andPOP and Universal Studios Home Entertainment are giving you a chance to win 1 of 5 copies of Tower Heist on Blu-ray/DVD. To enter, complete the form below and we’ll randomly select 5 winners on March 16th, 2012. Tower Heist is available in stores starting Feb 21st.
“A wealthy Wall Street swindler gets his just desserts at the hands of the employees he stiffed in the year’s most uproarious action comedy, Tower Heist, coming to Blu-ray™ Combo-Pack with UltraVioletTM, as well as DVD, Digital Download and On Demand February 21, 2012 from Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy lead an all-star comedy cast in this hilarious tale of sweet, sweet revenge. The film’s stellar ensemble cast includes Casey Affleck (Ocean’s Eleven trilogy), Alan Alda (The Aviator), Matthew Broderick (The Producers), Stephen McKinley Henderson (“Law and Order”), Judd Hirsch (A Beautiful Mind) Téa Leoni (Fun with Dick and Jane), Michael Peña (Battle: Los Angeles) and Gabourey Sidibe (Precious). The film is produced by Academy Award® winning-producer Brian Grazer (8 Mile, A Beautiful Mind, American Gangster). The Tower Heist Blu-ray™ Combo Pack delivers the film in perfect hi-def picture and perfect hi-def sound and features over an hour of bonus features including two alternate endings, deleted scenes, a gag reel and exclusive behind-the-scenes features on the making of the film.”
Read more…
andPOP is giving you a chance to win 1 of 5 copies of Bridesmaids on DVD. 
Join the wildest wedding party of the year when Bridesmaids is released on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download on September 20, 2011 from Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Surpassing Sex and the City as the number one R-rated female comedy of all time, Bridesmaids starring Saturday Night Live standouts Kristin Wiig and Maya Rudolph was critically acclaimed by fans and media alike. Hailed as “brazenly hysterical” byPeople Magazine and “the best comedy of 2011” (Back Stage), Bridesmaids is produced by comedy mastermind Judd Apatow and marks his most successful film ever. The DVD release includes an unrated version not seen in theatres plus more than three hours of laugh-out-loud bonus materials! Please see below for behind-the-scenes clips and trivia from the film.
To enter, simply fill out the form below. Contest ends Oct 14th. Open to residents of Canada, excluding Quebec.
The ‘Justin Bieber: Never Say Never’ Blu-ray and DVD are released this Friday, May 13, and the film promises some special bonuses for fans.
As a special bonus for Bieber’s devoted fans, Paramount Home Entertainment is creating 500 Purple Tickets that will be randomly inserted into the DVDs, which will be released on Friday. Lucky recipients of the Purple Tickets can redeem them for a 5×7 film cell personally signed by Justin Bieber and an exclusive t-shirt.
The film is the highest grossing concert-themed film ever in U.S. history, having earned more than $72.7 million at the domestic box office. The Blu-ray/DVD Combo with Digital Copy and standard DVD will include a concert dance off that was not shown in theaters in which Bieber and his crew show off their dance moves, a full-length concert performance of “Favorite Girl” from the Director’s Fan Cut of the film, footage of Justin’s team surprising lucky fans with free concert tickets and a final farewell to Bieber’s signature hairstyle.
Here are some bonus clips for all you Bieber fans. Read more…
The magic is about to get a whole lot more real.
Producers of the hit franchise ‘Harry Potter’ are planning on releasing ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1′ in 3D for a Blu-ray release. Funny, because just last year, the producers ditched plans to release it in 3D in theaters. Change of heart, I guess.
But it doesn’t stop there. The rest of the franchise may get the 3D treatment too. “We’re doing 3-D for the DVD of ’7, Part 1,’ and there’s been no discussion of anything else yet,” producer David Heyman told MTV News recently. “But I suspect the studio is going to be reluctant to let it die, and if there’s an opportunity to maybe enrich … ”
Back in March 2010, Heyman also said “I’m sure it’s just a matter of time” regarding the 3D conversion of the entire series. Looks like he’s a man of his word.
