Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems DVD vs Blu-ray in Practice (was HD621)

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/delusion

Seriously, it's time the "upscaled DVD is almost as good" guys give up and move on. And the 612 just hammers that final nail home. Lossless audio on blu-ray craps all over the sound quality of DVD in the same way as the image quality does.

Mark

" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/delusion

Seriously, it's time the "upscaled DVD is almost as good" guys give up and move on. And the 612 just hammers that final nail home. Lossless audio on blu-ray craps all over the sound quality of DVD in the same way as the image quality does. "



http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/opinion

I think No.2 definition sums it up .

I think this 'DVD must die ' cos Blu is so brill is totally inaccurate . For a start a huge part of the catalogue is unreleased on BD plus stupid studios cannot agree on a minimum quality level for new releases . My latest 2 discs were 'Chris Botti in Boston ' ( Dolby True 7.1 ) and the excellent German film ' Sophie Scholl ' in 2-channel PCM .

I regularly come across reviews over at highdefdigest.com which point out deficiencies in video quality on new releases . To imply that BD always delivers is misleading at the very least though I'm sure , Mark , you have a Master List of Reference discs somewhere

For once , I agree with Bob Stuart regarding the ' catalogue ' ; I'm not quite ready to give up on my Hitchcock , John Forde , Film Noir and Concert collection of dvds until they are bettered and available .

BD done properly and losslessly can of course beat SD but

a ) it doesn't always ( apparently the new Steve Winwood/Eric Clapton Live BD has standard dts audio only )

b ) it doesn't neccessarily totally invalidate the enjoyment from the earlier format

c ) some BD discs are nothing but upconverts anyway


My .02c

Best

~M~

That is not my point. Clearly, when there is no choice but to buy a DVD then there's no choice. But where the choice is available, to justify the purchase of the DVD over the Blu "cus DVD is good enough" is at best, naive or disingenuous and at worst delusional.


Those issues plague all consumer formats and are not a weakness specific to blu.


See above. But the fact remains that a screwed up blu release will still outperform the same DVD. I'm not aware of ANY release where the DVD is universally reviewed as better...?

Mark

Mark H

In your original statement you said that those who believed in upscaled DVDs should give up. In your next post then said, "who would buy a DVD instead of a Bluray". Not the same thing - as accurate as calling a HD621 a 612 The fact is some Bluray discs are far more expensive for a negligible increase in quality, which can make DVD more attractive. Some DVD's are indistinguishable from Bluray if you didn't know the source - in my case P03/D03 through a Radiance. As for saying highdef sound is better all you know is your getting the best, but again walk into a room and listen and know whether it lossless or not you are either very lucky or have exceptional hearing, which is possible. For one I watch the film, listen to the dialogue and follow the plot, so the pixels and all the techie stuff disappear. It is a broad church and in some cases there is no absolutely correct answer - it is a matter of opinion.

Rob

This phrase keeps coming up. Somehow it is never "my wife has commented on the general sound improvement and thinks my buying the [$3000 HD621] was was money well spent."

Touch�!


Naive. Disingenuous. Delusional. You pick.


I'm willing to bet money that I could tell the difference EVERY time, even with non-HD resolution displays. There are characteristics of DVD, particularly mpeg compression artefacts that are simply absent on blu-ray, such that a blu-ray downsampled to DVD resolution will still look better than the same film on DVD.


No it's not. It's a matter of quantifiable evidence. Some people, for whatever reason, are willing to ignore the facts...

I would suggest this discussion be split off into another thread.

Cheers,

Mark

I watch Occasional Movies, TV, TV shows on DVD and Music Concert DVD's but more than all that I listen to the radio.

Much of the content I want is not on Bluray at all.

Whereas the technical advantages of Bluray are undeniable in their potensial, it does not follow that DVD is dead.
Horses for courses.
I often buy movies from Charity shops or 2nd hand at Car boot sales (Never Pirate copies). This makes them disposably cheap and IMHO great value.
If I loan them out, it doesnt matter if they do not return.
Supermarkets sell alot of DVD's for �3.00 or less.

The quality of my latest Concert DVD's (bought new) has been staggering in sound and picture on my system, and yes...... plenty good enough for me.

At this time, the extra cost of Bluray is just not worth it for me and who knows whats comming next..........
When everyone is ditching blu, may be the perfect time for me to buy in.

For 90% of the population, DVD is king and probaly always will be.
If you want the very best, then Get Bluray and pay the price.

Cheers, Chris

That's a fair point Chris, most movies on DVD now seem to be �7 or less 6 months after release, with a healthy supply of slightly older titles around �3. Compared to �20 for equivalent BD releases, I must admit that I'd be more inclined to take a punt on an interesting looking DVD. If it's a stinker, �3 doesn't hurt as much as �20!

I can't argue with the fact that the limited number of BD discs which I do own look gorgeous on our HD LCD screen. Mark's point is very interesting though that BD discs downsampled to SD still look better than DVDs. I didn't know that!

Cheers

George

Split off from HD621 Thread

Again, this is clearly demonstrable. DVD's have a limited bitrate and often that full available capacity is not used (same is true for blu too.) When you compress video to DVD using mpeg2 you introduce lots of visible artefacts; mosquito noise, macro blocking, i-frame pulsing, chroma noise etc etc. And if you don't use the full available bitrates these issues are exacerbated. With blu-ray, downscaled to SD resolution, you have the opportunity to take a significantly superior source, clean of such compression artefacts, and deliver a much higher bitrate version than you can get on DVD, crucially still clean of mpeg2 compression artefacts for a superior image.

So, even if you only have an SD display, you can still benefit from blu-ray vs DVD in image quality, and make huge gains in sound quality.

Mark

Thanks for this Mark. It might make me reconsider going for BD earlier than I would have otherwise.

My thinking was that there is little point in going HiDef with my Barco BG808S CRT and I would wait until it dies before upgrading the system front to back.

I was running HD (D-Theater tapes) on my Barco 812 before going digital a few years back. The 808 is very similar... the key to that experience working well was using a Lumagen processor to deliver 48Hz to the projector. This allowed the full resolution HD bandwidth to fall under the projector's maximum and avoid ringing issues. 1080p60 looked softer and had some ringing. Having said that it still looked significantly better than DVD...

Mark