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Will 2010 (Finally) Be Blu-ray's Year?
- Thread starter HardOCP News
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I am fully aware, I used to encode my own portfolio DVDs before all potential clients (thankfully) decided they preferred looking at material on the web.
No way, the best encodes would fill up an entire DVD, easily. And I'm not just talking Criterion's or Pixar's stellar transfers either.
Absolutely, bad encoding is always a risk. The HD-DVD for The Game looked horrible, might as well have been a standard DVD. That doesn't change the fact that the ceiling for quality has been raised and the potential for significantly better image quality is there. And with few exceptions, they hit the mark. The number of BR discs I have with stellar encoding far exceeds the mediocre ones, and I can count the horrible "might as well be DVD ones" on one hand.
MPEG2, an ancient codec, with a 9GB storage ceiling, is not going to compare to VC-1 or h.264 with a 50GB storage ceiling, it will never happen. I've seen recent DVDs and there is simply no comparison, and there is absolutely no avoiding the same compression artifacts that plagued even the best encodings back in 2000, I'm sorry. I see the same motion artifacts, pixellation in deep shadows and deep colors, etc etc.
I actually have a relatively new VHS/DVD combo player for old material, believe it or not. Either way it is an irrelevant argument. We are arguing about what is the absolute best, not comparing mediocre or barely passable with the worst. Who cares that one thing is a little less horrible than the other thing when you have something else that is completely awesome, which you also happen to be arguing against for some crazy reason. WTF?
One thing I forgot to add re: this -
Nope, sorry, no way. I still pick up DVDs every now and then since everything unfortunately still isn't on Blu Ray, and I call complete bullshit on that. Don't assume that I don't pick up new DVDs, I do, and it has the same compression issues that they had before. There is only so much blood you can squeeze from a stone until it has no more to give.
Nope, sorry, no way. I still pick up DVDs every now and then since everything unfortunately still isn't on Blu Ray, and I call complete bullshit on that. Don't assume that I don't pick up new DVDs, I do, and it has the same compression issues that they had before. There is only so much blood you can squeeze from a stone until it has no more to give.
Apples and oranges- The jump to optical vs tape was a totally different medium and tech.
The jump to DVD was revolutionary, BR is just an outgrowth of DVD.
I'm starting to wonder that myself- Friends who talk about HD on cable who clearly have not seen an over the air uncompressed broadcast till they come over my house and are blown away.
There seems to be a lot of people here trying to justify thier BR purchases while ignoring what people are buying or watching.
Cracks me up...
Till DVD is dead BR will not garner large market share, I almost expect studios to start releasing crappy DVDs that look like VHS rips to force people into BR.
HTPC upgraded two days ago(LG drive), first BD Disk picked up last night (Pans Labyrinth $9.99).
I had watched plenty of HD downloads before, but there were still macro-blocking in some backgrounds and there was this odd bit of motion artifacting, micro stutter or something (I have an 8800GT and my CPU usage is very low) that I couldn't put my finger on.
On the micro-stutter, I thought it was my HTPC. But playing the Blu Ray was sublime, no artifacts, no motion artifacts, no micro stutter. It was just perfect.
Yeah my 87 year old grandma won't ever upgrade to Blu Ray, but anyone who actually cares about quality will.
Price is getting close to a non issue. If you hunt you can get Blu Rays at good prices today.
In a year or two prices will be a parity with DVD, and no one but a luddite would by a DVD in that case. Smart buyers saw this coming and stopped buying DVDs a year ago.
Streaming sucks even for some low res TV channel sites, forget actually enjoying a clean HD movie.
Blu Ray all the way.
I had watched plenty of HD downloads before, but there were still macro-blocking in some backgrounds and there was this odd bit of motion artifacting, micro stutter or something (I have an 8800GT and my CPU usage is very low) that I couldn't put my finger on.
On the micro-stutter, I thought it was my HTPC. But playing the Blu Ray was sublime, no artifacts, no motion artifacts, no micro stutter. It was just perfect.
Yeah my 87 year old grandma won't ever upgrade to Blu Ray, but anyone who actually cares about quality will.
Price is getting close to a non issue. If you hunt you can get Blu Rays at good prices today.
In a year or two prices will be a parity with DVD, and no one but a luddite would by a DVD in that case. Smart buyers saw this coming and stopped buying DVDs a year ago.
Streaming sucks even for some low res TV channel sites, forget actually enjoying a clean HD movie.
Blu Ray all the way.
