Disney Shows Off Narnia Blu-Ray Disc

I just got off the phone with “Landsknechter” (as we shall call her). She was able to check out one of Disney’s Magical Blu-Ray Tour events in Raleigh, NC where they showed two clips from “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” in high definition.

Blu-Ray Booth

The first clip was just before the battle, when the griffin flies in and lands next to Peter. The shots she was most impressed with were Otmin and the cheetahs. “Unbelievable,” she said. “You could see every hair blowing in the wind. It was like you were actually standing there.” She also said the shot of the cheetahs growling was “like watching Planet Earth.”

The Battle of Beruna

The second clip was only about ten seconds long. It was when Lucy first steps into Narnia. “I was shocked by how different it looked [in HD],” she said. “It was crazy, all the little details. Even things 100 feet in the distance, like branches moving. The clarity was unbelievable.”

Lucy in Narnia

Disney also showed HD clips from Finding Nemo, Cars, Ratatouille, and Pirates 3. The tour’s next stop is Nashville, TN next weekend. View the event schedule here.

The LWW Blu-Ray Disc releases on May 13!

In related news, Toshiba recently announced that it will no longer manufacture HD DVD players and recorders, which effectivley makes Blu-Ray the winner of the “format war” and the likely successor to DVD (but don’t worry, Blu-Ray players also play DVDs). This is good news for Narnia fans, since Disney has been Blu-Ray exclusive for some time now.

New to Blu-Ray? Learn more here.

UPDATE (3/3/08) – NW Spy Jason went to one of the events in Nashville, TN and wrote: “The quality of the blu-ray was awesome! It was great seeing Narnia on a 65 inch screen. It was almost as big a difference watching a blu-ray as it is from black and white to color. It’s like I put on glasses for the first time and watched TV having watched all these years without them!”