So confused... HD-DVD or Blu-ray??

[SofaKing381222]

Ok. I dunno whats going on. I heard Buena Vista is going for the Blu-ray format. What are the different formats. Will either work on regular DVD players, so that you don't have to completely replace your dvd collection? Why can't we just stay with DVDs?!?!

[Luke]

There's been a few threads on this topic and deathie's written a few novels on the subject.

Here's one I found: http://www.ultimatedisney.com/forum/vie ... 4780#84780

To sum up, Blu-Ray will have more space and higher resolution. And now it will have Disney!

Advantage: Blu-Ray!

[thatartguy]

Ok. I dunno whats goin on. I head Buena Vista is going for the Blu- Ray format. What are the diffrent formats. Will either work on regular DVD players, so that you dont have to completely replace ure dvd collection? Why cant we just stay with DVDs!!!!????

Here is a snippet from a post on the Home Theater Forums from a couple months back on Blu-Ray:

When we were putting together the itinerary for our Home Theater Forum 2004 National Meet we had talked to the folks at Sony/Columbia about doing something special for our membership.

Imagine our excitement when they offered to give us a demonstration of their upcoming Blu-Ray Disc technology. I have to admit, of all the things we had planned to do that week, this demonstration was something I was most excited about seeing.

....it did not disappoint.

I wish that we could have brought all of you out to Sony to see what we experienced. You folks have no idea how dramatically this format is going to change in the next two years.

We met with Victor Masuda (Vice President Blu-Ray Disc Group) and Don Eklund (Senior VP Advanced Technologies Columbia/Tri-Star) who gave us a little background on the Blu-Ray format.

I am going to give you a few excerpts from the Press material that was provided to all of us.....

* Instead of simply equaling the broadcast HDTV data rate of 19 Megabits per second, Blu-Ray far exceeds it. At supporting data rates of 36 Megabits per second, it's the highest data rate of any consumer medium, delivering the ultimate picture quality: full 1920 H x 1080 V High Definition video.

* Thanks to the blue-violet laser and other advanced technologies, the single layer BD exceeds the capacity of five DVDs, while dual layer BD holds even more.

* Blue-Ray already has the support of 13 major manufacturers including Dell, HP, Hitachi, LG, Matsushita, Mitsubishi. Pioneer, Royal Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson.

If I remember correctly, the opposing HD DVD group is backed only by Toshiba and NEC.

Though the two consortiums are fighting to become the most widely accepted format, it is my early opinion that based on the manufacturer backing, upcoming Playstation support and Sony's recent acquisition of the MGM library that Blu-Ray will probably be the dominant format.

So how good does Blu-Ray DVD look? It looks incredible!

Nearly 60 members of Home Theater Forum were ushered into one of Sony studio's private screening rooms last week to get a first-hand look at this new format.

We were treated to scenes from Lawrence of Arabia that were split-screen so that we could see side-by-side the difference between the DVD and Blu-Ray. As the split screen moved from right to left you could see the smaller detailed blurry images of the DVD suddenly come to a razor-sharp realization that became so incredibly defined.

...and mind you, these are images projected on a 20' screen. Imagine how they will look on consumer televisions.

Personally, I think the difference between Blu-Ray and DVD are more dramatic than what we saw going from VHS to DVD.

I'm going to give the opportunity for the members that attended this event to give their reactions to what they saw. Better to hear it from a group of people than just one individual.

Stay Tuned!

That should answer most questions, but like they said on the forums there:

So basically we'll have to repurchase all our DVD catalog?

Only if you want to do so. Personally, with 2600 dvds in my collection, I will be very selective on what I purchase again with this new format. Lawrence of Arabia is a given while Peggy Sue Got Married is not.

[deathie mouse]

SofaKing381222, you don't have to replace your DVD collection if you don't want too. You will be able to keep on playing them.

You ask why can't we just stay with DVDs.
Well same reason we couldn't stay with VHS, and 78 RPM records, etc.

DVDs tho they look amazing, the best a consumer format has looked , still can't look as good as 35mm film (much less 70mm film). In other words were not getting yet the original quality of the movies. Think of DVDs as 16mm versions of your films, or 25% versions, etc. Of course i mean properly printed and projected 35mm film cus the latest 2 times i've been to the theater the projection was so bad my PAL DVDs look better than that!
But compared to excellent/optimum 35mm projection DVD is like a quarter of the quality of that image or even less. Your sofa or favorite chair probably is like about 9 feet from your TV/display or so . Well a 35 mm image can be blown up to be 6 feet tall from that seating distance (and depending on format, 8 to 15 feet wide) and still remain sharp and snappy. Cover your whole wall! Try THAT with a DVD. With DVD its like watching a postcard of the movie, with 35mm you can actualy LIVE the movie. And we haven't gone to 70mm yet .

