8 May 2008

There are a number of reasons why we at DVD Outsider have not kitted ourselves out with full HD TVs and high-definition disc players yet, largely to do with expense, the previous but now settled format war and the fact that, as with the early days of DVD, too many of the available titles are the very sort of thing you don't see covered on this site. Tartan's first releases on Blu-Ray last year were the first serious temptation, and Camus has the US Blade Runner Blu-Ray set just sitting at home waiting for the justification for the equipment spend-out.

The ending of the format war certainly helped clear up the 'which one to buy' decision, and though it was definitely the better format in terms of storage, the down side is that it was also the more expensive hardware wise, and – big bloody sigh – it's also the one that opted to allow for regional coding, and code-busting players have yet to appear on the UK market.

There always were certain announcements that would prompt me consider taking a third job to fund the equipment upgrade, but top of the list from the start were any high-def announcements from the likes of Criterion or Masters of Cinema. After all, Criterion have been mastering their restorations in high-def for some time, but the news leaking out last year is that they were in no hurry to release HD discs while there were still two formats battling out for supremacy. With the war over the announcement was inevitable, and at midnight last night I got the e-mail - Criterion are to begin releasing on Blu-Ray in October 2008. I'll hand over to their press release for the full announcement:

Our first Blu-ray discs are coming! We've picked a little over a dozen titles from the collection for Blu-ray treatment, and we'll begin rolling them out in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions.

Here's what's in the pipeline:

The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

Alongside our DVD and Blu-ray box sets of The Last Emperor, we'll also be putting out the theatrical version as a stand-alone release in both formats, priced at $39.95. Our Blu-ray release of Walkabout will be an all-new edition, featuring new supplements as well as a new transfer; we will also release an updated anamorphic DVD of Nicolas Roeg's outback masterpiece at the same time.

Given the picture quality on Criterion's DVDs it's hard not to start salivating at the thought, and with all of the supplements from previous releases included this will hopefully function as a challenge to those releasing films on Blu-Ray in movie-only editions at inflated prices.

There's only one concern here, and its a big one: will Criterion be regionally encoding their Blu-Ray discs? Some time ago they adopted regional coding for their DVDs, but unless some enterprising engineers get those region-cracked Blu-Ray players on the market or a region-free widget appears for the PS3, us European Criterion fans are going to be left out in the cold.