fricken cool is this!
Doing anything I can to stick it to Disney! :) I just watched this on TNT-HD and they did the streach city!

Cool! Thanks for the heads up. Just ordered my copy.



Somewhat tempting but I'd like to hear what the quality is like first.
Exactly.

Are they using VC1 or mpeg4 with those versions from YesAsia?

can someone let me know the PQ after they received their Japanese version of Reign of Fire?

Are they using VC1 or mpeg4 with those versions from YesAsia?
I would assume it's mpeg4 like the previous Japanese releases.

can someone let me know the PQ after they received their Japanese version of Reign of Fire?
Just keep in mind that the release date is mid November. Nobody is going to be getting discs for quite awhile. However, when I get mine I will be sure to share my thoughts on the PQ.

Reign of Fire shipped today from YesAsia. :)

Mine is "Preparing to ship" from www.cdjapan.co.jp. :cool:

Such a cool movie. I never understood why it was not more well-liked. Maybe people were dissapointed we don't see the war, which is understandable.

Reign of Fire shipped today from YesAsia. :)

I always liked this movie.

Give us the heads up on PQ if you don't mind.

Mine shipped today :)

any chance to get HIRES pictures of the back of covers ?

do they have only DD5.1 ? no DD+ ? (Reign of fire and XXX)

thanx for any info...

Marek

It is a Toshiba release so will be DD Plus 5.1, 1080P and multi region, will post a scan in a week or two (When it finally gets to me). Extras are usually in English with forced subtitles, the film is in English with removable Japanese subtitles and menus are mostly Japanese.

It is a Toshiba release so will be DD Plus 5.1, 1080P and multi region, will post a scan in a week or two (When it finally gets to me). Extras are usually in English with forced subtitles, the film is in English with removable Japanese subtitles and menus are mostly Japanese.

thanx for info !
are they authored with AVC or VC-1 codec ?

Marek

Mine shipped today from Amazon JP via DHL. Should have it this weekend.

great movie. i'm all over this like white on rice.

Do any of these sites mentioned have both Reign of Fire and Equilibrium? Can't seem to find one that has both....can't find either on amazon JP, but maybe I am missing something?

play-asia.com has both of them in stock.

I'm almost tempted to import this. I liked the movie, but I am not sure if I liked it that much. Now if it was Aliens then I wouldn't hesitate and who cares I'll be sleeping on the couch after my wife finds out how much I paid for a single movie. :D

thanx for info !
are they authored with AVC or VC-1 codec ?

Marek

AVC, the quality of releases from house Toshiba in general has averaged that of the US VC-1 studios but there has been some variance.

Do any of these sites mentioned have both Reign of Fire and Equilibrium? Can't seem to find one that has both....can't find either on amazon JP, but maybe I am missing something?

Equlilbrium is called "Rebellion" in Japan. Maybe you´ll find it under that title!

Let us know how "Reign..." looks, guys...

Looks like yesasia is the only site to actually have Reign in HD-DVD.
$45 with free world wide shipping. I'm interested if someone here gives it a thumbs up???

I just got a message from Yesasia about "Reign":

the expected ship out date has been revised to Nov/24/2006

Damn...

mine shipped the 14th...

Mine shipped out 11/14 :D

I pre-ordered it with The Machinist, they got Machinist in stock but my pre-order for Reign is now labeled as "searching from suppliers."

Someone please post a review when they get their copy!

Mine shipped yesterday as well from CDjapan. I'll port a review as soon as I get it! As usual the tracking number from them doesn't work.

Received my copy today. I'm flipping through it now. It looks and sounds VERY good! Glad I imported this...

Tango22, did you order it from YesAsia?

Tango22, did you order it from YesAsia?

Yes. I love that site...

I watched the first half last night. PQ about as good as The Brothers Grimm Japanese HD-DVD. Dialogue seemed a tad low but WOW what bass!

so, was it worth the upgrade??

from what, the dvd? Hell yes.

