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Topic: Anyone consuming HD or Blu-ray?
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 01-18-2008 09:54 AM
quote:
quote: Scott Jentschwhen I choose to purchase something costing hundreds of dollars, I want to make sure that I've made the best choice possible.
Then why did you purchase HD DVD? Boy, did you ever back the wrong horse!
Maybe in retrospect given Warner's announcement from January 4th, but from all reports of the background negotiations, it could have just as easily gone the other way, and Blu-ray would be on the outside looking in. I think Toshiba underestimated Sony's willingness to buy their position in the market.
Even though Warner has chosen short-term money over their customers, I'm able to watch my current discs and rent hundreds of titles from Netflix, so unless Netflix changes their policy, I'm set for a really long while. Even one of Warner's most current releases, I Am Legend, is being released on HD DVD. Plus, I can watch King Kong, The Bourne Movies, Batman Begins, U-571, Casablanca, and many others in HD when those who chose Blu-ray cannot.
quote:
quote: Scott JentschEvery Blu-ray player available today represents a compromise of some kind
Not quite as bad as the compromise of only 30GB of space. The only compromise on the PS3 is no DTS-HDMA. That's it. How many discs use that? Not too many. Dolby Tr00 HD is the same exact thing in the end anyway. Everyone likes Dolby better than DTS, even the people who work for DTS! And Linear PCM is even better because I don't think DTS HDMA and Dolby Tr00 HD have the higher sampling rates (though I could be wrong).
Thing is, I've never seen a review of a 30GB HD DVD that pointed to poor picture quality as a result of too little storage space. I admit that there have been cases where extras have been in SD or not included on the HD DVD version that were included on the Blu-ray version in HD, but when movies were on both formats, the reviews have been equivalent for each in terms of picture quality.
There have been reports from the encoding sessions of the LOTR trilogy that each of the trilogy movies in their Extended form could fit on a 30GB HD DVD with lossless audio and great picture quality. It sounds a little far-fetched, but the advances in the VC-1 codec have done wonders in terms of Picture Quality, and the tools have improved since they were first developed, resulting in better PQ at lower bitrates, with less hand-tweaking needed for challenging scenes.
One of the biggest issues with HD DVD is the bandwidth constraints, from what I understand. This is the reason that many HD DVD's do not have lossless audio. The encoder must plan for the worst-case scenario, as Dolby TrueHD can spike in its bandwidth requirements, and those spikes have to be handled. Most enthusiast that obsess over such things have identified the bandwidth, and not the disc space, to be the biggest issue with HD DVD. Supposedly, as the tools get better, they can predict bandwidth requirements better, and not leave so much headroom unnecessarily. Also, did you know that every soundtrack on a HD disc is playing simultaneously? Every soundtrack consumes bandwidth so that it can be played upon command in mid-stream because of the slow seek times of HD DVD and Blu-ray drives.
Blu-ray discs have used more lossless soundtracks than HD DVD's. Whether this is due to technical constraints or the choices of the studios, there's not much way to know for sure. Many early Blu-rays used uncompressed PCM because 5.1 Dolby TrueHD support was lacking in early players, and most players still don't have DTS HD Master Audio support beyond the lossy core (The PS3 still doesn't). If you didn't have 5.1 Dolby TrueHD support in your player, you were stuck with 640k Dolby Digital, which isn't a huge step up from DVD's audio. PCM is a stupid waste of space, but necessary due to the poor featuresets of Blu-ray players. It's a good thing that 50GB discs exist, otherwise, they'd be limited to 25GB, which is 5GB shy of the competition! (BTW, about half of all Blu-rays are 25GB discs, and not that many BD50's actually use all their capacity because it wasn't needed or keeping the space down increased yields)
Fox has been a big proponent of DTS HD MA, with all 48 discs they've produced having the audio format on them. 68 discs total have DTS-HD MA and another 21 have DTS HD, so there is a need on the Blu-ray side to decode DTS HD and DTS HD MA if you desire better audio than the core.
The PS3 is rumored to be getting DTS HD MA decoding over HDMI "soon" but no official word from Sony yet. Everyone pretty much assumes it because the PS3 is the flagship, but at some point, that reasoning is going to run someone into an unfortunate position. Even still, I agree with the assumption, and I also believe that the PS3 will get BD-Live before the fall releases that use it.
