Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Blu Ray vs HD-DVD

Well, just to balance this thread a little, how about not focusing so much on 'people who don't care'. We already know how many people only care about whatever is free or inexpensive. How about focusing more on what you would like to see happen.

My point was that what _we_ want is irrelevant. The movie companies are not catering for the select few, but the mass market.

I understand that, but again, SACD and DVD-A exist, and there will be continuation ation of those formats as well as SACD-2 and apparently MLP in the form of Dolby Digital Lossless. Given the increase in channel limitation from 5-6 (DVD-Audio) to (at least) 8 channels, how would you like to see those channels utilized? What sort of standard can we obtain? Can we achieve flexibility and standardization simultaneously?

One good example is this:



[This message has been edited by Health Nut (edited 03-10-2005).]

" My point was that what _we_ want is irrelevant."

Nail on the head. Shoot me down if I'm not leaping up and down with excitement with the prospect of 200gb of what Sony Corp. thinks I might need on a single disc.

IMO they have done more damage to hi-rez sound while trying to appear ( SACD) to be fostering it!

How many dfferent editions of Men in Black or Spiderman are you aware of ? Widescreen Edition, Deluxe Edition, Superbit, Boxset ? Are they really going to issue Ultimate Ultimate Editions to kill off these income streams ( bites of the same apple etc etc )? I don't believe so for a moment. And anyway, why would we need regional coding if that were the case ?

As for sound formats, John Doe believes 'dts ! ' is the ultimate in surround sound quality despite any evidence to support his claims.Misinformation is not the sole preserve of of Sony apparently

My 598 can't even play current DVD-A's (Seal being the latest to join a long list) so the thoughts of joining a whole new other format experiment isn't a runner with me regardless of what audio is available. I really believe in the short term these companies will **** it up one way or the other.

My 2c,
Manus

What would I like to see happen?

I would like to see more care in production of the present established formats. CDs can be awesome, but far too few are. Let DVD-A die quietly as is happening and, if the companies are going to produce hi-rez audio, let those SACDs be of uniformly high quality - at present they are not, something which hardly generates confidence re hi-rez video.

As for DVD, let them issue carefully crafted discs which realise the full potential of that medium within present specs. There is far too much junk being released at present. If the companies were genuinely interested in quality, they could easily demonstrate that now, but do not.

No, cynical me sees them interested in trying to generate a new market for increased profit. There is not enough loot for some of them from DVDs (e.g. production of players is no longer highly profitable) so they are looking to open up a new market. To kid ourselves they are really interested in giving us high quality is a delusion. The other sideline (as was the case in hi-rez audio) is to produce software so tightly encripted that coping is impossible. Another laugh. No system will ever be impossible to crack eventually.

No problem with companies trying to make a profit, but the stupid way they are behaving re this hi-def video beggars belief. Blind Freddy can see they are committing financial suicide with 2 formats, neither of which are likely to appeal to the general public.

Frankly I'm very lukewarm about this whole high definition topic. Given a good FTA transmission, my inexpensive Strong set top box can produce a stunning picture on a 96" Stewart Screen via a Barco VSE40 (which quadruples) -> Barco 808s projector.

So where is the incentive for me to go HD? Maybe there are a few basic differences between NTSC and PAL which make HD in NTSC more desirable than those of us blessed with PAL?

You can see from the little I've described here I have not been mean about expenditure on this audio-video pursuit and have more "invested" than in most expensive luxury cars. My wife and I would view about 30 hours of time shifted video a week so it is not as if I'm uninterested in the medium or its quality. But this whole HD-DVD vs Blu-ray bit is a big turn off and I'm rapidly coming around to be antagonistic about the whole HD concept.

Rant over

John

I'm generally with John on this. Well made current DVDs look pretty good on my scaled projection system (also Barco). If I'm pretty happy then Joe Six-Pack will probably also be pleased.

