Re: Blu-Ray player for $349

On Nov 23, 3:21 pm, The alMIGHTY N <natle...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Nov 20, 8:57 am, ninphan <sjburk...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Sorry Steveo but there's a lot of misinformation in your post.

Blu-Ray is much more expensive than HD DVD. This will always be the case
because it costs more to make Blu-Ray drives because of licensing as well as
a few technical issues (lesser cause).

I disagree and so do the people making the discs. If you look at
recent remarks and reviews made by Richard Casey the producer of R&B
Films who's responsible for "Chronos" and "Nature's Journey" (both
released on HD DVD and Blu-ray), he describes the differences between
releasing on both formats in cost as "negligible". This is coming from
a 20,000 copy independant release! If a 20,000 copy run shows a
"negligible" difference in cost I can only imagine that a 250,000 run
like "300" is much less than that!

Once you get past the pressing equipment, the cost difference is
negligible. However, the cost of converting existing DVD presses to
accomodate HD-DVDs is a fair bit less than the cost of installing the
new equipment necessary to press Blu-Ray discs at a mass level.

In any case, are you sure he's talking about the manufacture of the
discs themselves and not the manufacture of the players?

At this time, Blu-Ray has done an inferior job of utilizing the HD format.
It has done a poor job on many titles of transferring the video from the
master to the HD format. It has not utilized the extra capacity of the
disc, and so does not offer any additional features over the HD DVD format.

I think that's an unfair statement. There are plenty of crappy video
transfers in both formats. Perhaps it's more disappointing with Blu-
Ray since some of the really big releases like Die Hard and Robocop
were lazily done, but that's balanced out by stellar releases like
Cars and Ratatouille.

On the other hand, the really big releases on the HD-DVD side seem to
always come out well with crappy transfers being done more on less-
than-blockbuster films. But that's just from what I've seen and read.

Well I would venture that having lossless audio on over three times as
many discs as HD DVD has out as taking advantage of the format.

What really is the significance of having lossless audio when 99% of
the people out there can tell the difference? A commentary on
HighDefDigest.com a month ago about blind adherence to specs pointed
out just how ridiculous that frame of mind is.

"I should mention at this point that at least one working Hollywood
sound mixer has voiced his opinion that, when played back on his
professional dubbing stage, well-mastered Dolby Digital Plus
soundtracks encoded at the high 1509 kb/s bit rate that Paramount uses
can be audibly transparent to the studio masters, when tested on
movies that he mixed himself and would presumably know better than
anyone else. But what use is the informed opinion of an expert in the
field when it's easier to just point to the specs list on the back of
a disc's packaging to make conclusive statements about matters of
quality?"

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Joshua_Zyber/Commentary:_Specs...

I
would venture that utilizing the 60% more bandwidth that Blu-ray has
over HD DVD as taking advantage of the format.

Well, there's a question right there... how do any of us know exactly
what percentage of the greater disc space offered by Blu-Ray studios
are using on average? The video is really no different for all intents
and purposes... the extras are usually worse and of lesser quantities
on Blu-Ray discs... so where is all this space going? Does lossless
audio really take up that much room on a disc?





The reviewers would
seem to agree as well. If you look at the averages of over 1,000
reviews of HD DVD and over 1,000 reviews of Blu-ray from High Def
Digest, Home Theater Spot, Upcoming Discs, Home Theater Forum and DVD
Talk you'll get the following averages:

PQ SQ TOTAL HD DVD
3.88 3.61 3.74 HighDef
3.96 3.88 3.92 HTSpot
3.63 3.50 3.56 DVDTalk
3.98 3.80 3.89 Upcoming Discs
3.89 3.68 3.78 Home Theater Forum
3.84 3.67 3.76 Totals

PQ SQ TOTAL Blu-ray
3.94 3.81 3.87 HighDef
4.09 4.28 4.18 HTSpot
3.69 3.74 3.71 DVDTalk
4.03 4.12 4.07 Upcoming Discs
4.25 4.04 4.14 Home Theater Forum
3.94 3.96 3.95 Totals

That's an average of 0.10 higher in PQ and almost 0.30 in SQ! That
shows me that they are taking advantage of the format. Looking at this
by studio shows it in another view:

PQ? SQ? 0.10 higher? 0.30 higher? What does any of it even matter?
Just pop the discs in and enjoy them in your home entertainment
system. Both formats are equally good as far as visual and audio
quality. It's really very nonsensical to argue about those merits.





PQ SQ Total Studio
4.18 4.36 4.27 Buena Vista
3.99 4.16 4.08 Sony
3.81 4.08 3.95 Fox
4.01 3.84 3.93 Paramount
3.96 3.66 3.81 Warner
3.63 3.80 3.72 Lionsgate
3.80 3.63 3.71 Weinstein
3.71 3.63 3.67 Universal

Look at the three most highly reviewed studios - Disney, Sony and Fox
- the three studios releasing only on Blu-ray. If Warner were to
optimize for Blu-ray instead of encoding for HD DVD and then porting,
they'd average more highly as well. This has nothing to do with year
of release either as Warner has earned some of its highest marks for
its catalogue titles - like 1957's "The Searchers" - 4.5/5 for PQ on
HDD, 1942's "Casablanca" - 5/5 for PQ on HDD.

