[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Socially Awkward Solo

You forgot the line that says it ONLY happens in the menu and not the movies. Also something that can be fixed with a ROM update but this smells of typical samsung crap.

Even if it's only the menu, it's a deal-killer at least for my primary TV, cuz it's very, very annoying.

I have this same issue with an HD cable box on my secondary TV when using 1080i. My HD PVR is fine, but my HD non-PVR box is not. It's not a deal killer though on a secondary TV because that TV is 720p anyways, so there's not much point in using 1080i, and I didn't pay much for the box either.

P.S. That model of the HD cable box has had several ROM updates, and none have corrected the 1080i menu issue, despite the fact there is no such issue with the higher end PVR model.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Even if it's only the menu, it's a deal-killer at least for my primary TV.

I have this same issue with an HD cable box on my secondary TV. My HD PVR is fine, but my HD non-PVR box is not. It's not a deal killer though because that TV I normally have it hooked up to is 720p anyways, so there's not much point in using 1080i, and I didn't pay much for the box either.

P.S. I've had several ROM updates, and none have corrected the 1080i menu issue.

Well duh, simple fact is you wouldn't have got this player at that price no matter how stellar it was.

Not to mention this problem doesn't mean it is on ALL future blu-ray players.

Eug, what ever happened to MPEG2 being able to look at good as MPEG4. If so why does starman think sony dropped the ball by going with MPEG2?

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Socially Awkward Solo

Well duh, simple fact is you wouldn't have got this player at that price no matter how stellar it was.

Correct. At $500 it's a consideration, but at $500 with this issue it's a dead deal. Too bad it's $1000 - a doubly dead deal.

Not to mention this problem doesn't mean it is on ALL future blu-ray players.

Of course.

Eug, what ever happened to MPEG2 being able to look at good as MPEG4. If so why does starman think sony dropped the ball by going with MPEG2?

I'm not sure what you're asking, but there are a couple of issues.

1) MPEG4 ≠ H.264. Well it can be said that H.264 is a subset of MPEG4, but usually when you're talking MPEG4 you mean something different.

2) MPEG2 can look pretty much as good as H.264 or VC-1, but it takes a much higher bitrate to achieve that in general. The point is that 25 GB makes for excellent H.264 and VC-1 discs, but 25 GB can sometimes be problematic with MPEG2, particularly on long movies, because there is not enough disc space. That is why 50 GB is preferred for MPEG2.

eg.

Let's say an ideal VC-1 disc is 20 Mbps. That means it's 2.5 MB/s, or 150 MB/min, or 18 GB for a 2 hour movie. On a single-layer 25 GB Blu-ray disc that leaves around 7 GB for audio and extras. Perfect.

Let's say an ideal MPEG2 disc is 36 Mbps. That means it's 4.5 MB/s, or 270 MB/min, or 32 GB for a 2 hour movie. Uh oh...

Even at 30 Mbps, that's 27 GB. Probably they had to stick with something like 24 Mbps instead, to fit onto a single-layer Blu-ray disc. Now, 24 Mbps MPEG2 ain't bad, and it's better than most broadcast MPEG2 HD. However, many claim it is often visibly worse than 18-20 Mbps VC-1.

In truth though, most of the time I wouldn't care all that much. I'd probably be relatively happy with 24 MPEG2. What I want is an end to the format war, and reasonably priced hardware and software... and a better software selection too.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

We need to keep in mind that this thread is NOT about Toshiba vs. Samsung which is what Starman is quickly turning into. It is about the format.

Right now it seems that both players are **** and expensive.

As for the movies themselves it is a toss up. Look at first gen DVD's. Most of them are not even anamorphic, widescreen or in 5.1 audio. Look at them today, the look amazing for what the format can do.

The DVD players have also gotten much better. My current Sony DVD player looks 10x better than my previous LG player which was only 6 months older.

Not all blu-ray titles are bad. Out of the few out there 50 first dates apparently looks amazing, so it is all about the studio's getting the transfers right.

[starman]

How am I turning it into that? Where did I say that it was JUST about the players?

You said yourself

"Eug, what ever happened to MPEG2 being able to look at good as MPEG4. If so why does starman think sony dropped the ball by going with MPEG2?"

