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CASINO ROYALE on Blu-ray is excellent! Plus, product placement
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 At CES in January, along with a mudslide of Blu-ray announcements for titles that were to later be delayed, the BDA's biggest win would have to be Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's announcement of Casino Royale on Blu-ray. It was announced that the disc would be encoded in the MPEG 4 AVC format - which doesn't mean that the video transfer will automatically be excellent, but it technically does mean that the video encoding people can get away with more fast motion and detail without having to resort to filtering shots to avoid blocking problems (see a lot of the special effects shots in Sony's MPEG-2 Silent Hill for examples of that).
Fortunately, Casino Royale looks brilliant. You just have to watch the very detailed, stylistic, intricately textured, patterned title sequence at the beginning of the film to imagine how much it would probably have to have been filtered, had Sony decided to use MPEG-2. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the title sequence was the deciding factor in Sony using AVC for this one.
The disc, to me, looks like a brilliant representation of the film. So far, grainy shots are handled brilliantly without the grain structure breaking up into blocks. The only slight ringing I can make out on this film is what seems to be an optical effect, and not artificial tinkering on the part of the video technicians, meaning that unless we find some sort of horrible flaw later on, it'll get a rare 10/10 rating. BTW, if you have a copy of the disc, check out the beginning of Chapter 3, the colours and detail are just gorgeous.
Yes, Casino Royale looks excellent. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe have made a very, very smart decision to give this title away to early PS3 owners - by all accounts, much better than SCEA's pack-in inclusion of "Talladega Nights".
Oh, I should also add, the product placement in this film is a total laugh riot! If I was allowed to drink right now (damn medication) then I'd make a game out of it with friends, seriously. Look - even the villains know their sound quality and know to avoid the nasty bass of the iPod. James Bond and his acquaintances are clearly men of choice, as here is a saucy Sony NW-HD5.
Chillin' out with my Sony VAIO, reading "The News", what's go---- I MEAN, shit son, gotta get me one of those new Sony BRAVIAs!
Where is that rascal hiding? What brand of phone can tell us best?
The funniest part is where James Bond checks the security camera footage, in a room with multiple Sony BDP-S1 Blu-ray players, hooked up to Sony AV processors and Sony Monitors of some sort.
The next HD disc I'm really looking forward to is Lost In Translation on HD DVD. I will kill them if they get that one wrong!
Check back later today for info on the other new disc in today's package - The Devil's Rejects from LionsGate.
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Your not the only one who noticed the Sony NW-HD5! I was offered to see the movie and when I spotted the thing I was thinking that somebody in that movie has good taste in MP3 Players.