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Author
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Topic: Anyone consuming HD or Blu-ray?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-16-2008 05:15 PM
quote: Mike Blakesley
When did I ever say they would? One thing you are good at, is reading things into people's posts that aren't there.
You placed the blame of failure at the feet of the music buying public, which is mostly made up of young people. The vast majority of music released on DVD-A and SACD was music that did not appeal to those people, not even people in their late 20s and 30s who do have some money to blow on high end stereo gear. The music companies didn't release their kind of music in those formats. Therefore, it's very reasonable to conclude the fault of failure of SACD and DVD-A is the fault of the studios, not the consumers.
Those music labels have all kinds of nice things in their contracts that force their talent to do all sorts of marketing and promotion stunts as well as a lot of other crap to screw the talent out of any earnings. Those music studios could have actually demanded their signed talent start producing new titles in both 2-channel and 5.1 audio mixes to accomodate new audio formats and have greater flexibility in how music is delivered and played. But they didn't lay down any of that ground work. Releasing SACD and DVD-A with next to nothing in terms of high resolution 5.1 channel content was a grand act of putting the cart ahead of the horse.
quote: Mike Blakesley
You must not remember when CDs first came out. What was the first type of music to be marketed thereon? Classical.
I remember seeing CD players for the first time in 1984. I also distinctly remember new rock albums, such as Eliminator by ZZ Top, being available in the format and playing on the demo players.
SACD and DVD-A have been available for nearly a decade. Over that time, neither format got any decent title support from any music label. Over that entire time, nearly all the music available in those format was geared toward middle aged listeners, not the younger crowd that buys the most music.
quote: Mike Blakesley
As has been pointed out, the young kids as a rule don't have the $ to blow on some new format. It has to start with the dreaded old people who are the ones with the cash. Sorry about that.
Even in that regard, albums that came out 30 years ago are hardly the thing to demonstrate a new, next-generation music/audio format. Any new format needs new content. Not just a bunch of old stuff people have probably bought numerous times in numerous formats already. Even middle aged and older folks get tired of hearing the same old songs. They want new music that appeals to their tastes as well.
...
I'll go back to the Blu-ray topic.
I found this interesting opinion piece that made a few good points on why iTunes won't kill Blu-ray.
Opinon Article Link
quote:
Don't Hold Your Breath for iTunes to Kill Blu-ray
By John Martellaro
The Mac Observer
02/27/08 4:00 AM PT
When Blu-ray emerged victorious from the high-def format war, people were already talking about how HD downloads from iTunes and others were poised to trump discs as consumers' favorite way to get video. However, with an ongoing dust-up over net neutrality -- not to mention the fact that popping in a disc is just plain easier that downloading and storing a movie -- that won't happen any time soon.
In an effort to create artificial tension for their readership or to cater to the RDFs (reality distortion fields) of Apple some are arguing that Blu-ray will now have to fight an uphill battle against Internet downloads.
That's all pure baloney.
The Bandwidth Obstacle
First, it's going to be many years before Internet downloads can compete with Blu-ray discs in terms of bit rate and video quality. What's worse, we're facing a unique problem these days in that some Internet providers may be working behind the scenes to make life difficult for their competitors. Unless net neutrality laws get some teeth soon, the days of free and open access to any video any time may be numbered.
So, until the day comes when I have a 100 Mbps (megabits per second) cable modem or FiOS connection and the federal government has guaranteed me that I can download an HD movie from Big Time Competitor A on Big Time Competitor B's network in a few minutes with no behind the scenes dirty tricks, I think I'll pass on the Blu-ray is dead scenario.
Going Up
Next, I suspect most people have older DVD players that don't do much in terms of upconverting. They're going to need a new player anyway. For those older players, the output is 480i, and the HDTV it's connected to does it's best to convert that to native resolution. As time goes by, there's going to be less and less emphasis on that circuitry to save costs, and so a good upconverting DVD player will be required. What's a good up-converting DVD player? A Blu-ray.