[Eug Wanker]

Actually, in a lot of ways the thread is about Toshiba vs. Sony. IMO, Sony fscked up the Blu-ray launch, on multiple levels. So did Toshiba for HD-DVD, but not quite as badly IMO.

50 first dates probably does look great... Actually I saw that movie on DVD and it (the content) wasn't terrible, but I'm constantly amazed that the studios (on both sides) pick movies like this for launch titles. WTF?

Anyways, considering my main TV is only a 34" (widescreen), I'm sticking with DVD for now. Yes, even broadcast HD looks better than the best DVD on my screen, but not enough for me to spend $$$$ on a mediocre player and discs, in the midst of a stupid format war.

[olePigeon]

There is not god damn apostrophe in plural words.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

Ya no way in hell am I buying either player.

The current of each gen stinks and I am no fan of samsung.

I am going to get a PS3 and a couple movies at most. If the player in the PS3 is average then I will buy a Blu-ray player only when they drop to $350 or a clear winner is decided.

[MaxPower2k3]

I have an Apple HD demo disc lying around with DVCPRO HD sample files on it, so i figured i'd try some different compressions on a clip and see how it handled it. The source is 1080i60 and all of the recompressed clips are 1080p24.

I used a clip with water moving past an iceberg. there's a lot of detail in the iceberg and the moving water is tough to compress. Here is a frame from the original 116mbit DVCPRO HD clip:


I used Compressor to convert the clip to a 25mbit average/29 mbit maximum MPEG2 file (as high as Compressor will go, unfortunately). Granted, this is the stock MPEG2 encoder included with every copy of FCP, and not a real professional encoder Sony is probably using, but it's still pretty disappointing. The glacier looks quite nice, with no noticeable loss of detail from the source, but the water did not fare so well, with blocking everywhere.


I also did H.264 at 20mbits. The result was slightly desaturated compared to the source, but not too bad. May be the smaller colorspace in Apple's H.264 compared to DVCPRO, or it could just be a bad encoder. Detail wise, the H.264 version looked slightly smoothed over, with the finest details on the glacier not quite as sharp as in the source or even the MPEG2 encode. The water, however, was a spot-on match to the source, with no motion issues whatsoever. I also did a 10mbit H.264 encode, which looked almost identical to the 20mbit, but with marginally reduced contrast in the smaller details. The 20mbit was a bit more pleasing overall, but not significantly.



I thought this showed pretty well the strengths of H.264 versus MPEG2 (namely, motion handling ability) at these bitrates. If they actually are using something in the 25mbit range for the first blu-ray movies, i'm not surprised the results are disappointing. Even with a better encoder, I can't imagine it's a very clean picture. If they have space to bump the bitrate up another 12mbits or so to ~36, then some of the motion issues might be resolved, in which case I'm sure the picture would look great, but on these first single-layer BR discs, it was an odd choice to stick with MPEG2.

If HD-DVD had done the same, it might have been accepted simply because it's still better than what's broadcast, but since HD-DVD has already proved that it could be better with the same amount of space, it looks like Sony shot itself in the foot.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

I guess we know why sony keeps delaying their players.

[Eug Wanker]

Wow, that MPEG2 grab really is quite blocky in spots. Yeah, it's probably better with the higher end MPEG2 encoders, but still...

Anyways, the MS guys are claiming that an 18 Mbps VC-1 encode if done by an experienced compressionist with a top end commercial encoder will give quality nearly transparent to the source. I've heard nobody claim that for MPEG2 under 30 Mbps.

The MS guys are also claiming that VC-1 reproduces film grain better than H.264. I wonder how true that is, but some claim that H.264 smooths things out even when it's not desirable.

Side Topic: HD-DVD includes the option for Film Grain Technology, but Blu-ray does not. Whether that's important at all or even good, I dunno. However, even on HD-DVD, FGT is not an option for VC-1.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

Wait a minute, 6 months ago there was all sorts of chatter here that MPEG2 can look just as good as MPEG4. Now it sucks?

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Socially Awkward Solo

Wait a minute, 6 months ago there was all sorts of chatter here that MPEG2 can look just as good as MPEG4. Now it sucks?

Did you not even read the last several posts?

