Pursuant to my senseless HD DVD purchase a few months ago, fairness demands that I give equal time to Blu-Ray now that the discs are out…
Click for larger image
… even though you may have heard that the players aren’t available yet. Best Buy told me that the Sunday is the official day to start selling the Samsung player (no Sony in sight), though some Best Buy stores allegedly accidentally sold some prematurely.
The box copy touts 1920×1080 progressive scan video. Subtitles come in 7 varieties including English, English SDH (what’s that?), and Thai. The audio is listed as English 5.1 (uncompressed), English 5.1, and French 5.1. Presumably, the latter 2 options are compressed. The package sports the Dolby Digital logo. How is 5.1 audio stored uncompressed on these discs? If each channel were allocated 48 KHz, 16 bits/sample, that would require ~8.7 GB of the 23 GB disc for this 126-minute feature.
Anyway, for those who want to look for hidden messages in the literature accompanying the disc, see below (click any picture for a larger image).
The actual Blu-Ray disc
Inside literature (continued from last image; scanner not that big)
English SDH = Subtitling for Deaf and Heard of Hearing. SDH involves a distinct colour for each type of dialogue/noise.