The great thing is that, just starting, the Blu-Ray disc can give you 35mm quality for the majority of film formats. Not only that, in fact i've made dethi calculations, that if they desired to do so, using mpeg4 compression, they could even fit 70mm quality on those 50GB discs. So if it has the capacity it can be done. And hey not only for prerecoded discs, one day we'll have Blu recorders and camcorders anyone can make 70m discs one day if they want to. independent companies, filmmakers, you yourself. There's a point where it's no use to keep piling on resolution, the picture wont improve (well you could keep enlarging it bigger after that but it wouldn't get sharper) and that point can be reached by Blu-Ray and them some.(that point is 70mm 2000 line tall video btw)
Heh George Lucas is filming at just 800 lines tall now

DVD can't even come close to that point.

And WHY Blu-Ray instead of "HD-DVD" (or AOD as it used to be called before they "apprpiated" the "name") Simple: cus Blu-Ray has 67% more capacity. As Luke said, more storage capacity more resolution, and I add less compression so even cleaner noiser-free images. Why jump in small steps if we can jump in big steps?

Blu-Ray vs DVD is as big a step or actually more as DVD was to VHS.

If your DVD looks awesome on a 40" Plasma, Blu-Ray wil look better than that on a 100" plasma!

etc etc

[DisneyChris]

But now HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have their own supporters! We can't have 2 kinds of discs and 2 players at the same time! Maybe they could somehow make a 2-in-1 player that can play both formats.

But it's gonna be hard 2 years later when the change of the format comes... I 'll have to rebuy my "normal" DVDs again... Seems that DVD is weaker than VHS - it took 20 years for VHS to start fading away while DVD is now saying goodbye in 10 years only...

[2099net]

Its only fading away due to the improvements in broadcast technology. Trust me, most people, including most studios, would be happy for DVD to remain as it is for the next 20 years.

Blame the govenment.

[deathie mouse]

DisneyChris, right now there are "Universal" DVD players that play CD, HDCD CD, DTS-CD, DVD, DVD-A, and SACD, so if there were two high density video formats there could one day be "Galactic" DVD players ( CD, HDCD CD, DTS-CD, DVD, DVD-A, SACD, hd-dvd, Blu-Ray..)

but why? i dunt want hd-dvd!

ok . as i've mentioned before i don't follow hd-dvd developments cus everytime i read about them my body reacts weird.

But i stumbled into this soo i read it and oh dear.

Soooooooo as you know, Blu-Ray will be 50 GBs double layer, well...
here's the latest and the greatest on hd-dvd.
See, they are deseperate for people to buy into it so they are dumbing it down more (reducing space) already to make it compatible:

DVD/HD-DVD Combo Developed
http://dvd.ign.com/articles/571/571931p1.html?fromint=1

December 08, 2004 - Memory-Tech Corp. and Toshiba have announced that they have developed a dual-layer disc that can store both standard DVD and HD-DVD formats, on different layers.

The disc uses the dual-layer structure found on DVD-ROMs. The disc would hold 4.7GB of standard DVD data on one disc and 15GB of HD-DVD content on the other. This would make the disc playable on a standard DVD player (currently at around 80 million installed in the U.S.), plus HD-DVD players.

The pitch is that it will allow content providers to offer their material on one disc in both formats, or put the movie on the HD layer and promotional products on the DVD layer. Of course, this forgets one issue: can anyone remember the last single-layer DVD they bought? Pretty much everything hitting the market today is dual layer and even that's not enough room. What this appears to do is provide half of two separate products.

Toshiba and NEC are spearheading the development of HD-DVD and hope to have it on the market in the late 2005. Warner Bros., its New Line subsidiary, Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures have signed on to produce HD-DVD content.

-- IGN DVD

Sooooooooo this means, we get a double layer hd-dvd that's compatible with DVD cus it brings HALF a DVD on it (4.7GB) and THEN a "high-definition" DVD in the space of one and a half dvd??? (15GB). Soooooo you buy your favorite movie in this supposedly superior updated format and you get what? You can either A: play it on your regular DVD player with half the quality of regular DVDs, or B: Buy a new hd-dvd player and medium definition display and play it wiith just ONE and A HALF the data rate of regular current in the millions DVDs?? . The differences between these hd-dvd versions and a Superbit dvd would be very small indeed! Why bother??