Dang... now I'm getting impatient as hell; my copy supposedly shipped early this week.

One small problem: I loaned my HD-A1 to a friend for him to play with in his new dedicated HT room... I may have to invite myself over for a showing of RoF.

I watched the first half last night. PQ about as good as The Brothers Grimm Japanese HD-DVD. Dialogue seemed a tad low but WOW what bass!

is it DD5.1 ? or DD+ ?

codec ? VC-1 ? or AVC ?

Marek

I have a copy winging its way from the land of the rising sun right now. Should land on Monday or Tuesday. I'll drop back in with my assessment of the disc then.

Video 9/10
Audio 9/10

Any doubts about Mpeg4 can safely be laid to rest with this transfer! The level of detail is incredible, this movie really needed HD, looks exactly as I remember it in theaters. That is to say, there is a lot of intentional grain on daylight exteriors for the gritty post apocayptic look(which is the only thing that keeps this movie from being reference quality), and gone are the halo's on the DVD. My only compaint about the release, is that it seems impossible to remove the Japanese text from say, newspaper headlines and signs. At least I can't figure it out with menu navigation, but it's a minor issue.

Audio is predictably spactacular, if slightly front heavy. The bass in this film will shake off anything on your shelves thats under 3lbs! Great release, if this is the sort of quality to be expected from Japanese releases, I can't wait for xXx!

Now if it were only in an actual HD-DVD case. :mad:

I love that flick. Terific fx work. Guess I am importing. :)

I have to concur with all the praise for the PQ. It's excellent, even better than 'Equilibrium' I'd say. Popped in the disc just to check out the PQ & ended up watching the whole movie. This movie is just a lot of fun.

Between this & Equilibrium, I think MPEG4-AVC can deliver just as well as VC-1. I'd read somewhere that AVC can soften the PQ, but not so in this case.

My only compaint about the release, is that it seems impossible to remove the Japanese text from say, newspaper headlines and signs.

I found this also with the Brothers Grimm disc from Japan. Even with subtitles turned off, there was player-generated Japanese text for place names and dates. I did find a selection in the setup menu that turned this of also. In the menus for Brothers Grimm, it was not in the subtitle listings but on the opposite side of the menu screen. Last selection in a list. There are 4 or 5 characters with the last character looking like a backwards "L".

You might check the menu on Reign of Fire to se if you can find something like that. Let us (me) know.

Am I correct in reading the price as $45?

Equilibrium is now showing as Out of Print at Yesasia :mad: . Going to get Reign of Fire while it's still available! I saw this on Sky when it first came out and really enjoyed it, and although £23 is a lot for one movie I just got a small tax refund for the exact amount, so it's obviously what the good L-rd intends!! Just want to confirm though, the PQ, it's up there with the best? Where would it rate on the tier system because it's not listed there yet?

What the heck... Just ordered it anyway! Thanks Inland Revenue! Total price £21.60 delivered.

My copy of Reign of Fire showed up today and I said I'd post my comments....

I agree with the above assessments of the disc. Not quite the best of the best, but certainly a top tier HD DVD transfer. Codec is MPEG-4 AVC and audio is 5.1 Dolby Digital + (English and Japanese). Audio is about what you would expect, which is to say, very good.

I confirmed that all Japanese subtitles and text for place names, printed signs, etc. can be turned off. From the main menu, select setup. There are three sections, audio (English is default), subtitles (defaulted on), and a third section that I don't know, but this is where you turn off the Japanese text. Leave audio at default, but change the next two to the second (bottom) selection. This will give English audio with no Japanese subtitles of any kind.

Enjoy!

Thanks Robert. Let's see if I can navigate the Japanese menus :). At least the word 'Setup' appears in English if I remember correctly on the main menu.

Yep, "Setup" is the only English in the main menu.

