that's not the same thing though. games start off with low textures and objects and have simple objects that are built up mathematically by the video card. Blue ray vs DVD is simply a matter of compression of the original picture. the difference is going to be far more with video game because it will now contain more detail. the video simply losses more of the original picture (the fidelity for lack of a better word)
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Will 2010 (Finally) Be Blu-ray's Year?
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that's not the same thing though. games start off with low textures and objects and have simple objects that are built up mathematically by the video card. Blue ray vs DVD is simply a matter of compression of the original picture. the difference is going to be far more with video game because it will now contain more detail. the video simply losses more of the original picture (the fidelity for lack of a better word)
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It is both that AND resolution for the BluRay, too, but yeah you make a good point
. A game won't magically have better textures from resolution alone, while a movie will gain more fidelity.This is something the tech community will never understand. What's a gigantic difference to them and what's a gigantic difference to normal people are two completely different things. My girlfriend has a nice HDTV and I told her the other day that she should buy a BR player so we can watch my movies, her response, "Why? I own a DVD player that's looks great. I can think of better things to spend the money on." Techies are too arrogant and pig headed to ever see things from everyone else's point of view.
MisterSparkle
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Blu-Ray drives still going for $200 at the cheapest down here in Australia.
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I've shown the BluRay vs. DVD thing to older relatives when they've come over and even they, technophobes, can tell the difference. It's not just a "you have to look for it" difference, as I said it is GIGANTIC.
Telling the difference and not being able to live without it/caring enough to spend money on it are two different things.
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I never said there wasn't a difference. What you perceive as a gigantic difference and what someone else does are two different things. There's a reason normal people don't care to overclock their computers....it's the same reason they don't buy BR's...they just don't give a damn.No one said you can't live without it, but the difference is 100% there
Like what?? There is nothing else on the horizon and even if there were, what could it possibly offer? The Laserdisc comparison is so out of touch with reality. Laserdisc failed, because it could not be copied, it was expensive and it was cumbersome.
3D is the only thing that would motivate me to purchase anything new and Hollywood has had 50+ years to embrace that and it doesn't look like it is coming any time soon.
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It's not a small difference like overclocking is... I'm talking about for example integrated graphics vs. a Radeon 5870
. Even older relatives as I said can immediately tell.Like I said...you think it's a big enough difference to buy. Nobody else does. You're kinda proving my point here.It's not a small difference like overclocking is... I'm talking about for example integrated graphics vs. a Radeon 5870
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u guys realize (of course) that this is largely dependent on the original source right? The Searchers was well maintained and finely restored to look like it was made yesterday. Criterion releases are another great example of what older releases look like because of great restoration/remastering. but if you have a crappy source to begin w/ like Face/Off, even Gladiator, it ain't gonna look significantly better. that and if the studio decides to play w/DNR like Patton, then you are still FUBAR. there's 2many fudge factors that DVDs used to mask that you can't now w/the increased resolution.
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re: .mkv that are 1/4 size, those are ENCODES, they take the Blu-Ray source and shrink them down to even smaller sizes by taking a frame by frame reduction (using x264) similar to .mp3 shrinking process and is very lossy. a true 'muxing' of the BD .m2t files into .mkv container would be roughly the same filesize. if the film is 30GB .m2t minus all the bonus/junk, then it should be roughly that for the .mkv.
I can't speak for Netflix, but people stating that HD digital formats don't hold a candle to BR have clearly have not tried a good BR rip.
I can show you a Star Trek DVD (dual layer) vs a Star Trek BR rip to MKV (6 gig file) and you would be amazed at the image quality.
Hands down blows DVD out of the water, which in my book makes "digital downloads" a competitor to BR.
heatlesssun
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Your point is taken but most streaming media right now doesn't hold a candle to BD. Sure it could but you still talking about a 6GB file, most streaming is far more compressed.