This subject has grown worn and tattered.
Clearly, the GP just doesn't care about BR. They've all seen BR on big screens in the stores and evidently, it's just not that big of a deal over DVD. It's better but by such a small margin that the GP isn't impressed. Couple the fact that BR hardware and discs are still more expensive than standard DVD...
BR will be adopted when it prices itself evenly with DVD. The product isn't good enough to supplant DVD on its own merit.
Clearly, the GP just doesn't care about BR. They've all seen BR on big screens in the stores and evidently, it's just not that big of a deal over DVD. It's better but by such a small margin that the GP isn't impressed. Couple the fact that BR hardware and discs are still more expensive than standard DVD...
BR will be adopted when it prices itself evenly with DVD. The product isn't good enough to supplant DVD on its own merit.
So how about the fact BR has grown more rapidly than DVD did in its early years? Sales revenue are up 224% from last year while DVD revenue are down 8%.
I say this holiday will be a big stepping stone for next year. The sale of HDTVs, PS3 slims, and the name-brand Blu-Ray players under $150 are just setting everything up.
Here's a graph from HighDefDigest showing projected with actual:
I say this holiday will be a big stepping stone for next year. The sale of HDTVs, PS3 slims, and the name-brand Blu-Ray players under $150 are just setting everything up.
Here's a graph from HighDefDigest showing projected with actual:
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Please support this with evidence... because at the growth rate BluRay is experiencing relative to DVD at equal time periods, let alone matched weeks from last year against itself, it looks like the opposite of what you say is the case to me. That's not to mention we're in a bust economy vs. a boom one back when DVD was trying to make inroads to the market (2000's dot-com).
DonInKansas
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Non-HDTVs are being pretty much phased out. You can't even buy a regular tube/flatscreen TV at Walmart anymore. It's all LCDs.
Microstutter? Usually a CPU going into sleep mode too often. Try getting to the task manager, right clicking on the process thats decoding the DVD and raise its priority to "Above normal". Seems to happen quite a bit with the new Windows 7 (too aggressive of a power conservation profile)
not the same, DVD was very clearly better then VHS but was an entirely new platform. of course Blue ray is DVD 2.0 and . for a lot of people blu ray only offers a marginal improvement. I'm not saying your wrong here but I don't think the comparison is the same
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FTA OTA is pretty damn sweet.
Up here in West Canuckistan (Calgary Canada) we finally got our first OTA HD broadcast this year - By 2011 it should be 11 or 12.
I think the idea around here was "all or none" for OTA. The US you guys get way more terrestrial signals now that you've forced digital broadcasts this year.
Up here in West Canuckistan (Calgary Canada) we finally got our first OTA HD broadcast this year - By 2011 it should be 11 or 12.
I think the idea around here was "all or none" for OTA. The US you guys get way more terrestrial signals now that you've forced digital broadcasts this year.
I generally agree. About the only thing that holds me back from 100% agreement is the lack of cheap 32GB (or larger) flash drives. Alternatively the lack of SD readers on every PC (including those that you don't own).
At this point, the best way to back up your HD is to use another HD.
With that said, I'm glad that BD won, since it has the larger capacity of the 2. Maybe I'll never need it, but if I have to use a high capacity optical disk, i'd rather have 25GB instead of 15GB (I assume that all multi layer disks will be very expensive, just like DL DVD-R).
I don't know how to author video, so I don't know any of the ins and outs, but I suspect that mastering it is part science and part art. Hell, look at CDs. It took years for them to get that right.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.
I'm not so picky that I've got to replace every disk every time a better vesrion comes out, but I am careful to read reviews, because there's no doubt that the quality will improve over the next few years. Hopefully they'll have it down to a science by the time the SEs of LOTR hit BD.
Nobody was saying this year was THE year for BD. What we said was that sales would increase, that prices would drop and that they were already falling faster than they did for DVD. All of that was and is true.
Mass acceptance won't happen for another 3 years (give or take a year). This isn't SACD vs DVD-A (which might have made it if both formats didn't persist (forever).
Blu-ray is a marginal improvement over DVD compared to DVD's improvement over VHS. DVD offered much much more than just picture quality.Marginal? Is that a new internet meme for "amazing" or something?
And DVD lost a lot too, such as the ability to record shows - when it first came out too. I'd hardly call it an improvement by your average person's standard.
DVD recorders and DVR didn't come until much later.
