Blu-ray Imports (General discussion, announcements and retailers) - Page 40

Have you tried: http://bluray.liesinc.net/

The region B list has several Italian Jobs, all region free.

-Bill

I tried playing "Girls of MCN" (German Blu-ray) disk on my Pioneer player and although the disk plays it shows no video, as if it's PAL. What causes this? Encoding a Blu-ray from a PAL source?

It plays fine on my LG player, which has PAL ability.

At first I though it might have been a mis-packaged standard DVD but it is Blu-ray. The audio is dts MA.

I received Italian Job (the newer one) in the same shipment. It plays fine on the Pioneer, including the bonus content. It also has dts MA. I did have to turn off subtitles and set it to English since it starts out in German, and with subtitles (seems a bit odd the subtitles come on by default).

Kalifornia has been shipped and I'd guess it will arrive near the end of the week. I'll report back on it.

Now I am curious. Forget Mbps, I would have thought that even multiple subtitle tracks wouldn't make that far into the point of measuring in Kbps, even with formatting and location data.

Do subtitle tracks really require that much data? If so, why?

In the Specs thread we usually see 20Kbps-80Kbps per track but as high as 1.5Mbps(!) on weird ones like the German Traffic Blu-ray.

I believe they are stored as compressed image files.

Kalifornia (from Germany) is Region-Free and plays fine on the Pioneer Elite. dts HD MA. Includes a trailer for the movie. No other extras.

According to Blu-ray.com, 'Life is Beautiful' has been announced in Canada for Sept 21st....great, life-affirming film. I don't care if it's Alliance....it's guaranteed to be better than than the non-anamorphic dvd....and hoping for lossless audio, which Alliance usually delivers on. And with a pre-order price of only $13.99 on Amz.ca, 'life IS beautiful'

And, hopefully they don't pull something where the English dub is lossless while the Italian track is lossy.

amazon.co.uk is listing

Ozu
Tokyo Story - one of the great movies of all time
Early Summer
Late Spring

as well as

Le Planete Sauvage (Fantastic Planet)

on blu-ray. Does anyone know whether these titles are region B locked?

Note: the Ozu titles are available now in a dvd and blu-ray double package
(the dvd portions of each title are region 2). The French film (quite good!)
is available 26 July.

Sticks

From the BBC UK:
http://www.bbcshop.com/blu-ray/littl...nvt/bbcbd0100/
E-mailed them to ask if it is region-free, as someone outlined in a IMDB post.

Shot with a digital-cinema Arri D-21 camera, AIUI, so shouldn't involve some dingy-print telecine--although as I recall the PBS broadcast (or elsewhere?) they seemed to have bled/filtered most of the color from it, excluding some supposed Italian locales.-- John

EDIT: BBCshop version, from e-mail, will be Europe only region coded. They suggest contacting http://www.bbcamericashop.com/help/contact-us_us.html . I left an E-mail request for a US (region 1) version. Calling BBCamerica didn't help; they can't log disc requests, apparently. EDIT2: Left Blu-ray Region-1 request, on signup link, at Amazon.com after Dorrit movie search.

Anyone know about this or if there is another release that is region free?

Paradise Lost, known as Turistas in the U.S., is locked to Region B. Fox shows no sign of releasing a Blu-ray of it for America.

Theres a Taiwanese release of this. $6.26 plus shipping at jsdvd.com

Great, thank you!

Anyone ordered from here before to the US? Experience, good or bad?

Any feedback on PQ/AQ for Turistas?

JP release of Evil Dead II coming in Nov: http://db.geneonuniversal.jp/search/...ftid=GNXF-1092

It's a Geneon-Universal release, but since Universal didn't handle the release outside of Japan, I'm guessing/hoping it will be done by the Geneon side of the company and use a new master from film elements located in Japan, like how The Crow was done.

The Crow didn't use a new master though, it was the same as the Euro releases. Likewise for their T2. Just scaling/cropping/encoding differences.

I haven't seen screenshot comparisons, but The Crow was 1080i50 in the UK, so I don't see how it could be the same master as the 1080p24 JP release.

The JP T2 specifically had the Studio Canal logo on it, so there's no surprise it used the same master as the French HD DVD, but I don't believe The Crow has such logos.

Here they are.

A few posts down is the comparison with the cropped Nordic release too, which is 1080p24 (not 1080p23.976) and still sourced from the same master.

It's no different from the way 24p masters are sped-up for 25p PAL DVDs. Take your 24p, adjust the frame rate header and audio rate, encode as "progressive-segmented frames" in 1080i50 because Blu-ray doesn't allow 1080p25.

Does anyone have any comparisons between The Fog DVD and the UK Blu-Ray? I'm thinking of getting it, but can't find any comparison shots.

I have the Japanese Universal/Studio Canal DVD; its transfer is 100% identical to Anchor Bay's grainy THX DVD. Cover scan here.

Oh, OK. I thought the term "same master" couldn't be applied to masters with differing frame rates, even if they were taken from the same transfer.

Looks like a good sign. Here's hoping.

Does anyone have any experience with Amazon.fr? I ordered a Blu-Ray and it shipped with DHLGA and the tracking on Amazon says it's in my city, but it says this "Action requise de la part du client" which translates to "Action requested on behalf of the customer" and it also says "Customer contacted to admit delivery". Is there something I have to do in order to have this delivered? This is my first time ordering from Amazon.fr.

Actually, that translates to "Action required from the customer". It seems to mean that you need to call your nearest DHL facility. There may be issues related to delivering the package to you. Be sure you have the tracking number.

DHL was no help. It's global mail and the tracking number doesn't match theirs. Perhaps I just need to sign for it when it's delivered? I'll see if it comes with today's mail.

Post office wasn't any help either. The tracking number doesn't work for either DHL or USPS. I guess I'll just see if it shows up today. Very strange.

I've ordered from Amazon.fr every now and then and I've never had any tracking numbers. I go with the standard shipping and it's delivered by the USPS about a week and a half to two weeks later.

Coming out in Japan on November 5!

Poltergeist II
http://www.amazon.co.jp/ポ&#12...2390742&sr=8-2

Poltergeist III
http://www.amazon.co.jp/ポ&#12...2390758&sr=8-3

Thanks for the reply. It should be here today with the mail hopefully.

It looks like I may have gotten my hopes up for nothing, as the Optimum UK BD and French Universal/Studio Canal apparently use the same DNR'd Anchor Bay transfer, so the JP release will probably be the same.

It finally arrived today. I guess it was just sitting at the DHL facility for a couple of days.