Actually the disc will have 3 versions: theatrical, +9 minutes, and +16 minutes, so that leaves an additional 7 minutes for the slower stuff.  Then there's the 45 minutes of deleted scenes.

If you've got about an hour to spare, check out Cameron and Jon Landau talking about the release in this article.

Videos accompanying the article.

Yeah, I'm with Doc on the 3 is better than 2 wagon.  I'm seriously thinking I need to get some means of playing Blurrys.  I was really impressed with the Panasonic the DIF studios uses, and those only go for around $160, or I could just get a Blu-ray drive for around my computer for around $50.  I'd need to get an HD monitor too, but I was already planning on doing that anyway.

Hmm.  Well, I would be using a rather unorthodox setup.  All I have is a laptop (Macbook Pro), which I plug a second display into so I can use  a dual monitor setup.  I can get an adapter that will send the second display signal via HDMI; not sure how sound will work yet.  I'll keep that HDCP compliance thing in mind when I'm shopping around.  As far as connecting the drive to the laptop, I use one of these adapters, which basically let you use any internal drive as a USB drive.  Very handy.  I've used it for hard drives as well as optical drives with no problem.

Of course the third option is to go with one of those integrated player / receiver home theater setups like this, which I could presumably plug my computer output into for everyday use.  Of course this option, aside from costing much more, presents its own problems.  One of the things that impressed me about the DIF Panasonic was the job it did upconverting DVD.  I don't want to have to re-buy every movie I own, and that player did an incredible job of making DVD look good, and the specs for the home theater setup don't say a thing about upconverting.  Then there's the problem of having to either cart a home theater with me wherever I move to, or go through the hassle of trying to sell it and not get ripped off.

Uhg.  I really want to make the jump to HD, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do it on the cheap.  I'm not even interested in the whole t.v. / player / surround setup; all I really want is to be able to watch the content on my computer for now.  I dunno.  I'll keep researching, but if anyone has any better ideas throw 'em out there.

All this really makes me a bit nostalgic about when DVD first came out.  I didn't need a new television, I just got a PS2 and I was set.  The video plugged into the t.v., the sound into the receiver and you were off.  HDMI really changed that, because unless you were forward thinking enough or could afford it, you didn't have an existing setup you could just plug your Blu-ray player into, you had to ditch all of that and start over.

Oh well, that's how the technology cookie crumbles.  My fancy iPhone 3G I camped out outside AT&T and called in sick to work for so I could get it on launch day is going to be all but forgotten by the time the next one comes out; it's all but forgotten now.  Still, if I had the cash I'd be happy to pay Apple's exorbitant prices to have the newest one every year, so I really can't complain about Blu-ray, at least that's getting cheaper.  When I think about the $1500 I dropped on a 27" LCD back in '04, and what I could do with $1500 today I just want to break down in tears.

So...Avatar, still works for me.

So unoptainium is really upsidaisium?

Any fans of the Rocky & Bullwinkle show here? If you are then you know there was a plot arc involving Bullwinkle inheriting a claim to an upsidaisium mine, a mountain of floating rock. Of course our cold war fiends Boris and Natasha tried to steal it. Smurfs, Rocky & Bullwinkle, how did this get to be so successful again?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upsidaisium

That's Matt's laptop on the right.

1080p on a big screen with surround sound is magical, if you ask me. But some people just don't care much about it, like driving a sporty car with a manual transmission.

Myself, I couldn't care less about smart phones and apps and whatnot.

Just, please, don't buy Bose. People who buy Bose are like people who think the Mustang is a sporty car.

Last edited by Zarban (2010-11-15 05:19:54)

I loved your commentary on this movie, because everyone raved about it and I was so disappointed when I finally saw it.

Admittedly, since I was living in a small village in the West of Ireland when it came out, my first opportunity was on a long-haul flight, and trust me, it does NOT hold up to being watched on a tiny, low-res screen with crappy sound quality. When you're watching a movie on a plane, you rely almost entirely on story to carry the film... yeah, you know how well that would've worked out for me!

Boy, Avatar has not had a smooth ride at all.
Maybe Cameron should stick with historical events so that he can avoid this trouble in the future 

From 1999