20th Century Fox and National Geographic are releasing The Story of God with Morgan Freeman: Season One on DVD only on 1/10.
Our friends at Twilight Time have announced their March and April 2017 Blu-ray release slates. On 3/14, look for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), Baby Boom (1987), Peyton Place (1957), and Our Man in Havana (1959). Following on 4/11, you’ll get The Fortune Cookie (1966), Year of the Comet (1992), How to Steal a Million (1966), You’ll Never Get Rich (1941), and Another Woman (1988).
HBO Home Entertainment has set Quarry: The Complete First Season for Blu-ray and DVD release on 2/14.
And in March, Arrow Academy titles (usually produced for the UK) are coming to the States distributed by MVD Entertainment. The first batch will include Ludwig, Property Is No Longer a Theft, and a Cinema Paradiso: Special Edition (a Barnes & Noble exclusive) on 3/7, followed by The Creeping Garden and Story of Sin on 3/14, and a standard release of Cinema Paradiso on 3/21. Note that the Cinema Paradiso: Special Edition will include both the 124 minute Cannes Festival theatrical version and the 174 minute Director’s Cut (restored from the original camera negative), optional English subtitles, audio commentary with director Giuseppe Tornatore and Italian cinema expert critic Millicent Marcus, 3 documentary featurettes (A Dream of Sicily, A Bear and a Mouse in Paradise, and The Kissing Sequence), as well as the original Director’s Cut trailer and the 25th anniversary re-release trailer. Early pressings will also include a collector’s booklet by Pasquale Iannone illustrated with archive stills, behind-the-scenes images and posters.
In other news today, as many of you know Rogue One: A Star Wars Story had its big U.S. premiere last night in Los Angeles. Early word from friends who were in attendance is that the film is terrific; better than expected certainly and some liked it a lot more than The Force Awakens. Reviews are going to start appearing online tomorrow, but I’ve been told that you should avoid them if at all possible, because there is much in the film that hasn’t yet been revealed. The film opens this Friday, with the first showings on Thursday evening.
Finally, this is exciting for 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray fans: Oppo Digital has just officially announced that its long-awaited new UDP-203 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Player is finally ready, will be available online this week via OppoDigital.com, and is expected to start shipping immediately. SRP is $549. For that price, you get:
- Universal disc playback for 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and many other formats (BD, BD3D, DVD, SACD, DVD-A, CD, etc)
- High Dynamic Range with HDR10 and firmware upgradable to Dolby Vision
- Two HDMI outputs – HDMI 2.0 for UHD and HDMI 1.4 for audio
- HDMI 2.0 input for external streaming devices or set-top boxes
- Two USB 3.0 ports for media file playback (in a wide variety of audio and video formats)
- High resolution audio with lossless decoding for PCM and DSD
- 7.1ch analog audio outputs with premium 32-bit “Velvet Sound” DAC by AKM
- Excellent audio and video performance
- Upgradable and dependable
Here’s an official launch video that Oppo has created to promote the player…
Oppo says that they’re also working on a UDP-205 model (as a successor to their current BDP-105/105D Blu-ray player) that has upgraded audio performance features. Click the link above or here to pre-order, or click on the player image below. Note that we will be getting one of these players here at The Bits very soon and we’ll post a full review as soon as possible...
That’s all for now. Back tomorrow. Stay tuned!
- Bill Hunt (@BillHuntBits)