[smacintush]

Originally Posted by mrtew 

I think DVD will disappear a LOT faster than LPs did when CDs came out. DVD's don't even have any various advantages over HD like LPs did over CDs so there's no reason to keep buying DVDs whatsoever. Once the winner is decided everyone will go get a $79 bluray player at wall-mart and buy BR discs even if they don't have an HDTV won't they? They will get a better picture, still be able to watch all their old DVDs, still be able to use their old TV, etc. and will stop digging themselves into a obsolete hole.

The reverse is true too. Besides resolution, there is no real advantage of jumping into HD over DVD and if you still have an old SD TV, there's no real advantage to a better resolution format.

Those old DVD players will last for YEARS. Why throw money away on something that you gives you no real gain? DVD's will die very slowly as those old DVD players die and as new people grow up, move out and buy their own stuff.

[Weezer]

The jump from DVD to HD-DVD is a lot less dramatic for your everday person than the jump from VHS to DVD was.

DVD added a completely different type of media, menus, extras, and works as intended with pretty much every TV out there via composite.

The jump to HD is much more evolutionary than revolutionary. Menus are better, extras are better, video/sound is better, but for the vast majority of consumers, not better enough at the previous price points.

Now that we are seeing $99-$199 HD-DVD players, I think it is a totally different ballgame. People have been easily spending that much on upconverting dvd players, so it's a no brainer to upgrade to the HD.

To say that DVD will drop as soon as the war is over is foolish. New releases will be coming out on DVD for atleast the next 4-5 years as the market gradually shifts towards newer sets and players. The adoption of DVD only took buying the new player and plugging it in. For most consumers, upgrading to HD movies requires a new 1k+ TV, new player, much more expensive disks, new audio receiver (if you want the new codecs), and new cables. To think that kind of mass market change will happen overnight is silly.

[exca1ibur]

DVD will be around for a while for the fact that HDTVs have to be a bigger market. Right now HDTV itself is new. Why would you buy an HD format disc, or even have HDTV from a cable company if you have an SDTV? The Digital TV revolution is still in transition, and will be for a while. The fact people overlook is you need an HDTV alone with your Blu-ray and HD-DVD player to get the advantage. Unless you own both what's the point? Why own an SDTV with a HD player? You will not see a difference in anything but audio, assuming you have the setup there as well. The VHS - DVD transition didn't require a new TV so that transition was easy.

When you get to a point where HDTVs are the majority market, with HD channels everywhere, the difference will be obvious between SD and HD for the general public. At that point the DVD market will start to decline, until then it will be around for a while. I'd guess at least 4-5 years.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by PaperNotes 

When you consider that low res video on phones and web browsers is so popular you kinda get the feeling not many give a **** about high definition until everything is in high definition bar none. Look at this factoid. This thread and its poll is very old but only has 47 votes. Sucky level of interest.

The poll is only two days old.

[goMac]

I haven't voted in the poll because I don't own either. I'd vote for neither, but with the HD-DVD player prices as they are, I may pick one up.

[mrtew]

Originally Posted by Weezer 

To say that DVD will drop as soon as the war is over is foolish. New releases will be coming out on DVD for atleast the next 4-5 years as the market gradually shifts towards newer sets and players. The adoption of DVD only took buying the new player and plugging it in. For most consumers, upgrading to HD movies requires a new 1k+ TV, new player, much more expensive disks, new audio receiver (if you want the new codecs), and new cables. To think that kind of mass market change will happen overnight is silly.

OK, you're the most exaggerated counterposter! Foolish, Silly? Wow. Foolish and silly is to keep buying more and more DVDs for the next four years while you save up for a huge screen HDTV. None of those high-end audiovisual things you list are required to start buying HD discs. All you need besides maybe a $299 HDTV is a $79 BluRay or HDDVD player. But they don't exist yet and even if they did only a silly fool would buy one knowing that the format that they start buying discs in might be gone soon. IF the war didn't exist any non-silly, non-fool would quit wasting their money on obsolete DVDs today and only buy HD discs starting tomorrow. As it is, I've pretty much stopped buying any movies at all until there's some kind of resolution and I'd think anyone that cared about their money and movie collection would too. Once there's a winner I definitely think the changeover will happen overnight.

