How can I tell how large the Blu-Ray file is?

[farquh]

Could be a basic question here, so I'll give you the background as to why I'm asking this...

I have a Panasonic 35 player.

I was about to go and get all 3 X-Men movies and I wanted to read reviews on them before hand. I saw that there is a second X-Men 3 Blu-Ray release. According to a customer review, the forst X-Men 3 disc is only 25gigs in total, and he says that this new version is 50gig. He also made mention that there's a new Transformers Blu-Ray that will be a 50gig transfer as well.

How would you know the size of a purchased Blu-Ray disc's file? Is there a website that would list this?

Can anyone help?

[james99]

I removed your HMV verbage since that info is retail related and according to the rules of the forum belongs in the shopping forums only (see blu-ray thread in that forum for this deal).

Anyway, a good review site has the info you require, see: http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=106567

Here's the technical stats for Transformers (BD not HD DVD):

Technical Specs
Blu-ray
BD-50 Dual-Layer Discs
Two-Disc Set
Bonus View (Profile 1.1)
BD-Live (Profile 2.0)
Video Resolution/Codec
1080p/AVC MPEG-4

Aspect Ratio(s)
2.40:1

Audio Formats
English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround (48kHz/24-bit)
English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
French Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
Subtitles/Captions
English SDH
French Subtitles
Spanish Subtitles
Korean Subtitles
Supplements
Audio Commentary
Featurettes
Still Gallery
Theatrical Trailers
Exclusive HD Content
Graphics-in-Picture
BD-Live Content

[granduncle]

Originally Posted by farquh

How would you know the size of a purchased Blu-Ray disc's file?

You won't.
Unless you read HTPC-oriented reviews on the particular title.
And I don't think this matters anymore. Maybe for some catalog titles, but not for new releases.

Here are the specs of Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets Warner release in December 2007 when both formats were still alive:

Blu-ray (m2ts):

4 AC3 tracks with 448kbps each   = 4 *   515 MB =  2060 MB
9 AC3 tracks with 640kbps each   = 9 *   736 MB =  6624 MB
1 16-bit PCM track               = 1 *  5304 MB =  5304 MB
1 VC-1 video track               = 1 * 17731 MB = 17731 MB
  TOTAL                                           31719 MB

HD DVD (evo):

3 E-AC3 tracks with 448kbps each = 3 *   515 MB =  1545 MB
1 16-bit TrueHD track            = 1 *  1704 MB =  1704 MB
1 VC-1 video track               = 1 * 17731 MB = 17731 MB
  TOTAL                                           20980 MB

This was done 18 months ago, the movie is 2h 40min long, the reviews were raving about high quality video -
and the video part is less than 18GB! That translates into under 15Mbps bitrate!

By now the codecs have improved and so has the horsepower of the computer farms the encodes are done on.
And since there is no religion left in all this - HD vs. BD, MPEG-2 vs. VC1 vs. AVC, Sony vs. Microsoft, etc. - you
can safely assume that modern BD movies are as close to transparency to the master, as the BD spec allows.
Regardless of file size.