High Definition Wing Commander Showing In Australia (February 9, 2008)

ChrisReid

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
DMJC reports that the Wing Commander movie will be showing in high definition on Yahoo! Channel 7 HD in Australia. It's a rare treat for the HD version of the film to show internationally, and it may yet be a while before the movie is released on Blu-ray. Catch it while you can! The broadcast is set for 3:00 pm Sunday (2:30 pm Adelaide).


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Wing Commander
Based on the best selling video game, WING COMMANDER is a science fiction-war movie spectacle. In the mid-27th century, the Terran confederation is at combat with the Kilrathi Empire. After destroying a Terran base, the Kilrathi have seized a NAVCOM unit that can coordinate hyperspace to Earth. With Terran reinforcements planned to arrive two hours after the Kilrathi strike Earth, it falls upon the star fighter carrier TCS Tiger Claw to keep the Kilrathi distracted.
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Original update published on February 9, 2008
 
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Sweet, cheers for the heads-up. I'm not the biggest fan of this flick but it'll do me well to sit through it again, plus it'll be a nice way to ease the hang-over I'm currently experiencing...
Why does this always happen during a Sunday? *rolleyes*

:)
 
This isn't the first time, I caught it at 10am one Saturday morning.

They're late with the broadcast, though.
 
Lorien said:
This isn't the first time, I caught it at 10am one Saturday morning.

They're late with the broadcast, though.
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Yeah I noticed. 20 minutes or so. Weird.

I'm enjoying this a whole lot more than what I remember. I think I'm becoming less cynical as the years go by...
 
It started at 15:17 AEDT. The Music Man showing before it didn't seem too bad. Didn't know Matthew Broderick could dance so well.

Here's something interesting I noticed: the HD release's 16:9 aspect ratio expands on the 2.35:1 aspect ratio available with my DVD version. This reveals a little more of the star map shown in the introduction than I'm sure was intended:

2005 Australian DVD Release (396 KiB)
Australian Channel 7 HD Broadcast (1.30 MiB)

The sound was only standard stereo compared with Dolby 5.1 for the DVD, though.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I wouldn't bet on seeing many new HD-DVDs anywhere.
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I haven't really been keeping up with the race that much, not owning any HD equipment, let alone a TV- I have read it would cost thousands of times more to convert DVD lines to Blu-Ray than to HD, and that the Blu-ray lines would lose DVD capability whereas HD retains them. The other problem being that the Blu-ray's language is closer to assembler than HD's, in my understanding; meaning a longer time to code them and buggier results nonetheless. Hence why a number of "blu-ray exclusive" titles have been found as HD-DVD versions in other regions.

But then I have heard of more Blu-Ray titles in the US itself on my end, which isn't saying much- like I said, I haven't been paying close attention to the format war, and some sources haven't noticed much compelling reason for them to switch over anyways.
 
Yeah, that was one of those things that didn't pan out -- it was true*, but it didn't matter. It may have cost studios money, but it didn't affect output or pricing... and so the consumer never even noticed. The "war" is essentially over now: Warner Brothers dropped the format in favor of BluRay just after Christmas and HD-DVD support has been disintegrating since then.

* - it's not true anymore - there's a new process for making BluRays.
 
I'm pretty surprised how things developed these last few months. I got an HD DVD player immediately after they were available, but I was fairly cautious about building up a library and investing much in it.

Then around last fall, which wasn't very long ago, the Sony CEO was quoted saying it looked like they would be in for a good long stalemate, and publisher support seemed pretty evenly divided. So I got the Star Trek and Heroes box sets on HD DVD and asked for a bunch of red boxes for Christmas. And so just mere days after I finally built myself an HD DVD shelf, the format practically falls apart. Oh well. At least most of my HD DVDs are the Combos that will work as regular DVDs too.

So far things like the Star Trek exclusives have been my biggest draw, but there are certainly some only-Blu-rays I want. I'll probably end up buying the 28 Days/Weeks Later set and Robocop in the next sale before I even get a Blu-ray player. Pioneer just announced a BRD/HDDVD combo drive that actually sounds like it might be good (the Samsung and LG ones prior have been somewhat lame), so I might end up with that.
 
Yeah, I was surprised too - I expected Microsoft to at least keep throwing money at HD-DVD until set-top HD boxes had negated both formats. They seem to have either lost interest or been out-maneuvered. It probably doesn't matter to us, though... with the exception of BluRays holding more data there's no real different for the end-user.

A while back I put together a list of existing discs I'd eventually want from both format -- I wound up with about ten BluRays, ten shared titles and four HD-DVDs. I guess that should have told me something at the time, but those four included two that were absolute deal-breakers (Dune and Star Trek Season 1.) There's nothing in the pipeline that I'd want to add, though... and I can see replacing Star Trek when Paramount rolls out the BluRay version just because I hate the flipper discs.

I would be wary of a combo player at this point -- there's a new BluRay spec (1.1) that's much nicer than the original. A PS3 is apparently one of the best ways to go, at this time (and good money says you'll want one for the next Wing Commander, anyway...)
 
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