Tomb Raider 2 (WMV-HD-DVD) - (German Collector's Box)

Tomb Raider 2 High Definition (WMVHD)

Releasedate: 27. April 2004 Only included in the German Collector’s Box

Finally, the first movie in High Definition arived on April 27, 2004. Concorde-Home Entertainment published Lara Croft: Tomb Raider I & II Collector’s Box with 6 DVDs. One of these DVDs containes the HD-Version of the second Tomb Raider “Die Wiege des Lebens” (The Cradle of Life), which we dedicated this report.



Originally, we wanted to test the movie with a Mac OSX, but the test unexpectedly failed. The exact procedure was taped into a shortmovie.

But why did not want the Windows Media Player 9 to play the movie?
The solution is to find at Point 3 Windows Media Player for Mac OSX FAQ. OSX only support MS DRM up to version 1 and consequentially refuses movies protected by MS DRM 2.0, alike Tomb Raider 2. It is also written in the FAQ, that Microsoft informed their “Content Providers”, that they have the right to decide wheter or not they want to open the content to Macintosh user.
The cooperation of Microsoft and Concorde-Home Entertainment in this DVD is mentioned at www.wmvhd.de/laracroft2/index.htm. So a lack of support of other Operating Systems (OS) is not very astonishing, but not less invidious.

But the DVD is also very delicate about Microsoft’s OS, and imperatively reqieres Windows XP.
The instalation of the current Service Packs (SP4) and Internet Explorer (IE6) did not lead to success. The latter only let appear the scrippt errors after starting the start.hta.
Unfortunately, Public Relation keeps silence about this fact, and only gives common information about powerfull system requierements. At least the data sheets of resellers, like Amason, should point out these circumstances, but they do not. Without these background information, these recommendations are barely to find into the DVD’s folder archs.

No chance with MacOSX
No chance with MacOSX (Film)
Requires Quicktime

Some errors with Windows 2000
Some more errors with Windows 2000

WinXP only. Red card for alternative Systems!
WinXP only. Red card for alternative Systems!

Furthermore, it is arguable, why the mapping, where the movie was started(as seen in the shortmovie) , has to be submited, when the information site about DRM was accessed.
That is not tragic, but who has to be concerned about where the movie was started besides the user himself?

If your PC fullfill the reqierements (Windows XP PC and CPU >2Ghz) and posess a high definition output device (CRT, TFT, Beamer with 720p or better with 1080p), you could experience a totally new Lara. For putting out the sound, your sound card has to be able to split the singe channels to stereo an pass through the analogue sound via coaxial cables to your receiver, because the sound track is encoded to Windows Media Audio Pro (WMA), and not to the common used Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS. Right now, the only way to avoid this is to re-encode the WMA sound track into AC3 in realtime.

We would love to present you the fife minutes trailer, which is included in an unsecured folder onto the DVD. This would be the most effective way to enthuse the user about this new format. Unfortunately, Concorde-Home Entertainment forbid to provide you this download. They also was surprised that we asked them about this service, additionally. So you have to be satisfied with the pictures in our galerie, but these also speaks for themselves.


Hot Lara...
... hot picture!
More than 30 pictures in our gallery

An attribute of WMVHD is, that the best picture quality/ sharpness is only visible in smooth scenes, because scenes with intensive action and camera movements are innately blurred.
But these blurr effects are only obvious in freezed images or screen caps. How good the image quality in smooth scenes of Tomb Raider 2 WMVHD is show the pictures above. The remaining 28 pictures in our gallery also present what high def future the movie industry has to offer. That rocks!

Tomb Raider 2 HD
Wanted

Conclusion: The first german high definition movie lives up to expectations and coul really elate. For the role of the precursor on the HD-market (Concorde published the first German DVD back in 1997 [Twelve Monkeys]) as well for the image quality, Concorde-Home Entertainment deserve the Totalie-Award. The use of DRM as well as the use of WMA for the audio track deserve a reprehension.
Owner of a Windows XP Computer with a lot of power should drool to own this DVD an put it into their collection. Anyone else, who are afraid of the movie industrie’s anty piracy development, have to miss out.
Discuss this article in our forum "Tomb Raider 2 WMVHD Review (German Collector's Box)" thread.


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