Blu-Ray debut yields inferior video quality to HD-DVD... Problems for PS3?

[Ruined]

Is Blu-Ray all hype?

Blu-Ray launch titles underwhelm with soft, filtered video and mpeg2 artifacts along with Sony's inability to produce 50gb Blu-Ray discs - HD-DVD superior overall in video quality due to using the more efficient VC-1 codec:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=689168
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=688776
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=689241

Sony software Blu-Ray encoders cut black/white levels unlike HD-DVD:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=680008

Promised TDK Durabis "Scratch Proof" coating missing from actual Blu-Ray titles, Blu-Ray surface now most definitely more error-prone than HD-DVD's:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=689750

Not to mention that the first wave of Blu-Ray players don't support Dolby Digital TrueHD or Dolby Digital Plus like the Toshiba HD-A1 does. Hybrid DVD/Hidef discs as available on HD-DVD have also been scrapped for Blu-Ray.

For double the price of HD-DVD, why would you go for Blu-Ray? Might this be a small issue for Sony's "grand plan?"

[Chris in Cali]

I saw a Blu-Ray up and running at Circuit City yesterday... I was not impressed. It looked like a regular DVD to me, the only real difference I noticed was the sound quailty. It sounded very nice, but then again that could have just been because it was hooked up to such nice speakers, and the ones I have at home suck.

[GuilewasNK]

I still think that piracy is the main reason a new format is coming out, not because of picture quality.

[Ikohn4ever]

i still dont know if I believe it, but what I do know is I am not spending another 1000 just to play blu-ray discs. I really want some video comparison of HDDVD and Blu on the same tv using HDMI cables to compare video quality

[TimPV3]

Blu-Ray isn't double the cost. Maybe we should wait until after Blu-Ray's first few players and movies to make comparisons. HD-DVD isn't exactly hot either, considering they're just launching both formats I didn't expect anything spectacular.

And even if Blu-Ray were slightly inferior to HD-DVD, it's the content that counts. What's the count, 7 studios to 3?

[Ruined]

i still dont know if I believe it, but what I do know is I am not spending another 1000 just to play blu-ray discs. I really want some video comparison of HDDVD and Blu on the same tv using HDMI cables to compare video quality

An A/B comparison isn't necessary. The current Blu-Ray discs look terrible while HD-DVD looks pristine. House of Flying Daggers is known as "House of Flying Artifacts" on AVSforum. Most Blu-Ray movies look like upscaled DVDs. Most HD-DVDs look better than HDTV broadcast. Whether Sony can fix this anytime soon is yet to be seen.

Sony really blew it with their launch with the poor video quality; checking any home theater forum (i.e. avsforum, hometheaterforum, etc) is proof of that. Rumor is now Disney may be going HD-DVD first due to the poor reception of Blu-Ray.

[Ruined]

Blu-Ray isn't double the cost. Maybe we should wait until after Blu-Ray's first few players and movies to make comparisons. HD-DVD isn't exactly hot either, considering they're just launching both formats I didn't expect anything spectacular.

We're not talking just one movie here:
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/hitch.html
The Video: Sizing Up the Picture - Geesh, just what is going on here? My fifth review of a Sony Blu-ray title, and another stinker.

Not one, not two, but most of the Blu-Ray titles released thus far plain old suck in video quality compared to HD-DVD.

And even if Blu-Ray were slightly inferior to HD-DVD, it's the content that counts. What's the count, 7 studios to 3?

What's the count of actual quality movies released? 10 on HD-DVD to 1 on Blu-Ray? Studios will jump sides in an instant once they see where the sales are. Not just talking about people who buy a disc or two for ps3 out of curiousity, but people who are actually interested in buying a lot of movies and hence buy a standalone player. Right now the Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player is #280 on Amazon, the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-Ray player is is #2096... And the Samsung should be the hot seller right now. Its not because the Blu-Ray software is so terrible currently.

[JSK414]

I have seen them both and I feel HDDVD is better. In a previous post someone said that blueray looked like just upscaled DVD... that is exactly what my impressions were. Also at my circuit city their bluray player is hooked up to some sound system that cost nearly a grand in itself and that is probably the only reason of the "improvment" as ChrisNCali was speaking of. I sure hope HDDVD wins this out because of the superior quality and the affordibility. 30gigs is plenty...The only reason I fear for HDDVD is because the PS3 will have blueray which will have a leap in home installment base. But i feel the better technology lies within HDDVD

[FriskyTanuki]

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98026

We already have a thread regarding the avs forums going nuts over this stuff.

[Puffa469]

i cant wait till regular old dvds start to get dirt cheap. I'll be buying regular dvds for the next 5 years at least.

[Zoglog]

Sony not living up the hype? Never D:! lols

keep in mind though these are mostly problems with the inherent release of the first disks. There is no reason to believe things will be improved signifigantly as time goes by.

[dragonxxiv]

Can we say Blu-ray is the next beta-max? UMD is already going down the hole----studios (except for the one Sony owns) and retail stores are all cutting back on UMDs.

[savestheday888]

I saw a Blu-Ray up and running at Circuit City yesterday... I was not impressed. It looked like a regular DVD to me, the only real difference I noticed was the sound quailty. It sounded very nice, but then again that could have just been because it was hooked up to such nice speakers, and the ones I have at home suck.

I saw the same thing at a Circuit City in Westland, MI. I couldn't tell the difference. Plus, the picture looked unusually soft.

[Zoglog]

Can we say Blu-ray is the next beta-max? UMD is already going down the hole----studios (except for the one Sony owns) and retail stores are all cutting back on UMDs.

Actually that's a very naive viewpoint. Blu-ray doesn't follow the same format. Blu-ray has the support from the majority of the studios (minus Universal). Big studios like WB will release on both. If anything HD-DVD has a higher chance of flopping due to lack of support. The problem with UMD was that it only worked on 1 device, the PSP. Also why would somone buy a UMD for a DVD they already own, the formula was destined to fail. Blu-ray and HD-dvd are the next step in the optical formats instead of a side tangent.

You people need to research this more. The problem is not inherent with Blu-ray technology but with the initial Release disks. If you look at the Displays at the Metreon with the Blu-ray trailers disc it looks fantastic. Do not expect Bluray to mature anytime before August.

[dragonxxiv]

Actually that's a very naive viewpoint. Blu-ray doesn't follow the same format. Blu-ray has the support from the majority of the studios (minus Universal). Big studios like WB will release on both. If anything HD-DVD has a higher chance of flopping due to lack of support. The problem with UMD was that it only worked on 1 device, the PSP. Also why would somone buy a UMD for a DVD they already own, the formula was destined to fail. Blu-ray and HD-dvd are the next step in the optical formats instead of a side tangent.

You people need to research this more. The problem is not inherent with Blu-ray technology but with the initial Release disks. If you look at the Displays at the Metreon with the Blu-ray trailers disc it looks fantastic. Do not expect Bluray to mature anytime before August.

Yeah, you're right. Did anybody read the article about PS3/Blu-ray and 360/HD-DVD in the latest EGM magazine? If you haven't, you should. It has great interviews with CEOs/head officials from both Sony and Microsoft.

I think the only problem with Blu-ray is that it is freaking expensive. The cheapest Blu-ray player, the PS3, will cost an upward of $600-$700 and the movies probably in the $30-$40. I would rather get a Wii and 360 instead of a PS3 and just wait off on the whole next-gen dvds. Only the hardcore fans/tech geeks/filthy rich are gonna cough up nearly a thousand dollars for a PS3. In addition, the early models of the PS3s are gonna have so many glitches---anyone remember PS2's disc errors.

[HumanSnatcher]

Actually that's a very naive viewpoint. Blu-ray doesn't follow the same format. Blu-ray has the support from the majority of the studios (minus Universal). Big studios like WB will release on both. If anything HD-DVD has a higher chance of flopping due to lack of support. The problem with UMD was that it only worked on 1 device, the PSP. Also why would somone buy a UMD for a DVD they already own, the formula was destined to fail. Blu-ray and HD-dvd are the next step in the optical formats instead of a side tangent.

You people need to research this more. The problem is not inherent with Blu-ray technology but with the initial Release disks. If you look at the Displays at the Metreon with the Blu-ray trailers disc it looks fantastic. Do not expect Bluray to mature anytime before August.

When you have movies that have been made in the past few years on high end equipment, there is absolutely no excuse as to why the picture should look horrid. Sony has always tried to have a format out that competes. And what happens, it FAILS?

[Ruined]

Actually that's a very naive viewpoint. Blu-ray doesn't follow the same format. Blu-ray has the support from the majority of the studios (minus Universal). Big studios like WB will release on both. If anything HD-DVD has a higher chance of flopping due to lack of support. The problem with UMD was that it only worked on 1 device, the PSP. Also why would somone buy a UMD for a DVD they already own, the formula was destined to fail. Blu-ray and HD-dvd are the next step in the optical formats instead of a side tangent.

The problem with "Greater studio support" is that studios will switch sides overnight. They just want the money. IMO HD-DVD has the advantage because they are significantly cheaper than Blu-Ray, are more consumer friendly (better name, hybrid DVD discs, less DRM), and currently look better than Blu-Ray for half the price.


You people need to research this more. The problem is not inherent with Blu-ray technology but with the initial Release disks. If you look at the Displays at the Metreon with the Blu-ray trailers disc it looks fantastic. Do not expect Bluray to mature anytime before August.

If you really did all of your research (or owned/watched HD-DVD on an ISF calibrated set), you'd realize that the 15gb/30gb discs offered by HD-DVD are more than enough to encode artifact-free reference quality movies in VC-1 on. Blu-Ray's 50gb dual layer disc is currently too costly to produce (apparently 1 out of every 100 BD-50s actually work compared to 95 out of 100 HD-30s) and won't offer significant video quality over HD-DVD anyway because VC-1 won't benefit from the extra space. Not to mention Toshiba has a 45gb triple layer disc in development - even though its been proved completely unnecessary.

The only the 50gb Blu-Ray discs are needed for is for Sony to compete using MPEG2 with HD-DVD using VC-1. MPEG2 on 25gb discs has been a disaster thus far, and with BD-50 too costly to produce and VC-1 not up to speed yet on Blu-Ray you really don't have many options at this point.

Even if Blu-Ray does bring quality up to the level of HD-DVD, what does the Blu-Ray backer get? Similar quality video for double the price and still the Blu-Ray user doesn't have the DD+/DD True HD (nextgen sound formats) that the $500 Toshiba unit has.

Knowing the specs of both formats and the codecs they can use, it is pretty clear to me that HD-DVD is the better choice of the two. It has more mature software, is less vulnerable to damage/errors than Blu-Ray, supports hybrid DVD/HD-DVD discs, has less DRM, and has more than enough space for movies encoded in perfect 1080p. All for less money than Blu-Ray. The choice is pretty clear if you are not simply arguing because you want your videogame console of choice to win - HD-DVD looks to be the better technology for now and the near future. Beyond that , the best Blu-Ray could truly muster is a tie - which isn't promising considering the price difference.

