Blu-ray, in General

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davebert · #601 Post by **davebert** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 7:37 pm

God, I could find myself owning BOTH players if I get a PS3 soon and then the HD-DVD with 3 free DVDs (if that deal is indeed for real, as I would think befits the format's final throes). I feel future proof yet dirty...

patrick · #602 Post by **patrick** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:48 am

Damn, my boss is going to be at that convention, but he already has an HD player.

exte · #603 Post by **exte** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:45 am

Promise to pay him back?

Darth Lavender · #604 Post by **Darth Lavender** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:50 pm

Just to chime in on this discussion with my own HD set-up and the reasons for it...

Bought a new computer tower ($1500) with a strong enough CPU, etc. to run HD and the X-Box HD drive ($250) then connected it up to my 'old' LCD television (rrp$2000, but I got it for $1500)
That's all in Australian dollars. American dollars, it should round out to about $3000 instead of $4000. (Or, $200, if you already have a decent computer and television)

Now, my reasons...

- Futureproofing... once there's a reasonably cheap Blu-Ray drive available, I can just add that to the computer and voila; dual-format player (with the advantage that I'm already watching HD-DVD while waiting for a cheap-enough BluRay drive)

- VC1 vs MPEG2 encoding... there seems to be a general consensus that VC1 is the superior of the two (how superior is debated.) Although BluRay might eventually be releasing VC1 encoded movies, they're unlikely to rerelease the MPEG2 ones, so the fact remains that if you want to watch Casablanca, Forbidden Planet, Enter the Dragon, King Kong, etc. in the very best HD, then you'll need a HD-DVD player to watch the VC1 version.
- Related point... occasionally films are released in a slightly better (besides the VC1) version on HD. The Phantom Of The Opera apparently only features a TrueHD soundtrack on the HD-DVD (That specific example isn't really relevant to me, because I much prefer watching this movie with the French dub.)

- Hackable... With computers, you can be confident that if the studios start using region coding, etc. there'll be hacks and such to counter-act that (and, the HD and BluRay already have non-skippable piracy warnings (the studios' way of saying "If you had downloaded a pirate copy, you could be watching the movie already") Now, I realise there's a lot of people here who prefer alternate-sexuality but I think eventually *everyone* gets a little tired of being sodomised by the MPAA.

- Possibility that the losing side will start reducing prices before they die out. Again, this won't happen for a while (by which time I'll probably have a cheap BluRay drive, too, so it won't much matter which side loses) but once the end is near for one side, there's bound to be some kind of last gambit (titles selling for <$10, etc.) in which case it will be nice to be able to take advantage of that.

Been typing for a while, I'll probably type more later with a few more reasons for my set-up, and my opinions on just how much difference HD makes (short version; a significant difference. But I won't be upgradng any DVDs unless (a) I watch them more than three or four times a year or (b) my original disk was just a 10 year old, bare-bones affair and the HD is a Special Edition (as in Forbidden Planet and Black Rain))

patrick · #605 Post by **patrick** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 9:03 pm

HD and BluRay already have non-skippable piracy warnings

Christ, the studios must think it feels good to pay $30 for a movie and still be treated like a criminal.

The Invunche · #606 Post by **The Invunche** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 4:30 am

Darth Lavender wrote: - VC1 vs MPEG2 encoding... there seems to be a general consensus that VC1 is the superior of the two (how superior is debated.) Although BluRay might eventually be releasing VC1 encoded movies, they're unlikely to rerelease the MPEG2 ones, so the fact remains that if you want to watch Casablanca, Forbidden Planet, Enter the Dragon, King Kong, etc. in the very best HD, then you'll need a HD-DVD player to watch the VC1 version.

Blu-ray has been using AVC and VC-1 for nearly a year now. Furthermore Sony are re-releasing MPEG2 Blu-ray titles with free exchange program for people who bought the old Blu-ray version.

