by Pravin on September 5th, 2010 in articles.
Our old pal Gary Ugarek is back with another HD DVD to release. As you already know from recent posts at the site, Deadlands 2 not only came out on HD DVD, it also won Indie film awards.
Gary is going back to his vault and bringing out a 500-copy limited production run of the original Deadlands 1 on HD DVD. Here’s the rest of the story directly from Gary: more »
by Pravin on August 17th, 2010 in news.
Thanks to all of your support, (and that of many, many others) Gary Ugarek’s Deadlands 2 won the People’s Choice Award for the 2010 World Music and Independent Film Festival in Washington, DC.
Gary worked hard to round up votes from this and many other websites and was able to garner over 53,000 votes, winning by a margin of 16,000 votes over The Mountain Music Project, a documentary about mountain music from Appalachia to the Himalayas.
A hearty congratulations to you, Gary!
by Pravin on July 19th, 2010 in news.
Whether you’ve enjoyed Gary Ugarek’s Deadlands 2 on HD DVD or DVD, Gary sends in word now that he needs your votes in an Audience Choice award in the World Music Independent Film Festival. Simply go to http://wmiff.com/?q=movies/vote-peoples-choice-film, scroll down once or twice and select Deadlands 2 from the list of films, then scroll to the bottom to submit your vote.
In addition to the Audience Choice award, the film has been nominated in three other categories:
Pass the word to your homies, comrades, confederates, associates, everybody! Deadlands 2 is within striking distance of second place, and with your help in spreading the word, first place is not out of the question. Voting closes on August 15, so act quickly.
Gary is currently in pre-production on Deadlands 3. At this point in the history of the discontinued format, it’s left to independent filmmakers like Gary, and Michael Bilinski (Smokers) to come out with a new title now and then on HD DVD. In the bigger picture, supporting indie artists of all kinds is good for art as a whole because those artists take on projects that the mainstream companies don’t always explore.
It’s easy for a studio to make a movie out of a book, comic, game, TV series, or remake another movie and just wait for the money to roll in. The same is true about music. Independent artists go beyond this factory-like churn and try something different. Whether they cross over or remain independent, they are eventually able to bring their vision to larger audiences, and new ideas into the industry. It all starts with grass roots support. Vote for Deadlands 2 and show your support for the guy who released on HD DVD just ’cause he wanted to.
UPDATE: Links in the article have been updated
UPDATE June 30: First 100 Pre-orders are in, the disc is on!
Did you think you had every last HD DVD disc accounted for? You even counted Gary Ugarek’s Deadlands which came out this year, long after the official HD DVD party ended?
Well, pull out that spreadsheet or database program, because there’s soon going to be one more HD DVD title to add to the list (and maybe even more than that if things go well).
Indie filmmaker, and HD DVD fan, Michael Bilinski joins the ranks of fellow independent Gary Ugarek, in making an HD DVD version of his movie, Smokers.
In Michael’s own words: more »
by Pravin on June 1st, 2010 in shopping.
UPDATE June 11: HDDVD.com readers get a 25% discount through June 21 (Father’s Day) by entering promotional code blog at checkout. Josh has updated the selections now that The Big Lebowski has sold out.
Yup, there are still fire sales going on of HD DVD titles. News of the latest one comes by way of reader Josh R. who has around 1,000 discs left of 15 titles, all selling for around $2 a piece, with the Heroes box set going for $5.
The selection is not bad, and by that, I mean it doesn’t contain Norbit. Not that Norbit is particularly bad, but I’m sure most of you will agree with me that it was not one of the titles that compelled you to go HD.
I’m sure many of you are already accustomed by now to shipping that competes with the price of the disc. It reminds me of my cable orders from Monoprice – sometimes I only need a 69 cent adapter, but I’ll pile on more cables in order to justify shipping cost. Shipping here is $2 on the first disc, and $1 on each additional. If you can pick up the order yourself in Houston, Texas, then shipping is free, and your savings will really kick in.
Head over to http://www.hddvd.highwire.com to see for yourself.