[tilcfast]

I still think that piracy is the main reason a new format is coming out, not because of picture quality.


I hadn't thought of that, but I think you hit the nail on the head!

[Puffa469]

I hadn't thought of that, but I think you hit the nail on the head!

Heres another reason.

The new movies that studios release now are all crap. Shit, theyre so bankrupt for ideas that they just remake old movies nowadays.

No one is buying these shit movies when they come out on dvd. The serious dvd collectors, the people who own hundreds of dvds, buy catalog titles (old movies from years ago). Not new release dvds that were in theaters 6 months ago.

Now the problem with that is. Once you own Jaws, and Star Wars, and Big Trouble in Little China, your not gonna buy them again. Maaaaybe they get you with a super duper collectors box and you buy the movie twice, but now what?

I'll tell you now what. Now the studios rush out a new format with some additional features so you can line up to buy those movies yet again.

Just look at the recent trend of releasing films sans features and commentary tracks. Every Harry Potter film was a 2 disc set for $20. The last Potter film was a featureless one disc release for that same $20. Or you could buy the 'special' 2 disc edition for $30 or more. King Kong did this also, with a $30+ 2 disc set, and many more dvds Im sure. And even the 'features' on that second Harry Potter disc pale in comparison to what was given on all the other Potter discs.

They are cutting back features and saving them for the new formats to sell you the same films again.

Lucas recently announced a new Star Wars original trilogy box set that was going to include the 'original' original trilogy, minus all the cg crap. They then annoucned that they would only be extras on a second disc, and would not be optimised for widescreen tvs, or play in high def, or have digital sound. Why did they do that? So they can sell it to you yet again in HD, or Blu-Ray, I guarandamntee it!

[Zoglog]

The problem with "Greater studio support" is that studios will switch sides overnight. They just want the money. IMO HD-DVD has the advantage because they are significantly cheaper than Blu-Ray, are more consumer friendly (better name, hybrid DVD discs, less DRM), and currently look better than Blu-Ray for half the price.



If you really did all of your research (or owned/watched HD-DVD on an ISF calibrated set), you'd realize that the 15gb/30gb discs offered by HD-DVD are more than enough to encode artifact-free reference quality movies in VC-1 on. Blu-Ray's 50gb dual layer disc is currently too costly to produce (apparently 1 out of every 100 BD-50s actually work compared to 95 out of 100 HD-30s) and won't offer significant video quality over HD-DVD anyway because VC-1 won't benefit from the extra space. Not to mention Toshiba has a 45gb triple layer disc in development - even though its been proved completely unnecessary.

The only the 50gb Blu-Ray discs are needed for is for Sony to compete using MPEG2 with HD-DVD using VC-1. MPEG2 on 25gb discs has been a disaster thus far, and with BD-50 too costly to produce and VC-1 not up to speed yet on Blu-Ray you really don't have many options at this point.

Even if Blu-Ray does bring quality up to the level of HD-DVD, what does the Blu-Ray backer get? Similar quality video for double the price and still the Blu-Ray user doesn't have the DD+/DD True HD (nextgen sound formats) that the $500 Toshiba unit has.

Knowing the specs of both formats and the codecs they can use, it is pretty clear to me that HD-DVD is the better choice of the two. It has more mature software, is less vulnerable to damage/errors than Blu-Ray, supports hybrid DVD/HD-DVD discs, has less DRM, and has more than enough space for movies encoded in perfect 1080p. All for less money than Blu-Ray. The choice is pretty clear if you are not simply arguing because you want your videogame console of choice to win - HD-DVD looks to be the better technology for now and the near future. Beyond that , the best Blu-Ray could truly muster is a tie - which isn't promising considering the price difference.

Actually if you did your research Bluray discs now are not any more expensive to make than HD-DVD Discs (hence you see some Blu ray titles going out for 11-20 dollars). Despite the shoddy initial release it's far too early to assume that all Blu Ray will fail and have worse quality than HD-DVD. In the end you have to factor in the installed user base from people buying PS3s and the initial impact of having the majority of the studios. That just means more people will buy the player initially because they expect more support by seeing more titles available for it. Which disc is superior and which one you prefer in the end has only an extremely limited impact on the disc's success. Personally I don't give a crap who wins as long as we end up with only 1 format in the end. Even though only time will tell my money is still on Blu-ray (though sony sucks ass)

[furyk]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The only way Blu-Ray or HD-DVD suceeds in the consumer section is if they are able to consolidate film series, tv show seasons, and the like on to one disc. I'm not rebuying a lot of the films that I own on DVD again unless there is a clear physical advantage. The market hasn't been demanding it, and the formats are being forced on the consumer. Just because gamers are willing to abandon a perfectly good console after five years doesn't mean the consumer in general will.

That being said, this will have absolutely no effect on PS3 sales.

[Zoglog]

That being said, this will have absolutely no effect on PS3 sales.

Actually it does because it's a big reason why i'm keeping my ps3 when it comes out instead of ebaying it is because of the bluray player.

[Metal Boss]

This doesn't bother me in the least if it's true.

[furyk]

Actually it does because it's a big reason why i'm keeping my ps3 when it comes out instead of ebaying it is because of the bluray player.

If you're buying a game system for a blu ray player then you should really reconsider buying it in the first place. The PS2's DVD player was one of the worst on the market and the PS3's Blu-Ray player will most certainly be the same due to the fact that it's half the cost of a current player AND it's a game system. The Blu-Ray is a nice extra for the PS3, not the selling point of it. You're in the minority if that's the #1 reason you're buying it.

[Ruined]

Actually if you did your research Bluray discs now are not any more expensive to make than HD-DVD Discs (hence you see some Blu ray titles going out for 11-20 dollars).

Lol, again the "research" quote. Again, if you had done your research, youd know that:

* Blu-Ray single layer discs have been a disaster thus far visually because MPEG2 needs twice as much space to look as good as VC-1. And we aren't even addressing the stuttering problems some Blu-Ray releases have.

* Mastering software for VC-1 on Blu-Ray is not even close to ready; in fact Sony has stated they will go on using MPEG2 for some time to come.

* An HD-DVD dual layer disc currently has a 95% (95/100 good) success rate in replication.

* A Blu-Ray dual layer disc currently has a 1% (1/100 good) success rate in replication.

Conclusion: To get comparable image quality Blu-Ray needs either VC-1 or dual layer, and neither one is ready for prime time yet. Blu-Ray dual layer discs cost substantially more than HD-DVD dual layer discs due to the poor replication rate.

Finally, and this is the big concept

Anything larger than ~30GB is pointless when using a high efficiency codec like VC-1. You can't get better than flawless, which is what HD-DVD offers now.

Despite the shoddy initial release it's far too early to assume that all Blu Ray will fail and have worse quality than HD-DVD.

No, but I'm sure many feel ripped off paying double for a player and getting half the video quality, features, sound formats, etc after Sony's boasting.


In the end you have to factor in the installed user base from people buying PS3s

Bundling formats with a videogame player will not have a significant impact in the US on the format war. Videogame consoles are used for playing videogames in the US - besides, XBOX 360 has an HD-DVD addon that will likely be out before the PS3 is even available. UMD, DVD-Audio, and SACD all proved that consumers having access to a format does not mean they are going to buy movies in that format. Further, buying a PS3 to play movies is foolish as every console DVD player to date has had poor quality and/or functionality compared to a real standalone player.

and the initial impact of having the majority of the studios.

The "majority" of the studios is debatable, because HD-DVD has just as many quality films to be tapped as HD-DVD. Warner and Universal arguably have the best library of films (check out the percentage of AFI Top 100 films broken down into studios), and both of those are on HD-DVD (Universal HD-DVD exclusive). Paramount is releasing on both. Disney started out Blu-Ray but recently stated they may release on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Columbia/Tristar (Sony) and Fox are Blu-Ray exclusive.


That just means more people will buy the player initially because they expect more support by seeing more titles available for it. Which disc is superior and which one you prefer in the end has only an extremely limited impact on the disc's success. Personally I don't give a crap who wins as long as we end up with only 1 format in the end. Even though only time will tell my money is still on Blu-ray (though sony sucks ass)

Originally I thought Blu-Ray as well but it is clear HD-DVD has the overall better technology. It has a better name (actually a big difference in the US market), the hardware & software are more mature, standard DVD can be put on the same disc as an HD-DVD, less DRM, and it costs less. All-in-all, I'd wager that after XMAS most Blu-Ray exclusive studios will defect to HD-DVD after seeing the revenue generated by HD-DVD compared to Blu-Ray; some execs will likely lose their bonus due to this, but that is their fault as it was easily predictable pre-blu-ray launch. On Amazon, HD-DVD hardware and software are murdering Blu-Ray hardware and software in sales, indicating that even though Blu-Ray just launched many aren't buying it. And there is a good reason - its twice the price and looks half as good.

I predict a fumble for Sony, just like they've fumbled every format they've solely spearheaded in the past. HD-DVD has the technology to deliver pristine, flawless 1080i/p video at a lower cost than Blu-Ray; HD-DVD has proven that Sony's PR stating you need 50gb is just that - bullshit PR and nothing more (unless you are stuck with MPEG2 like Blu-Ray is now, in which case you do need the extra space). In the US, IMO HD-DVD is putting out pretty much all you need to win a format war. Everything else fits into place by itself once sales get going. Some may argue Sony already have fumbled... Blu-Ray launch with video quality far inferior to HD-DVD movies released two months ago, $600 PS3, and now Sony says they may charge more than $60 for games. IMO Sony is far overreaching here and will get a swift combo to the jaw delivered by Toshiba and Microsoft as a result.

[Z-Saber]

IMO Sony is far overreaching here and will get a swift combo to the jaw delivered by Toshiba and Microsoft as a result.
Preach it!

Seriously, I don't hate Sony, but since E3, they've been slipping.

[Zoglog]

If you're buying a game system for a blu ray player then you should really reconsider buying it in the first place. The PS2's DVD player was one of the worst on the market and the PS3's Blu-Ray player will most certainly be the same due to the fact that it's half the cost of a current player AND it's a game system. The Blu-Ray is a nice extra for the PS3, not the selling point of it. You're in the minority if that's the #1 reason you're buying it.

I never said that was the #1 reason, I said it's one of the reasons. And with the price for competing blu ray players, I don't think i'll mind if it's only semi decent.

[whoknows]

I saw blu-ray playing at Best Buy today and I thought it looked amazing. I can't say I would spend $1000 on a blu-ray player, but I will spend $600 for the PS3.

[Ivanhoe]

Blu-Ray isn't double the cost. Maybe we should wait until after Blu-Ray's first few players and movies to make comparisons. HD-DVD isn't exactly hot either, considering they're just launching both formats I didn't expect anything spectacular.

And even if Blu-Ray were slightly inferior to HD-DVD, it's the content that counts. What's the count, 7 studios to 3?

Thanks.
Now i dont have to make a post saying the exact same thing.

agree 100%.


