Confirmed: Hardboiled will be in full HD for the PS3 Stranglehold SE
by Colin Torretta 
{ Jul 20th 2007 at 8:30PM }
Luckily, Midway has clarified that we will indeed be getting a remastered HD version of the movie, which puts the Special Edition of the title right back in the 'MUST OWN' category for any Action movie fans. And for the X-bots out there, there is no reason to pout. You will also be getting a Special Edition version of Stranglehold. It's true... you won't get the movie. But you WILL get behind the scenes footage of the game! Woot!
[Via Ars Technica]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Stef Geiger @ Jul 20th 2007 9:31PM
I wish they'd say something about the audio too. I'd be really bummed to find that it's just the original Dolby 1.0 mix. I've held off on buying this movie for years just because there's no 5.1 edition. I suppose this one will likely be 5.1 since they're releasing a brand new DVD around the same time too...
Deathalo @ Jul 20th 2007 10:24PM
@1
There was never a Dolby 1.0 because that would be only one channel of audio aka mono. The original most likely had 2.1 dolby sound.
Stef Geiger @ Jul 21st 2007 1:16AM
Yeah... I'm clear on what 1.0 means. I know for a fact that the first DVD edition (if not all of them) featured only a mono audio track.
You DO understand that stereo and surround sound haven't been commonplace in movies forever, right? Movies like Jaws are in mono too.
Strike Man @ Jul 21st 2007 1:28AM
"held off on buying this movie for years just because there's no 5.1 edition." -Stef Geiger
The Mei Ah (R0) disc had a 5.1 mix, as does the new "Ultimate Edition" (R1) that comes out next week. I don't mind including extra mixes on my discs, but the original audio (in this case, mono) should always been included on the disc.
Other versions have included a 5.1 English dub to go along with the 1.0 Cantonese track.
"There was never a Dolby 1.0 because that would be only one channel of audio aka mono. The original most likely had 2.1 dolby sound." - Deathalo
As I stated above, the original sound mix for the film _was_ a 1.0 mono track. All of the other mixes and dubs were made after the film's release.
As far as the forum post goes that PS3Fanboy linked to, a few things come to mind:
A) Fantastic. I was really worried that we'd get some pseudo-VHS-looking video thrown onto the disc, and I'm thrilled to hear that it'll actually be in HD.
B) I'm hoping the picture quality is up to snuff, and it isn't a 1080p image of a so-so transfer ("remastered" can mean a lot of things).
C) I'm REALLY hoping that it isn't dubtitled like next week's DVD release, or worse-yet, containing the English dub track only.
cheese @ Jul 21st 2007 1:31AM
Jaws DVD on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Widescreen-Anniversary-Collectors-Susan-Backlinie/dp/B00004TDTO/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-3420282-7518221?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1184995779&sr=8-2
Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Strike Man @ Jul 21st 2007 1:36AM
@cheese:
The original audio for Jaws was recoreded in mono as Stef pointed out. The 5.1 remixes were created many years later.
Stef Geiger @ Jul 21st 2007 2:04AM
I've held the box for the original hard boiled DVD and it only listed a mono track. If there's more than that one the disc, they neglected to indicated it.
Oh, and for all we know, it's a 1080p transfer that's compressed to hell. We'll have to wait and see on this one.
cjnwo4life @ Jul 21st 2007 3:18AM
Considering that my achievements are more important that that movie i will get the 360 version. That's the problem of having both as sometimes it's hard to determine what to do but my score is very important to me.
Stellarpimp @ Jul 21st 2007 6:13AM
I hope it is a quality remastering. It would be a shame if the game looks better than the movie bundled with it.
bish @ Jul 21st 2007 6:50AM
One thing you have to take into account is that Hardboiled was one of the first Hong Kong Action movies to make Hong Kong Action movies famous here in the states. In Hong Kong It was considered just another typical movie of that genre of which many hundreds were made every year. Most of those movies were done on the cheap with little to no effort put into preserving the original film as we are used to now. It was also filmed in mono. There is no stereo or 5.1 soundtrack. You can go back in and recreate the soundtrack but thats not what the movie was and the 5.1 soundtrack they cobbled together for it in previous releases after the fact was really bad and sounded like mono turned into 5.1
However this is a great film. It opened up the rest of the world to a genre that most people didn't even know existed outside of Hong Kong. Most of the big budget action movies you see today owe much of their action to movies like Hardboiled and The Killer (not to mention Jackie Chan's Police Story series.) You can watch this movie and know that no one had done it like this before and when people like myself and others saw if for the first time back in 1992-93 we were literally blown away as we'd never seen anything like it. (And I saw it on a 13 inch TV on a crappy video tape and I still remember just being glued to the set, we watched the first scene twice it was so amazing).
But like I said, films like these in Hong Kong were considered cheap entertainment for the masses and so the original film itself was not kept in very good condition. Even though John Woo as a Director made one of the most brilliant action movies ever and he put a lot of hard work into making it such, it was never intended to have the success it ended up having. When it came time to release this on laserdisc and DVD the Criterion Collection which at the time was known for putting out the best possible editions of movies went right to the source John Woo and used the best copy he had and it still was grainy and had flaws and was in mono, because thats the way it was shot. It was not a Hollywood movie. It was made on what would be considered today a very low budget. Good film stock wasn't even a consideration. And because no one ever thought it would be the huge success it was so there was no thought put into preserving the film at the time. Not even John Woo, who came to my school to speak once the movie started becoming an underground hit in the US. I remember we snuck away from the screening to find him so we could talk to him before everyone else mobbed him, and he was the nicest guy you ever met. But he was completely flabbergasted that this film he made was loved by so many people outside of Hong Kong.
Anyway this is a fantastic film that will probably leave a lot of younger viewers saying "They ripped that off from (insert movie here)" but the truth is that Hardboiled did it first and no action movie has been the same since.
I really hope those of you that do get the special edition enjoy the movie for what it was and its significance on movies today and hell it's just one non-stop fun action extravaganza, it doesn't need to be in 5.1 (or in HD) to be enjoyed. Those things are nice but this movie is beyond that really.
humpty @ Jul 21st 2007 7:56AM
Im not that interested in the game, so i will wait for the BD movie-only release.. sounds interesting.
bish @ Jul 22nd 2007 8:03PM
Actually I do, and it depends on the size of your HDTV. If your watching an HDTV below 50 inches your probably not going to see much of a difference between 1080i and 1080P If you have a bigger TV or a Projector your going to see a difference.
One thing to take into consideration is that even if most people don't have 1080p sets at the moment, ask yourself what your issue is with having movies encoded in 1080p? It doesn't hurt the people with lower resolution sets as its just being downscaled to 720p, you don't lose anything. All it does it make it better for when people do start buying more 1080p sets and for those of us that do have them and appreciate the higher resolution we get the best picture available.
FullHD is just a marketing slogan like the infamous slogan for CD's when they came out "Perfect Sound Forever"