Gorankar
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For my wifes HDTV there is my PS3 for bluray playback. Though she rarely ever watches a movie on it. In fact only twice that I can remember due to renting a bluray instead of a DVD. I am not much of movie watcher myself these days anyway. My computer has replaced my tv and the theater as far as entertainment goes. What few movies I do watch are streamed from netflix or watched over cable on my PC.
For my PC, I prolly will not switch to bluray til a PC game comes out, that I must have, that is not available on D2Drive or Steam, and is bluray only. I use flash drives and USB hard drives now for portability, and sata drives/hot swap bays for back up. The optical disk itself is virtually dead to me as far as a storage media goes. It's not just bluray that I no longer care about.
I can see that Bluray will eventually out strip DVD, it was a matter of time. I just do not see it ever having quite the same penetration as DVD with so many other "good enough for Jane & Joe" options available.
For my PC, I prolly will not switch to bluray til a PC game comes out, that I must have, that is not available on D2Drive or Steam, and is bluray only. I use flash drives and USB hard drives now for portability, and sata drives/hot swap bays for back up. The optical disk itself is virtually dead to me as far as a storage media goes. It's not just bluray that I no longer care about.
I can see that Bluray will eventually out strip DVD, it was a matter of time. I just do not see it ever having quite the same penetration as DVD with so many other "good enough for Jane & Joe" options available.
COMPPRO2K7
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im hopin this will be the year for blu ray, been itching to get a ps, ahh i mean a blu ray player. The selection and price just aint gotten right yet for me.
stop!theradio
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What do you mean "nobody else does"? Also "you're kinda proving my point here.". Huh? How is he proving your point that "no one" notices the difference if he's talking about how people - even his older relatives - DO notice the difference?
It's simple: some people don't notice the difference. Other people - DO! If you want to talk literally, then yes, there is a HUGE difference between a 480p standard DVD signal and a 1080p HD Blu-Ray signal. The technical differences are millions of pixels, increased color depth, much higher bitrates for advanced sound, etc etc etc. So, by default, you're WRONG that there's "[not a big] enough difference to buy", because the technical difference is huge. The fact is this: you may not notice a difference, but a large majority do, myself and many others in this thread included.
Yup. My mom who is far from a technophile jumped on board the Blu Ray train with her new HD set once she saw the difference it made.
If people can't afford it, understandable, but the prices have come down so fast that I see little reason why people wouldn't jump on when its time to buy a new player and they're only $100.
What do you mean "nobody else does"? Also "you're kinda proving my point here.". Huh? How is he proving your point that "no one" notices the difference if he's talking about how people - even his older relatives - DO notice the difference?
The fact is this: you may not notice a difference, but a large majority do, myself and many others in this thread included.
It makes little difference to either blind people or people who don't care about movies. That's it. For everyone else, yeah, its a massive difference.
Even if it was the same number of pixels as DVD it would still be a huge difference just with the elimination of those nasty compression artifacts that crap up every single frame.
I don't see it happening, hardware demands will allways make BR more expensive than DVD due to decoding requirments.
DRM overhead doesn't help either, nor BR licencing fees which have to be recovered.
Target had a $5 DVD player after $10 rebate in a sale flyer last week, how the hell do you make a $5 player and make a profit??
DVD shouldn't even be in the running; its bringing the worst, lowest common denominator digital format into the discussion. If we're comparing an HD download against a Blu Ray which can be encoded at a much higher bitrate since the only limitation is storage space, not bandwidth or hard drive space, there is no comparison.
Downloads are convenient, absolutely, but if we are talking strictly about quality then Blu Ray is still the winner. Believe me, I want a non-physical format to win, I buy all of my PC games via download now, but with games you lose no fidelity since shipped copies and downloaded copies are all the same size (2GB-16GB on average). With movies you lose fidelity as you compress the file, very simple. Blu Ray allows for massive video and audio files. Until we get some uber codec that doesn't make the same compromises, we're stuck with physical being the best.
It's not slight, premium cable channels aren't free and most BDs aren't on Basic Cable /OTA TV uncut (much less without commercials).