IN addtion bluray/hddvd is a nice improvement over DVD.
But nowhere near what VHS to DVD was/is.


As for ps3. Im looking forward to 50-100gig bdrom games.

[Z-Saber]

As for ps3. Im looking forward to 50-100gig bdrom games.
If you truly think gameplay content is a part of that ridiculous size, you're kidding yourself. The extra room is for more audio channels and super awesome high resolution HD kawaii ninja ninja fun happy models and textures, not more game.

I hope you're also looking forward to the increased cost associated with the production of these new discs and graphics.

[camoor]

If you truly think gameplay content is a part of that ridiculous size, you're kidding yourself. The extra room is for more audio channels and super awesome high resolution HD kawaii ninja ninja fun happy models and textures, not more game.

I hope you're also looking forward to the increased cost associated with the production of these new discs and graphics.

I have to think that gameplay will also be affected. Take the chess supercomputers as an example. As we've been able to increase the FLOPS of these computers, their AI has become smarter and smarter to the point that they can now intermittently beat the best human players in the world.

Now think about the AI required to program an FPS bot and give it realistic behavior. An FPS is no chess game - in many ways I would think it would be harder to program realistic AI for an FPS bot then for a chess game because of all the factors (3-dimensions, camoflage, getting the bot to realistically react to the myriad of possible player actions). With more processing power, game designers can afford to give each bot more intelligence, or else litter the playing field with bots; providing a true crazy anything-can-happen war simulation instead of a scripted shooting gallery.

[zewone]

I have to think that gameplay will also be affected. Take the chess supercomputers as an example. As we've been able to increase the FLOPS of these computers, their AI has become smarter and smarter to the point that they can now intermittently beat the best human players in the world.

Now think about the AI required to program an FPS bot and give it realistic behavior. An FPS is no chess game - in many ways I would think it would be harder to program realistic AI for an FPS bot then for a chess game because of all the factors (3-dimensions, camoflage, getting the bot to realistically react to the myriad of possible player actions). With more processing power, game designers can afford to give each bot more intelligence, or else litter the playing field with bots; providing a true crazy anything-can-happen war simulation instead of a scripted shooting gallery.
The fact is that just because the room and processing power is there, doesn't mean that the devolpers have any idea/money/time to make AI react like that.

Most devolpers, if not all, well tell you that AI is the hardest thing to work on for a game.

I saw blu-ray playing at Best Buy today and I thought it looked amazing. I can't say I would spend $1000 on a blu-ray player, but I will spend $600 for the PS3.
I thought you didn't care about 1080646745612516p.

[Duo_Maxwell]

The fact is that just because the room and processing power is there, doesn't mean that the devolpers have any idea/money/time to make AI react like that.

Most devolpers, if not all, well tell you that AI is the hardest thing to work on for a game.



But the point I think he was eluding to is that the materials are there should they choose to use it. If the developers have time/money/determinaiton, ideas, etc. they can add something like highly advanced AI, if they so choose.

[Z-Saber]

Umm... what does AI have to do with storage space?

No doubt it is difficult to create a convincing AI, but I've never heard developers complaining about their AI being too large for a DVD. It seems to be a problem with the amount of time spent programming and the restrictions of the processor, not the storage medium.

With the new consoles, better AI can be a reality, but it isn't because of 100gig discs. It's the muscle in the system.

Come on now. If you're looking to prove me wrong, start pointing out things that need twenty times the amount of space we currently use and are not related to the audio/visual experience.

[Duo_Maxwell]

Umm... what does AI have to do with storage space?

No doubt it is difficult to create a convincing AI, but I've never heard developers complaining about their AI being too large for a DVD. It seems to be a problem with the amount of time spent programming and the restrictions of the processor, not the storage medium.

With the new consoles, better AI can be a reality, but it isn't because of 100gig discs. It's the muscle in the system.

Come on now. If you're looking to prove me wrong, start pointing out things that need twenty times the amount of space we currently use and are not related to the audio/visual experience.

Don't know that much about AI, but simply becaus eit doesn't exist now doesn't mean it won't in the future, you can't rely on a DVD9 format forever.

Still if you want better examples what about more game modes added to games, added bonues features and unlockable content, more in-depth character creation systems, or just more content in general for games (think instead of a couple dozen tracks in a racing game a couple hundred, open-ended game worlds being 10-20x the size they are now, that kind of thing), etc. All of that would at least be somewhat effected by the storage capacity of the media, though it probably doesn't need to be 100gb (closer to 25-50 if that).

However, the biggest hinderence I see to all that (besides perhaps increased load times and development costs) is the idea of microtransactions becoming all the rage lately, developers and publsihers are less inclined to include added content like this out of the box when they know they can nickel and dime people for more if they choose to.

[RelentlessRolento]

I saw one at the CC sale yesterday and can say it looks great really... I'm not an expert on movie qualaty, but it was easily better than pretty much most of what I had seen in terms of Hi-def... the only thing I really care though about Blu ray anway is the capacity... it's damn huge, which is great for PS3 games.

[Z-Saber]

Still if you want better examples what about more game modes added to games, added bonues features and unlockable content, more in-depth character creation systems, or just more content in general for games (think instead of a couple dozen tracks in a racing game a couple hundred, open-ended game worlds being 10-20x the size they are now, that kind of thing), etc. All of that would at least be somewhat effected by the storage capacity of the media, though it probably doesn't need to be 100gb (closer to 25-50 if that).Bingo. More tracks is a great example.

However, while the new discs will indeed hold these tracks, it is up to the developers to create them. I don't see a racing game with hundreds of tracks coming out any time soon simply because the initial months of the PS3 will be all about zomg grafix (Gran Turismo HD anyone?) and not zomg 300 trax!

That doesn't mean it won't happen, but not until everyone settles down about 1080p and boob physics.

[Vinny]

I honestly couldn't tell the difference between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. And even so, I could see why I'd want to spend $500 on an HD-DVD player or $600 on a PS3 (I'll be nice and leave out the absurd $1000 Blu-Ray players).

Seriously, I hope both formats fail and Sony and Toshiba lose billions of dollars. Why? Those fuckers need to learn that while the general consumer might be unknowing about technical specs, they're not going to jump into something that costs 10x more if the quality is only 2x better.

[whoknows]

I thought you didn't care about 1080646745612516p.
Until I get a TV in a few years that supports it I dont. But the fact that the PS3 has it makes it nice that I wont have to spend more than that on a Blu-ray player when that day comes.

[Puffa469]

Until I get a TV in a few years that supports it I dont. But the fact that the PS3 has it makes it nice that I wont have to spend more than that on a Blu-ray player when that day comes.

In a 'few years' Blue Ray players will be $60 just like DVD players are today.

[crystalklear64]

I'm not surprised, tbh I can't even tell the difference between HD and whatever the normal TV is.

[RegalSin2020]

Blu-ray is just for data storage.

This data storage will be mostly for Audi0, video, Gifs, and other various images.

AI in a videogame is barely giving X a path of options and timed events.
The main focus of AI is to create a realistic opponent or realistic activities for X character to do.

E.G.

The little X plays all day long and gets tired eventually. He might cause injuries to Y during the EE/EE/E time of the year or E.EE day and thus X mother omes out of X house and take him in and displine/scold him. The X goes to get a drink of water or eat food after awhile during EE/EE/E day. When Night comes the father of X comes home from works and X will hug him, the father will come over and hug him, or nothing will happen. X goes to bed at E.EE but sometimes X stays up or sneaks out on EE/EE/E days or E.EE. When X wakes up he crows, wakes up everybody else, or sleeps late and wake up.

The point is AI in a game is nothing new even the AI in the simplest games ( meaning a path AI ) is no diffrent in the most advance simluations.

[zewone]

I'm not surprised, tbh I can't even tell the difference between HD and whatever the normal TV is.
I agree when it comes to shows or movies on HBO or something, but the difference is night and day when watching NFL or NBA or any sports for that matter. Same with 360, though to a lesser extent.

[camoor]

Umm... what does AI have to do with storage space?

No doubt it is difficult to create a convincing AI, but I've never heard developers complaining about their AI being too large for a DVD. It seems to be a problem with the amount of time spent programming and the restrictions of the processor, not the storage medium.

With the new consoles, better AI can be a reality, but it isn't because of 100gig discs. It's the muscle in the system.

Come on now. If you're looking to prove me wrong, start pointing out things that need twenty times the amount of space we currently use and are not related to the audio/visual experience.

You're prolly right here, I got off on a tangent. I also believe it has more to do with muscle then storage space.

However I think the PS3 is supposed to have the most muscle too.

[Ruined]

Heh, check this out:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125706,pg,13,00.asp
Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player comes in at #14 in Top 100 Products of the Year

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125706,pg,12,00.asp
Sony = Worst Company of the Year

Funny :)

[DeathDealer]

Goodbye Sony.

[Z-Saber]

Goodbye Sony.Goodbye indeed. They haven't done anything right all year.

Unless they have some big super major wtf surprise feature (not "stolen" motion sensitivity), they're screwed.

[whoknows]

Goodbye indeed. They haven't done anything right all year.

Unless they have some big super major wtf surprise feature (not "stolen" motion sensitivity), they're screwed.
And who did they "steal" that from?

[Z-Saber]

And who did they "steal" that from?I put "stolen" in quotes in anticipation of remarks like that.

[Metal Boss]

Goodbye indeed. They haven't done anything right all year.

Haha, Sony isn't going anywhere.

[Z-Saber]

Haha, Sony isn't going anywhere.I kept retyping this post, trying to convey different things, but I'll just say "Duh" and leave it at that.

[Ruined]

Some more stats:

HD-DVD software & hardware greatly outsells Blu-Ray on a daily basis at Amazon.com
http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm
http://www.amazon.com/gp/comparison/ref=pd_cmp_org_link/102-2582256-7608933?ie=UTF8&ASIN.1=B000E1PTGK&ASIN.2=B000F99FDE&ASIN.3=B000DZS0G8&bf=0

Over at AVSFORUM, the largest Home Theater enthusiast site on the internet:

RETURN RATE IS BOLDED FOR EACH FORMAT

Did you decide to keep your HD-DVD player? (240 responses)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=696555
3% - No, I returned it
97% - I am very satisfied with the HD-A1/XA-1/HDV5000 and keeping it

***

Did you decide to keep your Blu-Ray player? (225 responses)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=690621
77% - No, I returned it
23% - Yes I'm going to keep it

***

Man, it looks like the manufacturers really picked the wrong horse to back for this race!

[epobirs]

Actually if you did your research Bluray discs now are not any more expensive to make than HD-DVD Discs (hence you see some Blu ray titles going out for 11-20 dollars). Despite the shoddy initial release it's far too early to assume that all Blu Ray will fail and have worse quality than HD-DVD. In the end you have to factor in the installed user base from people buying PS3s and the initial impact of having the majority of the studios. That just means more people will buy the player initially because they expect more support by seeing more titles available for it. Which disc is superior and which one you prefer in the end has only an extremely limited impact on the disc's success. Personally I don't give a crap who wins as long as we end up with only 1 format in the end. Even though only time will tell my money is still on Blu-ray (though sony sucks ass)

Retail pricing has no bearing on manufacturing cost. That a particular disc format cost 80 cents per unit vs. 45 cents will not affect the retail price when so many other issues loom larger.

