Blu-ray, in General

[Der Müde Tod]

My (possibly incorrect and most likely incomplete) understanding is that both formats, BlueRay and HD, can introduce region coding at any time. Old disks will still play, but playing new ones on old players will require a firmware update, thus enabling region codes. I also believe that there is no firm commitment for this either to happen or not to happen.

[Cinesimilitude]

Excerpt from HTF chat with Microsoft HD Rep:

[kevincol] Also, don't forget that HD DVD does NOT have region control, so you can get really good titles from Japan and Europe and play them on your HD DVD player in the US. For instance, The Rambo series is out from Studio Canal in Europe along with Basic Instinct. In the US, these are BD titles.

[AaronSchneiderman] How long will that last? Is regional coding coming?

[RonEpstein] Kevin, the studios really haven't ramped up efforts to put region control preventives in place?

[kevincol] Region coding has been discussed in the DVD Forum Steering Committe, but nothing is currently being done about it. It is in an investigation phase. There are 20 companines on the DVD Forum Steering committe and many oppose region coding. Also, there is no way to back retrofit the existing HD DVD players to enforce region coding. So, this is another advantage of HD DVD over the other formats

Reading this leads me to believe that region coding on the Xbox 360 HD player is Hardware, and Not software, so It can't be forced to upgrade to a region coded player, but this may just be propaganda. If HD-DVD stays region free I will be incredibly happy. I think it would not only be good in allowing us the best choice of a film on disc, but also force companies producing HD-DVD's to take more care in producing them, knowing full well that if there's a better version in france or germany or the US, early adopters and consumers who are net savvy will only be buying the best product.

Is Blu-Ray not 24fps? How does the region encoding on it work, etc.

blu-ray, just like HD-DVD, is capable of 24, 30, and 60 fps 1080P, but one website I saw said that Blu-Rays in other regions are being encoded at 50fps at 1080i, and each frame is done twice to replicate PAL 25fps. It doesn't make sense to me, but I read it on the internet so it must be true

[davebert]

My current understanding is that when you put a BluRay disc into the player they actually blow up.

[Cinesimilitude]

My current understanding is that when you put a BluRay disc into the player they actually blow up.

How Nickfrostesque. That would be Wicked.

[porquenegar]

New HD DVD announcements

Departed
The Game
The Jerk
The Good Shepard

[Cinesimilitude]

Newer HD-DVD Announcements from thedigitalbits:

Afternoon, everyone. I just wanted to jump in here with some late-breaking high-def news. Universal, presumably to make up for their relative silence at CES, has just announced that they're planning more than 100 exclusive releases on the HD-DVD format in 2007... and they've revealed at least a few new titles that are on the way (if not specific release dates). The first 40-50 of these will be available in the first half of 2007, starting with Brokeback Mountain (now available) and Hollywoodland (on 2/6). Also on the way to HD-DVD in 2007 according to the studio (90% of the titles as DVD/HD-DVD Combo releases) are new films like Children of Men, The Good Shepherd and Smokin' Aces, as well as classic catalog titles like Scarface, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Bruce Almighty, The Bourne Identity, Meet the Fockers, American Pie, Inside Man, Pride & Prejudice, The Big Lebowski, Liar Liar, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Brazil, Erin Brockovich, Shaun of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Slap Shot and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The studio also confirmed that the first season of Sci-Fi's new Battlestar Galactica will be released on HD-DVD this year, as well as additional TV series titles yet to be announced. There's definitely some cool titles in that list, and presumably more (and more details) will be announced at a later date. It'll be great to see Lebowski and Brazil in HD, that's for sure... and the prospect of Battlestar has us pretty excited too.

Eternal Sunshine. Lebowski. Brazil. and a double helping of Clive Owen with Inside Man and Children of Men. I feel spoiled.

[Sanjuro]

Is Blu-Ray not 24fps? How does the region encoding on it work, etc.

Blu-Ray appears to have 3 region zones. Japan and the US seem to be in the same zone which means that:

a) I can play American DVDs without having to chip my player. Woohoo!

b) Japanese companies will actually stop putting English subtitles on their movies altogether for some utterly illogical reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Region_codes

[The Invunche]

You will of course see Fox switching to HD/dual format by April at my guess as even Murdoch knows his biggest total video market is outside the USA. Youll see Disney and the others follow by the end of the year.