[icruise]

I think the fact that they still sell "full screen" versions of DVDs says a lot about the average consumer's interest in HD movies. In my opinion, even if there was only one HD movie format, DVDs will still be going strong for some time unless the studios decide to just cut them off and force people to buy new players. My guess is that this would not be in their best interest, but you never know.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if DVDs disappear "overnight" as you say. The hard thing will probably be telling when one format or the other has actually "won" because the way things are going, it'll be a long struggle, and it's possible that there may never be one clear winner.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by mrtew 

OK, you're the most exaggerated counterposter! Foolish, Silly? Wow. Foolish and silly is to keep buying more and more DVDs for the next four years while you save up for a huge screen HDTV. None of those high-end audiovisual things you list are required to start buying HD discs. All you need besides maybe a $299 HDTV is a $79 BluRay or HDDVD player. But they don't exist yet and even if they did only a silly fool would buy one knowing that the format that they start buying discs in might be gone soon. IF the war didn't exist any non-silly, non-fool would quit wasting their money on obsolete DVDs today and only buy HD discs starting tomorrow. As it is, I've pretty much stopped buying any movies at all until there's some kind of resolution and I'd think anyone that cared about their money and movie collection would too. Once there's a winner I definitely think the changeover will happen overnight.

I'm not sure you could find anyone that would agree with that.

I went with my sister the other day to pick up Ratatouille on DVD. When it rang up at $14.99 I had forgotten how cheap DVDs were compared to the HD formats. Until prices come down across the board average consumers will stay away.

[mrtew]

Originally Posted by icruise 

I think the fact that they still sell "full screen" versions of DVDs says a lot about the average consumer's interest in HD movies....

This isn't the thread for debating 'full screen vs. wide screen of course, but if you research it you'll find out that you actually get almost the whole width of the original movie with many full screen DVDs and way more of the height that you even see in the theatre. They actually crop the frame to make it widescreen, not vice versa, contrary to popular belief! (of course widescreen IS the way the director intended it to be seen if that's important).

[Brien]

Well, depends really. Not all theatrical films are shot in 4:3 and matted, some are actually shot wide. But yeah, that is true a lot of the time.

[icruise]

In any case, it's really beside the point. All I was saying was that people who buy full-screen movies do it because they want the picture to fill up the screen on their standard-def TVs, and they are not going to go out and buy an HD movie player the second a winner is determined.

[Eug]

I went to the Toshiba/Universal/Warner HD DVD promo yesterday in Toronto. One guy was trying to tell the VPs of these companies that every new DVD release should be a HD DVD/DVD combo disc, or perhaps a Twin Disc so that everyone buying a DVD would automagically get an HD DVD.

The VPs very diplomatically said to him that even if cost weren't an issue (it is), it's still a marketing issue, because some consumers simply don't understand. They said that if they did that, they'd be very worried that they'd get a lot of them returned simply because they didn't understand that the disc wasn't playing because they had picked the HD DVD side and not the DVD side. I think this is true. It will take more penetrance in the market before average people really understand what HD DVD (and Blu-ray) really are.

OTOH, Paramount is releasing Star Trek on combo HD DVD/DVD only. No DVD release is planned. So there goes that argument. Too bad Paramount wasn't there, because it would have been interesting to hear their take on all of this. (Paramount wanted to be there, but had prior commitments.)

P.S. They gave us Ocean's Thirteen on HD DVD (along with I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry) as swag for showing up. Ocean's Thirteen isn't even out yet. Nice lunch too. They also had Shrek The Third playing during the break. Despite the fact that's not out yet either, nobody seemed to care.

One guy also walked out with a Toshiba HD-XA2 as a door prize. Lucky bastard.

P.P.S. They also had a commercial compressionist/DVD/HD/BD disc author there. It was interesting to hear his take on the war. I'll post more about it later but his take was:

1) VC-1 rocks in terms of video quality, and its encoding is fast. H.264 AVC rocks in terms of video quality, but it takes forever to encode, and many times longer than VC-1 for the same quality. MPEG2 cannot get close to either of them in terms of video quality with any reasonable bitrate, so they stay away from MPEG2 for HD.