1) We are talking about H.264 and VC-1. The usual MPEG4 is not even supported on Blu-ray or HD-DVD.

2) MPEG2 can look as good as H.264, but it takes a much higher bitrate.

That's what most of the last batch of posts have been saying, in response to when you posted this question the first time. In fact, here is my post all over again:

I'm not sure what you're asking, but there are a couple of issues.

1) MPEG4 ≠ H.264. Well it can be said that H.264 is a subset of MPEG4, but usually when you're talking MPEG4 you mean something different.

2) MPEG2 can look pretty much as good as H.264 or VC-1, but it takes a much higher bitrate to achieve that in general. The point is that 25 GB makes for excellent H.264 and VC-1 discs, but 25 GB can sometimes be problematic with MPEG2, particularly on long movies, because there is not enough disc space. That is why 50 GB is preferred for MPEG2.

eg.

Let's say an ideal VC-1 disc is 20 Mbps. That means it's 2.5 MB/s, or 150 MB/min, or 18 GB for a 2 hour movie. On a single-layer 25 GB Blu-ray disc that leaves around 7 GB for audio and extras. Perfect.

Let's say an ideal MPEG2 disc is 36 Mbps. That means it's 4.5 MB/s, or 270 MB/min, or 32 GB for a 2 hour movie. Uh oh...

Even at 30 Mbps, that's 27 GB. Probably they had to stick with something like 24 Mbps instead, to fit onto a single-layer Blu-ray disc. Now, 24 Mbps MPEG2 ain't bad, and it's better than most broadcast MPEG2 HD. However, many claim it is often visibly worse than 18-20 Mbps VC-1.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

"Obviously, this is only Sony's decision and as Blu-ray's specs rule that players need to support all approved video formats, including VC-1 and AVC, it means that other studios are free to use whichever format they prefer. But as Sony is likely to be the first studio to roll out large selection of Blu-ray -movies, it might give a wrong impression of the format's capabilities. Most people obviously wont care what the internal video format used is, as long as it provides better-than-DVD picture quality in HDTV-resolution. "

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/7067.cfm

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Socially Awkward Solo

"Obviously, this is only Sony's decision and as Blu-ray's specs rule that players need to support all approved video formats, including VC-1 and AVC, it means that other studios are free to use whichever format they prefer. But as Sony is likely to be the first studio to roll out large selection of Blu-ray -movies, it might give a wrong impression of the format's capabilities. Most people obviously wont care what the internal video format used is, as long as it provides better-than-DVD picture quality in HDTV-resolution. "

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/7067.cfm

Yeah, unfortunately, all the initial movies are done by Sony, who is MPEG-2 only initially. Actually, it kind of surprised me, considering they have lots of experience with H.264, which is the format of UMDs for the PSP.

Also from that link:

"By using either AVC or VC-1, Sony could have achieved even better picture quality for the movies that will use 1080i video resolution (1920x1080 as opposed to 720x480 on standard American DVDs). However, Sony claims that with Blu-ray's increased storage capacity (minimum of 25 gigabytes versus maximum of 8.5 gigabytes on DVDs), even MPEG-2 provides "good enough" picture quality when compared to DVDs. But, when considering mathematically the situation, their claim doesn't hold water -- HD-quality video, using 1920x1080 resolution has exactly six times more pixels than NTSC DVD-Video has, but Blu-ray's storage space is only about three times larger than dual layer DVD's storage space. Thus, the bitrate per pixel will be lower, if comparing side-by-side a DVD packed 100 percent full of video and Blu-ray full of HD-quality video. Sure, the better resolution most likely makes up the difference more than enough, but still the decision is rather unexpected."

[Socially Awkward Solo]

Some more info:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051208-5713.html

So I guess it is petty much sealed that it is the movie owners discretion as to what they can use.

Sony is just being stupid by using MPEG2 now or it could be just because it is rushed.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Socially Awkward Solo

Some more info:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051208-5713.html

So I guess it is petty much sealed that it is the movie owners discretion as to what they can use.

Sony is just being stupid by using MPEG2 now or it could be just because it is rushed.

Yeah, I think it's mainly because they're rushed, and they probably don't want to use VC-1 much either (since Microsoft makes money off VC-1), so the only other option is H.264.

