Blu-ray Has 24-fps Option for Improved Viewing in Europe, Sony Says

Blu-ray’s option for 24-fps output has been underplayed to date, possibly because it’s less relevant outside markets where the scan rate for broadcasts and TVs is 25 fps, such as Europe and the U.K. When 24 fps content is displayed there, the video and audio are speeded-up 4%. Although the effect on video is negligible, the rise in audio pitch is discernable by some. All content that originates from film is mastered at 24 fps for DVDs, Blu-ray discs and HD DVDs. In markets where TV operates at 30 fps, such as the U.S., 24- fps programming undergoes 3:2 conversion or “pulldown” to create a progressive display.

With Blu-ray, European releases “will no longer need a pitch shift,” said Don Eklund, Sony exec. vp-advanced technologies. The 24-fps option “is not possible with HD DVD” to his knowledge, he said. That contention couldn’t be confirmed with HD DVD’s backers at our Fri. deadline.

Eklund said 24-fps output was an option in Blu-ray and “not mandatory,” but that some companies plan to implement it, including Sony, Panasonic and Pioneer. “TV manufactures will soon start offering 24 fps inputs,” he said. Also, Panasonic is expected to enable its current Blu-ray player to do 24-fps output through a firmware update, Eklund said. Until the 24-fps option is installed, first-generation Blu- ray players for Europe will perform automatic 3:2 pulldown from 24-fps discs. “The software and hardware companies need to talk about things like this,” Eklund said. “Europe is not used to seeing the motion artefacts from 3:2 pulldown that the U.S. has gotten used to over the years.” Reporters on the scene took that to mean Blu-ray will appeal to a cultural conceit in its European marketing. Europe’s PAL TV-stand has long been considered superior to the NTSC used in the U.S. and elsewhere, at least for color reproduction. At our deadline, it wasn’t clear why dedicated 24-fps inputs on TVs and output from disc players can’t be applied to all markets, so that national TV broadcast standards become irrelevant for playback of prepackaged video content.

Blu-ray officially launched in Europe Oct. 16 with players from Panasonic and Samsung and 6 previously-announced catalog movies, said Matt Brown, exec. vp-Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for Europe. SPHE will field another 9 titles by year-end, he said. Some will be released simultaneously with standard definition DVD versions. All will be single- layer, 25-GB discs, but movies on Blu-ray’s 50-GB dual-layer configuration are “imminent,” Brown said. Those are Click, Black Hawk Down and Talladega Nights -- already announced for U.S. distribution this quarter.

As for Blu-ray’s regional coding, Sony and SPHE reiterated previous statements that all catalog titles will play anywhere in the world, although some for Europe are mistakenly identified as “Region B” -- the designation for that market. The U.S. is Region A while other countries, notably China and Russia, are Region C. In the future, SPHE titles will be marked “Region A/B/C” to indicate playability on hardware worldwide. However, some “new release” blockbusters will be regionally coded, Sony and SPHE said. The first will be Monster House, due for Dec. release in Europe. That’s already marked Region A in the U.S.

Following impressive displays of Blu-ray compared with DVDs and studio masters, Eklund gave another reason why he believes Blu-ray is better for Europe. “With multiple languages on some titles you soon run out of disc space -- 30 gigabytes is just not adequate for European market,” he said. The allusion was to HD DVD’s current top-capacity but didn’t address Blu-ray’s existing 25 GB limitation.