More filming for the Harry Potter Deathly Hallows flicks in Swinley it seems.
Not much to see given the limit viewpoints around the area they have closed off, although there are better shots around the net. Essentially there’s some green screen and some sort of stone archway set.
Well, despite my reluctance I’ve finally gone “Blu”. The reason why is simple, and that is that finally we have players that are the right price and most importantly are multi region for BD discs.
There are a number of multi region options about now. Some are very expensive, in some cases doubling the price of the original player to get the hardware ‘mod’ that’s soldered on somewhere.
In other cases we are starting to get cheap and cheerful players from the far east that are (like DVD players before them) of course easily hackable for multi-region, out of the box.
And fitting my requirements perfectly (price and multi-region), along comes the Tevion 1100UKT Profile 2.0 Blu Ray player!
“The what?” you say?
Tevion 1100UK Blu Ray player
It’s actually a rebrand of similarly unknown Curtis and Momitsu players (in fact the support for Tevion is provided by Curtis). It should be noted that a lot of these brands that are unknown to the west actually make the components that go in many big name western brands.
Anyway, the big thing about the Tevion is it is multi region, via a handset code that allows you to change between A, B & C and also set DVD to multi-region.
It is also a bargain price of £120. Less if you’re lucky. And sold by… Aldi. Yes, Aldi! And you get 3 years warranty with it, which is far more than you’d get with many big name brands for twice the price and still no multi-region.
Yes, it’s no looker. It’s a little noisy when starting up and slow loading a disc (much like many BD players though), and for BD Live you do need a USB stick plugged into the USB socket as there’s no built in memory for it. Oh and the handset IR angle is very small so you have to point it directly at the player (easily resolved by using a learning remote). I can’t really find much other fault with it though.
Bonus features are that it supports playing media (including DivX/XviD (not HD), MP3, WMA) off USB sticks and most recordable format discs. It bitstreams DTS-HD MA, DD True HD etc. If you only have an older amp with coax/optical inputs, it can either bitstream DD/DTS or it can even convert everything to DTS.
973500 = multiregion DVD
973501 = region A Blu Ray
973502 = region B Blu Ray
973503 = region C Blu Ray
Has to be entered on the handset with no disc in the player. A bit of hassle vs a mod that auto detects, but it’s more robust protection as the player can only be seen as that region when the disc loads. Being out of the box, BD+ systems will see the firmware as unmodified from the original (and note this is a fully licenced Blu Ray player).
In my opinion, for £120 (some have got it as cheap as £80), multi-region Blu-Ray player, it’s really not bad at all if you’re prepared to accept an unknown brand and limited support (by all reports the 0800 number they provide is either unanswered or links to a monkey who has no clue what you’re talking about. Though they have a web site with various firmware downloads, manuals etc, although no firmware for the 1100UKT yet, only 1100UK which is the Curtis version and apparently incompatible).
P.S. Aldi do a 14 day no quibble return also. Do remember though that they don’t accept credit cards but do take debit cards, and once these are gone, they are gone so they may not be available in all stores. I’m sure these players will turn up as another brand/model though.
Back in June I spotted some filminggoing on towards the edge of Aldershot on some of the Army land, with green screens and ‘G LOC’ signs about (wonder which film unit is ‘G’?).
Anyway, they cleared off a while back but driving home today past the place a new unit has set up. I missed what the signs say, but the place has a big sheet of blue screen this time and I thought I saw a bunch of people in Army dress this morning where they were setting up lighting. Then again, it’s Army land anyway.
Apparently they did some filming for one of the recent Bond films there a few years back. Seems to have become a popular filming spot. It’s just a big scrap of unused parade ground basically.
If there’s anything interesting going on I’ll try and get a photo.
And then going on towards home I go past Pirbright and dotted around the area are some ‘P&M LOC’ signs for more filming. Looks like there’s a film crew bus by the cricket green in Pirbright itself. There’s some also by a big house/estate nearby where I know they’ve done filming before.
Looks like mostly done now at Swinley. The main site with the cranes has gone. Not sure about the green screen area off the top of Surrey Hill, although it was taped off still in the middle of the week.
They’ve already started filling in the dug out area where one of the cranes was, and the place is looking more like normal with most bike tracks open now.
Hoping that the money the Crown Estate get from this will feed back to develop some great bike tracks.
One lucky lad managed to find a discarded callsheet!
My usual spot of mountain biking in Swinley Forest has been interrupted a little recently by some “major filming” (as they put it). Discovered lots of green screen, some cranes, and lots of crew vehicles. Not to mention a lot of mess! Spotted signs marked ‘WB’ and had a guess… big effects film, Warner Brothers… Harry Potter perhaps?
Did a bit of a search on the net and found my guess was right! Apparently they’re there filming some scenes for one or both of the Deathly Hallows films (due for release in two parts in 2010 and 2011).
Anyway, these are a few photos I’ve taken. They’re here for a couple of months apparently. I’ll be there every few weeks likely as usual so I’ll keep an eye on it, though I’m just there at the weekend for the biking so there’s not much activity to see.
“We’re here in the forest, we’ve just finished the scene where Harry, Hermione and Ron are captured by the Snatchers after being chased through the woods. The Snatchers are brutal and scary but they aren’t the most intelligent of creatures.They’re trying to figure out exactly who it is they’ve caught.”(Source: LA Times)
Always thought that China would never accept Blu-Ray due to the high cost of licensing, and thus high cost of discs and players.
Well, China has been attempting a few formats over the last few years that are under their control and don’t require them to fork out on cost fees to licence holders outside their country. The latest is CBHD. Formerly known as CH-DVD and rebranded probably following the demise of HD-DVD. New photos have emerged of the players and there’s a stunning similarity to certain Tosh HD DVD players!
Apparently CBHD is almost identical to HD DVD with the exception of the licensed components, so mainly the codecs used. How similar their own codecs are is yet to be established, but it does mean the discs will be incompatible with HD DVD.
What does that mean for the rest of the world? Probably not much initially. HD DVD owners however may find that a firmware hack to turn their players into CBHD players is not beyond possibility, opening up the player to the CBHD stock of titles (which Warner has already signed up for at least).
The more interesting possibility comes down to the fact that Chinese manufacturers make the base components for a lot of western kit that gets re-branded into known names with Japanese logos on them (with inflated prices). This means the potential some day for multi-format players that could play everything and probably support HD DVD/CBHD as well as Blu-Ray and others. Much like how cheap DVD players these days support a wide array of formats, old and new. Hopefully like DVD players, region free hacks for Blu-Ray will be widely available (the lack of which is the major factor that stops me buying Blu at present).
Doesn’t do anything for reviving HD DVD in the west, though does open up a market in cheap discs from China. I suspect there will be a number of restrictions to prevent export though as Hollywood would rather the rest of the world pays the massive premium for Blu-Ray instead (at whatever the local maximum price is thanks to region controls).