2) 50 GB is irrelevant. Well not really. It may be relevant in outlier cases with a four hour movie with lots of extras. However, if you put extras on a second disc, 4 hours shouldn't be a major problem for 30 GB.

3) It takes them 2-3 days to author a complete commercial DVD, once they have all the assets in place. (Video encoding for MPEG SD is in real-time, so that's not an issue.) It takes them 4+ weeks for HD DVD or Blu-ray with all the fixin's. Encoding is variable bit rate 2-pass, and a fast VC-1 encode is about 8 fps for each pass, while slower ones are... slower. Then they have to manually select parts to re-encode. So that's about 4 fps (or 12 hours for a 2 hour movie), plus additional time for selective re-encodes. Because this takes so long on even VC-1, they don't use H.264 AVC at all, except for testing. Judging by their previous comments, a similar H.264 AVC encode would take days on their equipment.

4) They can do in-house HDi programming for HD DVD. They don't touch BD Java at all. Far too complicated for compressionists. They contract to 3rd parties for Java programming, and add in the Java applications later to their BD authored discs.

5) HD DVD and Blu-ray are completely different in terms of authoring. Basically the only major thing that can be shared is the encode, but the interactivity is programmed completely differently (as evidenced above), so basically it means that if a company is format neutral its authoring costs are nearly twice as much.

Originally Posted by mrtew 

This isn't the thread for debating 'full screen vs. wide screen of course, but if you research it you'll find out that you actually get almost the whole width of the original movie with many full screen DVDs and way more of the height that you even see in the theatre. They actually crop the frame to make it widescreen, not vice versa, contrary to popular belief! (of course widescreen IS the way the director intended it to be seen if that's important).

The intent is the more important measure here.

The camera may be matted for instance, even if it's filming in full frame. So a boom mike won't be visible in a widescreen matte, but it may be totally obvious in an unmatted DVD release. That's why unmatted releases may suck. For example, in A Fish Called Wanda, John Cleese is supposed to be naked in one scene. In the theatres, he was naked. On the unmatted DVD, you see his underwear.

[Brien]

Originally Posted by Weezer 

The jump from DVD to HD-DVD is a lot less dramatic for your everday person than the jump from VHS to DVD was.

DVD added a completely different type of media, menus, extras, and works as intended with pretty much every TV out there via composite.

The jump to HD is much more evolutionary than revolutionary. Menus are better, extras are better, video/sound is better, but for the vast majority of consumers, not better enough at the previous price points.

Now that we are seeing $99-$199 HD-DVD players, I think it is a totally different ballgame. People have been easily spending that much on upconverting dvd players, so it's a no brainer to upgrade to the HD.

To say that DVD will drop as soon as the war is over is foolish. New releases will be coming out on DVD for atleast the next 4-5 years as the market gradually shifts towards newer sets and players. The adoption of DVD only took buying the new player and plugging it in. For most consumers, upgrading to HD movies requires a new 1k+ TV, new player, much more expensive disks, new audio receiver (if you want the new codecs), and new cables. To think that kind of mass market change will happen overnight is silly.

If they even have receivers at all... it will be a very very long time before HD reaches mass-market the way it 'should'. Case in point would be the continual delay of the analog shut-off.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Eug 

I went to the Toshiba/Universal/Warner HD DVD promo yesterday in Toronto. One guy was trying to tell the VPs of these companies that every new DVD release should be a HD DVD/DVD combo disc, or perhaps a Twin Disc so that everyone buying a DVD would automagically get an HD DVD.

The VPs very diplomatically said to him that even if cost weren't an issue (it is), it's still a marketing issue, because some consumers simply don't understand. They said that if they did that, they'd be very worried that they'd get a lot of them returned simply because they didn't understand that the disc wasn't playing because they had picked the HD DVD side and not the DVD side. I think this is true. It will take more penetrance in the market before average people really understand what HD DVD (and Blu-ray) really are.

OTOH, Paramount is releasing Star Trek on combo HD DVD/DVD only. No DVD release is planned. So there goes that argument. Too bad Paramount wasn't there, because it would have been interesting to hear their take on all of this. (Paramount wanted to be there, but had prior commitments.)