The same applies to the decks. Both the current HD-DVD and Blu-ray decks are modified PC designs with very similar costs. Toshiba has chosen to subsidize the cost of their hardware to reach a mainstream price point immediately while Sony and its partners are preferring to break even or turn a small profit on the decks. Sony will instead combine its hardware subsidizing with the gaming side on the PS3. (Which raises the question on whether Toshiba will make some deal with Microsoft for the HD-DVD add-on to have a very low price.)

Both companies had to put off ordering specific chipsets for their formats because there were so many delays in finalizing the DRM apsects. Those chipsets will be in the second generation decks and cut the cost quite a lot. Being forced to ship in advance of proper chipset availability is just one of many screwups in this circus.

[epobirs]

As for studio support, this can indeed change very quickly. Since the late 90s every new movie gets scanned (if originating on film) and a very high bitrate 1080i master produced. This can be a pretty big file. At one of the very first digital theater installations for a regular theater open to the ay public (We wrote it up here: http://www.byte.com/documents/s=146/byt19990901s0017/index.htm ) the disk array where the content was stored had a 300 GB capacity and was over 60% full from just 'Phantom Menace' as I recall.

To take that big master and squeeze it down for a particular disc format is a one day task for a good mastering engineer. Once the disc format is known it's just a matter of how much must be reserved for thing like alternate sound tracks and special features. Going from the 1080i master to a disc format supporting 1080i makes it much simpler than creating a DVD.

More complicated is converting interactive content from one format to the other. HD-DVD and Blu-ray use very different approaches to this. HD-DVD uses a spec developed with Microsoft while Blu-rays is Java based. Since neither format is shipping with the complete interactivity features so far, it doesn't matter much for the existing libraries. THe studios may put off really using the features until they're sure which format is the future.

If a studio decided tomorrow to start producing HD-DVD releases, they could match their Blu-ray library very quickly. Weeks to months depending on high a priority they put on it and whether they move personnel from Blu-ray work.

[epobirs]

I wouldn't say that HD-DVD has better technology so much as better decision making in regard to attainable goals and the resulting focus.

Toshiba went for a easily achieve gain in storage density using a blue laser for its short wavelength and knew that it would be sufficient coupled with the results already demonstrated with MPEG-4 and still promising codecs then on the horizon. It was a balanced end to end strategy for how to reliably produce a disc for delivering feature films at 1080i to mainstream consumers.

Sony chose to pursue bleeding edge technology on the disc side in hopes of avoiding the need for other bleeding edge tech on te codec side. If they could achieve a massive leap in storage density they could get away with using really fat MPEG-2 bitrates and the studios would love it. It was only much later in developemtn that Sony grudgingly accepted the need to incorporate MPEG-4, H.264, and especially VC-1.

The massive leap in storage didn't make it out of the labs and into reliable manufacturing. Suddenly the MPEG-2 bitrate becomes a real issue. If they'd been better prepared for using one of the newer codecs 25GB would be plenty. Meanwhile, mature tools for doing VC-1 work have come along much faster than Sony would have believed but they aren't in the position to benefit as of yet.

So, Toshiba relied on multiple technologies that did not yet exist but only to a reasonable level for each. They would have been dead in the water if any one of those technologies hadn't been on schedule but it was a safe bet because they didn't set the bar too high for any of them.

Sony placed a big bet on one technology deliver a major jump so that the others could be used pretty much as is.

Toshiba had multiple potential points of failure but in confidence that all goals were well within reach. Sony bet the farm on one point of failure and may have lost it all on that one item.

[Ruined]

Blu-Ray: Can it Survive?
http://www.projectorcentral.com/blu-ray_2.htm

Excellent article on the current state of things over in AV Enthusiast land :)


Oh, and while I'm at it:

HD-DVD leads Blu-Ray by far in IPSOS Poll
http://www.dvdtown.com/announcement/hddvdsurveybyipsos/3665/

[THE DARK KNIGHT]

Great article........anyone who thinks blu-ray is going to "win" needs to read it. It's all about us winning as consumers. HD-DVD has a significant lead in this race.

[whoknows]

Blu-Ray has the majority of movie studios on its side which is what matters. If a certain movie isn't on HD-DVD then the consumer can't buy it.

[MusicNoteLess]

Blu-Ray has the majority of movie studios on its side which is what matters. If a certain movie isn't on HD-DVD then the consumer can't buy it.

Sad but true. They/they're slowly phased/phasing out VHS that way.

Then Again.....

If Blu-Ray doesn't look any better than an hddvd...I think you'll see more people scrounging around the clearance bins for HD-DVDs rather than buying new Blu-Ray DVD.

[Sarang01]

As for studio support, this can indeed change very quickly. Since the late 90s every new movie gets scanned (if originating on film) and a very high bitrate 1080i master produced. This can be a pretty big file. At one of the very first digital theater installations for a regular theater open to the ay public (We wrote it up here: http://www.byte.com/documents/s=146/byt19990901s0017/index.htm ) the disk array where the content was stored had a 300 GB capacity and was over 60% full from just 'Phantom Menace' as I recall.

To take that big master and squeeze it down for a particular disc format is a one day task for a good mastering engineer. Once the disc format is known it's just a matter of how much must be reserved for thing like alternate sound tracks and special features. Going from the 1080i master to a disc format supporting 1080i makes it much simpler than creating a DVD.

More complicated is converting interactive content from one format to the other. HD-DVD and Blu-ray use very different approaches to this. HD-DVD uses a spec developed with Microsoft while Blu-rays is Java based. Since neither format is shipping with the complete interactivity features so far, it doesn't matter much for the existing libraries. THe studios may put off really using the features until they're sure which format is the future.

If a studio decided tomorrow to start producing HD-DVD releases, they could match their Blu-ray library very quickly. Weeks to months depending on high a priority they put on it and whether they move personnel from Blu-ray work.

Fuck! Hollywood are idiots. Why the fuck aren't they just creating a master of it at what the res. of film is INSTEAD and just dropping the res. down to 1080p for a copy. I refuse to see these assholes fucking leave film classics at 1080i because the bastards don't want to worry about the cost of a couple Terrabytes or more on each films full res.
I mean lets be honest here. Someday we will be able to watch movies at their full film res. on our HDTV sets and they will look spectacular. This will
easily be beyond that of the projection screens in the theater because the
set will have it in perfect focus, clarity, which projectors can't do.
Oh and in terms of studio offerings I don't fucking care. I care about picture quality, especially when it comes to HOFD and other Martial Arts flicks.
Btw on another note though when is the original "Mission Impossible" movie going to hit HD-DVD?

[Z-Saber]

The studios will jump to whatever format wins, barring exclusivity contracts or whatnot. They don't care about codec quality or storage space. They want the moneys.

[epobirs]

Fuck! Hollywood are idiots. Why the fuck aren't they just creating a master of it at what the res. of film is INSTEAD and just dropping the res. down to 1080p for a copy. I refuse to see these assholes fucking leave film classics at 1080i because the bastards don't want to worry about the cost of a couple Terrabytes or more on each films full res.
I mean lets be honest here. Someday we will be able to watch movies at their full film res. on our HDTV sets and they will look spectacular. This will
easily be beyond that of the projection screens in the theater because the
set will have it in perfect focus, clarity, which projectors can't do.
Oh and in terms of studio offerings I don't fucking care. I care about picture quality, especially when it comes to HOFD and other Martial Arts flicks.
Btw on another note though when is the original "Mission Impossible" movie going to hit HD-DVD?

Jeeze, this guy again. Do you ever think a bit before posting?

Those 1080i masters exist because a huge amount of business revolves around that format. There is no especially useful reason to have a higher res master lying around when it has no bearing on sellable products. Cable, satellite, digital theater, all of those derive from that master. The theatrical presentation is of better quality because it doesn't get squeezed as much and isn't being sent out in real-time with packet losses causing unrecoverable glitches.

It isn't as though the film stock is destroyed when they digitized it frame by frame for the distribution use. In fact, new film stock is often created as part of the restoration process for old films. One of earliest examples was Disney's Snow White, which had its first public exposure in 1987 and a more comprehensive restoration in 1983.

For this project, multiple prints were examined to find every scene that had been subject to cuts by projectionists over the decades. If a theater wants to align its schedule a bit they often resort to doing their own trimming of an old print to remove a scene they regard as disposable. It's even worse for broadcast TV, so a lot of old movies can be hard to find in a truly compelte form.

After that they went through and digitized each frame of Snow White at very high resolution so that each frame came out to about 40 megabytes. Not a simple data management task back then. It meant a lot of relying on tape for storage since hard drive arrays could only offer a few seconds worth of frames in random access.

So they went through frame by frame, finding and fixing every little scratch and other flaw not regarded as part of the original process. Color balance, audio cleanup, and myriad other details while being careful to stay true to what audiences experienced when it premiered in theaters 1937. Modern theater goers would have a much higher quality because of far better playback equipment but there were historical issues to observe.

When it was done the laser film recording process first developed at Lucasfilm was used to create a new celluloid print. This is a big imporvement over photographing the animation frames and assembling that into a film.

Since Snow White many other movies have been given the same treatment with no end in sight. It gets a lot less expensive and faster as the tehnology improves and get less costly while the number of personnel capable of performing the work increases. The process also provides the means to easily produce digital masters at far higher resolutions than current HD modes. Hollywood isn't the same as it was in the 70s, when old film stock was allowed to rot because it wasn't viewed as having any ongoing value. The explosion of home video and other venues since then has made Hollywood far more conscious of the ongoing value of its libraries.

Don't hold your breath waiting for a widely available home video format that greatly exceeds the current HD modes. Experiments have been conducted on various ultra high resolution digital displays but the people involved don't expect these to become consumer products for a couple decades at least. It would be a major accomplishment if they can offer something usable for the high margin theatrical market that compares well to the best of film. A good 70mm film is comparable to around 6000x4000 in digital resolution.

Producing a display device and storage/playback system to deliver the high end of film quality with the advantages of digital is still a good ways off. There will be no shortage of material, going back more than a century, to adapt to that format when it becomes viable for theaters and eventually for homes. You'll see a much lower resolution format, in between 1080 and the theatrical mode, for the home market first since it will be very difficult to show the difference in quality to anyone who isn't looking to put an 120" plus sized screen in their home. The theatrical market has a lot of opportunities for upgrades to their digital presentation systems before 1080i/p runs out of steam in the home market.

[epobirs]

Blu-Ray has the majority of movie studios on its side which is what matters. If a certain movie isn't on HD-DVD then the consumer can't buy it.

