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HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray Battle Over? Warner Switches to Blu-Ray
- Thread starter hvfsl
- Start date
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To appreciate....
The quality of these HD formats is evident when you get to a decent size screen. That's not going to happen based on the limitations of the human eye at 23" and in fact the bigger the better. Distance is another factor but I don't agree with folks on that entirely based on experience.
Of course I'm seeing this from the other side of the spectrum at 106" but at 42" or better, you really can appreciate HD. Hockey and movies done in HD formats especially.
The quality of these HD formats is evident when you get to a decent size screen. That's not going to happen based on the limitations of the human eye at 23" and in fact the bigger the better. Distance is another factor but I don't agree with folks on that entirely based on experience.
Of course I'm seeing this from the other side of the spectrum at 106" but at 42" or better, you really can appreciate HD. Hockey and movies done in HD formats especially.
The Blu-ray studios have been choosing AVC often lately but have used VC-1 and even MPEG-2 when it made sense for the source material. In some cases VC-1 or AVC would have looked worse because of artifacts introduced by the compression algorithms, sometimes AVC was best while VC-1 was chosen at other times. The Condemned is an example of when Lionsgate chose VC-1 at a higher bit rate than HD DVD was capable of in order to produce the best picture on Blu-ray.
Where are you getting this false information from? Subtitles work regardless the connection and all blu-rays players including the Ps3 support up to 1080p via HDMI or 1080i via component.
Update the graph. New Line confirms Blu-ray exclusivity.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978461.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978461.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1
i HATE blu-ray
I feel I will be the only one who didn't just got super-excited-oh-my-god-oh-my-god here, but well, I hate blu-ray.
because of one thing - regions. DVD has this stupid regions and it is making me mad. Blu-Ray has 3 regions, which is better than six (DVD), but HD-DVD has none. Nothing. No regions at all. Simple.
and last thing I don't get is why you all celebrate Blu-Ray is the winner (I guess the war is nearly over). Is it because Microsoft supported HD-DVD? so what? It doesn't have these stupid regions and that's what I care most.
I feel I will be the only one who didn't just got super-excited-oh-my-god-oh-my-god here, but well, I hate blu-ray.
because of one thing - regions. DVD has this stupid regions and it is making me mad. Blu-Ray has 3 regions, which is better than six (DVD), but HD-DVD has none. Nothing. No regions at all. Simple.
and last thing I don't get is why you all celebrate Blu-Ray is the winner (I guess the war is nearly over). Is it because Microsoft supported HD-DVD? so what? It doesn't have these stupid regions and that's what I care most.
Well isn't that the biggest ball of FUD ever. And no, playing too many BD movies on your PS3 will "wear it out" is utter B.S.
There is nothing inherently wrong with MPEG-2 encoding. Where space is not a concern, MPEG-2 can produce the same quality image as VC-1 or AVC (MPEG-4). This a myth that has been regurgitated over and over again by people who don't understand video compression technology.
The reason early Blu-ray discs had poor picture quality was because studios were distributing MPEG-2 encoded films on a 25GB BD. At that time, 50GB BD pressing was not readily available.
Now that 50GB BD is available, encoding possibilities are virtually limitless. AVC and VC-1 encodes enjoy a better quality/size ratio. However, MPEG-2 is far from dead and will continue to be used in applications where the quality to size ratio doesn't matter.
That's purely speculative. You would have to compare title to title, and since the "purple" studios only encode films once (usually in VC-1), we will never be able to accurately compare a 50GB MPEG-2, AVC or VC-1 studio encode to a 30GB MPEG-2, AVC or VC-1 studio encode of the same film.
That's also inaccurate. The vast majority of Blu-ray disc titles are released in AVC (MPEG-4) encoding as of now.
One big difference is that the DVD manufacturers are actually marketing high-def video. I never saw any serious attempt to market SACD or DVDA. I only know about them because I'm an audiophile, most stores never carried them and those that did didn't have marketing stands for them. The video content owners actually want you to view high-def video, while the RIAA consistently opposed high-def audio. It is no surprise, then, that SACD/DVDA died with a whimper.
The DVD Forum (who controls the HD DVD spec) approved region coding capabilities for HD DVD in 2006. So far, no one in the HD DVD camp is using it. But the notion that HD DVD "is" exactly region free is a joke.
http://www.dvdforum.org/34scmtg-resolution.htm , Item #6
Blu-ray and HD DVD both contain region coding capabilities. But it's up to the individual studios to decide whether or not to implement it.
The only reason HD DVD's region coding capabilities have not been implemented is because the particular film studios that WANT region coding are on the Blu-ray side.
Not true when you consider closed captions, which can't be transmitted over HDMI. Therefore, the concern that there be a replacement that actually works over HDMI is very valid.
What I want to know is, is there an alternate format used on blu-ray/HD disks now and is it universally implemented? Higher-def DVD without any kind of subtitle is useless to me and thousands of others who can't hear.