I've personally seen the difference between and old but serviceable Sony DVD player delivering 480i and a Blu-ray player with modern electronics delivering 480p via HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) from a DVD. There is a small but noticeable improvement for the same DVD.
Box Fatigue
Finally, while some people always have their preferences and try to get in on the latest trends, the fact is it's very hard to get all the people to do just what you want them to do all the time. A lot of people have a nice DVD collection, and they're going to keep right on enjoying those movies. If, every once in a while, a Blu-ray movie arrives via Netflix they'll do it.
Don't forget, we're still not very good at getting that content off our computers and into our HDTVs. HDTVs with an Ethernet jack are coming, but it's going to take a long time for manufacturers and content providers to make that interface as good as Apple can make it. In the meantime, video box wars and customer "box fatigue" is at an all time high. Adults and their kids know how to operate DVD and Blu-ray players; they're not considered hard to use.
Just Press Play
There's an old adage: "Under the most strictly controlled conditions of pressure, temperature and humidity, the organism will do as it damn well pleases."
So will millions of consumers who don't want to mess around with the Internet, wait for a movie to fill a buffer, mess with complicated video boxes, have a credit card number on file in the sky, worry about net-neutrality dirty tricks, and backing up purchased movies at 2 GB per shot. They just want to plop a disc in the machine, grab some popcorn and enjoy. You can bet Hollywood will keep them happy with lots of selections at Wal-Mart for a long time.
© 2008 The Mac Observer, Inc.. All rights reserved.
© 2008 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 03-17-2008 06:27 AM
Even the high-brows with golden ears seem to have succum to the "it's good enough" culture. Used to be when we were budding audiophile geeky kids, FM tuner and receiver manufactures were all abuzz about the latest refinement in FM reception and their high-end gear, the best of the best circuity, with phase-lock-loop circuits and with the classical stations touting linear FM antenna transmission, etc. Nowadays our WQXR-FM "classical" station (they are fond of a kind of top-40 classical format) seems to be quite proud of their crap quality internet trasmission.
Have you ever heard what classical music sounds like on an internet transmission? It sounds like you put it thru an old 60s wah-wah peddle box and then put that thru a Phaser peddle box, add lots of hum and residual noise; now feed that, if you dare, into a high-end high fidelity (they don't even use that term any more) sound system and the final sound coming out of the speakers is dog-poo garbage.
I guess there is a reason they carefully avoid ever calling it "high fidelity" and why the only place it sounds barely listenable is from shit computer speakers. But it seems that's "good enough," even for the "over-the-hill" demograhic who supposedly used to care about their classical music recordings. I mean, they are not 28-30 yr olds running the WQXR station, they are the age group who were once the gung-ho audiophile lunatics who weren't satisfied unless they were able to ring every last ounce of fidelity that was possible out of FM trasmission. But today, they seem to be quite content with the level of quality of their horrid internet broadcast; in fact, they seem to be right proud of it. I guess broadcasting "world wide" as they call it, trumps "local-but-superior" transmission. They might as well be broadcasting classical music over short wave radio as far as I am concerned.
So if this is all that even the formely demanding segments of the culture are now satisfied with, is it any wonder why content suppliers are not inclined to waist money on superior delivery systems like SACD and DVD-A or even S-VHS back in the day, even when they are available?
Well maybe this is a good thing. For all those people with golden ears, or silver ears, or even freakin brass ears...ANY ears in fact that haven't had the cochlea penetrated by earpod insertion and the delicate sila sanded down by 140db 12 hours a day sound blasting, maybe the only way that niche audience which does actually want to hear pristine classical music sound can do so is by actually GOING to live classical concerts.