New version of The Fifth Element

porquenegar · #607 Post by **porquenegar** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 5:13 am

I've been making my way through the Planet Earth HD DVD set. It is fabulous. It is sort of a strange documentary, not going to in depth with any subject, rather hopping all over the planet to look at something like caves around the world or forests. It is a very nice tour of our spectacular planet. The presentation is top notch. The level of detail on the image is astounding, particularly on all the close ups, which must have been shot using a 4 foot lens or something. I knew Great Whites were big having seen various documentaries over the years, but seeing a 15+ footer leap completely out of the water to attack a seal in slow motion, hi-def really drove the point home. I highly recommend the set. Unfortunately, neither the HD DVD or the Blu Ray carry over the extras from the SD set.

jedgeco · #608 Post by **jedgeco** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 1:50 pm

patrick wrote:
HD and BluRay already have non-skippable piracy warnings
Christ, the studios must think it feels good to pay $30 for a movie and still be treated like a criminal.

Isn't this already the rule of the day on SD DVDs? BTW, for anyone who hasn't tried this yet, you can usually skip the "unskippable" warnings by, instead of selecting "Play Film" in the menu, going to the chapter menu and starting chapter 1. I imagine that it would work on BD/HD DVD too, and I think it has on the BDs I've looked at. (Although it didn't work last night on "Marie Antoinette"; maybe now I'll have to start starting chapter 2 and then skip back to chapter 1.)

Titus wrote:Anyone know if there's any truth to this?

This says it's true, but limited to convention attendees.

Also, apparently the now-$499 PS3 is no longer in production, so when existing stock runs dry, that's it. Rumors abound as to whether Sony will a) bump the new 80Gb model down to $499 when the 60s are sold out, or b) release a new 40Gb for $399. Really doesn't seem that 20Gb of hard disk space is worth a c-note, especially when an external hard drive can be hooked up via USB.

redbill · #609 Post by **redbill** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:20 pm

I assume they'll drop Motorstorm from the 80gb, when/if they drop to $499.

barrym71 · #610 Post by **barrym71** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 5:31 pm

The Invunche wrote:Blu-ray has been using AVC and VC-1 for nearly a year now. Furthermore Sony are re-releasing MPEG2 Blu-ray titles with free exchange program for people who bought the old Blu-ray version.

Are you privy to evidence that anything other than The Fifth Element is getting re-released? As far as I know, it's the only title getting re-released and exhanged for free, but it would be great news if Sony planned to fix more of those initial releases. House of Flying Daggers was the first Blu-ray title I ever saw playing in-store, and the image quality completely soured me on the notion of becomming a Blu-ray early adopter.

patrick · #611 Post by **patrick** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:12 pm

I haven't seen the House of Flying Daggers disc (although we do have it at the store), but I know Sony was flipping their lid over the fact that so many early Blu-Ray displays were improperly set up and therefore making their product look like shit. You can still see it at the big box stores.

barrym71 · #612 Post by **barrym71** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:26 pm

patrick wrote:I haven't seen the House of Flying Daggers disc (although we do have it at the store), but I know Sony was flipping their lid over the fact that so many early Blu-Ray displays were improperly set up and therefore making their product look like shit. You can still see it at the big box stores.

Proper set up is still a challenge for both formats in the big box stores, but what I saw was related to the transfer, and picked up on by disc reviewers at the time. And there was really no excuse for the image quality. House of Flying Daggers was one of the initial Blu-ray releases, it was a Sony property and it was a newer movie. Sony was also quick to blame the Samsung player for problems that were clearly related to their own discs. All of the A/B comparisons of the recent The Fifth Element re-release show that there were serious problems with the initial release, and I'm hoping that The Invunche is correct and Sony will be replacing more than just The Fifth Element for Blu-ray early adopters.

The Invunche · #613 Post by **The Invunche** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:42 pm

No, I don't have evidence of more titles being re-released. But the one shows that Sony is aware it was a cluster-fuck.