Apparently the compression tools from Sony are mature for MPEG2, but for some reason for Blu-ray they're not so mature for H.264, despite the fact they use H.264 for UMD. Unfortunately, there aren't too many good 3rd party tools apparently.

So, while technically the studios can choose whatever they want, right now that choice consists of MPEG2 only.

I agree it probably won't matter much to the general public, but Blu-ray is only for the early adopters right now, and they're the biggest complainers around.

BTW, this will all become moot when 50 GB discs hit the streets, but we don't have those either...

[Socially Awkward Solo]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

I agree it probably won't matter much to the general public, but Blu-ray is only for the early adopters right now, and they're the best complainers around.

Yup they sure are.

Also keep in mind what I said about early DVD releases. I found myself re-buying many DVD's because the original release was so crappy.

The colour purple for example had to be flipped half way though the movie and it was non-anamorphic and grainy. Nobody at the time complained about movies like this.

Years later they sold a dual layer disk that corrected the above.

[residentEvil]

hahaha, the color purple. you could have at least talked about a good movie like se7en being a flip disk or just about 200 other movies.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

Originally Posted by residentEvil

hahaha, the color purple. you could have at least talked about a good movie like se7en being a flip disk or just about 200 other movies.

Screw you that movie ROCKS!

My 7even was never a flip. I think colour purple was the only one. The others were only flips for widescreen or fullscreen.

[Eug Wanker]

My Se7en was not a flipper either.

Das Boot was a flipper though.

P.S. The Director's Cut of Das Boot will absolutely require VC-1 or H.264 on HD-DVD. It's over 3 and half hours long. At 16 Mbps, that's 26 GB. After you add a bunch of Hi-def audio tracks, there's not much space left. I guess the extras will go on a second disc.

On a (so-far hypothetical) Blu-ray 50 GB dual-layer disc, that second disc would not be required... unless MPEG2 was used.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Socially Awkward Solo

this smells of typical samsung crap.

The same happens in Mac OS X.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

The same happens in Mac OS X.

It sure does. Apple hardware also.

Problem is Samsung doesn't release many products without widespread problems. I mean how can they not even know how to make a DVD player without black crush 10 years later?

[residentEvil]

Originally Posted by Socially Awkward Solo

Screw you that movie ROCKS!

My 7even was never a flip. I think colour purple was the only one. The others were only flips for widescreen or fullscreen.

Yes, it was. I still have it. Also, the movie Sleepers (NOT the woody allen movie, hahaha) is a flip disk. Let see, what else do I have that is a flipper. Casino or Goodfellas. Don't remember, don't watch them cause it is a flipper.

[starman]

Well, BR is pretty much a loser. Not one positive review of any BR title.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

Originally Posted by starman

Well, BR is pretty much a loser. Not one positive review of any BR title.

Out of the 3 all from the same studio 50 first dates got a good review as mentioned above.

I was going to say the same about HD-DVD though, I haven't seen one good review on the player.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Socially Awkward Solo

My 7even was never a flip

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

My Se7en was not a flipper either.

Originally Posted by residentEvil

Yes, it was. I still have it.

There was more than one version of Se7en released on DVD in the US. Also, both SWG and I are in Canada. Not sure if the first Canadian version of Se7en was a flipper or not, but there were most definitely dual-layer non-flipper Se7en DVDs available in the US.

Despite both being Region 1, sometimes the discs from Canada and the US were very different. IIRC, the first version of The English Patient DVD in Canada was a flipper, but it was always a dual-layer disc in the US. Canadians loudly complained, and it was re-released as a dual-layer disc in Canada later.

P.S. I got Dances With Wolves on DVD before it was actually released for general consumption. It came free with my DVD player. Luckily I didn't like the movie much and I sold it for US$50 to some guy down south.

[starman]

Originally Posted by Socially Awkward Solo

Out of the 3 all from the same studio 50 first dates got a good review as mentioned above.

I was going to say the same about HD-DVD though, I haven't seen one good review on the player.

The review of 50 First Dates is irrelevant. You have PROMISES from Sony about superior technology, they release The Fifth Element on HD for the first time EVER, and they botch the release. Now, does anyone give a rat's ass about 50 First Dates? And BTW: the review of 50FD wasn't stellar either, just "better than the others".