This is true, but if you give up the cable or Satellite, you lose access to the recordings. You definitely lose it if you don't own the PVR.
I haven't had Satellite in a few years, but I can promise you that the HD Cable I've seen (Comcast and Cox) isn't close to BD.
Furthermore, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, TMC and all the rest cost 10-15/month for each package (with discounts when you sub to more than one).
There's no doubt that what you describe is far better than digital downloads, but Cable, IME, is not close to BD quality.
Yes, but it's year 3.1 of BD. Do you really think the general public was on board with DVD in Q1 of 2000? The first DVD to sell 1,000,000 copies was The Matrix, in Q3 of 99. For BD it was, as I recall, Iron Man last year. The people that really didn't care didn't get a DVD player until 2003 or later!
So yes, the GP may not care right now, but they didn't care about DVD at this stage either. With that said, it may happen faster with BD, because prices are much lower on Hardware and slightly lower on movies. What's more, many of the BDs are now coming with a DVD, so you get both for the same price as the BD (though not in all cases).
Digital downloads have been the next big thing since 2000 or 2001, and yet we're not even up to DVD quality (unless you mean 1997 DVD quality).
I had a friend who said there was no reason to buy a good 5.1 receiver and speakers -- this was 11 years ago, because he couldn't tell the difference between them and a super cheap system.
And he was 100% correct right up to the point that he actually listened to better systems.
2 or 3 years ago, my brother said that about HD-DVD/Blu-Ray vs DVD....and that was true until he actually saw them (and he's definitely not a techie).
Not a great analogy. Normal people are terrified to open their PC case. The thought of overclocking their PC, voiding the warranty and possibly breaking it is out of the question.
Prices on Drives and software are no longer high. yes, it's too high for the late DVD adopters, but the ASP is lower this year than last, and it will be lower next year than it was this year. It's not like you could always buy a DVD player for under 100 bucks, much less for under $50.00.
DragonMasterAlex
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Streaming is the future, bluray is a throwback to a bygone era.
I recently bought a PS3, which is my first-and likely only ever-bluray player. I realized while shopping on black friday what my requirement is for buying a movie on bluray instead of DVD: It has to be the same price as the DVD version, or at *most* $1 more. I simply will not pay double for a bluray version of ANY movie I can get a DVD for and simply upscale.
I recently bought a PS3, which is my first-and likely only ever-bluray player. I realized while shopping on black friday what my requirement is for buying a movie on bluray instead of DVD: It has to be the same price as the DVD version, or at *most* $1 more. I simply will not pay double for a bluray version of ANY movie I can get a DVD for and simply upscale.
heatlesssun
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If you can afford an good HDTV, cable and/or satellite and by and/or rent DVD's currently, you can now afford BD. New releases are $20 at WalMart which to me is the make or break price point.
This is true, but just like the first release of many DVDs wasn't the definitive version, the same is true on BD.
Do you have the original DVD of Contact? That DVD got great reviews for it's PQ. Go look at it today. It's doesn't look good by DVD standards, much less BD standards.
Every year, the quality will improve. Problems with DNR will largely go away, just like most problems with Edge enhancement diminished as DVD aged.
If movies move to USB sticks, I don't see that as a major change from an optical disk....it's still a physical medium. You may be right about the penetration, but we really won't know for another 2-4 years (probably 3). My gut tells me that by then, nobody will by dvd players. BD players will be very inexpensive and most will buy the one that plays everything. Even now, there's almost not difference between DVD and BD prices (so long asyou compare the full blown DVD releases to the BD).
You can argue that Joe doesn't care about the extras, and you're probably right, but in 2 or 3 years, we'll probably see stripped down BDs releases, just like we have with DVDs.
QFT. As usual, another well thought out and well reasoned post.