The visual improvement between VHS and DVD is smaller than the improvement between DVD and Blu-ray. VHS is 240, DVD is 480. Blu-ray is 1080. So no, DVD to Blu-ray is not marginal by a long shot compared to DVD and VHS.
That's a stretch. DVD brought a format that people could record their movies on easier on the PC, it allowed easy starting and stopping, extra features, smaller format, faster speeds, vastly improved reliability and durability, etc, etc. I think you guys are forgetting just how big of an improvement DVD was to the average consumer. DVD was a game changer in that regard. Blu-ray is nothing more than an evolutionary step.
You are aware that the average lifespan of a TV is nine years right?
Instead of spouting specs, perhaps you should get yours checked.
VHS looks like total ass compared to DVD, BR is at the point of diminishing returns.
Rewinding was one of many annoyances VHS had. Tapes coming apart and winding themselves on the VCR heads was a big one. I can't tell you how many women called in tears because their wedding videos were ruined. Not to mention that every time you played the tape it slowly ruined the video. VHS was garbage every way you looked at it so DVD was a much bigger deal.
I never said anything about VHS looking good or bad. I'm well aware of DVD's improved quality over VHS. If you've been following along with what I've been saying in this thread, including the first time I've quoted you, I've been saying that there's been improvements along the way. DVD looked great compared to VHS. Blu-ray looked great compared to DVD.
Why does it sound like some of you guys are sticking your fingers in your ears going "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" when we're trying to show you guys how much Blu-ray improved? My mentioning specs just help back my statement up. It wasn't meant to be a be-all explanation.
Sounds a lot like the Blu-ray supporters in these threads
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+1. DVDs improvement over VHS is 1000 times that of BR over DVD.
I know. I've got to hand it to the BR fanatics. They've got the best beer goggles in town.
Yep, I agree with this as well. DVD allowed almost instantaneous skipping of chapters whereas on VHS, you'd have to take a guess, rewind for fast forward 30 sec., and hope you're at the next or previous "chapter". No guesswork involved with DVD. And a lot more extras and audio substitution (such as different languages) are available with DVD compared to the 1-lang. choice of VHS. Not to mention director's commentary as the film is being played and so on.
BR improves on everything DVD does, but doesn't "revolutionalize" like the way DVD did over VHS.
I'd argue that the significantly higher bitrates which increase color depth and accuracy, reduction or elimination of compression and motion artifacts, are a little more important than the increase in pixel count. A Blu Ray played back at 480p would still look better than a DVD at 480p. The massive increase in resolution is great though, don't get me wrong.
DVD made viewing movies more convenient, it brought the features of Laserdisc. Which is what I had during the VHS era, to the mass consumer. It was still plagued with image quality issues that have finally been taken care of with Blu Ray. Now we're in a golden era of image quality and you've got blind people here saying that BR is irrelevant without backing up their claims with data, amazing!
So how about the fact BR has grown more rapidly than DVD did in its early years? Sales revenue are up 224% from last year while DVD revenue are down 8%.
I say this holiday will be a big stepping stone for next year. The sale of HDTVs, PS3 slims, and the name-brand Blu-Ray players under $150 are just setting everything up.
Here's a graph from HighDefDigest showing projected with actual:
Quiet, the front page forums are no place for backing up your argument with hard data and facts!
Laserdisc had this stuff years before DVD came about. Chapter skipping aside, it was the first format with extensive behind the scenes material, alternate audio channels for directors commentaries, etc. The Aliens Laserdisc from 1991 was groundbreaking, it was almost like film school in a disc. The problems were that they were always very expensive ($35-$100 even right before they were phased out), the players were always expensive, and the discs needed flipping and swapping. Either way, all of the "innovations" of DVD were nothing new, and there certainly wasn't an improvement in image quality with that move either.
If you have low standards, sure. To my eyes the leap is massive, as big a generational leap as there ever has been. The fact that this generational leap has resulted in something I have NO issues with (I had Laserdisc instead of VHS and was sick of DVD's compression artifacts and limitations before it caught on with the mainstream) is pretty amazing.
But Blown, in 2000 the people you're talking about weren't buying DVDs. The folks with 20-25" sets were generally happy with their VHS and, more often than not, unaware of this DVD thing.
Even if DVD was the biggest jump in quality, the people weren't buying it. The naysayers were still saying it might not make it. There were still writers saying that it might be overshadowed by streaming video and PPV.
None of that happened.
FYI, to give an idea of HDTV penetration and how fast it's growing I provide 2 links
2008 33%
2009 46%
At that pace, we'll be at 75% next year.
