First movies shot in 1080p heading for Blu-ray, HD DVD

From Tomshardware:

Hollywood (CA) - In time for the holiday shopping season, movies that were shot in high-definition format are heading for both next-generation DVD formats. The Da Vinci Code and Miami Vice will set the groundwork for a library of high-definition movies with a 1080p resolution (1920x1080 progressive).

On 14 November, Sony Pictures movie The Da Vinci Code will be released on DVD and Blu-ray. The Blu-ray format will take advantage of the fact that it was one of the first major movies to be shot entirely in 1080p. This means that, especially for those with 1080p HDTVs, the film's resolution will be optimal for the high-definition disc format.

While HD DVD and Blu-ray media offer a native 1080p resolution, all of the motives available today were not created in that resolution. However, since these movies weren't recorded in such a resolution, the up converting process makes educated guesses as to what would be in the additional pixels. With 1080p recording, every single pixel is recorded when the film is shot.

This transition is also happening with the other new high-definition format, HD DVD. Today, at Digital Life 2006 in New York, Universal Studios Home Entertainment announced that Miami Vice, the 2006 movies based on the 1970s TV show, which was also shot in true 1080p format, will be released on HD DVD on 5 December.

The movie will take advantage of one of HD DVD's unique features, which is the ability to have an HD DVD encoding on one side of the disc and a regular DVD on the other side. The HD DVD release of the movie will have the true 1080p format of the unrated version of the movie on the HD DVD side and the R-rated, standard definition resolution of the movie on the DVD side.

The transition to true, native 1080p movies is reminiscent of the transformation from analog to digital media. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when audio cassettes were being replaced by CDs, it took a while for the complete and total transfer from analog to digital recording and editing. Now that virtually everything is digital, there are still paradigm leaps to take, such as the conversion of standard definition to high-definition.