The prestigious Criterion Collection will begin releasing titles on Blu-ray beginning December 19th, following delays that pushed the launch from October until now.
Criterion’s technical director Lee Kline feels the wait will have been worth it once the consumers see the quality of the discs.
“If our Blu-ray discs are going to come out, then they’d better look right,” Kline said. “We had to make sure that the compression was right, that the audio encoding was up to par. And we had to make sure that the discs played on all players, particularly the older generation models, as well as PlayStation 3.”
Kline also noted that the publisher has been in the “high-def business” since the late 90’s and have been remastering approximately 90 percent of their standard definition library in HD “then down-converting for a standard-def release, giving them a more film-like look.”
“We pulled the high-def masters that we’ve done [for the films in the first wave of Blu-ray releases] and looked them over—and we haven’t had to go back to change anything,” Kline said. “All the technology we’ve taken to make these high-def masters are still fine.”
Something else to note is that Criterion’s Blu-ray movies will not be housed in the blue-colored boxes that most other releases are in, and the boxes will not have the Blu-ray Disc logo either. All the titles will be priced identical to their SD counterparts as well.
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The Criterion Collection, the leading distributor of classic cinema, has announced that it will begin its Blu-ray support this year with at least 13 confirmed titles.
The announcement, through the company’s official email newsletter, says that the first releases will hit retail shelves in the Q3 of this year.
The thirteen confirmed titles are ‘The Third Man,’ ‘Bottle Rocket,’ ‘Chungking Express,’ ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth,’ ‘El Norte,’ ‘The 400 Blows,’ ‘Gimme Shelter,’ ‘The Complete Monterey Pop,’ ‘Contempt,’ ‘Walkabout,’ ‘For All Mankind,’ ‘The Wages of Fear,’ and the ‘The Last Emperor.’
Criterion adds that the new editions will feature “glorious high-definition picture and sound,” and all the special and supplement content of their DVD cousins.
Another welcome situation is that of price. Criterion says the movies will cost the same as their standard DVD counterparts, a welcome relief from the expensive pricing of current Blu-ray films.
