Why is New Line scared of HD?

dang i wish the ps3 had the same type of marketplace like the xbox sometimes espeacially lately its not worth it to drive to pick up a $2 movie to rent just to spend $3 in gas so you end up spending $5++ i rather just download but hopefully not with the crazy prices xbox charges lol or do they still charge $5.99 per movie?

yeah...which is pretty pricey. But if you're only renting these once in a while it's not too bad.

High def movies are only that much, reg movies are 3 or 4 bucks i think

The cheapest thing would be to ride your bike to a friend's house that already owns the movie

even better if he pic you up

i think new line is the studio that made wedding crashers. I want wedding crashers on hd dvd. i love that movie.

Funny how no one answered the OP question. Anyway, yeah, it is odd. It's also starting to border on violently frustrating. The Blade series, the Austin Powers series, etc - these movies need to come to HD soon.

I don't understand why they just don't put out at least some of the smaller titles in their catalog. If they are waiting until a point where they can also let people know what's going on with Lord of the Rings, then that is just stupid to me.

I've seen LotR often enough to want other titles in their catalog first.

New Line = Warner

Warner = 2nd biggest contributer to HD-DVD

New Line = Not scared

New Line has a lot of interesting movies but out side LOTR very few big movies. I am sure they just want to maximize profits on their a-typical selection.

New Line is a completely autonomous company with it's own theatrical distribution (their films aren't distributed by WB, unlike say Touchstone being dsitributed by Disney) and their Home Video department is the same.

Definitely not equal... two completely different companies and departments.

I had a discussion when were finishing mixing Texas Chainsaw 2 and spoke with the VP of NLHV, who I've known for a long time (almost 10 years). At this time, about 10 months ago, they were taking a wait and see approach.

They still are, and they will decide what they do, not anybody at WB.

FWIW, New Line was mastering their films in HD long before everybody else... when we were finishing Mortal Kombat in 1995, I saw some HD of "The Mask" at the video post house where we were finishing MK.. it was the first HD I had seen at that point.

I would venture to say they have almost all of their film assets in HD at this point.... I'll have to ask

It sounds right - I remember first noticing using high-definition transfers as marketing on the rear artwork of New-Line DVDs pretty early on.

Funny you mention Mortal Kombat.... stil non-anamorphic after all these years... still waiting...

Hmm, but they'll probably have to reencode them all anyway, unless they want to use good ol' MPEG2. Unless their newer encodes are AVC (I doubt they've used VC1).

New Line did say they were bringing the theatrical editions of LOTR to HD DVD and Blu-Ray. They will probably hold out on the Extended Editions for awhile.

They didn't encode anything, just transfered them to D5 or what ever they were using back then for HD, (which I believe was D5 for the record, and not D1).... that is uncompressed component 10bit storage, different from the codecs used for HD DVD and BR.

You use a D5 master, or uncompressed DI files, etc.. to make an MPEG2, AVC, VC-1 encode...

Any one of the 'Blade' movies would be awesome Demo material.

I would happily pay $35 to hear the first one with a lossless audio track.
And that red drop of CGI blood at the end would pop off the screen.

I've seen quite a few New Line films on broadcast HD and I hope the first Austin Powers gets a whole new transfer as it looked pretty rough. The Blade films (at least 2 and 3), Final Destination 1/2/3, Dark City, Pleasantville, should look fantastic though.

And when it hits me in the head I would be like "WTF!!!!!!!"

New Line was supposed to make an annuncement about their HD plans in the June/July timeframe.

TotalHD was also supposed to debut in the same June/July timeframe.

However, I think that Blu-Ray's changes to their standard postponed both of these items until November 1st at the earliest.

I can't understand them holding back.

For example, a dual HD DVD & BD release of 'LOTR' would increase interest in, and therefore sales of high def.

That's good for New Line, enabeling them to get people to double-dip...again.

Being available on both formats might help one or two people believe the format war isn't something to worry about.

It doesn't commit New Line to either format. Inded, they could release it on HD DVD only, and never release another HD DVD ever again, choosing BD instead.

And, of course, a high def 'LOTR', evenm a theatrical cut with no extras, would sell bucketloads, and pave the way for a Spec Ed at a future time.

Steve W

I think it's wait-and-see all right. Waiting until the Blu-ray standard is finalized to see whether TotalHD will work. A dual-format LOTR would be a suitable high-profile title for a big holiday marketing campaign.

I personally think TotalHD is a two-headed monster that will create a fresh wave of compatibility problems and slow releases on both formats. It's the kind of craziness only a studio executive could love.

I really can't imagine we'd see any version of Lord of the Rings this quickly on either format.

New Line should be criticized more than anyone else, even Fox. At least Fox has released content. Hell, even the frickin' Weinstein Company, which doesn't own many movies at all, are releasing. Why haven't they held titles back to maximize profits? New Line is just 100% cowards.

My theory is that New Line is not only holding out for a clearer winner and more stable tech for interactive features but they are also busy trying to refurbish their content. Apart from LOTR, they have a lot of "franchise" films that have ancient transfers, some of which are lesser quality HD from when the DVD format was new and quite a few of them are transfers they had used or intended for the Laserdisc format as many of first DVDs on the shelf were recycled from elements used for Laserdisc. Many companies have done it over the years, Universal did it with their Jurassic Park/Lost World releases and studios that are releasing on both HD formats are using the same video encodes for them. Many of the "re-released" DVDs from New Line seem to be sporting new transfers from HD elements so chances are those are the ones we can expect to be released once they decide to get in the brawl. Another possibility is that they are waiting for the higher capacity HD-DVD discs to become standard so they can make a single high bitrate video encode that fits well on both formats with identical HD audio encoding. Anyway, that's my two cents.

catalog titles isnt going to make anyone jump into hd. its not going to happen. the fact that matrix and pirates sold so horribly attest to that. lord of the rings is a big franchise, but its not gonna help HD adoption that much. hardware prices has to come down, software prices has to come down, and movies have to be released the same day as their dvd counterparts on a regular basis. thats the only way itll happen

new line has no real incentive on releasing movies in hd. theyd spend millions on reencoding, marketting, and everything involved in getting the word out the masses only to MAYBE sell a 50-100k copies. not worth the effort at all. until hd movies have a big enough market that these studios, especially the smaller ones can make a decent enough profit, it makes no sense to waste the resources on it.

If what you say is true about catalog titles, then New Line blew it by releasing Pan's Labyrinth only on SD-DVD.

They may have. There was alot of excitement about the DVD coming out, and it sold well I beleive, especially the 2 disc special edition. Many people won't want to double dip.
J

For anyone who doesn't know: An HD DVD version of Pan's Labyrinth is coming out soon in Europe from another distributer.

Yep
But isn't it only coming in an expensive 4 disc boxset?

Its coming out in France.
If I remember correctly, its a 5 disc set (1HD, 3 DVD[R2 PAL], 1 CD), no english subs. Yea, I'm going to double dip for that.
J