Dev Interview: Dragon Lair Fans

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A very lengthy interview for those Dragon Lair fans.

Dragon's Lair Blu-ray: An Interview With Executive Producer, David Foster

The Blu-ray release has been directly transferred, and remastered, from the original film to 1080p and 5.1 surround sound. Extras on the disc, also in 1080p, include an interview with the original Dragon's Lair creators Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and Rick Dyer. Another cool feature of the Blu-Ray is the side by side comparison between the Amiga, Deluxe Pack PC, 20th Anniversary, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-ray releases of Dragon's Lair. With the Blu-Ray release, fans of Dragon's Lair will finally get the "ultimate" release available of the title.
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Who do you think this release would appeal to most?

DF: We have a pretty loyal following of Dragon's Lair fans. These are typically people who were playing Dragon's Lair when it came out in 1983. So I would say in 1983 if someone was between the age of 6 and 25, they had pretty heavy exposure to Dragon's Lair. It made such an impact at the time that it has really stuck with people through the last 20-odd years. So our demographics now is kind of 30 to 50. People that have grown up with Dragon's Lair. These are the people that can now afford to put HD TVs in their living room and actually want to share it with their kids. With the Blu-ray release we really reached the ultimate in terms of the quality of Dragon's Lair. It's a perfect fit.
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What were some of the biggest challenges in bringing it to the Blu-ray format?

DF: The biggest really was Blu-ray Java. We really were pioneers in terms of getting something to work. The documentation and the availability of hardware to test on was really a nightmare, quite honestly. It took us nearly eight solid months to do something, that if we had the right documentation, could be done in probably a month. So just at every turn when there would be something that would go wrong, there would be sort of a different implementation across the few different players we had to test on. Functions would be implemented differently, so we had to find some sort of common way to handle all these different machines. The good news is the Playstation 3, which honestly we could not test on, we crossed our fingers and checked discs, the PS3 turned out to be a great implementation of BD-J. It really plays the best than on any other system. So, sigh of relief!
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Yeah a big one, I imagine!

DF: Yeah, it's not cheap to run these masters. Everything is expensive with blu-ray. If something had gone wrong on the blu-ray in a big way, we would just have no way to try and even figure out what to change to try and make it work. Let alone the $3000+ you need to pay every time to make a master. So, big sigh of relief when it worked and it worked fantastically.

So how many Blu-ray players did you test on?

DF: We have 3 players. The challenge of the players is that they don't allow us to put in anything but a final production ready disc. So, these test discs that we cut, there's only really two players, plus a PC player, that we're able to actually test on. So we had to extrapolate all the little problems we had on those and try to make generalized solutions that would work for the rest of the BD-J implementations.
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i agree,
i remember a show, yonks ago.
it was called thats incredible, basically the premise was something mildly interesting happens, + then the 3 guys (in unison, they'd put hours into it i could tell) would turn + say to camera 'thats incredible'
hmmm, now when a truly interesting thing happens, like last year ( or two) when that guy cuts off his balls with a knife, cause wales won against england in a rugby (theres no cameras!, i mean WTF)

anyways, on this show, they showed this dude completing dragons lair without dying ( a truly boring event ), thats incredible!!!!. + heres me giving the finger to the screen, the only thing incredible is that he inflicted the torture of playing that game, above + beyond the call of duty. the dawn of cd games
 
Regardless of how bad or good Dragon's Lair is, the mention of BD-J support in the PS3 is good to hear. It's been in speculation for some time now.
 
Gradthrawn said:
Regardless of how bad or good Dragon's Lair is, the mention of BD-J support in the PS3 is good to hear. It's been in speculation for some time now.
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PS3 has always had BD-J support... a few of the early BD-J BR titles would only work in the PS3 for a while (The Descent, for example).

The whole BD-J thing is a little confusing though, as there is BD-J (just general term, mostly used for the Java stuff we have now -- BD-J 1.0?) and then there is BD-J 1.1 and 2.0 (which no player currently supports) which have an october 31st date for forcing players to support (players released after that time have to support 1.1 at least).

PS3 getting an update to BD-J profile 1.1 is the speculation (and I don't see a reason why it wouldn't be -- BD-J 2.0 they may decide they don't want to add to the PS3).
 
Bobbler said:
PS3 has always had BD-J support... a few of the early BD-J BR titles would only work in the PS3 for a while (The Descent, for example).

The whole BD-J thing is a little confusing though, as there is BD-J (just general term, mostly used for the Java stuff we have now -- BD-J 1.0?) and then there is BD-J 1.1 and 2.0 (which no player currently supports) which have an october 31st date for forcing players to support (players released after that time have to support 1.1 at least).

PS3 getting an update to BD-J profile 1.1 is the speculation (and I don't see a reason why it wouldn't be -- BD-J 2.0 they may decide they don't want to add to the PS3).
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Thanks for the clarification. I'll have to look further into these upcoming specs. I don't see why they wouldn't add 2.0 support though, it is their Trojan Horse of a BD player. Unless, of course, the Cell doesn't have enough general computing power to handle it. :LOL:
 
Gradthrawn said:
Thanks for the clarification. I'll have to look further into these upcoming specs. I don't see why they wouldn't add 2.0 support though, it is their Trojan Horse of a BD player. Unless, of course, the Cell doesn't have enough general computing power to handle it. :LOL:
Click to expand...

As of october 31st, from my understanding, the 2.0 spec will be optional (not sure if it will ever be mandatory - it's the BD-Live spec)... and they may want to keep it for the higher profit high-end players out there (there may be pressure from other CE companies in the BDA to not make it BD-Live compatible, even). I would be very surprised if PS3 wasn't a profile 1.1 compatible player, but I'm not sure on 2.0 (I'm not sure the features of 2.0 will be used much if it continues to be optional -- and if it becomes mandatory, stand alone players that are better off would likely be pretty cheap at that point, so it's sort of a non-issue if you ask me).

I think the decision on 2.0/BD-Live for PS3 will be entirely an issue of marketing and BDA politics. 1.1 seems like it'll have most of the useful features anyways, so I'm not really concerned either way.
 
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