Darth Lavender · #614 Post by **Darth Lavender** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:22 am

patrick wrote:I haven't seen the House of Flying Daggers disc (although we do have it at the store), but I know Sony was flipping their lid over the fact that so many early Blu-Ray displays were improperly set up and therefore making their product look like shit. You can still see it at the big box stores.

Interestingly enough, one of the (minor) strengths of High-Definition is that it stands up so well to improperly calibrated displays.
When I first started playing HD-DVDs on my display, the difference to SD was *very* noticable. After recalibrating a little (improving the black levels*) I'm noticing a lot less difference between SD and HD (presumably because the SD is looking a lot better, and HD was already pretty much perfect thus couldn't be much improved.)

On the subject of bad choice of movie, the first demo I saw of High-Definition (bluray, to be specific) was the film Ultraviolet. Now there's an incredibly bad choice for showing off the increased detail of High Definition (for those who haven't seen it, it's one of those deliberately soft 'CGI-backlot' movies like Sky Captain, etc.)

*The exact refinements I made to my calibration, if anyone's interested, were to set the LCD screen's controls to absolute black (37 on a scale of 100) and then adjust the PowerDVD brightness, contrast, etc. controls using one of those THX things. (Previously, I had left all the PowerDVD controls at medium, and done all of my THX visual adjustments using the LCD controls (which resulted in very weak black-levels (any darker and, for some reason, I couldn't see the THX on that brightness test)

jedgeco · #615 Post by **jedgeco** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 8:53 pm

Blade Runner on HD DVD/Blu-ray will be a five frickin' disc affair.

New Line announces HD DVD/Blu-ray support. (The bad news: First disc is Hairspray.)

Darth Lavender · #616 Post by **Darth Lavender** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 1:09 am

jedgeco wrote:Blade Runner on HD DVD/Blu-ray will be a five frickin' disc affair.

That's a bit of a concern, actually. I was looking forward to being able to pick up the new Blade Runner (with maybe a few SD extras) for the usual $25 Australian. Five disks raises the possibility of five times the price and I'm a little reluctant to spend $100 or more on a High-Def Blade Runner.

btw, to answer David's earlier question, my display is only 720p widescreen. I have also seen standard-def DVDs upscaled on my old 1240x1024 computer monitor (which, for the purpose of academy ratio DVDs, is basically 1080p) and the main difference (a big one) is being able to sit much closer to the screen without seeing the 'flyscreen' effect (as it is, my 720p can fill more than half my field of vision without flyscreen being a problem, but with the 1080p you can really get an IMAX effect going.)

In my opinion, by the way, 'filling the field of vision' is much better measure of a TV than the physical size. Someone posted a while ago (perhaps in this thread) that there's a psychological difference between seeing an image that's projected the size of a wall and sitting right up close to a small computer screen. I can kind of see that with some films, but to me it's always been more like looking through a window into another world and on that basis I don't much care about the physical size (except that one has more freedom to shift about in one's seat and still see the image clearly.)

tavernier · #617 Post by **tavernier** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 2:37 am

From The Onion:

kevyip1 · #618 Post by **kevyip1** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 9:56 pm

Darth Lavender wrote:Just to chime in on this discussion with my own HD set-up and the reasons for it...

Bought a new computer tower ($1500) with a strong enough CPU, etc. to run HD and the X-Box HD drive ($250) then connected it up to my 'old' LCD television (rrp$2000, but I got it for $1500)
That's all in Australian dollars.

One thing your PC rig can't give you, at least for now, is uncompressed discrete PCM 5.1/6.1 audio tracks on some Blu-ray discs, because virtually no PC sound cards today have HDMI output.