Going by the number of studios can be an illusion when considering the offerings. Several of the Blu-ray supporters libraries are dwarfed by the holdings of those fewer studios allied to HD-DVD or supporting both formats.

The spread of HD-DVD movies in the stores right now is a good deal better than DVD could offer when it was this new. I was assisting in product reviews back then and eneded up with about a dozen copies each of the same half dozen movies from Warner because that was essentially everything worth looking at for the first few months.

Blu-ray was supposed to see a flood of releases out the gate just from Sony alone, and a veritable deluge from all of the partners combined. When I was working at the Sony Culver City lot for an IT deployment project back in February, some of the folks there showed me tons of great looking demo clips for movies that were supposed to ship alongside the first players.

But when I visited the store yesterday there were only two titles to be found and the salespeople said none were sold out. It was all they'd received so far. Sites like Amazon appear reluctant to suggest when the list but unreleased titles might actually ship. Some of the titles have images supplied by customers rather than the studios!

Sony seems to be having a problem producing these discs that were mastered months ago. If they cannot get their product into stores, the studios will have no choice but to jump ship to the format that can actually produce discs reliably.

Sony might turn it around and start flooding the stores with Blu-ray movies but it has yet to happen. At the same time, the HD-DVD selection becomes more interesting every week. If I were in the market for an HD content player I'd have to go with HD-DVD at this moment just by virtue of there actually being something to buy.

90% of success is showing up. -- Woody Allen

[Duo_Maxwell]

Going by the number of studios can be an illusion when considering the offerings. Several of the Blu-ray supporters libraries are dwarfed by the holdings of those fewer studios allied to HD-DVD or supporting both formats.

The spread of HD-DVD movies in the stores right now is a good deal better than DVD could offer when it was this new. I was assisting in product reviews back then and eneded up with about a dozen copies each of the same half dozen movies from Warner because that was essentially everything worth looking at for the first few months.

Blu-ray was supposed to see a flood of releases out the gate just from Sony alone, and a veritable deluge from all of the partners combined. When I was working at the Sony Culver City lot for an IT deployment project back in February, some of the folks there showed me tons of great looking demo clips for movies that were supposed to ship alongside the first players.

But when I visited the store yesterday there were only two titles to be found and the salespeople said none were sold out. It was all they'd received so far. Sites like Amazon appear reluctant to suggest when the list but unreleased titles might actually ship. Some of the titles have images supplied by customers rather than the studios!

Sony seems to be having a problem producing these discs that were mastered months ago. If they cannot get their product into stores, the studios will have no choice but to jump ship to the format that can actually produce discs reliably.

Sony might turn it around and start flooding the stores with Blu-ray movies but it has yet to happen. At the same time, the HD-DVD selection becomes more interesting every week. If I were in the market for an HD content player I'd have to go with HD-DVD at this moment just by virtue of there actually being something to buy.

90% of success is showing up. -- Woody Allen

Two titles? Where the hell do you shop? We probably have about 12 Blu-ray titles in stock, which is more titles he had a month into HD-DVD's rollout in store actually. We had like 6 or 7 HD-DVD titles for what seemed like forever, though that may have just been our store, as we never seem to get product from Universal in even a remotely timely fashion at all for some reason. So we had 0 of their Hd-DVD titles near the launch, so it's not really an accurate representation of what was available, but still only 2 titles?

[Sarang01]

Jeeze, this guy again. Do you ever think a bit before posting?

Those 1080i masters exist because a huge amount of business revolves around that format. There is no especially useful reason to have a higher res master lying around when it has no bearing on sellable products. Cable, satellite, digital theater, all of those derive from that master. The theatrical presentation is of better quality because it doesn't get squeezed as much and isn't being sent out in real-time with packet losses causing unrecoverable glitches.

It isn't as though the film stock is destroyed when they digitized it frame by frame for the distribution use. In fact, new film stock is often created as part of the restoration process for old films. One of earliest examples was Disney's Snow White, which had its first public exposure in 1987 and a more comprehensive restoration in 1983.

For this project, multiple prints were examined to find every scene that had been subject to cuts by projectionists over the decades. If a theater wants to align its schedule a bit they often resort to doing their own trimming of an old print to remove a scene they regard as disposable. It's even worse for broadcast TV, so a lot of old movies can be hard to find in a truly compelte form.

After that they went through and digitized each frame of Snow White at very high resolution so that each frame came out to about 40 megabytes. Not a simple data management task back then. It meant a lot of relying on tape for storage since hard drive arrays could only offer a few seconds worth of frames in random access.

So they went through frame by frame, finding and fixing every little scratch and other flaw not regarded as part of the original process. Color balance, audio cleanup, and myriad other details while being careful to stay true to what audiences experienced when it premiered in theaters 1937. Modern theater goers would have a much higher quality because of far better playback equipment but there were historical issues to observe.

When it was done the laser film recording process first developed at Lucasfilm was used to create a new celluloid print. This is a big imporvement over photographing the animation frames and assembling that into a film.

Since Snow White many other movies have been given the same treatment with no end in sight. It gets a lot less expensive and faster as the tehnology improves and get less costly while the number of personnel capable of performing the work increases. The process also provides the means to easily produce digital masters at far higher resolutions than current HD modes. Hollywood isn't the same as it was in the 70s, when old film stock was allowed to rot because it wasn't viewed as having any ongoing value. The explosion of home video and other venues since then has made Hollywood far more conscious of the ongoing value of its libraries.

Don't hold your breath waiting for a widely available home video format that greatly exceeds the current HD modes. Experiments have been conducted on various ultra high resolution digital displays but the people involved don't expect these to become consumer products for a couple decades at least. It would be a major accomplishment if they can offer something usable for the high margin theatrical market that compares well to the best of film. A good 70mm film is comparable to around 6000x4000 in digital resolution.

Producing a display device and storage/playback system to deliver the high end of film quality with the advantages of digital is still a good ways off. There will be no shortage of material, going back more than a century, to adapt to that format when it becomes viable for theaters and eventually for homes. You'll see a much lower resolution format, in between 1080 and the theatrical mode, for the home market first since it will be very difficult to show the difference in quality to anyone who isn't looking to put an 120" plus sized screen in their home. The theatrical market has a lot of opportunities for upgrades to their digital presentation systems before 1080i/p runs out of steam in the home market.

My worry is, and correct me if wrong, regardless it's keep in a really nice environment and everything it's still degrading to a less then desirable extent hence why I would like full res. prints of 35mm. when they first come out in storage to ensure the BEST picture possible in the fact.

[HumanSnatcher]

My worry is, and correct me if wrong, regardless it's keep in a really nice environment and everything it's still degrading to a less then desirable extent hence why I would like full res. prints of 35mm. when they first come out in storage to ensure the BEST picture possible in the fact.

What the hell? My brain hurts trying to understand that

[epobirs]

Two titles? Where the hell do you shop? We probably have about 12 Blu-ray titles in stock, which is more titles he had a month into HD-DVD's rollout in store actually. We had like 6 or 7 HD-DVD titles for what seemed like forever, though that may have just been our store, as we never seem to get product from Universal in even a remotely timely fashion at all for some reason. So we had 0 of their Hd-DVD titles near the launch, so it's not really an accurate representation of what was available, but still only 2 titles?

The sole outlets for both formats in my immediate area. CC and BB, have far better offering in HD-DVD than for Blu-ray. The shipping schedules are favoring HD-DVD by a large margin, too, indicating a selection around Xmas time of twice as many titles.

When asked the salespoeple indicated that was what they'd received so far and no titles were sold out, so either there were supply issues or the chain itself wsn't all that enthused about stocking up on Blu-ray titles in the absence of any well rated decks to sell. (The Samsung hopefully not being representative of what can be expected from Blu-ray decks in general.)

These stores are situated in an area that includes some pretty affluent neighborhoods. It isn't for lack of customers who might drop a couple grand on a whim. But the feeling among the people being asked to sell this stuff is that Blu-ray isn't real yet. The current HD-DVD decks aren't anything like the final versions that should be out sometime next year but at least the discs are up to snuff and delivering good quality. Later releases will have far better interactive features but they aren't suffering such severe MPEG-2 space limitations that they will need replacement versions issued down the road.

Sony is seriously screwing up. If they had either their dual layer or advanced codec support in order they would be in a better position but they managed to drop the ball on two critical technologies at the same time. This indicates that the people in charge of Blu-ray are seriously out of touch or steafastly refused to face reality when there was still time to handle the layer deficit with better codecs. Toshiba and its partners don't have any special advantages in that area. If anything, thanks to UMD, Sony is the foremost seller in the world of video content using more advanced codecs than MPEG-2 but neglected to appreciate the need beyond the PSP and PDAs. Yet they couldn't get their advanced codec support for Blu-ray ready in time for launch. I strongly suspect Blu-ray would not be in the stores at all if HD-DVD had been delayed further.

Several months ago I was telling people that Sony had the format war won if they didn't make any really severe mistakes in execution of their Blu-ray plans. Well, guess what? Sony appears to be incapable of doing anything right so far. They cannot even ship their brand name reference platform, relying instead on a Korean company to ship the first deck. They won't say it publicly but that is a really serious embarrassment for certain responsible Sony personnel.

If there are severe supply issues on the PS3 they will have the perfect trifecta for screwing up the Blu-ray launch. An overwhelming installed base via the PS3 is the one still favoring Blu-ray.

[epobirs]

My worry is, and correct me if wrong, regardless it's keep in a really nice environment and everything it's still degrading to a less then desirable extent hence why I would like full res. prints of 35mm. when they first come out in storage to ensure the BEST picture possible in the fact.

This isn't the 1970s. Movie studios are very conscious of the need for good archival management.

Back when there was only theatrical viewing and broadcast TV the film industry got sloppy about library management because it cost a lot of money but so little of the content had much value going forward. For every 'Gone With The Wind' there were a thousand completely forgettable B features.

Home video sales changed all of that. By the late 80s the attitude towards the lesser content and the rise of better technology for managing, maintaining, and restoring it changed radically along with the major interest in the ability to reach consumers directly in what had previously been almost entirely a rental market to large venues.

The production technology has changed a great deal as well. A lot of early TV is simply gone because it was broadcast live with no reording of any sort. THere was no videotape and kinescopes were clumsy films made by pointing a camera at a studio monitor. An expense too great for most shows and it didn't produce especially good quality recordings. A lot of really old TV broadcasts looked far better than what we've been trained to believe by those kinescopes that are the sole record.

A lot of movie and TV content are lost to history or only available in flawed versions because they haven't merited the investment in a detailed restoration. But that by and large only applies to stuff produced several decades ago. Today, it is more of a problem to limit the number of perfect copies in existence to ensure the owners of the content get paid for its use.

[Ruined]

Warner Blu-Ray releases confirmed MPEG2 25gb, less features than HD DVD versions

http://www.dvdtown.com/announcement/fulldetailsonwarnersblu-raytit/3692

Full specs now available - Warner's titles will be MPEG2 single layer on Blu-Ray. As previously announced Training Day Blu-Ray will lose the TrueHD5.1 soundtrack that is featured on the HD-DVD and the other three titles will lose the standard DVD version that is featured on the flipside of the HD DVDs for those movies.