I like when you post your guesses as fact.

[jon]

I am 100% sold on HD-DVD now. The only thing I regret is that the technology of the Blu-Ray disc itself is so much stronger. The prospects of a 4-layer disc with 100gb of storage is just amazing. Anyways, it seems that there will be so many more options for film viewing in the future, thanks to the region-free HD-DVD.

[Cinesimilitude]

not to mention if they come up with those triple layer 45gb or 51gb (if they can get a single layer up to 17 gigs) discs, there will be more than enough space to present films in excellent transfers with great features.

[The Invunche]

And you'll need a new player.

[Cinesimilitude]

And you'll need a new player.

I like when you post your guesses as fact.

#-o

[Rufus T. Firefly]

And you'll need a new player.

I like when you post your guesses as fact.

#-o

Actually he's right, the current HD DVD players won't play triple-layer discs. However (my "guess as fact") we won't see triple-layer HD DVD discs for years, if at all.

[Cinesimilitude]

Actually he's right, the current HD DVD players won't play triple-layer discs. However (my "guess as fact") we won't see triple-layer HD DVD discs for years, if at all.

I'd like to see your sources. I've been following closely and no one has yet mentioned whether they will or will not be able to read three layers. And It's not that I don't believe him, it's just that it's a guess and he stated it as fact, much more so than David's comment about Fox (which actually was worded more as a guess than a stated fact). If that's the case, fine, I'll buy another HD-DVD player, I don't mind. I was just rubbing it in Invunche's contradictory face.

[porquenegar]

I suspect these could likely be Rear Window and Vertigo as only these two have been remastered in HD, as far as I know. The other 50s Universals, while markedly improved in the last Hitchcock set from the earlier releases are still not good enough for reference standard HD.

Sadly the first is going to be Psycho rather than Rear Window.

[The Invunche]

I'd like to see your sources. I've been following closely and no one has yet mentioned whether they will or will not be able to read three layers. And It's not that I don't believe him, it's just that it's a guess and he stated it as fact, much more so than David's comment about Fox (which actually was worded more as a guess than a stated fact).

It's a fact that current HD DVD players are unlikely to support a three layered discs since it isn't part of the HD DVD specs. It is possible that a firmware update will be enough for the players to handle the extra layer.

If that's the case, fine, I'll buy another HD-DVD player, I don't mind. I was just rubbing it in Invunche's contradictory face.

Yes, I am "contradictory". It's my reaction to the HD DVD circle-jerk in this thread. You guys act like the war is over when no unbiased source dares to call it yet.

[exte]

Sadly the first is going to be Psycho rather than Rear Window.

Yeah, I just hate it when a masterpiece comes before a masterpiece.

[The Invunche]

Invunche if we all thought BD was the way to go we'd say so.

Oh I know that. You have chosen sides. Which one doesn't really matter to me.

The overwhelming negative of it for me is the region encryption. Who wants THIS after 10 years of region free SD? And most of us on this thread live outside the USA. That's why.

Yes that is definitely a huge negative, but how do we know region coding wont be introduced later in HD DVD. Many early DVD discs weren't region protected either. I think you guys are making a bunch of assumptions based more in belief/wishes than fact.

[The Invunche]

but the current generations of HD players are all region free and will play everything in any case.

Again a false assumption. Imagine a HD DVD firmware update that includes support for three layers and sneaks in region coding at the same time. Or imagine a new generation of region coded discs that wont play on older players until the firmware has been updated with region coding support.

I have no illusions about the motives of these companies.

[jon]

Well, Sony is doing that right now. Why not support the medium that is doing the right thing and not speculate about what might happen to it in the future. Of course I am afraid that you might be right about region encoding being introduced in the future, but at the moment, with some major studios opposing it, I can't see how the invisible threat of region encoding on HD-DVD can be worse than what Sony's Blu-Ray is doing right now.