Interestingly, I'm also using my PC to view HD discs. I originally bought the PC to play games, and it includes the Geforce 8800gtx video card, which is reportedly twice as fast as Playstation 3 and happens to be HDCP-compliant, too. PC gaming is the Mount Everest of video gaming as opposed to the technologically inferior PS3s most of you seem to own. With that subtle dig of console owners out of the way, let me just say that when you have a PC like that, it's a no-brainer to spend a mere $300 for the xbox drive and PowerDVD Ultra to be able to sample HD movies, which is what I did.

The Invunche · #619 Post by **The Invunche** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 4:20 am

Some of the new graphic cards also output audio on the HDMI connection.

Alonzo the Armless · Thu Jul 26, 2007 7:50 pm

From today's IMDB:

Target Targets Blu-Ray

Sony, which once saw retailers shunning its Betamax video recorders, received a welcome surprise Wednesday when Target Stores announced that it will not be selling HD DVD players during the holiday season this year and will focus exclusively on Sony's Blu-ray high-definition DVD players. Target also said that it will expand its inventory of movies available in the Blu-ray format. "I think what you're seeing is that retailers are deciding [between Blu-ray and HD DVD]," Sony home entertainment president David Bishop told Home Media magazine. "This is the beginning of a trend." He indicated that carrying both types of high-definition players has confused customers. "We think this is a big step in clarifying the decision to the consumer," he said. But Ken Graffeo of Universal Studios Home Entertainment, which releases high-definition movies exclusively in the HD DVD format, told the trade publication, "The question I ask is, knowing that HD DVD is the most affordable high-definition format, it will be very interesting to see how the Sony player will appeal to Target guests."

pointless · #621 Post by **pointless** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 2:57 am

Alonzo the Armless wrote:From today's IMDB:

Target Targets Blu-Ray

Sony, which once saw retailers shunning its Betamax video recorders, received a welcome surprise Wednesday when Target Stores announced that it will not be selling HD DVD players during the holiday season this year and will focus exclusively on Sony's Blu-ray high-definition DVD players. guests."

Turns out the Target did not say this and is still format neutral. It was Sony that spun this somehow into implying that Target would be Blu-Ray exclusive. Wishful thinking on their part!

jedgeco · #622 Post by **jedgeco** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 7:38 pm

pointless wrote:Turns out the Target did not say this and is still format neutral. It was Sony that spun this somehow into implying that Target would be Blu-Ray exclusive. Wishful thinking on their part!

Huh? The Sony press release says that "Beginning this fall and continuing at least through the holiday season, Target will feature Sony Blu-ray Disc players as the exclusive product in the emerging category of high-definition home video systems." Target essentially confirmed that, telling the AP that it "would not say why it decided to sell only Blu-ray players in stores," but that it would continue to sell HD DVD software.

Which part is wishful thinking?

Cinesimilitude · #623 Post by **Cinesimilitude** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 7:57 pm

The 360 Add-On and HD-DVD movies will still be available at Target Stores. They are only exclusively selling blu-ray standalone players, and they may still sell Toshiba's stand-alone HD-DVD players on their website.

and when it comes to people who shop at Target, they are more likely to get a ps3 or a 360 + an HD DVD drive, as opposed to a high priced blu-ray standalone. so nothing has really changed.

The Invunche · #624 Post by **The Invunche** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 8:58 pm

SncDthMnky wrote:so nothing has really changed.

True. Blu-ray is still winning the war.

pro-bassoonist · #625 Post by **pro-bassoonist** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 5:09 pm

update:

Optimum Releasing (UK), an offshoot of the French giant Studio Canal, which has been HDDVD exclusive up to this point is now going to release in BLU as well. Which leaves Universal as the only HD-exclusive studio in the UK.

In similar news, Concord-Video in Germany who appear under the Universal distro umbrella, will also be releasing on Blu-Ray, leaving Universal as the only HD-exclusive studio in Germany. Concord's upcoming releases will include the US-HD exclusive 12 Monkeys and The Jackal amongst others.

Finally, Metrodome-UK have just announced their upcoming Blu-release for Algeria/France's Oscar entry Glory Days (property of TF1 in France).

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