Guess this is all good news for the concert venues, although the down-side might be their having to invest heavily in additional access ramps to accomodate that growing number of walkers and battery powered mobil chairs in which all of us "dreaded old people" (thanks so much Mike B ![[fu]](graemlins/fu.gif) ) will be arriving.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-17-2008 09:01 AM
quote: Frank Angel
I mean, they are not 28-30 yr olds running the WQXR station, they are the age group who were once the gung-ho audiophile lunatics who weren't satisfied unless they were able to ring every last ounce of fidelity that was possible out of FM trasmission. But today, they seem to be quite content with the level of quality of their horrid internet broadcast; in fact, they seem to be right proud of it. I guess broadcasting "world wide" as they call it, trumps "local-but-superior" transmission. They might as well be broadcasting classical music over short wave radio as far as I am concerned.
They might as well be doing the same thing with what's going on right now. "HD Digital Radio" is one laughable joke. Digital audio broadcast at bit rates of only 96kb/s or 64kb/s, yet called "CD quality" and "HD." Lots of radio stations that broadcast classical music are jumping on that. Here in Lawton, Cameron University's radio station was first in the area to embrace "HD Digital Radio." The old, analog FM broadcast sounds better. But they jump on it anyway because of "multi-casting" numerous "digital quality" channels in a limited chunk of radio broadcast spectrum. Multiple channels? More advertising opportunity! Yay.
The low standards of "good enough" are more profitable. That's the main reason why so many suits are very quick to fiercely defend low standards of music production and content delivery.
This odd situation seems even more tinged with hypocrisy when movie audio formats are moving in the other direction to the extreme. Buyers of Blu-ray movies cry foul if a disc doesn't feature an uncompressed LPCM multichannel track or lossless multichannel track. DTS-HD Master Audio can run at bit rates up to 24.6 million bits per second. That's only 256.25 times the bit rate of HD Digital Radio. Yet movie audio often comes from more crude beginnings than music. It's quite a contradiction.
quote: Frank Angel
maybe the only way that niche audience which does actually want to hear pristine classical music sound can do so is by actually GOING to live classical concerts.
That's provided if you can afford the concert ticket. Prices have seriously inflated for seeing live concerts. To make matters worse, ticket scalping has pretty much been legalized nationwide by way of online 3rd party ticket brokers. They buy up available tickets by the thousands and sell them way above the face value on the ticket.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 03-17-2008 11:06 AM
I wanted to follow up with what I believe is the study that I was referring to in my earlier post. The study was conducted by E. Brad Meyer and David R. Moran, two audio journalists that compared 2-channel material on CD and SACD, and their results were published in the September 2007 issue of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society (Volume 55, Number 9).
I could not find the original publication (probably locked behind membership gates), but there are a few links that refer to it and provide some additional detail and discussion that I found interesting:
The AVS Forum discussion is interesting, and to no surprise, there are people on both sides of the debate on the merits of the study and its results.
Being an engineer by training, I believe that there is audio data present in real-world sounds that exceeds the ability of a 16 bit 44.1kHz system to capture. That's why it's a good idea for the capturing system to be better than that.
However, I also believe that there are real-world limitations on the ability to reproduce all the sounds present in nature. No matter how good your equipment, your environment, your ears, and the source, there is a realistic limitation on the amount of quality that actually makes it to our ears.
Therefore, I buy into the fact that 16 bit 44.1kHz recordings are enough to reproduce what any reasonable audio system and my ears will be able to appreciate.
I have more than a couple SACD's and I also have the LOTR "complete recordings" soundtracks that have the DVD-A versions. I think that the ability to listen to the music mixed in multi-channel far outweighs any supposed quality benefits that SACD or DVD-A brings to the table.
Maybe I could if I listened with a more discerning ear, or had a better audio system. However, I tend to think I have a more discerning ear than many non-audiophiles (I don't consider myself an audiophile), and I have an audio system that exceeds everyone I know (maybe I need higher-class acquaintances??).
To bring this back to Blu-ray and HD DVD, I think it's great that both formats have the ability to play lossless audio tracks. But to reproduce those tracks, one needs to have an HDMI-equipped receiver, which not many people do (in the grand scheme of things). That leaves a significant number of the population listening to pretty much the same quality of audio that is present on their current DVDs (yeah, I know there is a numerical difference between Dolby Digital on DVD vs. Blu-ray/HD DVD).