Sony should be embarassed by this.

As for the Toshiba, everyone agrees it was a turd out of the gate, but the firmware update solves a lot of problems. At least HD-DVD sofware looks stunning.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by starman

The review of 50 First Dates is irrelevant. You have PROMISES from Sony about superior technology, they release The Fifth Element on HD for the first time EVER, and they botch the release. Now, does anyone give a rat's ass about 50 First Dates? And BTW: the review of 50FD wasn't stellar either, just "better than the others".

Sony should be embarassed by this.

As for the Toshiba, everyone agrees it was a turd out of the gate, but the firmware update solves a lot of problems. At least HD-DVD sofware looks stunning.

Well, I don't give a rat's ass about The Fifth Element either. It's been released so many damn times on DVD and it's not as if it's a stellar movie in the first place. Mind you, I don't give a rat's ass about most releases on HD-DVD right now.

[Eug Wanker]

The Digital Bits (who has been championing Blu-ray all along) sez:

There are some problems I'm seeing right away with all of the Blu-ray Disc titles on the BD-P1000. First, when I switch to 1080i, I'm noticing some very obvious scaling issues that I don't see when the player is set to 720p. I also don't see anything like this on the Toshiba HD-A1 at any resolution, so this is specific to THIS player, which may be why Samsung ships it with 720p set by default. Second, I'm noticing a very slight "studdering" problem. About once a second, or maybe once every few seconds, the video seems to hesitate for just a instant - a tiny fraction of a second. You notice it most when the images on screen are moving quickly, or when the camera is panning. It may be that this issue is related to the first. Still trying to figure out what I'm seeing here. Lionsgate's Lord of War was the title where I noticed it first, and I'll have to check them all before knowing whether it's just this title or all of the discs. Again, it's not something I've seen on any HD-DVD titles thus far.

If I had to compare my initial impressions of Blu-ray Disc to those of HD-DVD... well, I certainly need to see more Blu-ray titles and spend more time with the player. I'm really just giving you my initial, off-the-cuff comments, based on less than 10 hours of viewing time with the Samsung. It's worth noting that we've only seen one player for each format, so it's hard to say what issues are specifically related to the players, and what are format related. But right now... I think I may end up giving Round One of this format war to HD-DVD, and that surprises the hell out of me. Sure, that Tosh HD-DVD player was a lemon until the firmware upgrade, but it's worked like a charm since. And the first 25 or so HD-DVD discs I've viewed just look better overall than the first 4 Blu-ray Discs I've seen. The HD-DVDs also have a LOT more extra features than the Blu-ray Discs (even if you consider that most of the extras are recycled from standard DVD). For the record, Terminator on Blu-ray has 7 deleted scenes and 2 featurettes, recycled from standard DVD. Fifth Element has a pop-up trivia track, again from the standard DVD. The Lionsgate titles have nothing. I keep hearing these comments (both official and unofficial) from Blu-ray execs saying that they're leaving off the extras so they can give all the extra disc space over to the best video quality possible. Which tells me that Blu-ray is having major disc space problems. I've heard from more than a few industry sources that Blu-ray is having trouble getting the dual-layered BD media to work, which means that discs with lots of extras and good video quality aren't an option now. It also means that longer movies aren't an option now either. Both are problems for this format that don't seem to be troubling HD-DVD at the moment - at least not at first glance, based on the initial title offering.

[Ken_F2]

I think I may end up giving Round One of this format war to HD-DVD, and that surprises the hell out of me. Sure, that Tosh HD-DVD player was a lemon until the firmware upgrade, but it's worked like a charm since. And the first 25 or so HD-DVD discs I've viewed just look better overall than the first 4 Blu-ray Discs I've seen.

I keep hearing these comments (both official and unofficial) from Blu-ray execs saying that they're leaving off the extras so they can give all the extra disc space over to the best video quality possible. Which tells me that Blu-ray is having major disc space problems. I've heard from more than a few industry sources that Blu-ray is having trouble getting the dual-layered BD media to work, which means that discs with lots of extras and good video quality aren't an option now. It also means that longer movies aren't an option now either. Both are problems for this format that don't seem to be troubling HD-DVD at the moment - at least not at first glance, based on the initial title offering.

