SatTech
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Amazon BOGOs FTW!!! Picked up the first 4 Harry Potter movies 2 days ago for 45 bucks shipped.
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Blu-ray a sick joke on the consumer?
- Thread starter hardc0re
- Start date
w1retap
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me too, lol
While that can be a decent reference, it really depends on the individuals visual acuity, the lower you can go on the snellen chart, the more you'll be able to pick up the differences.
Just a little information for anyone considering HD DVD. Today, January 4th, Warner Home Video has decided to stop making HD DVD disc and will become a Blu-ray only studio at the end of May. This is a major blow to the HD DVD camp. The HD DVD Promotional Group had scheduled a cocktail party and press conference for this Sunday evening in Las Vegas to tout the progress it has made in the high definition video and the ongoing format war with the Blu-ray consortium. The event was canceled because Warner Home Video earlier in-the day had said it would switch exclusilely to the Blu-ray format. Disney, Fox, MGM, Sony, Lionsgate and Warner will all be Blu-ray. Universal and Paramount are HD DVD and I do beleive that Universal only had a 18 month contract with HD DVD. Even Microsoft can not save HD DVD. It looks like Sony will win the war, so you can stick a fork in the HD DVD format. Blu-ray is the better format anyway. 
w1retap
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It looks like you missed the thread.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1259843
If by better you mean more DRM shoved down our throats, then yes.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1259843
If by better you mean more DRM shoved down our throats, then yes.
Just for your information, Blu-ray has a higher video bit rate(max). The bit rate is the amount of information that is processed and displayed on your HDTV. Blu-ray has a maximum video bit rate that is 33 percent higher then HD DVDs. Combined with a highter storage capacity, Blu-ray can produce a higher quality 1080P picture that is sharper and more detailed. I hope this information gives you a better understanding of why Blu-ray is by far the better format.
w1retap
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That's great. In head to head and blind comparisons, you can't tell a difference. I know I can't tell a difference between Blu-ray and HD DVD movies on my 105'' screen with the Epson 1080p projector from a proper viewing distance. Most argue you can't even tell a difference between 720p and 1080p. Unless you watch at 1 foot away zoomed at 200% and compare pixel by pixel, you aren't going to see anything different.
Here's some screen shots of HD DVD and Blu-ray. This is arguably the best Blu-ray movie picture quality from what Blu-ray.com says.
http://www.mbmg.de/hd-discs/theprestige_bd-vs-hd/01.html
more: http://www.mbmg.de/hd-discs/
W1retap, the problem is that the movie was almost certainly mastered for the lowest common deominator. The only way to know if one is better than the other is to have a movie mastered for HD and mastered seperately for BD. Then we'd know for sure one way or the other.
In the end, if they're both identical, I want BD because the winner is likely to be the winner on the PC, and I'd rather have 25GB than 15gb.
In the end, if they're both identical, I want BD because the winner is likely to be the winner on the PC, and I'd rather have 25GB than 15gb.
w1retap
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Movies are mastered according to what disk size they are going onto. 60% of Blu-ray releases are on 25GB disks, while around 90% of HD DVD releases are on 30GB disks. If anything, many of the releases are so they can fit on Blu-ray disks. There are very few 50GB disk production lines that studios have access to all the time, and Singulus doesn't even have one yet. Even with the 50GB+ disks, it isn't like we are going to see better quality movies. Around 30mbit/sec h264/vc-1 encoding is where the limit is for the cutoff of noticeable quality in 1080p on a large screen in your home at proper viewing distance.. You also have to remember this is only peak bitrate. Most of the movie where people are standing around and talking is less than 15mbit/sec. Action scenes and motion spikes up the bitrate more. But with larger disks, they'll just pack more standard def extras onto them.
BillR
Born Again Cynic
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One thing I havent seen mentioned here is how those old 35mm and 70mm films were meant to be seen.
Back in say 1955 or so the typical home TV for those lucky enough to be able to afford one was a 17 black and white set. I remember when 21 came out and it was the hot ticket for sure. The fact is when people wanted to watch a move they went to a movie theater. You had two types, the indoor theater and the drive in theater. In those days a typical drive in would have a screen one hundred feet or so diagonal. A normal indoor theater typically had something in the 50 to 70 foot range. It was nothing like the mini theaters of today.
The point here is when you throw a one hundred foot picture it better be pretty good or you will lose your audience if not the whole industry. Of course the drive in is all but gone now for a number of reasons, kids can afford motel rooms for one and the cost of real-estate for another. In any case take Disney for example. Back when Walt was alive there were no budget films made by his studio. 20,000 leagues Under the Sea, Old Yeller, Lady and the Tramp and most of the rest of the Disney collection were made as close to perfect as possible. What you saw at the theater was at best a 5th to 10th generation copy and that still looked fantastic on those huge screens. The masters stayed in the vault. In todays dollars nobody could afford to make that kind of movie anymore, its all about budget.
When you get to the typical SiFi movie yes, you did get some grain but hey, it was usually a low budget film to start with and you knew that going in. There were a few exceptions such as War of the Worlds which was pretty well done. The other side was any production by Daryl F. Zanuk the King of B horror movies. He worked with almost no budget yet managed to produce movies that made people scream. Yup, gonna get some grain there too, but its supposed to be there.