[Ruined]

Training Day:
First HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray head-to-head movie comparison

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/trainingday.html

The Video: Sizing Up the Picture

'Training Day' on Blu-ray has a lot to live up to. Had this title been released on the format before it hit HD DVD, it likely would not have come under nearly as much scrutiny. Videophiles are waiting with baited breath to see not only if 'Training Day' looks great on Blu-ray, but if it tops or at least equals its rival. Surprisingly, the differences between the two versions is substantial in more ways than one -- and unfortunately, it doesn't go Blu-ray's way.

But first, a note on this comparison. I hooked up both my Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD player and Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player to my HP Pavilion reference HDTV via its two HDMI inputs. Note, however, that the first-generation Toshiba HD DVD decks are not capable of outputting native 1080p signals (unlike the Samsung), so it was up to the HP's internal processing to upconvert the Toshiba's 1080i signal to 1080p. Also, given the Samsung's much-publicized problems with its HDMI output (due to a reported faulty noise reduction chip that results in a degraded signal via the deck's HDMI out, Samsung is planning to correct the problem on future shipments as well as issue a firmware upgrade sometime this Fall), I also hooked up both the Toshiba and the Samsung via component out to ensure the most fair comparison possible between the two discs.

So, how do Blu-ray and HD DVD stack up? First, there was one noticeable difference between the two transfers I wasn't expecting. Both the Blu-ray and HD DVD are labeled on the back of their respective packages as being presented in 2.40:1, but that's not the actuality. The Blu-ray suffers from a narrower aspect ratio, with some noticeable cropping on the sides of the picture. Though the total screen area of the bottom letterbox bar is the same on both discs, the total screen area on the top letterbox bar is visibly smaller on the Blu-ray. A physical measurement off of my 65" monitor showed the top letterbox bar is reduced by a good one and a quarter inches on the Blu-ray. Meaning that the picture has either been reframed for the Blu-ray during the telecine process, or the Samsung is outputting a signal that slightly blows up the image. I estimate that about three to four percent of the area on the sides of the picture is lost on Blu-ray. Not that I also switched the outputs on both players into my HDTV to make sure it wasn't a problem with one of my set's HDMI or component inputs, but to no avail -- the Blu-ray was still cropped. Unfortunately, with no other Blu-ray player available in which to do a comparison, there is no way of yet telling if the altered aspect ratio on the Blu-ray is inherent to the encoded material itself, or a fault of the Samsung player's internal circuitry.

Next, to assess picture quality I did comparisons of three complete scenes on both discs, one after the other, simply by switching between my set's two inputs. I also compared a dozen individual still images, by pausing each deck on identical still frames and switching back and forth. And even the aspect ratio problem aside, the picture quality differences between the two transfers is often quite apparent. For example, during the very first shot of the film -- a zoom in on a red-hot, rising sun -- there some polarization was visible on the Blu-ray, with the banding of colors was obvious as the picture faded in. Though by looking closely at the HD DVD I could also spot some polarization as well, it was not as severe. These type of compression artifacts continued throughout both transfers, but again, I noticed about three or four shots on the Blu-ray with more polarization on backgrounds or during fades/dissolves, which were either not there on the HD DVD, or greatly lessened. So score points for HD DVD's VC1 compression codec over the MPEG2/AVC scheme used for Blu-ray, at least until that format's larger-capacity BD-50 dual layer discs become commercially viable.

Another difference between the two formats with 'Training Day' is that the Blu-ray transfer looks darker. Right from the opening scene when Ethan Hawke wakes up in his bed, the HD DVD exhibits an obvious (if far from extreme) brighter look. However, black levels looked comparable -- the HD DVD did not seem washed out versus the Blu-ray. And while the Blu-ray image still looks detailed, shadow delineation does appear a bit less impressive in the darkest scenes. Fall-off to black is a bit sharper on the Blu-ray, which is to be expected given its darker cast. Conversely, colors can appear slightly more vivid on the Blu-ray at first glance, though the actual saturation of colors appears equal on both. It is not that the HD DVD looks washed out, but the darker appearance of the Blu-ray transfer can make hues seem a bit more deep by comparison.

In all other areas, the two transfers are comparable. The sense of depth and detail of both formats can be terrific. While the brighter HD DVD is more consistent, especially on the darker scenes, the Blu-ray is no slouch. Indeed, anyone sitting down with either disc would, during a casual viewing, be quite impressed by either. But a head-to-head comparison is all about the small things, and given the aspect ratio issue with the Blu-ray disc, plus the compression artifacts and slightly darker cast, I would have to concede this first battle to HD DVD.

The Audio: Rating the Sound

The HD DVD release of 'Training Day' was only the second on the format to include a TrueHD Dolby Digital track (after another Warner title, 'Phantom of the Opera'). Unfortunately, due to disc space limitations, Warner has elected to drop the track altogether on the Blu-ray release. Of course, since there are currently no TrueHD-compatible HD DVD or Blu-ray players nor A/V receivers on the market that can even decode the format, as of this writing the question remains moot. But more troubling is that Warner has also dropped the Dolby Digital-Plus track off of this Blu-ray release, too -- the only format available is plain old Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. So instead of this Blu-ray sounding identical to the HD DVD, it sounds identical to the standard DVD released back in 2001.

As expected, 'Training Day's sound mix has a lot going on. Gunfire, explosions, a driving score and a hip-hop song or two -- it's all very precisely rendered. Dynamic range was excellent on the Dolby Digital-Plus track, with very defined and tight low bass and mid-range, and clear, distinct highs with little harshness. The same goes for the Blu-ray, though in a direct comparison of the film's two big action scenes -- the house raid and the final showdown -- the Dolby Digital-Plus still gets the edge. The soundfield is just more open in the rears, with plenty of ricocheting bullets bouncing around all five speakers, with imaging from the front to back channels sounding more natural and transparent. Low bass is also a tad stronger and tighter on the Dolby Digital-Plus, delivering more consistent deep frequencies. Overall, no, the differences are not staggering, but they are there if you listen close enough. A pretty big disappointment for Blu-ray.

In short, HD DVD wins.

[Vinny]

First they can't get the 50GB discs to work in the real world and now the image quality sucks too? Wow.

In other news: DVDs still pwn both high def DVD formats. That's a fact and nobody can deny it.

[schuerm26]

I really have no idea what any of the stuff you guys are talking about means, so i am going to post a general question. Has it ever been brought up that people might buy HD-DVD over Blu-Ray because it has that familir "DVD" in the title? If this is a very naive question, i am sorry, but i don't really get the technical stuff.

I don't mean to technical junkies or to people who know the difference. I mean just to your everyday normal movie watcher who is upgrading, like me. I wouldn't know what to pick so i would probably go with HD-DVD just because it is more familiar sounding. Not saying it's a great way to do it but i would think i wouldn't be the only one like that.

[CocheseUGA]

OK, we get it: You hate Blu-Ray.

I don't care which one 'wins,' I'm not buying either until Hollywood decides on a format. Whatever wins, it needs BC.

[Z-Saber]

As in backwards compatability? Then HD-DVD wins again, brotha.

And to schuerm, I'd say that's a very valid point, though not an overall determining factor in the format war. I think most average consumers would agree that HD-DVD sounds pretty straightforward (High-Definition Digital Versatile Disc) while Blu-Ray is unfamiliar. When a normal person hears "Blu-Ray," they don't automatically think of Sony, PS3s, and movies. They think of a blue laser, or maybe a stingray that is blue.

[CocheseUGA]

As in backwards compatability? Then HD-DVD wins again, brotha.

And to schuerm, I'd say that's a very valid point, though not an overall determining factor in the format war. I think most average consumers would agree that HD-DVD sounds pretty straightforward (High-Definition Digital Versatile Disc) while Blu-Ray is unfamiliar. When a normal person hears "Blu-Ray," they don't automatically think of Sony, PS3s, and movies. They think of a blue laser, or maybe a stingray that is blue.


BR players could be BC as well if the public wanted it. HD-DVD does sound better, but I don't want Sony to fail in the terms of I want Sony to keep making consoles so we have more choices.

And Blu-Ray not selling PS3s? I doubt that, considering the amount of people who bought a PS2 because it also was a DVD player. I know we are dealing with a slightly more affluent sector now, but the premise still applies.

[Vinny]

I'm not sure but I think most Blu-Ray players do play DVDs... though it's more complicated than how HD-DVD players play standard DVDs.

I think you guys have a point about the name familiarity. Most people have a decent amount of DVDs and they'll probably assume that a HD-DVD player can play DVDs. Blu-Ray on the other hand... will probably make people think more along the lines of "what the shit?!".

[HumanSnatcher]

The name familiarity has been brought up before, but this is the first time it was mentioned here and people have thought about it. I'd have to agree with that sentiment too.

As for people buying a PS2 solely for the DVD player, I highly doubt that. What was the point when DVD players had been on the market for 3 to 4 years prior to the PS2 launching here in the states. I meant for the 300 (I believe that was the launch price), you could go buy a full featured dvd player for the same price or less. The fact that it played dvd was just a feature. Now you have Sony trying to launch the PS3 as a bluray player also, which I think is kinda wrong. As the system is meant to play games. The ability to play the movies is pretty much a feature just as a regular DVD player was in the PS2

[CocheseUGA]

The name familiarity has been brought up before, but this is the first time it was mentioned here and people have thought about it. I'd have to agree with that sentiment too.

As for people buying a PS2 solely for the DVD player, I highly doubt that. What was the point when DVD players had been on the market for 3 to 4 years prior to the PS2 launching here in the states. I meant for the 300 (I believe that was the launch price), you could go buy a full featured dvd player for the same price or less. The fact that it played dvd was just a feature. Now you have Sony trying to launch the PS3 as a bluray player also, which I think is kinda wrong. As the system is meant to play games. The ability to play the movies is pretty much a feature just as a regular DVD player was in the PS2


No no no. The point I was trying to make was, 'I want a PS2 mom...and it can play DVDs, too!' DVD playback was a feature. I think it was a big feature personally. I know I used mine until I got a real DVD player (hell, I used my PSX and Saturn as a CD player sometimes).

So, along the lines of 'I want a PS3 mom...and it can play high definition DVDs, too!' (well, that may be aimed more at dad...) will help sell some more consoles. But it will be up to Sony to pull it off, and honestly, I'm not sure they are going to. I think the real reason Sony hasn't put out their BR machine is to get people to buy the PS3 first to ensure more sales. The quality issue plays into that as well, but Sony doesn't mind pumping up the numbers to make themselves look good.

[Sarang01]

No no no. The point I was trying to make was, 'I want a PS2 mom...and it can play DVDs, too!' DVD playback was a feature. I think it was a big feature personally. I know I used mine until I got a real DVD player (hell, I used my PSX and Saturn as a CD player sometimes).