BTW, the first selection in the main menu is to play the movie, the second is scene selection, the third is a English language trailer, the fourth is a Japanese trailer (both poor quality), followed by "Setup".

I got around to watching tonight. I thought the movie was great but the wife hated it. Looked good to me and what great dragons.

P.S. Easy to turn off subtitles and text. Subtitle button and right and all was good.

With all the talk about the movie, the wife and I decided to rent the dvd over the weekend. All I kept thinking was how nice it might look on HD DVD.

Figures today I see its announced for BR in Feb...

Just received 'Reign of Fire' from YesAsia today! Will watch tonight! :)

FYI, this title will be released in Feb. for R1, per dvd.themanroom... in Blu-Ray :)

Blu-ray should be MPEG4AVC as well, so it should make for a good comparison w/the HD DVD.

Got it yesterday from Amazon.jp, hopefully I'll have a chance to watch it this weekend.

Okay, watched Reign of Fire last night. Because it deals with post-Apocalypse Britain the movie's style is purposefully dark and colourless. The good news is that the HD-DVD does a brilliant job at communicating this while still managing to give the nice sharp picture that we've all grown to love on HD-DVD. Yes, unlike Batman Begins (which is similarly dark but, I felt, also soft), Reign of Fire is impressively detailed throughout, and last night I sat back and purred to myself over the quality of the picture - this is why I bought HD-DVD !! When there is colour then the disk does a great job of highlighting it against the generally stark background. So the brief flashes of colour really stand out - particularly the red blood on grimy faces, explosions and, of course, the dragons' fire! There is some visible film grain but that's to be expected and actually adds to the post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Film blemishes are totally absent - it's a nice clean print. The sound also is great! There were some great effects fizzing between my rear speakers and the sub gets a good workout at times too. All in all this is a very good disk and worthy of purchase. I wouldn't say it's quite reference, but it's certainly at the top end of the picture league table - perhaps not Champions League, but, let's say, it would certainly qualify for the UEFA Cup (not sure how this translates in America!)

One thing is bugging me about the film cut itself though, I seem to remember watching it on Sky years ago and recall a scene at the beginning of the movie where we see kids watching Teletubbies or something on a knacked out old TV... Am I right, because that scene isn't on the HD-DVD. I missed it, because that scene stood out to me years ago.

Oh, BTW, switching off subtitles is easy. Just press the subtitle button on your HD-A1 remote and then press right. You'll need to switch off the Japanese soundtrack too. When you press menu the navigation buttons appear at the bottom of the screen. These are, from left to right, Play, Scene Selection, English Trailer, Japanese Trailer, and last of all and helpfully in English too 'SETUP'. If you go into set up all you get are audio choices. Despite the fact that everything's in Japanese you can see that two of the choices, on the left side of the screen have 5.1 in them. The disk plays Japanese 5.1 by default and this is the lower one of the two. Navigate to the one above this and select it and you've got English 5.1. Done! May be what I said sounds complicated but it really is easy. Took me 30 secs to work it out.

Hope all this helps.

Has anyone been able to do a side-by-side comparison of the PQ between the import HD-DVD and the Blu-Ray version? Is it the same transfer? If not, is one superior over the other?

I have this jap HD but no blu ray to compare . The downside is I think the audio is quite soft compare to the rest of jap HD I owned. Need to turn up the volumn a lot . Equilibrium,shinobi(loud),Fragile,Gift,panist audio is fine though.

I have this jap HD but no blu ray to compare . The downside is I think the audio is quite soft compare to the rest of jap HD I owned. Need to turn up the volumn a lot . Equilibrium,shinobi(loud),Fragile,Gift,panist audio is fine though.
Hi AdeTan, Can you give us a quick rundown on 'The Gift' please. I'm still in two minds as to get this or not.
Thanks.

Well its been a while... any updates on the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Import PQ comparison for Reign of Fire??