Those issues (other than cost) go away with a Twin disc. And I'm told production on a Twin disc is a lot cheaper than a combo.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by mrtew 

OK, you're the most exaggerated counterposter! Foolish, Silly? Wow. Foolish and silly is to keep buying more and more DVDs for the next four years while you save up for a huge screen HDTV. None of those high-end audiovisual things you list are required to start buying HD discs. All you need besides maybe a $299 HDTV is a $79 BluRay or HDDVD player. But they don't exist yet and even if they did only a silly fool would buy one knowing that the format that they start buying discs in might be gone soon. IF the war didn't exist any non-silly, non-fool would quit wasting their money on obsolete DVDs today and only buy HD discs starting tomorrow. As it is, I've pretty much stopped buying any movies at all until there's some kind of resolution and I'd think anyone that cared about their money and movie collection would too. Once there's a winner I definitely think the changeover will happen overnight.

My parents, and many older people I know, would still be buying VHS tapes if they could.

I know I'll be buying some DVDs until a super cheap portable HD player is marketed. The built-in DVD player in my van is a very valuable asset during 3+ hour trips my family takes every couple weeks.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

Those issues (other than cost) go away with a Twin disc. And I'm told production on a Twin disc is a lot cheaper than a combo.

According to Universal's VP Marketing, even Twin Disc is a marketing issue. See below.

Here is my longwinded summary of the event:

-----

I went to the Toshiba/Universal/Warner HD DVD promo on Saturday in Toronto. Great event. Well organized and well-attended. Everyone was enthusiastic. Everyone involved deserves kudos for doing such a good job, especially on such short notice. BTW, They gave us Ocean's Thirteen on HD DVD along with I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry as swag for showing up, and Ocean's Thirteen isn't even out yet. Nice lunch too. They also had Shrek The Third playing during the lunch break. I have to admit though, not that many people seemed all that interested in Shrek the Third. Everyone was going gaga over the Blade Runner Limited Edition Box Set as well as the Harry Potter 1-5 box set when Warner showed them to us. One guy also walked out with a Toshiba HD-XA2 as a door prize. Lucky bastard.

Some points from the talk:

XA2 to get 7.1 bitstream support over HDMI next week.

Did a demo of a 1080i60 source vs. a 1080p24 source on a 1080p60 TV. Nobody could see a difference.
Did a demo of a 1080p24 source on a 1080p24 capable 120 TV, and on the same TV with 24p support turned off. Nearly everyone could see a difference, because the lack of jitter.

Did an audio comparison of DD+ vs TrueHD PCM vs TrueHD HDMI 1.3. Hard to compare since the volumes were a bit different.

-----

They had a commercial compressionist/DVD/HD/BD disc author there. It was interesting to hear Pat's take on the war.

1) VC-1 rocks in terms of video quality, and its encoding is fast. H.264 AVC rocks in terms of video quality, but it takes forever to encode, and many times longer than VC-1 for the same quality. MPEG2 cannot get close to either of them in terms of video quality with any reasonable bitrate, so they stay away from MPEG2 for HD completely. They stay away from AVC as well because of the encoding times (but not because of quality). He prefers VC-1 to AVC in terms of the look but overall it's pretty much a wash, and he knows some who prefer the look of AVC.

2) 50 GB is irrelevant. Well not really. It may be relevant in outlier cases with a four hour movie with lots of extras. However, if you put extras on a second disc, 4 hours shouldn't be a major problem for 30 GB. They feel confident in saying for the vast majority of situations 50 GB = 30 GB in terms of video quality, because they have the original uncompressed video to compare at any time.

3) It takes them 2-3 days to author a complete commercial DVD, once they have all the assets in place. (Video encoding for MPEG SD is in real-time, so that's not an issue.) It takes them 4+ weeks for HD DVD or Blu-ray with all the fixin's. Encoding is variable bit rate 2-pass, and a fast VC-1 encode is about 8 fps for each pass, while slower ones are... slower. Then they have to manually select parts to re-encode. So that's about 4 fps (or 12 hours for a 2 hour movie), plus additional time for selective re-encodes. Because this takes so long on even VC-1, they don't use H.264 AVC at all, except for testing. Judging by their previous comments, a similar H.264 AVC encode would take days on their equipment. He had said their test encodes can take 6-7X as long for AVC vs. VC-1.