Blu-ray has a lot of potential for not just watching movies, but for enjoying other programming as well. It's a medium that could be used for really high-quality music recordings, with or without video. Now that concert events are becoming more popular in theaters, perhaps that will transfer over to those concerts becoming available on Blu-ray. If Blu-ray can get a solid foothold, I look forward to things like this becoming a reality.
The media capabilities of the PS3 really make it more of a machine that most people are probably even aware of. It's an incredible platform for enjoying movies, music, photos, and TV programs. Its biggest detracting factor is that it is being sold as a gaming machine, and most people associate gaming machines with gaming and if they're not into gaming, it doesn't stay on their radar. The lack of IR support on the PS3 just reinforces the fact that it's not a "serious" media device, which is really selling the PS3 short.
If Sony were to repackage the PS3 in a traditional box, add IR support, and toss the game controller, they wouldn't need the upcoming BDP-S350. The PS3 is a more capable device that can do more, and would better justify the $400 price tag.
Or, better yet, the BDP-S350 is still a sellable device, but it should be at $299 MSRP with a $200-$250 street price.
The Blu-ray manufacturers gotta do a better job of getting fully capable Blu-ray players into the marketplace at a more consumer-friendly price. $400 is more than people want to pay for such an item.
All pre-BD-Live players need to be removed from the market as soon as possible. When BD-Live discs come out, and people can't play them in their $400+ Blu-ray players, there is going to be hell to pay. It's a darn good thing that (more than?) 90% of the Blu-ray players sold are PS3's!
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David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 03-17-2008 11:36 AM
I guess I should retract my claim about being an "audiophile". I used to be. Now I have a quite average system. But I'm discerning enough to know what sounds good and what sounds like crap (most FM broadcasts are crap now, intended only to sound good in a car).
The market largely determines what we get. There's little to no demand for really high-quality sound amongst the majority of music listeners these days, so we get overly compressed FM, HD Radio (heh) and lossy MP3. Music purveyors will supply whatever the mass market wants, and the mass market doesn't want SACDs or other true high-quality audio nowadays.
Ironically, the true high-end audio market seems to be doing very well. Take a look at a recent edition of The Absolute Sound. There seems to be more specialty manufacturers of high-end electronics and speakers now than ever. And they're mostly focused on 2-channel stereo. Yet you go to Circuit City or Best Buy and there's hardly any selection of mass-market receivers or speakers any more. It all seems to be about video. I guess people are buying $3000 TVs and home-theater-in-a-box audio systems for $500.
I was in Circuit City yesterday scoping out the latest flat-panel TVs and Blu-ray stuff. They had one of the Sony 52" 1080p LCDs playing "Transformers" on Blu-ray. It looked extremely sharp and detailed, but also very contrasty or something, like it had crushed black levels. I couldn't find the remote for the TV so couldn't try to tweak the picture. But it also looked nothing at all like film. It was video as far as I'm concerned. Is that how it's supposed to look?
As far as PS3 vs. standalone Blu-ray, I have zero interest in the game stuff, so I gravitate toward standalone players.
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Tom Mundell
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 120
From: Silver Spring, MD, USA
Registered: Nov 2007
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posted 03-17-2008 12:26 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
But to reproduce those tracks, one needs to have an HDMI-equipped receiver
Not quite, there is an alternative. Some blu-ray players can decode the audio internally and have multi channel analog outputs. This is what I have set up currently, my receiver has 8 channel analog inputs but it won't decode any of the new formats, but my blu-ray player can decode everything except lossless DTS master audio and has 8 channel analog outputs. In theory having an HDMI connection to the receiver would sound better, in practice I'm not sure the difference is really audible.
quote: Scott Jentsch
When BD-Live discs come out, and people can't play them in their $400+ Blu-ray players, there is going to be hell to pay.
BD-Live discs should still play fine on any blu-ray player out there, no? It's just any extra features that may be problematic.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-17-2008 03:40 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
If Sony were to repackage the PS3 in a traditional box, add IR support, and toss the game controller, they wouldn't need the upcoming BDP-S350. The PS3 is a more capable device that can do more, and would better justify the $400 price tag.