For now, though, the filmmakers are racing to finish “Deathly Hallows, Part 2″ before the July release and working on the conversion of the first part for the Blu-ray.
“We’re very pleased with the way ‘Part 1′ is going – the 3-D for the Blu-ray,” producer David Barron said. “It’s really exciting, really involved.”
“I was surprised at how wonderful it is. It is different in some ways [than the theatrical release], but it’s enriching,” said Heyman. “The quality is quite different… It’s much easier, in a way, to do 3-D for a smaller screen than it is for a bigger screen.”
And there you have it. I personally don’t get the whole 3D trend, it gives me a headache, but if others love it then power to them.
Girls, mark your calenders.
The release of New Moon on DVD has been announced for March 20th.
Accompanying the film is a six-part behind-the-scenes documentary, rehearsal footage from Muse, music videos from Death Cab For Cutie, Anya Marina, and Mute Math, and commentary from Chris Weitz (director), and Peter Lambert (editor).
LaCie, a computer hardware company, has just announced the release of the d2 Blu-Ray Drive. This latest version of the product burns Blu-ray single-layer media discs four times faster than the previous model. The drive records, rewrites and reads 25 gigabytes (GB), 50GB BD-R (recordable) and BD-RE (rewritable), as well as DVD±RW DL and CD±RW. The d2 Blu-ray Drive also comes with Roxio burning software, allowing users to burn professional-quality media.
Since Blu-ray discs have 10 times the capacity of DVDs, users have the ability to choose much higher bit rate codes when burning content to improve the overall picture quality. The audio qualities can also be manipulated with the Blu-ray drive, with up to eight channels of 92kHz/32 audio streams.
The d2 Blu-ray Drive is available at specialized retails stores, and has suggested retail price of $649.99.
High costs and consumer perception that Blu-ray DVDs are not that much different from normal DVDs has created a dim outlook for the product, according to an article published in the New York Times’ Technology section.
The New York Times reports that a study released from ABI Research revealed consumers don’t really notice the better picture quality Blu-ray DVDs purport to have. The NDP Group (another research corporation) also released sales figures last week showing that the sales of Blu-ray players nosedived by 40 per cent from January to February. Sales managed to recover by 2 per cent from February to March, but this was accredited largely to Toshiba’s decision to discontinue its support for the HD DVD format, according to the New York Times article.
The sales of the Blu-ray DVDs are actually so low that the NDP group hasn’t released the actual numbers in fear that individual retailers would be indentified for low sales. The actual figures will be released later this year, according to the New York Times article.
Another factor in the low consumer interest in Blu-ray DVDs and players appears to be the hefty cost. The price of upgrading a normal DVD player to Blu-ray is around $70, and a brand-new Blu-ray player costs around $300. There also seems to be an inconsistency with the product, as not every player is equipped with Blu-ray all features such as Internet connectivity. The price of the Blu-ray DVD player is expected to drop to around $200 around Christmas time this year, at which time the future of Blu-ray will be more predictable, according to the NDP group.
ABI Research, however, gives Blu-Ray a slightly darker outlook. The research firm stated that Blu-ray won’t be a solid market contender until at least October 2009, according to the New York Times.
According to Business Weekly, Sony has been able to reduce the production cost of the PS3 from $800 in November 2006 when the console launched, to $400.
“We think the biggest factor here is that simplification has become possible through a reduction in the parts count, leading to a reduction in costs,” says Nikko Citigroup’s Kota Ezawa in a December 27th report.
Ezawa estimates that Sony’s gaming division will lose $1.4 billion compared to last years $2.1 billion and doesn’t expect the division to be profitable until 2009.
With the built-in Blu-Ray player playing such a key role in the PS3?s success, sales are expected to pick up since Warner announced that it would release HD movies exclusively on Blu-Ray beginning this summer.