Yup. Back in the day it was a big deal that The Matrix broke a million in sales. Nobody was sure that DVD would catch on at that time. There was a real fear that it would be the next Laserdisc. History repeats.
That Blu Ray has gained acceptance faster than DVD did while dropping in price much faster than it did has me optimistic for its future.
Of course, certain people will continue to ignore facts and base their opinions on pure rhetoric, so whatever.
But Serpico, we're just rabid Blu-ray fanboys! We're just kidding ourselves if we say that Blu-ray is leaps and bounds ahead of DVD!
I have 3 dedicated HD players (4 counting the WD TV LIVE) and only watch over the air uncompressed HD, I'd wager that my standards are higher than most board members on this subject.
I still feel that DVD's full potential is not realized, but the public generally has spoke with their condemnation of Superbit DVD's which tended to take out all the fluff (like 4-5 different audio tracks, 2-3 different languages, subtitles, extra footage, easter eggs) in favor of an extra 2GB of videodata or so.
People just didn't care for the extra video data.
From a technical standpoint there is actually *a lot* of life still left in the DVD format. Much like every 1.44MB floppy is actually capable of 2.0MB (Of which Microsoft was almost exclusively starting using the 1.8MB format for all of their distribution before the CD-rom took over)
DVD is actually not 8.5GB, its 8.5GB of massively redundant data (to recover from not just minor, but major scratches at a bit level) I mean you can really stick a piece of electricians tape representing the worst scratch in history - and most DVD's nowadays (with large buffers) will play through it without a hitch.
The original Mpeg-2 is also quite dated, but must be adhered to to maintain compatibility with the original DVD spec. Its very easy to get better quality at less than half the bitrate using an Mpeg-4 replacement. Or likewise, much better picture with the same bitrate.
There was a whole two years or so before HDDVD and Blu showed up, where players were definitely flashable or capable of decoding Mpeg-4. But noone really did - cause like Superbit DVD's noone really cared. DVD was good enough...
If I could find the old article - The NFL was trying to figure out when to make the "jump" to HD broadcasting. They could have gone HD digital long before they actually did, but they determined by panel that it was not a priority. The priority was actually upgrading the "old" camera system. By "old" I'm talking about the cameras that were not filled with special fluids that create smooth side to side motion.
So the NFL spent nearly 100 million dollars or so (that would have otherwise went to HD upgrading at the time), and incorporated new fluid technologies into the camera to create smoother pans and a very expensive gyro stabilizer to minimize the awful "camera shake" when the wind starts to pickup.
Its important to put the money where its necessary. And as many highdef people are beginning to figure out - the weakness is not the digital DVD or the bitrate, the weakness is more often than not a weakness of the camera or the original film (black levels)
People just didn't care for the extra video data.
From a technical standpoint there is actually *a lot* of life still left in the DVD format. Much like every 1.44MB floppy is actually capable of 2.0MB (Of which Microsoft was almost exclusively starting using the 1.8MB format for all of their distribution before the CD-rom took over)
DVD is actually not 8.5GB, its 8.5GB of massively redundant data (to recover from not just minor, but major scratches at a bit level) I mean you can really stick a piece of electricians tape representing the worst scratch in history - and most DVD's nowadays (with large buffers) will play through it without a hitch.
The original Mpeg-2 is also quite dated, but must be adhered to to maintain compatibility with the original DVD spec. Its very easy to get better quality at less than half the bitrate using an Mpeg-4 replacement. Or likewise, much better picture with the same bitrate.
There was a whole two years or so before HDDVD and Blu showed up, where players were definitely flashable or capable of decoding Mpeg-4. But noone really did - cause like Superbit DVD's noone really cared. DVD was good enough...
If I could find the old article - The NFL was trying to figure out when to make the "jump" to HD broadcasting. They could have gone HD digital long before they actually did, but they determined by panel that it was not a priority. The priority was actually upgrading the "old" camera system. By "old" I'm talking about the cameras that were not filled with special fluids that create smooth side to side motion.
So the NFL spent nearly 100 million dollars or so (that would have otherwise went to HD upgrading at the time), and incorporated new fluid technologies into the camera to create smoother pans and a very expensive gyro stabilizer to minimize the awful "camera shake" when the wind starts to pickup.
Its important to put the money where its necessary. And as many highdef people are beginning to figure out - the weakness is not the digital DVD or the bitrate, the weakness is more often than not a weakness of the camera or the original film (black levels)