The latest news from Gary Ugarek adds a whole lot of Zombie cred to his name. Not only has he made movies about Zombies, he then got involved with trying to put out a new HD DVD disc long after the format was already laid to rest, and then had that disc project itself require resurrection.
The new word on Deadlands 2 is that Anthem Pictures (the distributor) has been hard at work on offering the original product (bonus materials and all) through HD DVD-R discs, all made in-house instead of chasing down replication houses that failed them last time.
As usual, we have the story straight from Gary: more »
Writer/Director Gary Ugarek, the man behind Deadlands: The Rising, and its sequel, Deadlands 2: Trapped, also happens to be an HD DVD fan. He has been trying his darndest to release his latest creation on HD DVD, long after the format’s official demise.
We first covered news about Deadlands 2 last September, when Gary was able to announce pre-orders for this limited edition disc. Many of you jumped at the opportunity to show support for this project and placed orders at Anthem DVD.
Unfortunately, this story has not turned out the way that HD DVD fans would have wanted, including Gary. Rather than piece together an article based on various postings gleaned from around the web, I thought it would be good to give Gary a chance to tell us about it himself.
Here’s Gary Ugarek: more »
by Pravin on December 24th, 2009 in news.
Whether you are celebrating holidays, holy days, or just taking some time off, best wishes to all of you for a wonderful new year!
2009 was a year where HD DVD lived on in some way for many of us via sales of old disc inventory, as well as promise of one last new title. Though the format is defunct in the western world, a sibling format, CB-HD has been making strong gains over in China, signing on more and more studios, like Warner and Paramount.
The Blu-ray format made its inevitable progress this year. The recent Black Friday saw sub-$100 players, one made by none other than Toshiba. Coming up at CES, they will show or announce players that support a 3D standard for the format to keep up with the numbers of 3D movies that have been coming out, such as James Cameron’s Avatar.
Though we loved our tangible physical media, most of us probably realized that HD DVD and Blu-ray were probably the last of the optical disc formats. But, did you expect such a huge proliferation in all the ways that we can now have HD content?
Netbooks were incredibly popular in 2009, and most of them included HD-capable video abilities in their $299 price point. In fact, almost all laptops sold today include basic HD features, as do most of the new smartphones and personal media devices. This spread of HD ability has kept pace with corresponding developments in the world of online video streaming, which is poised to make strong gains in 2010.
We no longer have to hook up a specially made PC to our HDTVs to enjoy video streaming, because more HDTVs are coming out with internet features built right in (as are Blu-ray players, finally!). This ranges from watching YouTube and Hulu, all the way to streaming DVDs from Netflix and Blockbuster.
What are your HD gadget plans for 2010? Did Santa leave any HD goodies for you under the tree? Have you eyed these thinner LCDs with LED backlighting? Or are you taking a break from the video side and focusing on building up the audio part of your home theater experience?
Though Toshiba has joined other PC vendors and included Blu-ray drives on their laptops, Microsoft joins Apple on this Windows 7 release week in continuing to leave Blu-ray off their own machines.
In a Windows 7 launch day interview with gadget site Gizmodo, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer made some statements that included the words “360″ and “Blu-ray” in the same sentence. Ballmer’s exact words were, “Well I don’t know if we need to put Blu-ray in there — you’ll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories.” Ballmer stated that the future of movies was to view them on-demand, and not on physical media. There was enough ambiguity in his words to lead some to conclude that an external Blu-ray drive was in the 360’s future, even though Microsoft spokespeople denied a new Blu drive.
Much later in the day, there was an emphatic clarification from Major Nelson, the Director of Programming for Xbox Live, who was able to burst the 360/Blu-ray rumor immediately. Major Nelson explained that Steve Ballmer was referring to the fact that Blu-ray drives are available as add-ons and options for PCs in home theater setups, and that Microsoft’s focus is on instant streaming of HD movies on the Xbox 360, as they’re doing now with Netflix.
Is this enough to completely squash the short-lived story about a Blu-ray 360? Only time will tell. Is there going to be a Blu-ray add-on drive? Only time will tell.