The whole point of this is simply those old masters can be as good as or better then many of the movies produced today. Take what was meant for a really huge screen and it transfers very nicely to a 100 screen or smaller. So yes, there is a need and a want for HiDef movies for the home and they are not a rip off. In fact, if you are a movie freak or just a big fan they are a bargain.
Back in say 1955 or so the typical home TV for those lucky enough to be able to afford one was a 17 black and white set. I remember when 21 came out and it was the hot ticket for sure. The fact is when people wanted to watch a move they went to a movie theater. You had two types, the indoor theater and the drive in theater. In those days a typical drive in would have a screen one hundred feet or so diagonal. A normal indoor theater typically had something in the 50 to 70 foot range. It was nothing like the mini theaters of today.
The point here is when you throw a one hundred foot picture it better be pretty good or you will lose your audience if not the whole industry. Of course the drive in is all but gone now for a number of reasons, kids can afford motel rooms for one and the cost of real-estate for another. In any case take Disney for example. Back when Walt was alive there were no budget films made by his studio. 20,000 leagues Under the Sea, Old Yeller, Lady and the Tramp and most of the rest of the Disney collection were made as close to perfect as possible. What you saw at the theater was at best a 5th to 10th generation copy and that still looked fantastic on those huge screens. The masters stayed in the vault. In todays dollars nobody could afford to make that kind of movie anymore, its all about budget.
When you get to the typical SiFi movie yes, you did get some grain but hey, it was usually a low budget film to start with and you knew that going in. There were a few exceptions such as War of the Worlds which was pretty well done. The other side was any production by Daryl F. Zanuk the King of B horror movies. He worked with almost no budget yet managed to produce movies that made people scream. Yup, gonna get some grain there too, but its supposed to be there.
The whole point of this is simply those old masters can be as good as or better then many of the movies produced today. Take what was meant for a really huge screen and it transfers very nicely to a 100 screen or smaller. So yes, there is a need and a want for HiDef movies for the home and they are not a rip off. In fact, if you are a movie freak or just a big fan they are a bargain.
PolygonGTC
[H]ard|Gawd
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1080p is 1080p there is no visual difference. Also, the Blu-Ray format doesn't equate higher resolution. The fact that is has more storage allows you to store movies encoded at a higher resolution.
If I'm wrong feel free to prove it.
Lets sum it up this way
Higher Storage Capacity + Higher Video Bit Rate = A Better 1080P Picture.
DVDs have a max bit rate of 10.1
HD DVDs have a max bit rate of 29.4
Blu-ray has a max bit rate of 40.0
Thats incorrect, i could put exactly the same movie on a DVD but with a resolution of 1920x1080, as long as the bitrate stays the same. It would of course not look as good as one with a higher bitrate.
But i think ive only ever seen it get near that for MPEG2 based videos, perhaps on one of the pirates films?
Up to a point, then the extra bitrate becomes 'almost' useless as its gets impossible to tell the difference between a 30Mbit AVC and a 40Mbit AVC and perhaps even the source, as it becomes too transparent.
You can serch both the Blu-ray and HD DVD Wikipedias. There are many other places to research information on the two formats. This is from one of them.
3.2 What benefits does Blu-ray offer compared to HD-DVD?
Although both Blu-ray and HD-DVD are similar in many aspects, there are some important differences between them.
The first is capacity. Because Blu-ray utilizes a lens with a greater numerical aperture (NA) than HD-DVD, the laser spot can be focused with greater precision to fit more data on the same size disc. This allows Blu-ray to hold 25GB per layer (50GB on a dual-layer disc), whereas HD-DVD can only hold 15GB per layer (30GB on a dual-layer disc). Blu-ray has also adopted a higher data transfer rate for video and audio (54Mbps vs 36.55Mbps). The greater capacity and data transfer rates for Blu-ray will allow the movie studios to release their movies with higher quality video and audio than the HD-DVD format.
3.2 What benefits does Blu-ray offer compared to HD-DVD?
Although both Blu-ray and HD-DVD are similar in many aspects, there are some important differences between them.
The first is capacity. Because Blu-ray utilizes a lens with a greater numerical aperture (NA) than HD-DVD, the laser spot can be focused with greater precision to fit more data on the same size disc. This allows Blu-ray to hold 25GB per layer (50GB on a dual-layer disc), whereas HD-DVD can only hold 15GB per layer (30GB on a dual-layer disc). Blu-ray has also adopted a higher data transfer rate for video and audio (54Mbps vs 36.55Mbps). The greater capacity and data transfer rates for Blu-ray will allow the movie studios to release their movies with higher quality video and audio than the HD-DVD format.
w1retap
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If you sit down and compare pixel by pixel at 200% zoom, you might be lucky to see a slight difference in the encode. I can assure you for viewing video in motion, you won't tell a difference. I have watched both HD DVD and Blu-ray movies on my 105'' screen in 1080p at a viewing distance of 10 feet, and in a blind comparison you cannot tell. If you think you can tell the difference between 30mbit and 40mbit AVC or VC-1, fanboyism has overridden your senses.