And to think Blu-Ray with 50GB is almost 6 times DVD (and 3.5 times hd-dvd)..

uh oh, I thought too long about hd-dvd..


(with my excuses to UD members)


Warners, Universal, Paramount.


WUP hd-dvd. Just say NO


Go Disney!

[SofaKing381222]

uh oh, I thought too long about hd-dvd..

That barfing smiley is kinda nasty....

[Key]

uh oh, I thought too long about hd-dvd..

That barfing smiley is kinda nasty....

I was just gonna say it's cute... in a way that only a smiley can be.

[karlsen]

I have no idea what format that is going to win this war but I can say for certain that I don't belive that it will take over after DVD.

There has been sold DVD players to 80 millions of homes in America, and I don't belive that more then a few high defenition "freeks" will buy anything new now.

People love DVD and will be satisfyed with that for many years to come.

Mark my words, you will se 2010 long before DVD has lost its market.

[bmadigan]

Don't forget. No one is buying either new format who doesn't already have a HD TV set. And until the prices of these come down, I don't see the penetration that is necessary to drive sales of HD DVD players.

[karlsen]

Don't forget. No one is buying either new format who doesn't already have a HD TV set. And until the prices of these come down, I don't see the penetration that is necessary to drive sales of HD DVD players.

That is not true. Here in Europe HD TV are not big and none of the TV stations in Norway sends signals in HD so there is no use of it.

HD-DVD and BlueRay will improve both sound and not to forgett picture on normal TVs and not to forgett all those that has projectors will se a big diffrence.

But it will still be a small market for it. I am so pleased with my DVD player that even can burn DVDs so I will not exchange that for anything before I have to (it gets broken). If BlueRay or HD-DVD players are as cheap as DVD players then I will buy it (if it will play my old DVDs, I am not going to buy my 500+ collection once more ).

[deathie mouse]

For High Definition playback, don't forget the many people who have computers. Most computer monitors have high resolution specs these days. Many could watch Blu-Ray or *cough* hd-dvd instantly there. (Like they can watch the 3/4ths Hi def wm9 version of T2 now. (I've seen a demo of that and tho only 3/4th HDTV it looked very nice) or the 1/4th Hi def Pixlet version of The Matrix II trailer and The Incredibles teaser I've seen (The Incredibles looked twice as good there as it looked on my local theater (insert barfy smiley here)

Karlsen I'm sure in the long run Blu-Ray players will be very cheap (My first S-VHS HiFi VCR was $1100, first VHS tape transport i ever bought . The second (and last one) was about $69 and it has tons better picture quality too. It's VHS kind of looks almost as good as the old one's S-VHS) and they will play back DVDs. So i don't inderstand why you say: "If BlueRay or HD-DVD players are as cheap as DVD players then I will buy it (if it will play my old DVDs, I am not going to buy my 500+ collection once more ).". Even if they didn't, you could always keep your DVD player and keep on watching the DVDs as you always have. I still have my turntable for Lps... oh. and Laserdiscs

Even if it's a small market like Laserdiscs there were like 10,000 titles at it's peak with incredible editions dedicated specially for film enthusiasts, so if Blu-ray turned to be like that i would be very happy and buy new titles or titles that deserve it (hey we all double dip from DVD to DVD. Sometimes for the meager improvement 16:9 coding brings that's just 1.33x more resolution. With Blu-Ray we're talking 5 to 6 times at the very least!* (The less said about hd-dvd, the better..) (insert you know who here)

If i follow my usual buying pattern I'll start buying the discs when the format is released and buy the player a year or two later (That way i support the format, get early releases that might dissapear or go out of print (collectible! ), and get a cheaper higher perfoming player too )
I already have some scarce SACD's and DVD-As .And I have the first CD of Dark Side of The Moon (EMI's 1rst Pop CD pressed in japan, it's catalog # is something like CDP4600001 or something ) and the First pressing of Bob james/Earl Klugh's One On One from the first batch od CBSSony japanese CDs' made (its # is CDP-035) and THAT one sounds better than all the subsequent remasters ive heard of it.
So who here is NOT gonna buy Disney's first Blu-Ray disc? I'm sure reyquila will be on Border's second floor first thing in the morning going





*(at least 8 times better compared to letterboxed (non 16:9 coded) 4:3 widescreen dvds!)
_________________
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious OAR pic comparisons now <a href="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/forum/vie ... 524">up</a>.