Who hacked the Digital Bits? That guy was the most anti HD-DVD, pro-BD person on the planet.

[goMac]

I heard something interesting the other day from a birdie at Apple. Apparently Apple is planning on waiting until the dust settles in the high def DVD war. They are part of both the DVD forum, which is handling HD-DVD, and the Bluray forum, and as far as management is concerned Apple is neutral in the whole DVD war. It was then noted that Apple's video software can burn either to HD-DVD or Bluray.

You're welcome to believe me or not believe me. I won't care either way. Just thought I'd share for those interested. It wasn't new information that was given to me, more a clarification of things already public, given that Apple hasn't said they are firmly in the Bluray camp. The way Apple sees it, if they are in both camps, they can't lose.

[CaseCom]

Release for Sony's BD player now pushed back to Oct. 25, according to sonystyle.com.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by CaseCom

Release for Sony's BD player now pushed back to Oct. 25, according to sonystyle.com.

Do you have a link? Sony's BD launch just gets worse and worse...

Originally Posted by Ken_F2

Who hacked the Digital Bits? That guy was the most anti HD-DVD, pro-BD person on the planet.

Is there an echo in here? But yeah, a bit surprising coming from him.

Originally Posted by goMac

I heard something interesting the other day from a birdie at Apple. Apparently Apple is planning on waiting until the dust settles in the high def DVD war. They are part of both the DVD forum, which is handling HD-DVD, and the Bluray forum, and as far as management is concerned Apple is neutral in the whole DVD war. It was then noted that Apple's video software can burn either to HD-DVD or Bluray.

You're welcome to believe me or not believe me. I won't care either way. Just thought I'd share for those interested. It wasn't new information that was given to me, more a clarification of things already public, given that Apple hasn't said they are firmly in the Bluray camp. The way Apple sees it, if they are in both camps, they can't lose.

Yeah. Apple did say they were favouring Blu-ray, but their actions stated that were probably more neutral, given that DVD Studio Pro supported HD-DVD first.

[Landos Mustache]

On the plus side Blu-ray disks are way cheaper than HD-DVD

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-ente...hat-182533.php

[starman]

UNiversal just dropped the price on their HD-DVDs, so price is no longer an issue.

[torsoboy]

Looks like a player that plays both formats is in the works (ships end of year or early 2007): http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2979

Now everyone can stop arguing... it doesn't matter anymore. If the same player plays both formats, just get whichever version you like (or that is available) and pop it into your player.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by torsoboy

Looks like a player that plays both formats is in the works (ships end of year or early 2007): http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2979

Now everyone can stop arguing... it doesn't matter anymore. If the same player plays both formats, just get whichever version you like (or that is available) and pop it into your player.

It won't be realistic for laptops though as it adds a lot of size.

[torsoboy]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

It won't be realistic for laptops though as it adds a lot of size.

Riiiiiight. Like they wont figure out how to fix that in a year or less.

[Eug Wanker]

I just hope they get to a 9.5 mm drive size sooner rather than later. Personally, I might have preferred if Apple had just stuck with 12.5 mm drives... No dual-layer DVD burning support in my MacBook, much less Blu-ray/HD-DVD.

[CaseCom]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Do you have a link? Sony's BD launch just gets worse and worse...

SonyStyle

Engadget

[kaze0]

They blu it. I was another person who thought Blu Ray was going to stomp all over HD DVD. I sitll bought the hd dvd player cause it was cheaper though, its beginning to look like the right decision now. The bad word of mouth is going to hurt blu ray no matter how quick they move to 50 gig discs or a better codec.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by kaze0

They blu it. I was another person who thought Blu Ray was going to stomp all over HD DVD. I sitll bought the hd dvd player cause it was cheaper though, its beginning to look like the right decision now. The bad word of mouth is going to hurt blu ray no matter how quick they move to 50 gig discs or a better codec.

Actually they BOTH have equal bad reps now.

