X-Men CONFIRMED!

[doctor drew]

Fox has finally announced the release of X-Men: Special Edition, set for November 21st.

These are the final details:

widescreen enhanced 2.35:1

5.1 Dolby Digital

NO DTS track (sorry, stefanb!)

6 deleted scenes, totalling 10 minutes, focussing primarliy on Storm and Wolverine.

Animatics, outlying certain key action sequences (ie: Fight between Wolverine and Sabretooth on Statue of Liberty)

"Mutant Watch", a 30 minute documentary on the making of the film.

excerpts of director Bryan Singer on the Charlie Rose show.

photo gallery featuring production stills and sketches.


Why no DTS track? Although a DTS audio track had been planned for the release, these plans have been scrapped today, as it turned out that the DTS audio track would severely affect the video quality of the presentation. According to Fox representatives, especially the dark scenes of the film suffered quite bit from the datarate reduction that would have been necessary to accommodate a DTS track. Regrettably, the transfer would lose detail and blacks were fading out, especially in scenes like the cage fight scene with Wolverine. As a result there will be no DTS audio track on the disc and for a number of internal reasons 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has no plans to make a separate DTS version available at any time in the foreseeable future.

'drew

[This message has been edited by doctor drew (edited 09-19-2000).]

[The Troll Man]

Awww.... wheres the out-takes?? I mean normally they're just a bonus, but when they've won comedy awards they really ought to be on the DVD!

[stefanb]

I AGREE!! Damnit, I havn't seen them, but I heard they were hillarious. I was looking forward to getting the DVD just to see them (assuming they'd be there). The director did say he didn't want to make "a joke" out of the movie, by putting them on, but at the same time he didn't say he wouldn't. I was hoping he'd bend.... d'oh.

PS - Why never DTS versions?

[stefanb]

I see you edited the original post....

so it IS going to have DTS? eXcellent. Even better if it comes with both...

For those of you out there scratching your @$$ and wondering why it even matters, on DVD's, DTS information in FAR less compressed then Dolby Digital information. Because of that, it offers clearer sound over a broader range. If you don't have a disgustingly over-priced stereo, you might not even notice the difference, but it does make for better sound.

[stefanb]

For those who care, here's the technical differences between the 2:
http://www.moviesoundpage.com/msp_dddtsdvd.htm

And for those who couldn't be bothered, to read the whole thing, here's the only important part in there:

Dolby Digital and DTS Digital Surround were created with completely different design objectives in mind. DTS was designed to offer multiple channels of greater-than-CD resolution audio within the bandwidth constraints of the Compact Disc system, using a combination of signal redundancy coding (adaptive differential PCM, or ADPCM) to reduce bandwidth, and perceptual coding to increase the perceived resolution of the coded signal. Dolby Digital's primary objective was to dramatically reduce the bandwidth needed to reproduce multichannel audio (preferably to 320kb/s or below) without significantly altering the quality of the original linear PCM signal. DTS's compression is accomplished primarily through the use of sub-band ADPCM compression, while Dolby Digital's compression is primarily the result of aggressive psychoacoustic coding and hybrid forward/backward-adaptive bit allocation. Given that DTS was designed without many of the limitations imposed on Dolby's system, the fact that Dolby Digital and DTS Digital Surround are so often compared with one another is a tribute to the perceptual coding expertise of Dolby Laboratories.