[deathie mouse]

Well the hd-dvd camp (WUP) anounced 89 titles for 2005's 4th quarter.

See news on the digitalbits <a href="http://www.thedigitalbits.com/index.htm ... s">here</a>

(This means there will be soon the inevitable Blu-Ray strike bac.. err i mean announcement )

Of all those hd-dvd titles I like about 26

Of those 26, I already have 8,
they are 4 Universal titles and 4 Warner/New Line titles

Which break down into 4 in Laserdisc, and 4 in DVD, (and one of those 4, repeated in VHS, yes my sole movie VHS for its original stereo mix is there ) (So mm if the hd-dvd had the 2 mixes i probably could sell those two copies..)

(The titles I have were also exactly evenly split in formating between the 2 companies! Unis were 3 LDs 1 DVD/VHS, Warners/NL were 3 DVDs 1 LD)

2 of those Uni Laserdiscs have the original LD high bitrate 1.4 mb/s DTS track..
Will puny hd-dvd include the non compressed newer DTS-HD??

About half of the titles I want are in Scope (2.35-2.40) So mmmm.. if they do the Hybrid/DualDisc layer sandwich and only have a 15GB hd-dvd layer of 720 x 1280pixels, it's not gonna be much better than a PAL disc. decisions decisions..

pixels per Scope (2.40) picture height:

533.33/362 = 1.47x

1.47 X 1.47= 2.2x total pixel increase

storage space:

15/9 = 1.66x

ok you'll have 2.2x the data encoded into just 1.66x the bit space.

If they use mpeg2 that makes it actually noisier than DVD per pixel!
1dB noisier per pixel!

The reverse of Superbit!
(Superbit vs DVD is usually 1 or 2 dBs less noise per pixel)

but lets be dethi fair. How would they look blown up to the same screen size side by side.

2x the pixels is about 3dB's more resolution

now comes the com plicated part, since they are 2.2x the data but only in 1.66x the space, but if you were gonna blow them up side by side equally they have 1/2.2x the enlargement, you get: Ta Da!!!! 2dB's less noise on screen!

Wow i'm so amazed ;P

3dB more resolution
2dB less noise

I hope them hd-dvd'ers are smart and don'tgo forward with the hybrid/layering thingie, and that they don't do the halfrazed HDTV resolution and do the full 1080x1920, otherwise, I don't think there's gonna be much difference to "look" forward to

hope i'm proven wrong. Anybody here know if hd-dvd has said uniquevocally theyre not gonna do them 720x1280? (they used to say they had chosen that cus it was more "compatable" with today's displays )

(Display today gone tomorrow)



cus..

Blu = 5x res in 6x bit space (for letterboxed Scope)

or in other words

6.5dBs more resolution,
7.8dBs less noise
side by side

As comparison, 16mm vs 35mm is just a 6/6 difference

(and remember i did this numbers using PAL which is already about 0.75dB better than NTSC)

If these hd-dvd titles were in Blu, they would be no brainers for me...



choose wisely little hd-dvd grasshopper

[The Little Merman]

Its only fading away due to the improvements in broadcast technology. Trust me, most people, including most studios, would be happy for DVD to remain as it is for the next 20 years.

Blame the govenment.

Exactly. I am sticking with DVDs. This is probably a passing phase that hardcore geeks (I use this term lightly, being a dork) will flock to and then leave. Laserdiscs anyone?

[bean:therio]

I think both formats wil fail. There's allready a succesor in the works of Blu-ray/HD-DVD that is called HVD: Holographic Video Disc. This format has a proposed maximum capacity of 1 Terrabyte!

[2099net]

I think both formats wil fail. There's allready a succesor in the works of Blu-ray/HD-DVD that is called HVD: Holographic Video Disc. This format has a proposed maximum capacity of 1 Terrabyte!

I believe there is some debate about the viability of this format. Holographic data storage has long been the "holy grail" of the industry, and there are lots of whispers that HVD isn't 100% there yet.

[Mermaid Kelly]

haa haa I like that smiley!

I agree all this new dvd stuff is really confusing me too....just stick with regular dvd for a little while longer!

[MICKEYMOUSE]

You know sooner or later DVDS will be like VHS. Because now BLUE-RAY and HD-DVDS are soon heading are way maybe end of '06. Will you guys start another DISNEY collection?? I know we will be able to play are DVDS on the new players though.

[Disney-Fan]

I'll wait to see the impact this new format will make. If it'll be like the laser disc, I'll just stick to DVDs until the next format.