Does anyone care that Blu-Ray has the most robust DRM scheme of the two?
No wonder it won over studio heads.
Surprising that this site would be so excited about better protection against copying.
No wonder it won over studio heads.
Surprising that this site would be so excited about better protection against copying.
I buy physical media as my backup, one which is scratch resistant, immune to magnetic fields, fairly robust in a wide temperature range, compact, easily stored offsite, and much cheaper than a second set of hard disks (considering the likely difference, if any, between the download price and physical media price).
The real action is on my media server. If the studios can restrain themselves on the DRM front so that I can store Blu-Ray/HD-DVD movies on disk just like I can DVD I'll be very happy.
Last point well taken
You are right about MPEG-4 as I don't know which BR titles are consistently using now. No matter how you massage it, MPEG-2, yuch.
But I really will miss the download options on updating the HD-DVD OS and the download extras.
You are right about MPEG-4 as I don't know which BR titles are consistently using now. No matter how you massage it, MPEG-2, yuch.
But I really will miss the download options on updating the HD-DVD OS and the download extras.
Good, get this thing over with. I want one of them to "WIN", if you can call it that, so we can just move on past it.
Years ago, no one thought we would be getting a huge amount of our music from downloads. Especially with how much "BETTER" of an experience you got from DVD-A and SACD. People thought for sure one of those would be the eventual successor to CD. But then, broadband became a very viable option to many people, and music suddenly became something you could easilly purchase with a single click. Sure, DVD-A and SACD have better technology and do sound great. But, for many people, the CDs they already own or the music they can download from iTunes or Amazon or whatnot is just fine. Not the best, but its good enough.
The same thing is inevitable with these HD disc formats as well. Yes, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD offer much more than standard DVD. But, your average consumer is fine with DVD. Especially since we've invested so much $$$ in them over the last 10 years or so. No one would have thought 5 years ago that we would be downloading HD movies with ease, yet I've done it at least a dozen times on my 360, and its a piece of cake. Sure, they aren't 1080p, and all that. But, on my set, they look great. Broadband is getting faster and cheaper, and hard drives are getting bigger and cheaper as well. It only makes sense to just bypass the physical disc and just send people the bits.
So, good for Warner to step up, and make a decision. Because they are right. All this confusion wasn't helping anyone. Now, just get it out of your system, and get these HD movies on a server somewhere for me to purchase and DL. My Drobo is hungry for 1s and 0s.
Years ago, no one thought we would be getting a huge amount of our music from downloads. Especially with how much "BETTER" of an experience you got from DVD-A and SACD. People thought for sure one of those would be the eventual successor to CD. But then, broadband became a very viable option to many people, and music suddenly became something you could easilly purchase with a single click. Sure, DVD-A and SACD have better technology and do sound great. But, for many people, the CDs they already own or the music they can download from iTunes or Amazon or whatnot is just fine. Not the best, but its good enough.
The same thing is inevitable with these HD disc formats as well. Yes, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD offer much more than standard DVD. But, your average consumer is fine with DVD. Especially since we've invested so much $$$ in them over the last 10 years or so. No one would have thought 5 years ago that we would be downloading HD movies with ease, yet I've done it at least a dozen times on my 360, and its a piece of cake. Sure, they aren't 1080p, and all that. But, on my set, they look great. Broadband is getting faster and cheaper, and hard drives are getting bigger and cheaper as well. It only makes sense to just bypass the physical disc and just send people the bits.
So, good for Warner to step up, and make a decision. Because they are right. All this confusion wasn't helping anyone. Now, just get it out of your system, and get these HD movies on a server somewhere for me to purchase and DL. My Drobo is hungry for 1s and 0s.
Neither formats use closed captioning. They use subtitles, and they work well in both formats over HDMI; it is located in the menu under subtitles usually referred to as English for the hard of hearing.
New titles ignore VC1 entirely in favor of the much better AVC. Is there a list of MPEG-2 Blu-Ray titles anyway (so I can avoid them)?
If you are relying on dvds, cdroms, hd-dvds or Blu for archiving valuable info, then think again. One scratch and you can have a frisbee.
Blu-ray (due to its increased bit density) is especially prone to this issue of total unrecoverable failure.
FUD
The lack of regions also prevented some new day and date titles from being released on HD DVD by New Line (Hair Spray) at the same time as their Blu-ray and DVD versions because the movie was still in the theaters in Europe. Most catalogue (read older titles) theater releases from 2006 or earlier have been region free. In fact I picked up Bruce Almighty (Buena Vista in UK), Scary Movie 4 (Buena Vista in UK) and Starship Trooper from the UK via sendit.com and they play fine in my Region A Ps3.
Google is your friend. Here is a sight with a list of confirmed region free or all region Blu-rays:
http://bluray.liesinc.net/
This was only true when Blu-ray discs were first released. All current Blu-ray discs utilize proprietary hard-coat technology. This, actually, makes Blu-ray less vulnerable to irreparable damage.