4) They can do in-house HDi programming for HD DVD. HDi is similar to XML + Javascript. They don't touch BD Java at all - far too complicated for compressionists. They contract to 3rd parties for Java programming, and add in the Java applications later to their BD authored discs. Memory conservation is very important regardless of the format. For example, on Surf's Up BD, the pinball game is 64 MB. BD's Java implementation is very robust. Any problems with compatibility isn't the fault of BD Java per se, but that of the firmware of the players. Contracting out Java can be a problem because memory conservation becomes more difficult (since they have little control over what the 3rd parties do with the code), as does testing.

5) HD DVD and Blu-ray are completely different in terms of authoring. Basically the only major thing that can be shared is the encode, but the interactivity is programmed completely differently (as evidenced above), so it means that if a company is format neutral its authoring costs are nearly twice as much. For HD DVD they use a Sonic Scenarist solution, but for BD they're forced to also use more Sony produced software which is not user friendly. Testing is also harder on BD since there the same type of emulated HD DVD environment. (I hope I got that right.)

6) BD requires AACS on all discs, so it's harder to demo interim work. On HD DVD for short clips, they just burn to cheap DL DVD-R without AACS for that.

7) Blu-ray discs waste more of their space, because of a very large lead-in and lead-out, but still have significantly more space than HD DVD.

8) His personal opinion, but he says at this point with current prices, it makes almost no sense to get any BD player besides the PS3. It's the most feature rich and the most potentially upgradable for the cheapest price.

-----

Wayne, VP from Warner was a very animated guy, and a very good speaker. Some points.

Reaffirmed their dual-format status, and says he's seen the 2008 slate which at this point continues to include both formats. Nonetheless they are watching Q4 closely. TotalHD is not quite dead, but almost dead.

Canada year to date: 61% BD ($7.6 million), 39% HD ($4.8 million) (including all companies).

Somebody asked about Kubrick discs and why they're so hard to get. They said they underestimated demand, and haven't been able to ramp up easily because most of the replication is going towards Harry Potter. No HD or BD replicators in Canada. Elsewhere in the world, there are many HD replicators, but BD replicators are rare (effectively only Sony). For SD replication, there's one just down the street (Cinram).

Top 8 titles in Canada in terms of $ in 2007 YTD. (I didn't write down the rest of the top 20 because I ran out of time.)
Planet Earth BD
300 BD
300 HD
Planet Earth HD
Casino Royale BD
Transformers HD
POTC Dead Man's Chest BD
POTC - can't remember which one

Planet Earth on SD was predicted to ship 5000 copies in Canada. YTD they've shipped 120000. The popularity of Planet Earth on BD/HD also totally shocked them but they didn't give us numbers.

Extras? Yes they matter, esp. for some movies.
- Some filmmakers love it. They almost demand it now, and actually tailor their workflow to be able to include stuff for extras.
- 300 on SD sold a crapload of the higher-priced special-edition two-disc sets, so there's lots and lots of extra money to made by including extras.
- It helps combat piracy since people have to pay to get the extras. If they just had the disc with nothing else, they think many would simply stop buying.

Go see I Am Legend, not only because it is supposed to be good movie, but also because it will have the Batman: Dark Knight trailer.

The definitive director's cut of Blade Runner is being screened right now in Toronto at The Regent. It's listed for a couple of weeks, but the run will be extended if it does well.

-----

Universal's VP, Richard, was less animated but a very good speaker, and very diplomatic. One guy was trying to tell the VPs of these companies that every new DVD release should be a HD DVD/DVD combo disc, or perhaps a Twin Disc so that everyone buying a DVD would automagically get an HD DVD.

