Oliver Carter

General musings on Popular Culture

mkv2vob on PS3

I regard the PS3 a great value for money media centre.  The only drawback is that it will not play certain codecs, a decision that is most likely down to DRM issues.  It is ludicrous that the PS3 does not support the .mkv format.  mkv. files have a number of advantages over other file formats, the most obvious one being high quality video at a low file size.  An application for Windows users called mkv2vob has been around for quite a while now.  This excellent app will remux mkv files into a format that the PS3 can playback and it takes a matter of seconds to do; therefore, there is no need for re-encoding.  However, Mac users currently have no such app available. Thankfully, someone has posted a workaround that will allow mkv2vob to run on a Mac.  It works perfectly.  All is needed is the Crossover software and the software found in this installation guide.  It works perfectly.  Hopefully this will help other Mac playback HD .mkv files on their PS3's, Dr Jazz, I am pointing in your direction.

Hard Boiled (1992) in HD

Last month I posted that the John Woo film Hard Boiled (1992) was due to be released by the American DVD label Dragon Dynasty later this year. I had read rumours that a possible HD release of this film was being lined up to coincide with the release of the Hard Boiled inspired video game Stranglehold (2007). I had thought that this was no more than a rumour but my cynical ways have once again been proven wrong. According to this USA Today article, Hard Boiled will be included as an extra to the PS3 release of Stranglehold. Apparently it will not be on a separate Blu-Ray disc but instead will be housed on the same disc as the video game. No plans have been made to release the film separately or with Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game.

Hard Boiled is my favourite action film of all time and even though I would love to see it in full 1080p HD I am not willing to buy a PS3 just to do so. Hopefully it will be released separately on either HD-DVD or BD-DVD when the Dragon Dynasty special edition SD-DVD comes out on the 24th July. It will also be interesting to see the HD quality of the film as the Hong Kong film industry is notorious for it's poor preservation of film prints. I wonder if there will be anymore hybrid releases of video games and films in the future?