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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 04-20-2008 01:07 AM
quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
Not much to say about Blew Ray... there haven't been really any decent releases lately... I think they are playing catch up now.
Blu-ray is only playing catch-up in terms of Paramount/Dreamworks and Universal titles.
Everything else, Blu-ray clearly was in the lead -which explains why Blu-ray won: better overall selection of titles. Columbia, Tri-Star, MGM, Fox, Disney, Touchstone, Hollywood, Dimension and Lionsgate -that's a decent collection of studios releasing exclusively on Blu-ray. With WB thrown in as a non-exclusive studio (but then eventually exclusive) helped further.
Studios like Universal did make a valiant effort in supporting HD-DVD.
Current market numbers (copied and pasted from The Digital Bits):
TOTAL BLU-RAY DISC TITLES (4/11/08 - DVD Release Report):
477/70*
TOTAL HD-DVD TITLES (4/11/08 - DVD Release Report): 421/12*
*Net total of R1 discs released/announced.
Discontinued & adult not included.
SOFTWARE MARKET SHARE - BD VS HD-DVD (4/13/08 - Nielsen/VideoScan):
Week End. 4/13: Blu-ray Disc: 86%, HD-DVD:14%
Since Inception
Blu-ray Disc: 67%, HD-DVD: 33%
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 04-22-2008 11:29 AM
The latest issue of Widescreen Review has a story written by Joe Kane about the challenges they faced producing the Blu-ray edition of the DVE Basics disc.
Some players wouldn't display the fonts correctly (on HD DVD and Blu-ray, you can display text using fonts instead of rendering them as graphics), many loaded the menus slowly, and quite a few couldn't handle mixed frame rates without issues. The article mentions firmware updates being made for the affected players that fixed many of the problems, but seemingly not all.
Such issues might explain why it is taking a while for existing HD DVD titles to be released on Blu-ray. It makes sense for studios to want to replicate the menus and features made for the HD DVD release. Universal was a big proponent of online connectivity (even if they didn't make great use of it), and I would imagine that is yet another example of making sausage that would scare most of us if we knew how it was made. Universal also had extensive PiP and other stuff under their U-Control moniker that might take some learning and or firmware updating to work on Blu-ray.
If it was easy to produce a Blu-ray title when one already has an HD master made, we would see more released already. While some are going to wait for their tie-ins to be released (such as Batman Begins with the upcoming release of The Dark Knight), there are others that have no such reason to wait.
It's a shame that we may be waiting a very long time for classics like Casablanca to be released on Blu-ray. From what I understand, the older movies didn't perform very well when they were released on either format, so studios are hesitant to produce more.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 04-22-2008 03:37 PM
So far, I've been pretty unimpressed with web access features that are incorporated into Blu-ray movies. The features work slow and very little of that content is unique. The "e-store" crap and various movie trailers can all be downloaded much faster using a regular computer.
Picture in picture commentaries (which normally require a 1.1 "Bonus View" BD player or better) can be good if the material is more than mere interview stuff ported over from a "making of" extra.
The tele-strator commentary track for the upcoming Men In Black BD has the potential of being pretty interesting. Participants could do their best John Madden voice impersonations while drawing stuff all over the 1080p video.
quote: Scott Jentsch
Some players wouldn't display the fonts correctly (on HD DVD and Blu-ray, you can display text using fonts instead of rendering them as graphics), many loaded the menus slowly, and quite a few couldn't handle mixed frame rates without issues.
This is an area I think needs serious improvement. Are the subtitle fonts resident in the player or is it software that is loaded from the disc? If the latter is used, then I think disc authors could be more creative with the type, using fonts more appropriate to the type of movie being played. I also think end users should have some level of freedom to customize how subtitles are displayed on screen (such as text size, certain aspects of on screen placement, etc.).
quote: Scott Jentsch
From what I understand, the older movies didn't perform very well when they were released on either format, so studios are hesitant to produce more.
The most obvious problems is how older, catalog movies were transferred to high defintion.
HD quality telecine has long been used to create digital masters to derive down for DVD release. That method has been pretty acceptable for standard resolution fare. Unfortunately, it's turning out to be not so great for formats like Blu-ray. If there are flaws in the transfer they'll be a lot more visible in 1080p.
The best looking Blu-ray movies are typically created from a scanned, digital intermediate source. Unfortunately, it's rare for an old catalog title to have a digital intermediate created unless it's part of a significant restoration project -like what took place with Bladerunner, The Final Cut. You can tell the other four versions of the movie were sourced from HD telecine masters. They look nowhere near as good as the Final Cut version.
I'm not 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure the less than impressive image quality of BD releases like Independence Day, Total Recall or American Psycho have marginal HD telecine sources as a culprit.
Old movies can look very good in high definition. The Searchers and 2001: A Space Odyssey are good examples of that. The studio just has to be willing to spend the money it takes to get the job done well.
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