The Universal VP very diplomatically said to him that even if cost weren't an issue (it is), it's still a marketing issue, because some consumers simply don't understand. The Warner guy then said that if they did that, they'd be very worried that they'd get a lot of them returned simply because they didn't understand that the disc wasn't playing because they had picked the HD DVD side and not the DVD side. Universal said even Twin Disc would be confusing to some consumers, as he still sees people in store wondering if they should get widescreen vs. full-screen, because they don't know exactly what the difference is. I think this is true. It will take more penetrance in the market before average people really understand what HD DVD (and Blu-ray) really are. With such a miniscule market share by hi-def types, it's asking too much to risk DVD sales.

OTOH, Paramount is releasing Star Trek on combo HD DVD/DVD only. No DVD release is planned. So there goes that argument. Too bad Paramount wasn't there, because it would have been interesting to hear their take on all of this. Paramount wanted to be there, but had prior commitments. So the Toshiba guy simply summarized their coming release schedule, and the fact that Transformers sold extremely well.

The Kingdom will be out on HD DVD in Canada before the US, only by a few days, but it's a very important few days. I think Universal said Dec. 26 for USA and Dec. 21 for Canada, so it will be an interesting experiment.

Spielberg movies had appeared on the slate, but then were dropped. He said while they could release those movies without permission from Spielberg, the sales gained would not overcome the problems encountered by pissing off Spielberg.

Universal's VP agrees that extras help combat piracy, because a lot of people like them. Their info tells them the average Canadian watches 46 minutes of extras, even on rental discs. The average Quebecer watches 63 minutes of extras, or 17-18 more minutes than average Canadians for whatever reason.

They tried hard to get Tricia Helfer to come to help launch Battlestar Galactica on HD and SD at a store, but she charges way, way too much money for these types of appearances.

Web enabled extras will be supported for quite some time, but there will be a window around the release. Don't expect to necessarily get web enabled extras for say an 8 year old disc.

-----

Dave's Toshiba wrap up:

Going forward, all Toshiba HD DVD models (including the HD-A1), will be getting updates when necessary. Maybe not for 10 years, but for the next couple of years at least. The XA1 can't be updated to 1080p though.

The A2 is now discontinued.

Q4 is VERY important, since the last 8 weeks of the year represents 68% of yearly sales.

In September the HD-A2 outsold their SD4000 DVD player in Canada, which is their only sub $100 player here (at $69), and a player which is #4 overall in Canada for DVD players. The A2 also sold well in October, but then they ran out of stock in the first two weeks of Oct. Going forward it will be the A3 at the low end. No more A2.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Universal said even Twin Disc would be confusing to some consumers, as he still sees people in store wondering if they should get widescreen vs. full-screen, because they don't know exactly what the difference is.

If you only offer a single version (read: no full screen) there would be no confusion and no marketing problems.

[Chongo]

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/S...-DVD-89353Sony CEO Wishes Blu-Ray had Collaborated with HD DVD
Format wars haven't been good for anyone involved
11:29AM Sunday Nov 11 2007 by KathrynV
tags: Video · competition · business
Sony’s Blu-Ray has consistently managed to compete with HD DVD in the battle for the public’s high-definition love. However, CEO Howard Stringer wishes that the battle had never begun. Stringer says that the war has been all about bragging rights which ultimately doesn’t serve the customers that they are trying to gain. He wishes that they’d worked more closely in collaboration in the past to develop a single outstanding high-def product, rather than wasting time battling to beat out HD DVD.

The change of heart could come from the fact that Blu-Ray’s edge up in the battle has decreased considerably since Paramount announced support of HD DVD several months ago. Despite Stringer’s desire to go back and change the past, he doesn’t seem to be moving forward with any sort of collaboration at the current time. The format wars are expected to continue for at least another year before consumers show a definite interest in one over the other.

[drmcnutt]

We just picked up the $99 HD-DVD players last week. Have had a PS3 since last Christmas. I like the formats, but I am intrigued by the dual format HD-DVD disks. For homes that have several DVD players it makes sense. Right now I pick HD for things I wouldn't share with say the kids like 300, but films they may enjoy like Pixar films I still buy in standard DVD so we can enjoy them together and then on their TV. It would be the best of both worlds and save buying multiple copies of the same movie which I won't do at this point.

