Mission: Impossible III (Blu-ray)

From Hi-Def Digest: “Paramount is making high-def history by releasing ‘Mission: Impossible III’ simultaneously on Blu-ray and HD DVD day-and-date with the standard-def DVD — a first for a top-shelf, A-list new release. ‘M:I III’ is also the only release on either format to get two full discs, one for the movie, one for the majority of the extras. That’s exciting news, because it means the Blu-ray (on a BD-25, 25GB single-layer disc) boasts a very high bitrate. With only an audio commentary and no uncompressed soundtrack options included, there is maximum wattage devoted to the video quality. Note also that the Blu-ray version has been encoded using the MPEG-2 codec (the HD DVD is VC-1). However, the bitrate on the Blu-ray actually maxes out a bit higher than the HD DVD (which, while benefiting from an extra 5GB of disc space has some HD bonus content included, eats up some of those extra gigabytes). So this comparison is most interesting…”