I don't think very many people are bothered by the aesthetics of the PS3 console. The only issue I see with the case design is it doesn't allow you to stack other devices on top of it (which may be a good thing).
Given what all it can do I think the PS3 is a bargain at $400. It's a future proof Blu-ray player, at least in terms of adding support of BD Live! with an upcoming firmware update. Internal DTS-HD decoding is also in the works. Panasonic's DMP-BD50 will support BD Live! But it may cost significantly more than the $499 DMP-BD30.
In April 1999, I paid $450 for my first DVD player, a Sony BVP-S530D DVD player. That's 1999 dollars. Adjusted for inflation that price could be closer to $550 or $600. The DVD format was 2 years old at that point. Yet that was a period where the popularity of DVD really started growing rapidly. Blu-ray has been on the market for around 2 years. I will agree prices need to come down some. However, the current pricing of Blu-ray players is not really any different from DVD when it was the same age.
IMHO, quality movie titles do more to drive popularity of a new video format than low price. HD-DVD players were priced at very affordable levels, but that didn't move millions of units out of retail stores. So I'm not convinced Blu-ray player sales would be a huge deal better if the price of the players was cut in half. It might encourage more people to buy, but the thing that really does the trick is one hit movie phenomenon after another.
The Matrix deserves a great deal of credit for turning the DVD format into a hot gift item for the 1999 fall/holiday shopping season. Gladiator was another movie that gave DVD a big boost. The Lord of the Rings movies propelled DVD player sales much higher. It's not surprising those movies are among the most highly requested catalog titles to get released on Blu-ray.
Right now, there's very little in the way of new movie releases that qualify as any sort of hit phenomenon to use in driving home theater equipment sales. Hopefully, this summer's crop of big budget movies will change that. I think The Dark Knight is probably going to do well and a number of others may be big hits too. Those movies will help Blu-ray player sales this fall, but the effect will be much greater if those movie are big hits.
quote: Scott Jentsch
The lack of IR support on the PS3 just reinforces the fact that it's not a "serious" media device, which is really selling the PS3 short.
I think that issue is "small potatoes." The Bluetooth remote is relatively cheap. And there are third party IR remotes for PS3 as well.
quote: David Stambaugh
I was in Circuit City yesterday scoping out the latest flat-panel TVs and Blu-ray stuff. They had one of the Sony 52" 1080p LCDs playing "Transformers" on Blu-ray.
Transformers was never released on Blu-ray. Lots of people are pestering the hell out of Paramount to get some kind of word on when it will be released on Blu-ray.
Are you sure you weren't looking at HD-DVD instead?
quote: David Stambaugh
It looked extremely sharp and detailed, but also very contrasty or something, like it had crushed black levels. I couldn't find the remote for the TV so couldn't try to tweak the picture. But it also looked nothing at all like film. It was video as far as I'm concerned. Is that how it's supposed to look?
It sounds like they had the 120Hz motion enhancer turned on and probably set on "high." I've seen this problem very often already on various Sony Bravia XBR and Samsung store demo displays.
And, yes, turning on the motion enhancer as well as setting it to high will make any movie look very electronic -like it was shot on video. The combination of a "high" setting and noise reduction turned on at a medium or high setting will really blur out a lot of detail. Such displays look a lot better with those features turned "off" -at least for Blu-ray movie viewing. Gotta do that for 24p viewing anyway.
quote: Tom Mundell
BD-Live discs should still play fine on any blu-ray player out there, no? It's just any extra features that may be problematic.
BD Live! features will be disabled in Profile 1.0 and Profile 1.1 Blu-ray players. But those older players should still be able to play the movie unless they had some serious bugs in their design that don't agree with the way a new movie was authored to disc. And that brings up another advantage of PS3: most Blu-ray movies are tested on PS3 consoles for compatibility. Can't say the same for all the standalone models.
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