"With the debut of HD DVD at an underwhelming 720p/1080i, coupled with a buggy interface and a transport that makes boiling water seem like a speedy event, the entrance of high definition DVD into the mainstream came out of the starting gate lame and hobbled. For Toshiba to release a player that didn’t support true HD at 1080p (even though the software does), and with no lossless audio format to accompany the video track, the high definition wave was more of a ripple. Add to this the delay of HDMI 1.3, lack of market penetration and supply, and a dearth amount of software titles and you have a very unimpressive product launch."

http://www.audioholics.com/news/edit...DVDsfailed.php

Thing is it doesn't matter this early. Really.

The ones bitching are the SMALL early adapter geek crew. When the PS3 ships people will buy the PS3 plus a blu-ray movie just to try it out no matter what.

By then the players will have dropped in price also and more titles that are mastered better will appear. When the average consumers start to pick up the titles is when the war really starts. Normal consumers do not read boards to see that if you look really closely you can see artifacts because sony used MPEG2.

[Eug Wanker]

The geeks have renewed respect for HD-DVD ever since that new firmware came out. Hell, even The Digital Bits says HD DVD is OK, and that's a total shock to me, cuz had been dissing HD-DVD whenever they could get the chance.

Samsung could very well improve its hardware with a firmware update, but unfortunately the Blu-ray software issues won't change, unless they re-release the discs.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

The geeks have renewed respect for HD-DVD ever since that new firmware came out. Hell, even The Digital Bits says HD DVD is OK, and that's a total shock to me, cuz had been dissing HD-DVD whenever they could get the chance.

Samsung could very well improve its hardware with a firmware update, but unfortunately the Blu-ray software issues won't change, unless they re-release the discs.

Absolutely, good thing the titles that came out in MPEG2 are **** to begin with. Lets pray batman is not.

[starman]

Ok, so here's the deal.

I opened up my BR player. Now, my projector is a Yamaha LX-500, the LX-510 has HDMI input, so my only choices are HDMI->DVI or Component for video. The HDMI->DVI solution's been flaky on both HD-DVD and BR so, as with the Toshiba, I went with Component for the BR player.

Is T5E a bad tansfer? You betcha.

The Terminator looked AMAZING.

I did not have time to play with U:E.

Does BR suck? Well, here's the thing. It turns out that thedigitalbits posted this morning that component video looks vastly superior to HDMI output.

" Well... it looks like the scaling problems I've been having with the BD-P1000 at 1080i are specifically related to the HDMI output. I've switched to component and BAM... not only are the scaling problems gone at 1080i resolution, but now I'm seeing more vibrant color reproduction. Significantly more vibrant color, that really pops off the screen. Go figure."

Now, I can use HDMI->DVI better on the Samsung than the Toshiba. I'll have to try this out.

This COULD explain why all these people are seeing crap; they're using HDMI.

My only issue with the "it's a crappy BB display" excuse is that HD-DVD content looks amazing on these very same displays.

The other issue with the Sammy is that the pairs of analog 5.1 outputs are lablled fine for movies, but when you use a test tone under Speaker Setup, the machine reverses the channels (center is sub, left is right, sr is sl).

[Landos Mustache]

Starman, I am not surprised, Samsung is ****. I had so many bad experiences with them.

I told you not to hold anything against blu-ray over ONE player and the first round of disks.

Oh and the HD-DVD players are selling at a loss:
http://www.digitalhomecanada.com/content/view/1342/51/

[starman]

Well, I'm going to try out U:E and see how it is before I reserve judgement on the machine.

If it's good, then I'll dip into something like 50 First Dates or Ultraviolet next week. I have 3 more weeks before I can return the unit.

As for the Samsung, I can live with the test tone issue. The HDMI isn't a problem FOR ME, but I can see how it's going to be a serious issue for other people.

However, Pioneer and Sony are going to be releasing players for $1500+ in a few months. Even though the Sammy isn't the best machine on the market, I can work around its flaws and save $500. Panasonic announced a $1300 player today.

Why the f--- are these machines SO MUCH MONEY?

[Landos Mustache]

Honestly I would return it either way and wait for second gen machines. I assume you are getting a PS3 so that might hold you over.

[starman]

The problem with the PS3 is that I put the game consoles in little cubbyholes under the TV stand so moving it between upstairs and downstairs to play games and watch movies is going to be a pain in the ass.

I could wait for a 2nd gen machine, but I'll play around with it this weekend and decide.