[Darth Lavender]

Ironically, I think a big deciding factor here will ultimately be how soon region-free players and restriction-free players are available and, of course, which player is the more easily 'cracked' (regardless of one's own views on piracy, this is basically about what the majority of people are going to buy, and I think the majority of people will be more partial to a player that allows them to, say, copy a movie for a friend, or store a rented DVD on their computer long enough to watch it. (I'm not presenting these as acceptable or unacceptable examples of piracy, just as, I think, forms of piracy practiced by a particularly large segment of HDDVD/Bluray's potential customers.)

My own understanding of the practicalities of each format:

- BluRay has a higher bitrate (50 mb, versus HDDVD's 30mb (and DVD's 10mb)) which would seem to mean, potential, bluray can produce a better image. (Certainly, most of the highest quality DVDs available tend to be the one's which utilise close the maximum bitrate. Also, most of the descriptions I've read of HDs superiority to DVD have more to do with bitrate than resolution (ie. more detailed background, thanks to having enough bits left over (unlike DVD were skies and distant backgrounds and such are often a vague fog of mpeg artefacts)

- HDDVD is region-free, *but* I expect that someone will start making region-free players for bluray before I buy any sort of high-definition player.

- Bluray is using inferior coding; my immediate thought was; so what, they'll improve that by the time I buy into High Definition. But, most of those badly encoded movies are going to still be on the marketplace years from now (just look at DVD, there's a lot that are still only available in non-anamorphic format.) So, that is a bigger strike against bluray than may first appear.

But, certainly, once one of these is properly, thoroughly, hacked it's going to give me a lot more piece of mind. No need to worry about my favourite movie coming out exclusively in a French edition with forced subtitles, no need to worry about Bluray or HDDVD suddenly mass-producing the 'RCE' encoding (which won't play on multi-region players,) etc. etc.

So, the race is on; Who has produced the strongest, most unhackable system and thus lost the format war?

[davebert]

Here's a somewhat stupid question, but my research in stores doesn't seem to help much:

1080p is the highest possible resolution at this point, no?
I see a whole lot of HDTVs set at 720p, but theoretically this would not be the best HD-DVDs could look, right? Do the players even work at 720p, because I remember the PS3 had a downscaling problem where it went straight to 640 or 480 or something if the videogame didn't support the correct upscale format out of the box.

I'm just trying to futureproof my shopping, but it looks like "futureproof" in the HD wars is an oxymoron, so I guess maybe my standard CRT can handle 2007 as well.

[The Invunche]

And given the nature of the HD technical standards all future discs, even if region coded will all be playable on the present generation of machines.

I don't understand how can you be sure of that.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

BTW, Here's something you might be interested in seeing...

I took these shots on my 43" Samsung DLP using the 360 HD Player, and the color setting on my TV is normal, with slightly upped color and contrast, which I believe is amplified in these shots a bit. I took them at about 3800 x 2500 pixels, but exported the shots to 1080 height, since it's still massive and the HD can't really look better than that.

Here's the title card.

Zoomed in.

Zoomed even more.

Here's a terrible shot...

But more importantly the same shot zoomed to 8x.

Here's Monument Valley with the new color correction.

Here's Another shot with the new color correction, and showing that my color tone is normal.

Here's the same shot, showing that my color tone is cool. This removes the yellow from the sky, but I'm guesing that something that simple is worse with how yellow it makes the ground look. The blue saturation on the mountains is not visible as it is in this picture.

Going back to page 16 and the screenshots of The Searchers in HD, here's some I took with my feeble photographic skills a while back, unfortunately at a slight angle:

same Monument Valley scene as SncDthMnky from HD DVD

Shot from R1 SD DVD version

Same shot (almost) from HD DVD version

The player was a HD-A1 for all caps. Screen size is 86", projected from a Sony 720p projector. The obvious difference between my caps and SDM's is the colour. My display has been calibrated by a CEDIA trained/certified techo, so I would hope it's close to how it should look (otherwise I wasted my money, again).

You should also see differences between the SD and HD shots of the same scene. These are more marked in the flesh than they appear here. Not only is there more clarity in the HD but the colour is more lifelike. Whether this is how the film should look is a question others will have to answer, as I've never seen it in a cinema.

[Cinesimilitude]

My camera definitely added more color than I see. your caps look very similar to the way mine looks on my TV, although mine is slightly more vibrant, as I tend to up contrast. I don't think you wasted your money at all.