Gorankar
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I was really just looking at it more from a storage media point of view. Not movies in particular. Movies displayed on a HDTV do look tons better on bluray than they do DVD provided the source is good enough. Which it most certainly will be for movies shot since bluray launched. I just don't watch that many movies, so bluray never really meant much to me outside of being a storage media. Many others just don't care because they are blind, stubborn, in hate with Sony, exceedingly cheap, or are so into convenience that they would rather stream DVD or lower quality off of netflix. There was pretty much just DVD and VHS when DVD launched. Bluray simply has more competition, even if that competition is lacking in visual quality for the most part. Which is why I just don't think it will have quite as deep a penetration as DVD had.
As a PC storage media, flash is the better choice for speed, portability, durability, and physical media size imo. Bluray really can only win on price and density right now against flash, but that is changing.
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yes, i used to have the original DVD of contact. as i recalled, it was the first 'dual layer' and as such you could see the 'layer change', though newer DVD readers were so fast or had huge buffers u could no longer tell.
all DVDs has had some DNR/EE done. w/720x480 u need it for 'fudge' factor, like pixels so big it's basically smearing crap all over the place.
but w/1920x1080p u no longer need to do that crap! even Contact BD has some of it remaining, not too shabby, but if u look at Gladiator, parts of Band of Brothers, it's just disappointing that studios haven't learned their lesson on this new format yet =P. having DVD as a precursor should've given them a way to adapt to new technology, not just apply same ol' same ol' techniques. that is why titles like It's a Wonderful Life, Patton, etc. are fubar.
all DVDs has had some DNR/EE done. w/720x480 u need it for 'fudge' factor, like pixels so big it's basically smearing crap all over the place
.but w/1920x1080p u no longer need to do that crap! even Contact BD has some of it remaining, not too shabby, but if u look at Gladiator, parts of Band of Brothers, it's just disappointing that studios haven't learned their lesson on this new format yet =P. having DVD as a precursor should've given them a way to adapt to new technology, not just apply same ol' same ol' techniques. that is why titles like It's a Wonderful Life, Patton, etc. are fubar.
triviumnate
Gawd
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well the blu ray player i bought from egg wouldn't turn on so i returned it and they are gonna replace it
got a whole bunch of blue ray's i want 4 christmas
got a whole bunch of blue ray's i want 4 christmas
DVD artifacting has more to do with the coding than the decoding. Back before the year 2000, not many makers understood the subtleties of creating a good dvd. Many smaller operators just used a single pass - keyframe every 8 seconds regardless of what what happening on screen. It rarely ever made it to 4.7 or 8.5GB, so they tended just to either leave it short a few GB or add extras (where the idea of extras actually came from was because they did not have the capability to encode the video at a higher bit rate)
They actually did not know what to do with all the extra room in DVD's early on.
Artifacting does extend to today, there are plenty of badly coded HDDVD's and Blurays as well, usually black levels which are the hardest to get looking right. But a DVD coded properly in the year 2009 is infinitely better than the same DVD movie encoded in 2000.
I often wonder if any of the people who say that Blu is that much better than DVD have actually ever seen a VHS tape.
I don't see it happening, hardware demands will always make DVD more expensive than VHS due to decoding requirements.
DRM overhead doesn't help either, nor DVD licensing fees which have to be recovered.
Target had a $5 VHS player after $10 rebate in a sale flier last week, how the hell do you make a $5 player and make a profit??
Deja vu.
Every t hread about this is exactly the same. I never said I don't see a difference. Read my posts man. I said that while you can see a difference most people just don't care. DVD is good enough to keep their money in their wallets. If the quality is soooooo mind blowing then why are we still repeating the same thing we did last year about THIS being Blu-ray's year? Blu-rays have been cheap for a while now...that's why I own two players and a ton of movies. Some of you guys need to look at it from other people's point of views.What do you mean "nobody else does"? Also "you're kinda proving my point here.". Huh? How is he proving your point that "no one" notices the difference if he's talking about how people - even his older relatives - DO notice the difference?
The fact is this: you may not notice a difference, but a large majority do, myself and many others in this thread included.