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Topic: Anyone consuming HD or Blu-ray?
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-21-2008 10:07 AM
It's kind of fun to go back and read the first couple of pages of this thread.
Bobby Henderson wrote:
quote: Bobby Henderson
It's probably going to be around a year before I buy a player in either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD format.
He held out just about that long. Even so, this really goes to show how fast things change in the electronics world. Then on page 2, I wrote:
quote: Mike Blakesley
I'm not buying a HD DVD player until they are $99.99 or less, which they will be as soon as two things happen:
1. One of the two formats dies a slow painful death;
2. Regular DVDs are discontinued (or at least put on death row, like LPs and cassettes were).
I don't think I was using "HD DVD" as a format name, just a generic term...but it won't be long until my price point gets here for Blu-Ray. Or has it already?
Later in the same post, I said I wouldn't buy an HDTV until I could get 60 inches for $500. I was kidding, sort of... But, since Wal Mart singlehandedly ruined the profits in the HDTV business by selling a 42 incher for $988 last Christmas, I'm sure my price point won't be long in coming either, especially next year when analog TV goes out.
Too bad Sony didn't make Blu-Ray disks backward-compatible with existing players. Then the industry could have dumped the SD format right now and let the consumers decide when to upgrade their players. The way it is now, if they try to discontinue SD, there will be a wail of anguish heard throughout the land from all the people who are happy with their current DVD players. So they're stuck making (and stores are stuck with stocking) two formats for a few years, at least. Oh well, that's better than 3 formats.
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Mike Schindler
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1039
From: Oak Park, IL, USA
Registered: Jun 2002
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posted 02-21-2008 12:43 PM
quote: Larry Myers
I didn't purchase the A30 unit because I am using a projector that works best at 720p. I did lots of test with a Blue Ray unit. I switched back and forth between 1080p and 720p with the projector and I just could not tell the difference. Most of the tech guys here were in agreement. That is, if I am using a 720p native resolution projector, a 1080p player is not needed. So the way I look at it, I am really not out that much, less then a tank of gas, with the developments that happened in the last week.
The thing to keep in mind is that different players will be better at converting resolutions than others. So while 720p may look better than 1080p on that Blu-ray player, the opposite might true for your HD DVD player.
For example, I have a 720p projector with 3 HD sources. My Blu-ray player looks best at 1080p, my cable box looks best at 720p, and my HD DVD player looks best at 1080i.
So it's a good idea to test all the resolutions on your HD DVD player anyway, just in case.
As for buying an HD DVD player now, if I didn't have one already, I would not hesitate to drop $200 on one, even today. Sure, it's a dead format, and everything that's available on HD DVD will eventually show up on BD, but in the mean time, I get to watch stuff like THE BIG LEBOWSKI and BATMAN BEGINS in hi-def. That right there is worth $200.
I mean, look at the alternative. DVD? 480 lines of resolution? Please. You might as well just act the movie out with shadow puppets. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-22-2008 11:55 PM
quote: John Hawkinson
I have trouble with this one. Are you claiming, Bobby, that upconverting makes use of information from multiple frames? Or simply that it resamples a given frame with no time information?
Up-converting DVD players (and Blu-ray or HD-DVD players which also do up-converting of DVD) resample & resize 480p DVD video on a frame by frame basis.
quote: John Hawkinson
If the latter, I don't see why it would look any less jagged than a same-sized 480p display.
It all lies in the type of image resampling being done. There's a combination of bilinear and bicubic interpolation being applied to artificially add extra pixels in between the original native pixels of detail. It's also apparent some image sharpening is being applied after the image is resampled to the higher pixel level. Otherwise the finished conversion to 720p or 1080p would be very soft looking.
The upconverting process takes a certain amount of time. The DVD player, Blu-ray player or HD-DVD player has to buffer a certain amount of DVD video, apply the changes and then output it. Sometimes that process isn't perfect.
The original factory firmware in my 80GB Playstation 3 had problems. The resampling of DVD video didn't look very good. On top of that, there was a noticeable loss of sync between the audio and video. The audio was playing as much as a full second ahead of the video. I observed this with the DTS DVD of Saving Private Ryan. Updating the PS3 firmware solved the audio/video sync problem and improved the appearance of up-converted DVDs. Nevertheless, those up-conversion results simply do NOT compare to well authored native 1080p video.
Anyone who tries to claim up-converting DVDs on HD monitors is just as good as native 1080p video either has crappy eyesight, is lying to himself or has some sort of dishonest agenda at work.
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![[Wink]](wink.gif)
). He's now retired from Microsoft and is quite open about the pluses and minuses of the two formats. The impression I got from the article is that Blu-ray discs are significantly more difficult to manufacture (read: yield problems). However, he also says one of the downfalls of HD-DVD is the discs are very susceptible to damage from scratches and other mishandling. He said they would be worse than regular DVDs in rental situations in terms of problems caused by physical damage.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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