[icruise]

Originally Posted by Eug 

I went to the Toshiba/Universal/Warner HD DVD promo on Saturday in Toronto.

I'll have to say that you seem way more interested in this kind of thing that most of the rest of us here, Eug. You went to an HD-DVD promo event just for fun?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by icruise 

I'll have to say that you seem way more interested in this kind of thing that most of the rest of us here, Eug. You went to an HD-DVD promo event just for fun?

Heh. That was my GF's question too.

But yeah, esp. cuz it was organized specifically for people like us, not for industry types. And the free swag didn't hurt either (although I wasn't expecting it). It was close by anyway.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Oh no not again:
"The one last comment I wanted to make however pertains to the video quality. I was expecting to be blown away by remastered TOS on disc, and at times I was. But I was also expecting the quality to be significantly improved from the high-def broadcasts, given how much better the video bit rates should be on disc, and I wasn't so much. I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason why that would be - because it shouldn't be - other than that the video may have been compressed a little too much to fit these episodes on to the HD-30 portion of the combo discs."

The Digital Bits - Celebrating Film in the Digital Age

[Eug]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Oh no not again:

Indeed. Every time you link TDB, your credibility drops another point.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Indeed. Every time you link TDB, your credibility drops another point.

Hey! I go to the Digital Bits for all my unbiased HDM news!

[Dakarʒ]

Three days between posts, a new record.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Indeed. Every time you link TDB, your credibility drops another point.

Not like I care but why you hate them so much? Did I miss something?

Anyway I was hoping you would post some bitrates showing that they could easily have fit it on a 30 gig disk or something exciting like that

[ort888]

People hate them because Bill Hunt (or whatever his name is) is a ridiculous Blu-ray fanboy who constantly writes terribly biased and one sided HD DVD smear pieces.

[jokell82]

The 51gb disc is now officially part of the HD DVD spec:
Steering Committee meeting, (Nov. 15, 2007)

Hopefully we'll get some real world tests soon.

[Eug]

The PS3 will get BD Profile 1.1 support soon. <-- Beware of seizure-inducing banner ads.

I wonder if/when the PS3 will get BD 2.0 support with network interactivity.

Originally Posted by jokell82 

The 51gb disc is now officially part of the HD DVD spec:
Steering Committee meeting, (Nov. 15, 2007)

Hopefully we'll get some real world tests soon.

It was officially part of the HD DVD spec last month too. It was 1.9 last month. This month it's 2.0. However, none of us knows what that actually means. The most important thing to know is whether or not it will work on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gen players. Cuz if it doesn't, then that will be just as lame as BD 1.0 players that can't be updated to 1.1 and 2.0.

[Adam Betts]

Originally Posted by Eug 

The PS3 will get BD Profile 1.1 support soon.

"Blu-Wizard 2," which lets the PS3 "remember" viewing preferences for each movie you play. That means if you get the settings exactly the way you like them, watch the movie, eject it, and put it in months later, the PS3 will recall your settings for that one particular disc.

That's damn nice! Looking forward to it especially since I have to enable subtitle each time I watch any Blu-ray movies

[Eug]

Disney votes for 51 GB HD DVD

Walt Disney Home Entertainment, a major Hollywood studio and one of the strongest backers of Blu-ray disc format, voted for approval of a preliminary specification of 51GB triple-layer HD DVD media, just like all the backers of HD DVD and unlike some other backers of Blu-ray Association within the DVD Forum, who typically abstain in HD DVD-related votes.

[powerbook867]

Wow, the Disney backing is a big deal IMHO. I am still thinking about buying a PS3 in the future, but Disney flicks would make HD-DVD much more appealing.

I am assuming the triple layer disks are compatible with current players?

[jokell82]

That's what we're all assuming right now...

[mrtew]

Why hasn't there been any more talk of a dual HD-DVD and BluRay player. What even happened to that one that was on the market.... or was it cancelled?

[Teronzhul]

The dual that has been on the market is the LG BH100. It works except for lacking HDi and the fact that its price tag was more than that of an entry level HD DVD player and a separate Blu-Ray player combined.