So, along the lines of 'I want a PS3 mom...and it can play high definition DVDs, too!' (well, that may be aimed more at dad...) will help sell some more consoles. But it will be up to Sony to pull it off, and honestly, I'm not sure they are going to. I think the real reason Sony hasn't put out their BR machine is to get people to buy the PS3 first to ensure more sales. The quality issue plays into that as well, but Sony doesn't mind pumping up the numbers to make themselves look good.

It's also a definite way Sony could justify the extra cost of the PS2 at the time as well.

[javeryh]

I just listened to the major nelson podcast discussing the differences between hddvd and bluray and although I realize it is going to be heavily biased, if what they claim as fact really is true I will probably be supporting hddvd. It really just sounds like the better technology.

[Sarang01]

I just listened to the major nelson podcast discussing the differences between hddvd and bluray and although I realize it is going to be heavily biased, if what they claim as fact really is true I will probably be supporting hddvd. It really just sounds like the better technology.

Yeah and realize if Toshiba wins, with all that royalty money they get from the sale of each HD-DVD, they will use it to help subsidize the cost of SED's, bring the price down to soon CRUSH the inferior formats of DLP, Plasma and LCD. All that benefit of just buying the better product on the market. I also don't understand the point of nitpicking over Sony's 50 gig. disc since unless they fix up the scratch resistent tech soon the discs may not be playable and also Toshiba can triple layer HD-DVD's and I'm guessing reliably so based on their results with the dual layer product so unless Sony can triple layer Blu-Ray I don't see the point of them winning in ANY market.
edit: And just a thought to whoever said limited production copies of Blu-Ray, MAYBE studio's are mostly just using a few factories to press them, wanting to wait to see if Blu-Ray will even get up and succeed with the tremendous failures it's had so far. I mean having to buy entirely new production equipment as compared to just the modification of their old shit with HD-DVD is a big thing I'm sure.

[Vinny]

Sony already has a quad-layer BD... 100GB of storage on a single disc. But just like their dual layber BD, they haven't gotten it to work in the real world.

[Duo_Maxwell]

I just listened to the major nelson podcast discussing the differences between hddvd and bluray and although I realize it is going to be heavily biased, if what they claim as fact really is true I will probably be supporting hddvd. It really just sounds like the better technology.

To be honest, that podcast was bias crap for info. The experts work for MS. To use his analogy of going to a department store, that's like asking somebody at Best Buy if I should go shop at Circuit City. Nelson seems to only interview co-workers and never asks a hard question at all. Amir or whatever his name is outright lied when he said they had just starting becoming neutral last september, that's when they offically announced it, but the whole industry and every news source in the industry has known for well over a year that they've been anything but neutral. Not one mention of flaw in the Samsung player during the quality discussion was made (though I do mostly agree with them) and hyping up the hybrid disc for a little bit was hilarious IMO. Nevertheless, what's with their interactvitity guy only having ever watched one commentary on DVD??

[Ruined]

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/kisskissbangbang.html
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/rumorhasit.html

Two more wins for HD DVD over Blu-Ray in straight comparisons. In addition to better A/V quality the HD DVDs in these reviews also had more features including standard DVD versions of the movies on the flipside of the disc which you can play in any DVD player.

And here's the best part. The HD DVDs which looked and sounded better were 15gb single layer hybrid titles versus 25gb Blu-Ray titles. So much for Sony's "space" argument.

VC-1 > MPEG2, even when MPEG2 has 10gb more space to work with!

[javeryh]

VC-1 > MPEG2, even when MPEG2 has 10gb more space to work with!

Right. The whole point of these things is better PQ. HDDVD is looking better and better...

[CocheseUGA]

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/kisskissbangbang.html
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/rumorhasit.html

Two more wins for HD DVD over Blu-Ray in straight comparisons. In addition to better A/V quality the HD DVDs in these reviews also had more features including standard DVD versions of the movies on the flipside of the disc which you can play in any DVD player.

And here's the best part. The HD DVDs which looked and sounded better were 15gb single layer hybrid titles versus 25gb Blu-Ray titles. So much for Sony's "space" argument.

VC-1 > MPEG2, even when MPEG2 has 10gb more space to work with!

Ladies and gentlemen, this...is a man on a mission. Probably from God.

[Vinny]

Ladies and gentlemen, this...is a man on a mission. Probably from God.

I think we've all established that already.:lol:

[tehweezner]

man sony is not looking good right now. they're putting everything on blu-ray's success... and it's not even the superior product lol

[suffah]

man sony is not looking good right now. they're putting everything on blu-ray's success... and it's not even the superior product lol

It worked for VHS. Hope history doesn't repeat...

[Sarang01]

Sony already has a quad-layer BD... 100GB of storage on a single disc. But just like their dual layber BD, they haven't gotten it to work in the real world.

So basically the point is mute. In terms of the VHS argument Sony didn't create it either. They created Beta and even if we argue it was the better format Sony was still the one who developed it so I don't think we have to worry too much with Blu-Ray.
Ruined what is VC1? You're comparing it to MPEG2 but I thought HD-DVD used MPEG4. Also I heard you or someone else mentioning MPEG4 and VC1 for HD-DVD. Is VC1 a particular way of compressing it in MPEG4 or what?

[Duo_Maxwell]

So basically the point is mute. In terms of the VHS argument Sony didn't create it either. They created Beta and even if we argue it was the better format Sony was still the one who developed it so I don't think we have to worry too much with Blu-Ray.
Ruined what is VC1? You're comparing it to MPEG2 but I thought HD-DVD used MPEG4. Also I heard you or someone else mentioning MPEG4 and VC1 for HD-DVD. Is VC1 a particular way of compressing it in MPEG4 or what?

VC-1, MPEG-4, and MPEG2 are all different compression standards and actually the technology is there for both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD to use any of the three. But so far I think the stuidos have chosen to do all the HD-DVD releases in VC-1 and all the Blu-ray in MPEG-2 (which Sony is probably pushing). Someone may have released or is planning to release an HD-DVD in MPEG-4 but I would think that'd be a bad choice as it's usually not the greatest in terms of video quality, some even say MPEG-2 which is older has it beat still in straight video quality.

[Sarang01]

VC-1, MPEG-4, and MPEG2 are all different compression standards and actually the technology is there for both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD to use any of the three. But so far I think the stuidos have chosen to do all the HD-DVD releases in VC-1 and all the Blu-ray in MPEG-2 (which Sony is probably pushing). Someone may have released or is planning to release an HD-DVD in MPEG-4 but I would think that'd be a bad choice as it's usually not the greatest in terms of video quality, some even say MPEG-2 which is older has it beat still in straight video quality.

So then what is VC1 roughly in terms of compression compared to MPEG4? Ratiowise please. 4:1, 8:1, 2:1?
This sounds like a fairly new compression and if it's fairly or dramatically better than MPEG4 I could only imagine what could be done with it over Fiber, how many HD channels would be available at full res. if not 1080p. Maybe I could see some feasible International HD channels out of this.
edit: You mention video quality for MPEG4. Does VC1 not have the issue of artifacting that MPEG4 can?

[Ruined]

So then what is VC1 roughly in terms of compression compared to MPEG4? Ratiowise please. 4:1, 8:1, 2:1?
This sounds like a fairly new compression and if it's fairly or dramatically better than MPEG4 I could only imagine what could be done with it over Fiber, how many HD channels would be available at full res. if not 1080p. Maybe I could see some feasible International HD channels out of this.
edit: You mention video quality for MPEG4. Does VC1 not have the issue of artifacting that MPEG4 can?

The main difference between VC-1 and MPEG4 is that VC-1 has much better encoding software and documentation provided by Microsoft while MPEG4 tools are quite immature in comparison. Therefore while the codecs are comparable, the actual encoding tools and therefore final product suffers on MPEG4.

[Sarang01]

Interesting. Hopefully the Sats and Fiber people convert to that though given what you've just told me it's a fat fucking chance I'll get Internationals in HD anytime soon even though a concession like ImaginAsian or AznTV HD I'd be happy to see. Preferably I'd like TV Tokyo, MBC, KBS and SBS HD though.

[Ruined]

Disney scales back Blu-Ray support - No Pirates or Cars on Blu-Ray in 2006

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6361305.html

Disney’s biggest summer hits Cars and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest won’t be coming to Blu-ray this year, company president and CEO Bob Iger confirmed during the studios third-quarter earnings call Wednesday morning.

“We need a few things in terms of platform penetration,” Iger said. “It’s still early in the life of next-generation DVD to predict. In all likelihood, adoption of next-gen DVD will be slower to market than standard-definition DVD, which was rather dramatic.”

Iger quickly added that he believes in the long-term success of high-definition.

This is a lot different talk than the "we're putting all of our marketing behind Blu-Ray" Disney was talking about pre-BluRay launch. Looks like films like "Dinosaur" will be the norm for Disney Blu-Ray this year.

Also note that Disney now believes in the long-term success of high-definition, as opposed to saying Blu-Ray as they have in the past.

[Sarang01]

Ruined I wanted to hear your thoughts on incorporating VC1 as a codec or has MPEG4 shown itself to be better in terms of streams like what I've mentioned?
Also in terms of Disney questioning these formats I don't think anything close to HD-DVD has encouraged many people to buy it, in terms of showpieces and offerings. Me? I want MI, Weeds and others on HD-DVD, and I'm questioning where they are. Also I'd like Akira on it and "The Promise" as well as any other Anime shot on film regardless of the decade as long as it's a classic. "Fate Stay Night" would make a good showpiece for Anime considering it's fairly recent in Japan and is shot in HD to my knowledge. Seriously these publishers are wondering what's up but where are all the TV series being shot in HD being offered? Only a select handful of series like "The Sopranos" and maybe "Six Feet Under" are being offered. Oh and here's another giant question, wtf are all the HDNet films in terms of debuting on HD-DVD? I know they have the US rights to "Pulse" and I'd like to see it on HD-DVD if it was shot on 35mm hopefully.

[Kaijufan]

The first Blu Ray disk drive wont be able to play Blu Ray movies out of the box, and it costs about $750. (http://www.cnet.com.au/desktops/dvdburners/0,39029405,40091720,00.htm)
What the hell is wrong with the morons at Sony? Why would they release a Blu Ray PC drive that doesn't include the software to play Blu Ray movies?:wall:

[Sarang01]

Why even fucking bother Kaiju, since HD-DVD can already reliably double layer as well as possibly triple layer so I don't see the point.

[Ruined]

Ladies and gentlemen, this...is a man on a mission. Probably from God.

Hell yes. :D

Sony's first BD50 dual layer titles postponed indefinitely

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Sony/Disc_Announcements/Black_Hawk_Down,_Sense_&_Sensibility_Bumped_From_Sony_Blu-ray_Lineup/176

"Black Hawk Down' and 'Sense & Sensibility' have been removed completely from Sony's upcoming release schedule until further notice."

