Guys

I just seen the greatest super hero film ever and it is great (yes, great). It's the film I have been waiting for ever since my dad bought me a black & white reprint of a Fantastic Four comic in the sixties (back then you could only buy black & white reprints of Marvel Comics in the UK).

Watching "Avengers Assemble" is just like watching one of the best Avengers comic come to life, you had everything in the film that you would expect from Marvel. Heroes that start out not liking or trusting each other and so finding it difficult to work together.

Spoiler Alert:-

The heroes battling each other was a joy to behold, just what you would expect from Marvel.

End of Spoiler Alert:-

All I can say, without revealing the plot, is that if you like Marvel Comics or the Marvel films, i.e. Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, etc. then you will not fail to have a brilliant time watching "Avengers Assemble".

Right now, the film has been released in the UK (actually released yesterday) and it will not be released in the US until the 4th May, so guys get yourselves down to the big screen cinemas, with 3D if possible, and book your seats in advance and then treat yourselves to a fantastic Marvel super hero festival.

Finally, take no notice of the "nit-pickers" and "fault finders" because once the thrills start in this film it will take a pretty sad nerdy-type to find fault with this brilliantly spectacular film.

Now, I can't wait until the DVD comes out.


UK Bob

3D DVD/BD? Seems both TV stations and disks are heading that way now. I have a pair of the traditional 3D glasses. It's a wrestle between she and I. lol
But presently we only have a standard TV and DVD player. And I only 'just' a month ago bought a set-top to watch digital stations ... we go totally digital within a year I think. Or perhaps it's within months. I don't watch much TV nowadays so I'm outta touch. I do like watching movies at the movie festival at cinemas though with movies from world over.

I've only seen 2 x 3D DVD's, one of which I have a copy of and is a musical performance. Due to DVD's having limited space and bandwidth, quality left over for dual video modes is usually not good. BD is the way to go. DVD specification limitations were quite low for overall allowable bandwidth of video and audio combined. MPeg 2 sucks lol. MPeg2 is what all DVD's use, but is such an outdated format nowadays. MPeg 4 is twice better, and H264 is a couple times better than base MPeg 4 standard. H264 is an expanded version of MPeg 4. X264 the open-source version is even better, far superior due to a very large input from contributors to the code and has advancements other developers of H264 do not yet have.
Quote from Wiki: Warner Brothers has used x264 for commercial Blu-rays.

LOTR

You haven't said whether you are going to watch "Avengers Assemble" or not and, IMHO, you don't need high spec visuals to enjoy a brilliant film.

You see, I own an ordinary flat screen Samsung TV, capable of up-scaling, and an ordinary Toshiba DVD player. I have no intention of buying a Hi-Def TV or Blue-Ray player because I know that my 50+ year old eyes would not be able to tell the difference between Hi-Def and quality digital visuals.

Besides, I believe that Hi-Def and Blue-Ray are just another way for film producers to get you to re-buy movies you already own, i.e. a gigantic con.

Back to the beginning, for those guys out there that grew up reading Marvel comics and/or watching the latest Marvel films then Avengers Assemble is definitely the "must see" so far this century (I enjoyed this film more than I did "Avatar").


UK Bob

I will watch it yes, in cinema or dvd I'm not sure. The concept of the heroes reminds me of another movie I saw at cinema some years back. Mind-block. But it was not the known heroes. I think it was sort of like the Magnificent 7 concept, which by the way was a rip-off of a Japanese story about samurai made many years earlier (which I have on video tape.)

Marketing: many years ago my sister said buy the cd's of your fav albums now or they will probably become unavailable. So I went out and bought a live album which I previously had on vinyl. I had a recorded copy of this on a not so expensive cassette tape. Guess what, the cassette tape version sounded better than the CD. I was less than impressed. And to rub it in, the record store released a digitally remixed version to make it sound like the original LP and it also had bonus songs. grr. I downloaded mp3 versions of it but decided I wanted the better version. It was many years before I finally decided to buy the digitally improved version. Next they will come out with a 24-bit version I'm sure. I've had a similar issue with many bands albums.
A typical example I should not quote, but a french artist who keeps re-doing his original recording, mixed in 64 bit, then mixed in 96 bit, then a dual 24 bit cd release. sighs
Do the record companies really expect us to buy all these different versions when we had the original recording which was better than some of the earliest CD releases anyway.

On the BD front, I believe Europe and Australia BD players will play videos in the original film 24P. But USA has not yet caught up, obviously due to marketing reasons they are slowly getting there. Doing it slowly to try to get as much money in meantime and will only release the 24 frame-rate compatibility when it suits them as something to move up to.

Potentially BD offers much better picture and sound quality, especially if you have the supported playback equipment. However, I read an interesting article which reviewed BD releases of previously released movies and found the quality was no better than the DVD release. lol What a rip off hey. People think they are getting better but are not. I will try to find that article to quote here. It was a UK review which is equivalent to Australia's Choice magazine, www.choice.com.au Uh, discoverd the page is members only. Details in small print below:
Bit off-topic, was this link Digital rights - who owns your download?

Hi LOTR

You know, your post above reminded me of the time when music CDs first came out, they were awful.

We were told that the sound would have have unparalleled clarity but they sounded clinical and tinny. We were told that CDs would not be affected by scratches or poor handling, unlike vinyl. However CDs suffered from bad handling just as much as vinyl did.

You may not know this but, to recreate the atmosphere you got with vinyl CD producers recorded artificial pops and crackles into various recordings, as if that would increase sales.

Only when an engineer developed a bias recording technique, which is still in use today, to make CD sound like vinyl did CD sales start to take off. In fact, I believe (unless told otherwise), from that point onwards were other recordings methods further developed to give us the quality of sound we now get from current CDs.

However, there are still those, like myself, that still prefer the sound of recordings pressed on vinyl to CDs.

I guess that I am saying, I'm cynical and distrustful when a new consumer technology hits the streets, along with all the accompanying overblown hype and hoopla.


UK Bob