As there is so much poor mastering (edge enhancement etc.) in DVDs now, what makes anyone think that HD-DVDs would be any better crafted? Anyway, what about "historic" material say, 15 years old. Would this really gain anything on HD?

No, it's all about copy protection - evidence? - HMDI with HDCP. Makes all our analogue systems obsolete doesn't it?

Malcolm

Hi, I Agree. I have too much invested in my system to chuck it out at silly money to chase some aurel dream spun by higly motivated P.R departments hell bent on getting me to re buy my music collection again.
The law of diminsishing returns is alive and well, you gotta spend alot to get not much more.
My advice, enjoy what is available now. It is better than anything ever heard in the history of mankind and if we cant be content with that for a while, we will never be happy.
Enjoy, Chris

The extra capacity of Blu-ray makes a lot of sense for computer makers. Imagine being able to back up an entire hard disk on one Blu-ray optical disk. However, it's not just about drive space for the entertainment industry.

HealthNut (or anyone), do you have a comparison of of whose supporting what on the movie side of things, as opposed to the computer and A/V hardware companies.

What does it mean to be in one coalition or the other? If, say, Miramax is in the Blu-ray coalition (I don't know whether they are or not), have they had to make some sort of commitment to release a certain amount of product for a certain period of time, or to release product exclusively on Blu-ray indefinitely or for a certain period of time? What do they get out of joining one side or the other?

The studios are split approximately 50/50 with no exclusive support... so essentially, there is still nothing but 'heavy posturing' going on.

At this point in time I feel that the competiton between HD-DVD and Bluray is more destructive than beneficial. HD-DVD is unlikely to make any new announcements in terms of new features or capabilities that would have to be countered by Bluray. At this point in time, I don't think HD-DVD can force Bluray to become 'better' or less expensive.

It is not just storage space, Bluray is significantly more capable all the way around: 25 and 50 GB discs with the potential to reach 100 and 200 GB. Bandwidth of Bluray greater than HD-DVD and already slated to reach twice the bandwidth of HD-DVD (reaching 72 Mbps and potentially higher). Recording capacity that with 50 GB now and will reach 100 GB, and a prototype of 200 GB is in the lab. Then you have 10X times LESS power requirements for recording for Bluray which is huge for portable recording. There is also the more powerful Java layer of Bluray. Now we even have MLP/Dolby Digital losless as mandatory in Bluray. Apple is now on the board of Directorship... PIXAR is basically going to be on the Bluray side.

If cost to the consumer will be roughly equivalent and copyprotection/digital rights will be the same, why would a consumer chose HD-DVD over Bluray? I do not want to have to purchase two players, two additional sets of movies, HDMI switch boxes, other additional unecessary cabling, and EXPENSIVE REDUNDANCY. This is about supporting One Format, and the one that (so far) brings the most to the table is Bluray. If not much else changes and both formats are released, consumers will need to band together (if necessary) to 'boycott'one format and support only one.



[This message has been edited by Health Nut (edited 03-10-2005).]

So who gets what out of 'heavy posturing'? Else why join one camp or another - especially for the content providers.

The studios are playing both of the formats against each other to get the maximum concessions from both formats. I would like to know what the penalty would be if one of the HD-DVD supporting studio decided NOT to provide ANY content on HD-DVD and instead ended up giving Bluray exclusive support?

The fundamental thing future surround formats have to do is to break the outmoded, inefficient business of one channel, one speaker.

You need to encode or create the soundfield in the most efficient way, transmit that number of channels - say six or eight at most for hi-res with-height surround. Then your processor renders that for your hardware configuration to deliver the best re-creation of the original soundfield using your particular speaker layout. Like a PostScript file that describes the finest detail and renders at the resolution of the printer. MLP can already do that, I just hope that capability is in the spec.

It would put an end to people wanting "enough channels" to do "22.4" or whatever - by all means have two dozen speakers, but if the whole soundfield is encoded completely in eight channels, you don't need any more /channels/. You just tell your processor where all those speakers are and it generates the feeds to best reproduce the soundfield on that system.

--Rik