In regards to bitstreaming, the PS3 is not able to bitstream either Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD MA. The chip it uses is not capable of it. The best it will be able to do is decode those formats and send them across HDMI as LPCM. I don't think that's bad, though, so that's not a reason to pass on the PS3. Bitstreaming audio is a high-end feature that doesn't need to be on every player, and can be a differentiating feature for players > $400.
I'm not a big fan of the IR control situation on the PS3, but I'm willing to put those concerns aside because of the other features it offers, and how paltry the other Blu-ray players are in regards to features. Even with the new announcements, only the Panasonic is going to be BD-Live capable (officially), and that is probably going to be in the $500 - $600 range because of how many other features it has. I'm waiting to hear more news about a release date and price for that unit before I take the plunge (at least I'm trying to wait).
The Blu-ray format is technically superior in just about every way to HD DVD. However, many of Blu-ray's specs that we are now taking for granted would never have come about if not for HD DVD being in competition with them. VC-1 and AVC encoding were not going to happen, it was gong to be MPEG-2 only. I'm not even sure they were going to do anything but PCM audio, especially given how poorly supported Dolby TrueHD was in the beginning. They needed the 50GB space just to deal with MPEG-2 that didn't suck and PCM audio. Interactivity, regardless of how you might feel about it yourself, is coming largely as a result of being pushed by HD DVD's example.
My biggest issue with Blu-ray has always been that the players have not supported the format very well, and they were doing so at prices that were way too high in this day and age. Today, the prices have come down, but the features still kind of suck in comparison to the third generation of HD DVD players.
Even before the recent price drop by Toshiba, Blu-ray players are still sadly under-equipped for the price in comparison. The manufacturers seem to think that we consumers should be willing to pay them the margins they would like to have, regardless of what kind of crap they put out or how long it will be usable.
My 18 month old 1st gen HD DVD player can still play every feature of the latest disc released. How many Blu-ray players can say that today (with this month's releases of the first Bonus View enabled discs), much less when Finding Nemo and Sleeping Beauty come out in the fall with BD-Live features?
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 01-18-2008 11:14 AM
Reports have the payout to Fox at around $120 million, and Warner received $500 million in "considerations." This has come from so many directions and from so many different news sources, that either they are all quoting the same incorrect information, or there is something to it.
Of course, Warner denies that a payout had anything to do with their switch, much like Paramount denied that it was paid for its loyalty this past summer when it switched to HD DVD exclusive. I believe that Paramount/Dreamworks was given $150 million in "considerations" as well, but I don't think it came from Microsoft.
Warner and Fox going to HD DVD would have been very bad for Sony. All the press that has gone against HD DVD in the past two weeks would have been directed at Blu-ray instead. I don't think Disney would have put up with that kind of pressure, but who knows?
All I know is that Warner has forced somewhere under a million households that are interested in getting their movies in HD to look at Blu-ray because they have dealt HD DVD what will probably be a fatal blow.
A format whose players are under-featured and over-priced when compared to the players they already own, and which does not have exclusive studio support (yet), and which does not have all the same titles available from Warner itself.
Over a year after its release, the PS3 continues to be the best overall Blu-ray player available, and also one of the cheapest. I think it's safe to say that all that vaunted manufacturer support for the format hasn't done squat for the consumers. In the long-term, making decisions that are not best for the people that are supposed to buy your product or service will result in failure.
The best-case scenario for me is that the Panasonic DMP-BD50 comes out in March at a street price of $400-$450. That's still extremely high priced IMO, but at least it's a player worth buying. I'm going to try and do some more first-hand research into the PS3, but every store I've been in has it set up as a game system (duh) and not a movie player / media device.
There's no getting around the fact that the PS3 is a third-place game system that just happens to be the best Blu-ray player currently available. It's good news from a bang-for-the-buck, we can make it work, perspective, but hardly something for the format to hang their hat on.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-18-2008 11:43 AM
quote: Scott Jentsch
Maybe in retrospect given Warner's announcement from January 4th, but from all reports of the background negotiations, it could have just as easily gone the other way, and Blu-ray would be on the outside looking in.
