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In Reply to: RE: No, its basically over posted by Jack G on January 04, 2008 at 13:33:11
I'd agree that this is a decisive win for Blu-Ray, but Blu-Ray is still competing against the proverbial 800 lb gorilla: DVD. This will keep them honest, and keep pressure on Sony et al to broaden Blu-Ray's appeal. And Blu-Ray really needs to knock more people's socks off and more consistently than it has been, because let's face it, some transfers scarcely look better than their DVD counterparts, and folks notice that sort of thing immediately.
Follow Ups:
As Oscar said, they are going to have to add value either perceived or real, to get people to buy into it. They are also going to have to lower prices dramatically for both hardware and software. And they are also going to have to be alot better and clearer about video profiles. We'll have to see what CES brings next week. Marantz is introducing a new player, but I heard it was basically a rebranded Denon. It won't be cheap.
Lets see how thing go.
Jack
Audio and video quality are a big part of it, but the overall Blu-Ray experience needs to have a certain "wow" quality: Not much fun to pay $25 for a movie only to find what few bonus features it has are poorly presented, and rather than the little movie-specific booklet, just a generic leaflet extolling the virtues of Blu-Ray. It's like buying a first-class ticket but getting economy-class service. The overall buzz I've gotten to date about Blu-Ray (and HD DVD for that matter) has been positive, but not overwhelmingly so, and it's now up to the Blu-Ray camp to pick up that slack.I'm not sure that the public as a whole wants to know about B-D Profile 1.0 vs 1.1. In fact, I thought Toshiba erred by treating HD DVD too much like a computer product and freely issuing firmware updates every couple of months. Far better that movies remain backwards-compatible with 1.0 players aside maybe for more advanced bonus content, and best to ease into that gently since some folks are still paying for their 1.0 players.
PLAYER prices need to reach a point where more folks are willing to take their chances, but the movies themselves don't need to go head-to-head with heavily discounted DVDs. That will take care of itself as the B-D market grows and economies of scale kick in.
I've this quesy feeling the newer 1.1/2.0/whatever Blu-ray discs may force periodic updates on 1.0 players to allow playback.
The November '07 Fox titles also forced a firmware fix probably related to first use of BD+; I don't know much about how BD+ works but will it force a firmware update every time they change the BD+ protection scheme ? Or has Fox given up on ever making it effective ?
My player has already been discontinued with warranty to expire within a couple of months. I wonder how long LG will continue to provide firmware updates to support evolving blu-ray discs ?
Even though my Sharp BD player was made with the original BD+ programing in it, They did recently have to put out a FW update, or the new (December) Fox discs wouldn't play-they would read then shut off. Next week, Sunshine, a Fox title and the first 1.1 title, will be out. It could be interesting.
Jack
Thanks for the heads up.
.
> > > Not much fun to pay $25 for a movie only to find what few bonus features it has are poorly presented, and rather than the little movie-specific booklet, just a generic leaflet extolling the virtues of Blu-Ray. It's like buying a first-class ticket but getting economy-class service. < < <
Tell that to Fox, who's $40 Bds frequently have less features than the corresponding DVD.
But eventually the CE manufacturers will compete with each other for market share (just like with DVD).
I think part of Warner's decision is based on the development in BDA profiles. I imagine a prerequisite for their decision was knowing in advance of BDA player announcements prior to CES. I don't particularly care for PIP/IME/frills but Warner, Disney et al seem to think these are vital selling points.
DVD market is already saturated (hence reason for DVD sales decline). Blu-ray will still have to show some value added (probably more than picture/sound quality improvements) to get DVD content owners to doubledip; especially with higher HD media prices.
For the movie, a 50GB Blu-ray disc with a DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack mated to a high bitrate AVC video encode. Couldn't get any better than that with today's technology. Any bandwidth that's still available and any room that's left over on the disc after that or a BD25/BD9 could be used for the extras (depending on how much space the extras needed).
A world of video bitrate-starved, mediocre Universal and Warner releases on 30G discs was not my idea of HD media heaven. "Bourne Ultimatum" and "Transformers" turned out to be pretty good transfers but these were the exception in my meager HD DVD collection.
Audio-wise, lossless/uncompressed PCM was 2D4. This is the main reason my HD DVD collection is limited; not enough desirable movies with lossless/uncompressed audio tracks. Also, the possibility of 5.1 24/96 PCM (or higher), high-def music videos was far more likely with Blu-ray because of HD DVD's bandwidth limitations.
They need to make more players that will decode DTS-HDMA instead of just streaming it. Not everyone will want to buy a new receiver just for that.
BTW, how many titles actually use the 50Gigs of space? We already know half are on BD-25s, so I'm guessing not that many.
Jack
As of today, 50.35% of Blu-ray releases are using 50GB discs. This is from the stats site that I posted a while back. That's a strong showing for "vaporware", don't ya think?
:-)
As to DTS-HD Master Audio decoding, the blame lies equally with DTS and the chip manufacturers. DTS: they said it would take more processing power than DTS-HD High Resolution (which manufacturers knew the numbers for), but they didn't say how much more. Chip manufacturers: they should have pressed DTS for better info or at least designed their chips with significantly more processing power. By the way, Keith Jack of Sigma Designs admits that his company dropped the ball. I'll cut him some slack -- they only deserve half of the blame.
Scroll way, way down past that ever growing number of Blu-ray discs to see the
Lets see if it stays over 50% with next week's titles coming out. Care to tell me why the BCI double features are 2 disc sets? The movies aren't very long ( <90 mins), and I doubt there are very many extras. And, as I asked before, but was never answered, "how many titles actually use the 50Gigs?".
Jack
None.But you know as well as I do that studios like to give us useless crap (ie, just look at DVD). Better to have the space and bandwidth to accomodate their desire to include the crap than to lose things that should be there in the first place (lossless audio, for one). By the way, how many DVDs utilized the entire capacity of the format. Hint: none.
Question: you're not implying that having 50GB of storage space has a downside now, are you?
> > > Question: you're not implying that having 50GB of storage space has a downside now, are you? < < <
Outside of possibly lower replication yields, no. But, if its not used, its not an advantage either. This only supports my opinion that generally speaking storage space isn't really a factor in quality either way.
Jack
If over 50% of the movies are using the 50GB discs, then it's a necessity. These movies obviously needed more than 25GB to satisfy what the studio wanted to include for that particular title and satisfy storage and bandwidth requirements. Otherwise, compromises have to be made and audiophiles/videophiles know what that means (quality is the first to take the hit, not content).
"if its not used, its not an advantage either."
If studios are using 50GB discs, then they need them. The fact that over 50% of Blu-ray discs are 50GB versions means the capacity really is needed. And what studio would pay for a 50GB disc when it only needs <25GB to satisfy the above requirements?
Microsoft is never going to tell how many HD DVD encodes they have done which would have benefitted from a higher bandwidth ceiling and/or more storage capacity (at least not truthfully). One can only speculate that there were movies produced that bandwidth and storage capacity played a part in what was the final product. With 50GB of storage and a higher bandwidth ceiling, that type of speculation isn't part of the Blu-ray specs.
Is it really a necessity? Are they using BD-50s on all of those titles now because that have to or just because they can? We'll never know.
Jack
Do you really think that any of the "Lord of the Rings" movies (the extended aka real editions) are better suited to HD DVD than Blu-ray when discussing audio/video quality?
The point is, it's there if it's needed. If it were needed on HD DVD, it's not there -- neither bandwidth nor storage space, hence compromises would have to be made for some movies. The facts are what they are: this discussion has become circular.
I'm done.
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