By Robert Silva, About.com Guide
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What does the annual San Diego Comic-Con have to do with Home Theater? Besides comics, manga, and video games, the annual San Diego Comic-Con also features some interesting tidbits related to home theater.
If you are looking for that favorite hard-to-find cult film or an Asian scifi, fantasy, or action movie on DVD or Blu-ray, there are booths selling them. Also, movie and TV studios, not only promote their upcoming release dates or Fall seasons, they also promote their upcoming DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases. This year was no exception as Luscafilm, Burn Notice, Supernatural, BBC America, and a host of other TV and movie studios were heavily promoting their Blu-ray and DVD products.
However, there were some other home theater-related items of interest this year. Starz was on hand with a special booth for its Spartacus TV series that featured some great gladiator action sequences in 3D displayed on a couple of Sony LED/LCD TVs with active shutter glasses. It appeared that the footage was converted from an original 2D source, but it did looked very good. Starz was smart to place the TVs inside the semi-enclosed booth to minimize ambient light reflections from the convention floor.
Another interesting thing I found on the convention floor, was at the Lionsgate booth, which was using Vizio TVs for their “touch wall” video displays, and the Vizio brand name was prominently displayed all around the booth. Vizio is becoming increasingly aggressive in tying themselves into high-profile events. It would be interesting to see other TV brands pursuing this course, and the San Diego Comic-Con is certainly a way to bring a name to over 100,000 attendees that are also potential customers.
However, to get to the meat of how the San Diego Comic-Con can intersect with home theater was the informative panel I attended: The Golden Age of Blu-ray. The panel participants included Bill Hunt, Adam Janke, and Todd Doogan of Digital Bits.com, as well as Blu-ray Disc producers, Charles de Lauzirika and Cliff Stephenson. In addition, George Feltenstein, vice-senior vice-president of catalog marketing for Warner Home Video was also on hand to lend his opinions and discuss some interesting things going on in his department.
The main topics discussed by the panel included:
DVD sales have slowed down, but Blu-ray disc movie sales have increased tremendously, especially with regards to new movie releases. However, it was noted that the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war did not help the adoption rate of a high definition disc format by many consumers.
Catalog releases of older films on Blu-ray are a challenge, since many consumers already own many older titles on DVD. The challenge to the studios and Blu-ray Disc producers is to provide increased value, via new restorations, or added relevant special features that will make consumers want to double-dip on a new Blu-ray version of a previously released DVD. However, it was pointed out that the new Lord of the Rings – Extended Trilogy was doing very well, and the forthcoming releases of the Star Wars Trilogy, Ben Hur, West Side Story 50th Anniversary Edition, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s are being meticulously put together with new transfers and high value added extras.
Movie streaming services, such as Netflix, present challenges to both DVD and Blu-ray purchasing habits, but all the panelists agreed that when it comes to a quality video and audio experience, nothing beats Blu-ray yet. However, getting consumers to care about quality over convenience and price is always a challenge, especially now with the use of internet streaming for watching TV programs and movies, and iPods for listening to music.
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