If Warner Bros. had gone HD-DVD exclusive Hollywood studios would have been divided roughly 50/50 on the format war split and any hope of either format "winning" would have been gone. Electronics companies would have had to shift entirely to dual format players. Even with Warner supporting both formats I expected that outcome. Now that Warner went "blu" everything has changed.
quote: Scott Jentsch
Blu-ray discs have used more lossless soundtracks than HD DVD's. Whether this is due to technical constraints or the choices of the studios, there's not much way to know for sure.
I think it's obvious Blu-Ray's additional 10GB of data capacity per layer is why high bandwidth audio tracks are more feasible on BDs.
LPCM Surround isn't really a stupid waste of space since there's a lot more room for it on Blu-Ray. But there's pros and cons between it, Dolby True-HD and DTS-HD Master. LPCM Surround doesn't require a next generation decoder in a receiver. But not everyone can play it. The disc has to include another primary track in a backward compatible format like Dolby Digital.
Dolby True-HD and DTS-HD Master require new decoders and HDMI 1.3a connections to get the full benefits of those formats. However, their lossy cores can be sent through standard digital outputs to older receivers. Since backward compatibility is embedded in the high res track it isn't necessary to devote additional space to lossy, backward compatible tracks.
The Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut Blu-Ray release has English DTS-HD MA 5.1 as the only audio track on the disc. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure all HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players have to provide basic internal decoding and 2 channel output of LPCM, Dolby Digital and DTS.
quote: Scott Jentsch
The Blu-ray format is technically superior in just about every way to HD DVD. However, many of Blu-ray's specs that we are now taking for granted would never have come about if not for HD DVD being in competition with them.
I think a lot of people forget both of these formats were rushed to market before they were ready. Obviously that especially goes for Blu-Ray. However, Sony began development on Blu-Ray before Toshiba started work on HD-DVD. The technical goals for Blu-Ray were more ambitious, but required a longer term plan to implement. It required new technology for lasers, disc replication, etc.
HD-DVD merely extended use of existing laser and disc replication methods for DVD, making it cheaper and easier to get to players and movie discs to the market faster. But those choices also limited the format in critical areas like data bandwidth and disc capacity.
Nothing in Blu-Ray was an answer to anything done by HD-DVD. Sony just wasn't finished with development on Blu-Ray (and still isn't). They simply had to get some players to market even if development on things like BD-Live wasn't complete.
Given the fact these formats are still in the first 2 years of early adopter phase, any buyers should have known the risks they were taking by purchasing early.
Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have been negatively affected by immature technology. HDMI is a great example of that.
Only the newest HDMI 1.3 connections are worth a damn. Anything leading up to that has been one laughable compromise after another and has negatively affected HDTV monitors, receivers, movie disc players and even the freaking cables. Right now if you're wanting to buy a new home theater setup you have to be very careful in choosing every piece of equipment. There's still a lot of crap with HDMI 1.1 connections in stores. Not all HDTVs are full 1080p. Some devices max out at 1080i output. Any act of grabbing just whatever is on the shelf may result in some disappointing consequences. It may be a full year before a lot of that "good enough" garbage cycles off of store shelves.
quote: Scott Jentsch
Reports have the payout to Fox at around $120 million, and Warner received $500 million in "considerations." This has come from so many directions and from so many different news sources, that either they are all quoting the same incorrect information, or there is something to it.
None of those rumors have been substantiated. The Fox rumor really doesn't make any sense given how militant Fox was about having decent anti-piracy measures on the disc (which is primarily why they chose Blu-Ray).
quote: Scott Jentsch
There's no getting around the fact that the PS3 is a third-place game system that just happens to be the best Blu-ray player currently available.
The Nintendo Wii is the current "King" of video game consoles, but doesn't play movies. X-Box360 has lots of great gaming titles, but the console itself is turning out to be a horrible, malfunctioning, overheating piece of shit. I have three co-workers who are seriously considering shit-canning their 360s and buying PS3s instead.
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I wanted to get both and to that she said "UMM NO" so since she makes about half the income for the home I will listen. And since she is the third wife and we have been married much longer than the other two combined I will listen. And because I would hate to see her really made at me I will listen, but I wont be happy about listening!
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