Note these were originally both listed as BD50 dual layer titles by Sony - Black Hawk Down was supposed to be the premier BD50 release. As BD50 is likely not going to be ready anytime soon, these titles have been completely removed off the slate according to HIDEFDIGEST.

[Sarang01]

Wow so which do I want, storage and pqwise? Even though Sony could end up using VC1 compression and fix things they can't reliably dual layer a disc while Toshiba can triple layer though I don't know how realiably and they can easily dual layer one reliably which adds up to 5 more gigs. than a standard Blu-Ray disc. Someone remind me WHY I should be cheering for Blu-Ray. Btw BB needs to lay off the Blu-Ray asskissing.

[DarkNessBear]

Went to Circuit City today, and they had 2 TV's next to each other playing Bluray on each one.

One looked pretty good, it looked a little like normal DVD. But the other one was absolutely amazing. If you think that looks like DVD, you really need to check your eyes.

The ones you guys probably saw were the crappy set up ones...

[zewone]

No, the DVD looking one was Blu-Ray and the other was HD-DVD, fanboy.

[Yusuke-Urameshi-]

No, the DVD looking one was Blu-Ray and the other was HD-DVD, fanboy.
So you didn't see what he saw yet you know that the one that looked good must not be Sony? Whatever, fanboy

[Sarang01]

So you didn't see what he saw yet you know that the one that looked good must not be Sony? Whatever, fanboy

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case though. Regardless if Sony holds out for too long I'll just tell them to go screw themselves by buying the EV-DVD versions of all the Hong Kong films they have the rights to in the U.S. EV-DVD is China's soon to be High-Def format which is basically a ripoff of HD-DVD and I suspect China's going to try to have it succeed there.

[DarkNessBear]

So you didn't see what he saw yet you know that the one that looked good must not be Sony? Whatever, fanboy
They were both Blu-Ray. They both were blu-ray players (same type) and both were playing the same BluRay demo disc.

Lice was with me when I saw them. He can verify this.

[Kaijufan]

DVD Talk has a review up of the RoboCop Blu Ray release (http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=23110) that was recently canceled. The score for the video gets a one out of five.
Holy crap in a can, this disc looks horrible! I've written a couple of previous Blu-ray reviews where I'd called certain discs the worst High Definition image I'd ever seen, thinking HD couldn't possibly get any worse, but here Sony just keeps lowering the bar for the format. The Robocop Blu-ray is U-G-L-Y. And before you write in to chastise me that, "The movie is 20 years old. What'd you expect?" or "It was a low-budget movie. It can't look much better", save your breath. Those are bullshit excuses and dead wrong. The problems with this disc all stem from the video transfer and the Blu-ray authoring. Robocop is not supposed to look like this. No movie is supposed to look like this.

[zewone]

So you didn't see what he saw yet you know that the one that looked good must not be Sony? Whatever, fanboy
Yes, douchebag.

And I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't read and/or quote any of my posts.

<3,

zewone

[D4rkN1ght]

Yes, douchebag.

And I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't read and/or quote any of my posts.

<3,

zewone
PWNED!!!

[Daddy]

Went to Circuit City today, and they had 2 TV's next to each other playing Bluray on each one.

One looked pretty good, it looked a little like normal DVD. But the other one was absolutely amazing. If you think that looks like DVD, you really need to check your eyes.

The ones you guys probably saw were the crappy set up ones...


They were both Blu-Ray. They both were blu-ray players (same type) and both were playing the same BluRay demo disc.

Lice was with me when I saw them. He can verify this.


DUMBEST COMMENT EVER! Ok so let me get this straight you saw the same product but playing on 2 different TV's and thats how you compared??? Even if you were watching just HDTV and you saw a picture of a TV broadcast and it was playing on 2 different tvs it could look drastically different....WOW, just WOW. You might wanna try to think a bit before you comment or at least use some common sense, try finding a blu ray demo vs a HD-DVD demo running on the same player and tv when trying to comment on any form of clarity or picture....again WOW

[DarkNessBear]

DUMBEST COMMENT EVER! Ok so let me get this straight you saw the same product but playing on 2 different TV's and thats how you compared??? Even if you were watching just HDTV and you saw a picture of a TV broadcast and it was playing on 2 different tvs it could look drastically different....WOW, just WOW. You might wanna try to think a bit before you comment or at least use some common sense, try finding a blu ray demo vs a HD-DVD demo running on the same player and tv when trying to comment on any form of clarity or picture....again WOW
No not really DADDY....

I was just providing a point stating that it can look inferior if not hooked up properly.

One of the TV's provided a much clearer image than the other, hinting to the fact that the inferior Blu-Ray demos that some may have witnessed could have been shown on a display that did not have the Blu Ray player hooked up correctly, resulting in a poor image.

I was clearly just giving an example stating that Blu Ray does look fantastic, but can look far less than that if the player itself is not correctly installed.

Nowhere did I mention this demonstrates a clear indication that Blu Ray is in fact superior to its rival HDDVD. I was just providing a solution to OTHER peoples complaints on why it looked just like a DVD or less.

Thanks for being so kind.

[Lice]

DUMBEST COMMENT EVER! Ok so let me get this straight you saw the same product but playing on 2 different TV's and thats how you compared??? Even if you were watching just HDTV and you saw a picture of a TV broadcast and it was playing on 2 different tvs it could look drastically different....WOW, just WOW. You might wanna try to think a bit before you comment or at least use some common sense, try finding a blu ray demo vs a HD-DVD demo running on the same player and tv when trying to comment on any form of clarity or picture....again WOW

DUMBEST REPLY EVER!!!! BOLD//111 :roll:

I was there at circuit city and it was two exact same 1080p tvs, two samsung blue ray players and one was not hooked up properly. The side by side comparison really made it evident that an imporper setup, like with all forms of media, will result in a poor image.

He was stating the fact that you cant judge how something looks from stores like best buy, CC etc because they dont know how to set it up correctly as stated before in many posts.

And daddy... Calm down ok papa?

[Daddy]

DUMBEST REPLY EVER!!!! BOLD//111 :roll:

I was there at circuit city and it was two exact same 1080p tvs, two samsung blue ray players and one was not hooked up properly. The side by side comparison really made it evident that an imporper setup, like with all forms of media, will result in a poor image.

He was stating the fact that you cant judge how something looks from stores like best buy, CC etc because they dont know how to set it up correctly as stated before in many posts.

And daddy... Calm down ok papa?

At no point did he state they were running on the same tv, and yes you shouold try a high end store for picture quality b/c they split signals on broadcasts let alone their skills hooking up a DVD player....either way my point still stands the only way you could compare (in this case) would be to take a DVD player (perhaps upconverting for 1080i and 720P) and a Blu-ray player lets say and run the resolution at the highest setting with the same tv and see if you can tell any significant differemce.....good luck by the way. Point is most people arent even in the "hd era" let alone ready to waste money re-buying all there dvds on another format.....its alomst as bad as the dumbass idea of a phone with an mp3 player and tv broadcasts...yeah my phone dies already I dont think I need any help killing the battery any faster...thanks

[Lice]

At no point did he state they were running on the same tv, and yes you shouold try a high end store for picture quality b/c they split signals on broadcasts let alone their skills hooking up a DVD player....either way my point still stands the only way you could compare (in this case) would be to take a DVD player (perhaps upconverting for 1080i and 720P) and a Blu-ray player lets say and run the resolution at the highest setting with the same tv and see if you can tell any significant differemce.....good luck by the way. Point is most people arent even in the "hd era" let alone ready to waste money re-buying all there dvds on another format.....its alomst as bad as the dumbass idea of a phone with an mp3 player and tv broadcasts...yeah my phone dies already I dont think I need any help killing the battery any faster...thanks

Ok good that started off much nicer! See you can make a calm post. I lost you a little with the phone example but hell lets let that slide.

Yeah I think the upconverting comparison should be done with blue ray AND hd dvd. I personally am not backing any set up. Im more than happy with the upconverting player with my collection of Dvd's. Do i want to rebuy all the movies to see a few freckles more? not right now. I was just helping darkness out because he was attacked rather rudely when he was not out of line. Most Cag's seem to hold past thread grudges against people.

The key to any of these XYZ VS. Xyz threads is that it doesnt matter who wins or what YOU think is better because in the end everyone is going to purchse what they think is better. If someone likes how component cables look over Hdmi, or HDDVD is better than BLue ray, then thats what they enjoy. No need to battle in the threads. NOW good day to you sir!

[Kaijufan]

Sony has released the first 50 GB Blu Ray media. (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3825) The cost to write once to these disks? Only $48.
Rewritable disks will be coming out later this year, but the cost is unknown (I'm guessing it will be at least 2-3 times the cost).
It's going to be a long time before BD 50 is used for movies.

[Daddy]

Ok good that started off much nicer! See you can make a calm post. I lost you a little with the phone example but hell lets let that slide.

Yeah I think the upconverting comparison should be done with blue ray AND hd dvd. I personally am not backing any set up. Im more than happy with the upconverting player with my collection of Dvd's. Do i want to rebuy all the movies to see a few freckles more? not right now. I was just helping darkness out because he was attacked rather rudely when he was not out of line. Most Cag's seem to hold past thread grudges against people.

The key to any of these XYZ VS. Xyz threads is that it doesnt matter who wins or what YOU think is better because in the end everyone is going to purchse what they think is better. If someone likes how component cables look over Hdmi, or HDDVD is better than BLue ray, then thats what they enjoy. No need to battle in the threads. NOW good day to you sir!

Well easy answer there...no one is gonna buy a format thats dies (IE: minidisc,betamax,umd) Its the eqivalent of you going out and buying a casette tape or vhs right now...my point is Sony has failed many times with there gayass "formats" and to risk it in their system is absurd and risky b/c it forces consumers into it when they just want games (most % of people that is) and if it fails what the fook do you do with the system then? And also like I said earlier good luck trying to tell the differnce between upscaling dvd vs. a bluray (robo cop is the worst bluray ive ever seen!) or lie you agreed upon about rebuying or "backing up" all your old dvd's now to a new format....

If you didnt get my comment about the phone it was saying that companies are getting some strange idea that people want devices that do everything ok instead of one thing excellent. In the SONY case its more about using their system to push a format then it is about gaming...pretty dirty move but to SONY its a "business" move, just wish the gaming community wasnt part of there dirty little plans in case it does fail :-(

PS- As far as CAGS holding grudges...I dont play those stupid games, unless someone burned you on a sale/trade there is no reason to be all girly about posts on a forum, there is no way to translate words typed out when you cant see facial expressions or hear inflection in my voice, so how can you interpret if im being mean or sarcastic or silly or rude? You cant and thats why email,text,and message boards get misinterpreted. So relax foolio and go play some games b/c Daddy said so

[CocheseUGA]

Everyone thinks the MD was a horrible choice, but it did very well in Europe and Asia...at least before iPod.

[Ruined]

Sony has released the first 50 GB Blu Ray media. (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3825) The cost to write once to these disks? Only $48.
Rewritable disks