The most important issue with Blu-Ray, however, is that the specification
for Blu-Ray is not finished. The players on the shelf today conform to what
is known as "Profile 1.1" or "Profile 1.0". These specs detail what the
player has to have inside and how it works. For instance, Profile 1.0
players can't do picture in picture. Profile 1.1 players can - but only
sometimes with certain discs. There is an upcoming "Profile 2.0" standard,
but it isn't out yet. No one knows exactly if the discs that are produced
on Blu-Ray a year from now will work on the Blu-Ray players of today because
the specification is still not finished.

This is also false I'm afraid. Two weeks ago at the Blu-ray Disc Event
2007 in LA, Lions Gate showed off two of their new 1.1 titles,
including "War." They had it playing on the DMP-BD10 to show how the
player recognizes the disc is 1.1 and the player being 1.0 shuts off
access to the PIP featurette. You might believe the propaganda you
read on AVS to the contrary, but there's a big reason Panasonic
started the BD testing facility portion of the Panasonic Hollywood Lab
and that is so that software and hardware manufacturers can ensure
compatibility. Also I can assure you that profile 1.1 players will be
able to play all profile 1.1 discs. The first ones come out in January
(Lions Gate's War and 3:10 to Yuma, Fox's Sunshine and Sony's Resident
Evil 3.) and Fox already demonstrated "Sunshine" on the new profile
1.1 Panasonic DMP-BD30. Profile 2.0 is an optional specification,
which bumps the memory from 256MB to 1GB and requires an ethernet
port for connected content.

None of this is an issue with HD DVD. Any disc produced will play in any HD
DVD player with full functionality.

Providing long boot up times, shut downs in the middle of movies,
discs not loading up at all, etc., are all considered fully
functional. The first gen Toshiba players were a crap shoot and pretty
much every owner admits to that.

I bought a Toshiba HD-A2 and it's still slow as molasses when booting
up, even after upgrading the firmware over the Internet, which
alleviated a couple of crash and non-read errors I received (it worked
fine with 300, oddly enough, without any firmware upgrade).





So, while Blu-Ray holds a technical edge, that edge is not being utilized
and what you buy today might not work with discs a year from now. Seem
shady? Well, it's not the first time that Sony has treated its customers
like trash. Look up Sony +rootkit in google if you aren't familiar with the
way they treat their customers. What does Sony have to do with Blu-Ray?
While there are a number of CE companies on the board for Blu-Ray, it is
pretty much directed by Sony.

Sorry - that's totally wrong. There are 17 patent holders in Blu-ray
technology. Sony doesn't even give out the licences, Philips does. Any
changes in specs have to be ratified and approved by the Blu-ray Disc
Association; the founding members of which, minus Toshiba, were all
founding members of the DVD Forum. Sony cannot change anything about
the BLu-ray Disc format without the approval of Pioneer, Philips,
Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, JVC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Warner Bros.,
Walt Disney, etc.

Not quite...

The DVD Forum was founded by Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer,
Philips, Sony, Thomson, Time-Warner, Toshiba, and Victor.

The Blu-Ray Disc Association was founded by Hitachi, Matsushita,
Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, Sony, Thomson, Sharp, and LG.

But your point was right... :-)



To sum up: I would purchase the cheapo HD DVD player. At worst, you get a
decent player that continues to play your HD DVD movies and upscales SD DVDs
to 1080i for the price of a decent standalone upconverting DVD player (such
as an Oppo). It is not as if your HD DVDs will suddenly stop playing even
if HD DVD does die. In the best case scenario, you get the new standard for
optical disc media for $100.
steveo
PS - If I had to bet, I would bet on both formats being around indefinitely.

As I've already stated to the person - wait until next year to jump
in, you'll have a much clearer idea of where the format war is heading

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That article and many others that Joshua Zyber has written are very
biased towards HD DVD.
Josh wants you to believe that there is no difference between lossless
and lossy.
Josh wants you to believe that there is no chance of either format
getting mass market adoption, so you shouldn't worry about not
supporting HD DVD if your argument is that supporting HD DVD will help
lead to a stalemate and niche status will ensue.
I'm sorry but the only ridiculous things Josh's commentaries point out
on a regular basis are his tendancies to fight for Toshiba and HD DVD.

I'm sorry, but Josh Zyber is an HD DVD fanboy which is why he's always
having to make claims to the contrary. One anonymous poster from AVS
Forum called "Film Mixer" claims that DD+ 1.5 Mbps is transparent to
the master and that's good enough for you? Have you listened to the
difference between the DD+ and lossless TrueHD tracks on the HD DVD of
Training Day? You tell me one is transparent to the other, because I
think you'll find that's not the case.

As for how much bandwidth and capacity the studios are using, if you
go to the Blu-ray.com forums there is a sticky in the "Movies" section
entitled "Bandwidths" which is kept updated with all new discs as
they're released listing codecs, movie size, disc size, average video
bitrate, scanned bitrate, etc., etc.
.

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