Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2009 June 24

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June 24

Where do movie studios duplicate their DVDs/Blu-Rays?

Do studios own their own duplication services? Or do they farm it out? I never hear about any companies that make discs for Hollywood studios. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 01:11, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't work in the operations department of a movie studio, but I'm pretty sure they, like music publishers and video game publishers, farm it out. It's a really low-margin business with hundreds of competitors, so they don't have a great deal of money to gain by taking on such a specialty business. Tempshill (talk) 01:35, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

So what companies, specifically, handle the duplication? Seems like it's a secret. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 17:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

The problem with your question is that it is based on a fallacy. Studios do not "duplicate" disks. Studio DVDs are created as is. They are not created from blank-writable DVDs. The foil (the part where the movie data is recorded) is pulled out as a large sheet. How many DVDs are created from this sheet is dependent on the factory. The artwork is painted on one side. The data is burned onto the other. By "burned", I do not necessarily mean the same mechanism as burning a DVD in your computer. The plastic (the part that many people incorrectly think has movie data) is glued to the sheet. The DVDs are stamped out of the sheet like donuts and send to packaging. So, I assume that your question is really: Do studios own their own machines that create the original DVDs? They could. It depends on the studio. Look at the DVD itself. For instance, Lionsgate owns one (which I've seen - which is also how I know how the process works). They create and distribute DVDs for a lot of other studios, such as HIT Entertainment. -- kainaw™ 18:22, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Cinram is a major manufacturer. Warner used to press their own CD and some DVDs under WEA manufacturing. If you look at the center ring in DVDs, etc, you can often see a very small emblem for the company who made it. 164.156.231.55 (talk) 12:18, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Name that foreign film

I'm having trouble remembering the name of a foreign film. All I remember is that it was a Japanese film about a upper-class girl with a thing for Marie Antoinette style dresses who makes friends with another girl who's a member of a biker gang...Spade9 (talk)

Kamikaze Girls. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 03:56, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Most interesting man in the world

What is the background song playing during all of the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World commercials? An example is here [1]. If it's a tune made specifically for the commercial, does anything in cuban/spanish music come close? Shadowjams (talk) 05:14, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Apparently it was composed for the commercial by Brett Fuchs [2]. I can't think of one obvious song the music is referring to. It is more of a generic cliché. The chord progression (iv-i-V-i), instrumentation, and rhythm constitute a vamp often heard in Latin music. ---Sluzzelin talk 06:53, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

TV or Monitor best for PS3

I am wondering if a TV has any more advantages (besides being bigger) to a computer monitor when running a Playstation 3.

Thanks --154.20.167.198 (talk) 17:07, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

TVs have speakers, and most computer monitors don't, so that might be an advantage to you. Some computer monitors can't display the full 1080p resolution, so if you set your PS3 to output 1080p, the video output might get rescaled, resulting in blockier pixels on the monitor. (This last item may not be a material disadvantage. Most game publishers say that people can't really distinguish 720p from 1080p when playing video games, so you should just set up your console to output 720p.) Tempshill (talk) 18:22, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

It most likely has internal speakers. Some but not all monitors have those. 65.121.141.34 (talk) 18:23, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I have yet to have a PS3 game run at 1080p. BluRay movies obviously run at 1080p (and you can see the difference). So, if all you will do is play games, then get what you like. If you are going to watch movies, get a television (or monitor - there is little difference) that does 1080p. -- kainaw™ 19:00, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

If you have a small screen, the difference between 720p and 1080p is negligable. It only when you get to screens around 45-50 inches or bigger that it starts to make a difference. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:28, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Citation needed. I see statements like this all the time, but it obviously depends on viewing distance, and I don't think people sit 10 feet away from their computer monitor, like they would their TV. Right now, in my office, I'm sitting about 2 feet (24 inches) from my 19-inch 4:3 LCD monitor. It's running at its native resolution of 1280x1024 (so it's in the same neighborhood as 1080 lines), and I can see the pixels making up the letters that I'm typing. How would I not be able to distinguish 1080p and 720p? -- Coneslayer (talk) 18:12, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

TVs are often brighter than monitors. But not always. APL (talk) 21:13, 24 June 2009 (UTC)