LG has recently released its successor, the BH200. Samsung is also releasing a dual format player later this year, the UP-5000.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by powerbook867 

Wow, the Disney backing is a big deal IMHO. I am still thinking about buying a PS3 in the future, but Disney flicks would make HD-DVD much more appealing.

I'm not sure how big of a deal it is. The HD DVD insiders have stated that one of the main companies pushing for 50/51 GB was Disney, for potential future use. So, even though Disney is pushing Blu-ray now, I could see them voting for 51 GB HD DVD simply as a backup in case Blu-ray doesn't do so well, esp. since TL45/51 probably was mainly for them anyway. It should also be noted that Disney helped Microsoft design HD DVD's HDi interactivity.

We knew this already but what all this does confirm to us is that Disney isn't as firmly entrenched in Blu-ray as companies like Sony.

I am assuming the triple layer disks are compatible with current players?

That's the hope, but the DVD Forum has not claimed that yet. They are in the testing phase at the moment.

[Eug]

I just ordered the Star Trek Season One (Original Series) HD DVD / DVD Combo set which came out today. I was holding off because of the price, but couldn't pass up the DeepDiscount deal for $106.

The sales of this should be interesting, as there is just the one SKU for both the HD DVD and DVD... They both come in the one package. There is no DVD-only version.

[powerbook867]

that looks sweet...

Must resist temptation to get credit card....

[mrtew]

Originally Posted by powerbook867 

that looks sweet...

Must resist temptation to get credit card....

That's the kind of thing that could push me over to the other side.

[Eug]

Wall Street Journal numbers on the war:

[voodoo]

Why ST:TOS in HD?

It wasn't recorded in HD. DVD is an overkill.

V

[icruise]

It was shot on film, so they can get pretty good resolution out of the original prints.

[jokell82]

Yep, same reason movies like Casablanca can be in HD.

[Eug]

I don't have my copy of Star Trek Season 1 yet, because they're backordered at Deep Discount.

However, I've heard the image quality is stellar. They went back and cleaned up much of the film elements, and yeah, film is higher resolution than HD.

Ironically, it may be harder to get Star Trek: The Next Generation out on HD, because the show was targeted for SD video and I believe the CG effects were all SD. ie. No film source for any CG'd parts to work with directly. They could go back and revamp all that though if they wanted, like they did for the original Star Trek. However, for Babylon 5 for instance, the studio apparently seems to have no interest in revamping it for HD, cuz it would simply take far too much work.

And yeah, Casablanca looks great in HD. No, it's not as good image quality as Transformers, but it's still an excellent HD release.

[icruise]

Yeah, some of the effects on Star Trek: The Next Generation look a little janky even on DVD.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Ironically, it may be harder to get Star Trek: The Next Generation out on HD, because the show was targeted for SD video and I believe the CG effects were all SD. ie. No film source for any CG'd parts to work with directly. They could go back and revamp all that though if they wanted, like they did for the original Star Trek. However, for Babylon 5 for instance, the studio apparently seems to have no interest in revamping it for HD, cuz it would simply take far too much work.

They could really do some great stuff if they redid the CG though. Generations was the first mostly computer rendered nextgen movie and it looked great.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by icruise 

It was shot on film, so they can get pretty good resolution out of the original prints.

Hmm.. that means I'll have to get Miami Vice in HD! Yay!!

(seriously, I assumed ST:TOS was recorded on TV cameras, because it was seriously low budget. Film is expensive)

V

[goMac]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

seriously, I assumed ST:TOS was recorded on TV cameras, because it was seriously low budget. Film is expensive)

What else would they have recorded the show to besides film?

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by goMac 

What else would they have recorded the show to besides film?

Well gosh darn golly, maybe if you read what you quoted you wouldn't ask braindead questions, now would ya?!

That has to be the dumbest question I've had all week.

Not saying you are dumb, just for the record.

V

[Eug]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Well gosh darn golly, maybe if you read what you quoted you wouldn't ask braindead questions, now would ya?!

That has to be the dumbest question I've had all week.

Not saying you are dumb, just for the record.

Quoted for clueness irony.

P.S. Not that it matters, but I believe that Star Trek's pilot episode was one of the most expensive pilots ever made up until then.