I'm very curious if the same transfer was used, and if not, whether or not one is superior over the other. :cool:

Well its been a while... any updates on the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Import PQ comparison for Reign of Fire??

I'm very curious if the same transfer was used, and if not, whether or not one is superior over the other. :cool:

Somewhere in the world, there is a person who posts on this forum once in a while, who happens to be a neutral early adopter, and also owns Reign of Fire on Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD... and he knows firsthand if the two copies have different transfers, and can make a good call on the differences in the PQ, if one exists... I just want to hear what he/she has to say!! :eek:

I'll be picking up the Blu Ray version of this fairly soon. Now that I have both formats no point in importing any longer. Unless WB releases more stuff over in Europe first then brings it out here in the States later (Harry Potter...) :rolleyes:

BD25, mpeg2, uncompressed pcm taking up a nice portion of the disc
vs
HD30, AVC, DD+

BD25, mpeg2, uncompressed pcm taking up a nice portion of the disc
vs
HD30, AVC, DD+
:eek:

I havent seen the BD version but was plesantly surprised at the HD version. I wasnt expecting much from it being older with those effects but it was nice and clear along with being bright and colorfull. Definetly not one of the best HDs comparing to newer releases but definetly a large improvement over the DVD version.

Dont ya hate when you buy a movie and although you may have liked it, you know you will never re-watch it. I'm happy with the purchase because I think it would be worth re-watching.

BD25, mpeg2, uncompressed pcm taking up a nice portion of the disc
vs
HD30, AVC, DD+

Actually, the US Blu-ray disc is AVC, and the PCM track is 16-bit which is the lowest bit rate for 5.1 PCM. The movie is only 102 minutes with very little additional content.

I have both discs, and they are very, very close in video quality. Some consider them identical.

Actually, the US Blu-ray disc is AVC, and the PCM track is 16-bit which is the lowest bit rate for 5.1 PCM. The movie is only 102 minutes with very little additional content.

I have both discs, and they are very, very close in video quality. Some consider them identical.
Finally! Someone who has both discs! Now that you have mentioned that they are very, very close in PQ... be honest, which one has the SLIGHT edge!?!?!?! :eek:

As someone who owns the HD-DVD and also a PS3, I remember reading the comparison's when the BD came out. IIRC the BD had some very slight EE but as usual people touted its PCM sound, the video is definitely different masters, with the BD being the same as the R1 dvd. Most everyone said it was a wash, but seeing as the BD is half the price, I don't see any reason to get the HD-DVD.

That is of course unless you want to buy mine ;)

Finally! Someone who has both discs! Now that you have mentioned that they are very, very close in PQ... be honest, which one has the SLIGHT edge!?!?!?!

To my eye, I give a very slight edge to the Japanese HD DVD. It seems just a bit sharper and "cleaner" to me. But don't read too much into this. Like I said, very, very close.

To my eye, I give a very slight edge to the Japanese HD DVD. It seems just a bit sharper and "cleaner" to me. But don't read too much into this. Like I said, very, very close.
Thats good enough for me, since I can't quite afford to get a PS3 yet... and I've been wanting to get this movie in hi-def for the longest time. I could always wait til I get a PS3... but that might not be for another 5 or 6 months, if at all. If they were identical to the tinest degree, I would just wait, but I guess I'm going for the import! Thanks for the (sorta) recommendation. :D

I have this jap HD but no blu ray to compare . The downside is I think the audio is quite soft compare to the rest of jap HD I owned. Need to turn up the volumn a lot . Equilibrium,shinobi(loud),Fragile,Gift,panist audio is fine though.

Welcome to AVS AdeTan,

You could always use Netflix to compare the Blu-ray.

May I suggest that using Japanese in the place of jap will improve the post? ;)

Just watched this, and if I wasn't mistaken the rears channels are reversed. Since I have an A1 hooked up by 6-channel analog audio, it was no big deal to swap the connectors on the player. Did anyone else notice this too or am I mistaken?