Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems BR Is the King OF HD.

Actually, I was. All we have in this thread is speculation that the formats will fail without any evidence to back this up. All the published evidence so far suggests that they are doing ok and still going in the right direction.
Until I see evidence to the contrary I shall continue my cheerleading. In fact it's impossible not to when you see, and hear, just how astonishingly good (as I'm certain you have) HD is.

And this is partly why Sony is getting it's butt kicked by HD-DVD. They now need to go to plan B if they have one

They will come of course, but as already been suggested, and as we saw with titles like Star Wars, not until there is a larger user base who will buy the title and make the studios a load of money.

Mark

I wasn't sure if my 1080i 1280x768 50" would see a difference. I most certainly do. The source that was transferred is the limitation.

My friend just picked up a cheap 56" JVC 1080p DLP set. $1900.00 You can see the difference night and day.

I used Ice Age to compare both because it removes the film grain and soft movie lens difference.

The Demo's in stores (although possibly exagerated) with the split screens showing DVD vs Blu-Ray are quite good. They will convince Joe sixpack.

Sorry, Chris, but you are wrong. It may be GREAT for you, but that is not acceptable. The limitations and artefacts that come with MPEG2 compression are well understood and documented and their affects on image quality are easily visible and demonstrable; pick a DVD, any DVD... Once you start looking at the new codecs and the HD formats this becomes even more painfully clear.

Mark

Just for perspective ....

I have a 32" Aquos HDTV in my family room. This is a 720p (or maybe 768) resolution set and I can clearly and easily see the difference between an HD broadcast and a SD broadcast. It is not a subtle difference.

So, how many 32" + HD sets are out and in use ... 10 million, 20 million, 50 million. That's a pretty big installed base.

Maybe Joe Sixpack waits on the sidelines for a $200 HDplayer, but there are enough Joe Twelvepack's who will dive in to make these formats sucessful.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Again I say Virus, that your large screen will realy benefit by HD but you are an enthusiast with a house.

Joe sixpack (upon who the success of all this relys) hasn't got a projector and he hasnt got 40 inch plasma either.

He lusts for a video iPod and a media centre PC with flatscreen.

Then we get back to the Catalog (spelling)

Where is it?

But if i could scale my SD to 'nearly HD quality', whats the point of HD?

It's good enough as it is.

You can get an upscaling PVR with HDMI for Freeview now. And SD DVD upscaling players.

Thats the future for the short term untill prices fall and a decent catalog appears and one format remains. IMHO

LOL I could of course be completly wrong.

Cheers, Chris

I'm having a hard time agreeing with Mark_H, although I respect his position. Playback of SD DVD's on my Toshiba HD player passing through a decent scaler to the Sony Ruby projected onto a 132" screen will give a spectacular picture. HD DVD's are better, but I find myself at the HD shelves at Best Buy trying to decide whether or not to buy additional HD DVD's. New releases are generally twice the price of the SD sibling. In most cases, with the lame titles being released, I cannot justify spending twice as much money for a very average film.

When SD DVD was ramping up, the difference in picture quality was so substantial that I found myself buying DVD's every week. Nowadays, I probably buy two a month. I definitely hope that the HD format is successful, I would even be willing to buy two players if the format war cannot be resolved, as long as I feel that there is a value to doing so. Just my two cents.

Rudy

Mark, I want HD to succeed. I genuinely do. I watch far less "broadcast" TV than DVDs of my choice, so having a player is more important to me than whatever SKY or anyone else is churning out.

My contention though, is that by definition, you will only see positive reports of the formats' progress. The people writing reports/articles/reviews/press releases are as follows: the hardware manufacturers/licencers who need to make profit, the PR agencies who support them, the broadcasters who need to increase subscription revenues and market share, the magazines who need exciting new copy (and therefore profit) and the enthusiasts/reviewers, who genuinely want it to work for performance reasons. So who's left out? The public, who will make or break the optical disc formats (I think they will make broadcast a reality).

There is a phenomenon, unknown to obsessives such as ourselves, which is "good enough". Yes, most people who wander past an in-store HD display (and in the UK, the big supermarkets, Tesco and Asda, are making sure Joe Sixpack gets it between the eyes) will say "Very nice...yes, it looks much clearer and sharper". Does that translate into sales though? Nope. M'lud, I submit that the vast majority of the populace can discern the difference, yet will remain perfectly happy with what they have already got with DVD. Why? Because ultimate picture/sound quality is just not important enough in the day to day lives of 99.9% of the population to bother about.

I've said it before and will reiterate...even if every last enthusiast, on every forum, and every journalist, and every HD player factory worker and every retailer bought into this, it will still die on it's a*se if the general public stay out.

Right, I've banged on enough.

Cheers

George

PS And just to recap, I would love to buy a new player with loads of great titles!

Can this recurrent debate be framed into (broadly) two theories with two different testable predictions of what will happen?

If so, why don't we frame it that way so it can be revisited when someone's prediction is contradicted by experience?

It doesn't appear that convergence is coming about by debate of beliefs/theories.

Cheers, Ian

It's sad that there are two formats. That's the main reason why I'm in a wait and see status. It's also sad that Sony will not advocate VC-1 because it is a Microsoft codec but maybe that will kill Blu-ray. Although I would like Blu-ray to win and use VC-1.

I am also happy with upscaled SD DVD's. I still enjoy the movie and the picture is clear enough on my 120 inch screen. HD is pretty nice on broadcast stations like PBS. It isn't an outstanding increase in picture quality on my 1366x768 projector when I auditioned an HD DVD player because my projector uses BOB with 1080i and I only have component HD inputs. The picture was cleaner but I felt it wasn't absolutely necessary. Broadcast HD movies don't look much better than SD DVD in a lot of cases. Some do but not all. I was a Laserdisc user before DVD's and with that transition it was a night and day difference. LD was noisy compared to DVD.

One format must win before I upgrade my projector and player. I still buy plenty of SD DVD's.

Some people are just starting to try DVD recorders never mind HD DVD. Most people are overwhelmed with the complexity of a DVD recorder. They ask me why all the different DVD formats? My brother is so mad he is thinking about taking his recorder back to the store. Most of his friends haven't upgraded to HD yet. I have a feeling HD DVD will be like Laserdisc and never get as big as SD DVD. People are already starting to download movies and thats the way the industry will eventually turn IMO.

Its just pathetic that there are two formats. If there was one I would have a player already. Probably a new projector too.

Ron

Regarding Apple's iPod movie success, it will be interesting to see the long term numbers. Apple has more than enough rabid fans to try to initially show that "everyone" is downloading films from just one studio when in reality the general public are not.

They have had success in music downloads as it is convienient to listen to music on an iPod. The same cannot be said of a movie.

BTW it will be nice to demo Sky Sports in HD when I'm back in Newcastle for Christmas. The World Cup on ESPN this summer looked great.

Cheers,
David.

Have you been to BigBoxMart lately !!!
There must be 2 JoeSix packs wheeling out $1500.00 42" plasma's everytime I go.

I got the feeling that AVC (MPEG4) is no slouch either. Both VC-1 and AVC codec are being "learnt" at the moment by the transfer engineers, and the transfers will get better over time. BD does have the advantage that higher bit-rates are possible per layer...