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Sean 
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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 Posted - 02/18/2008 : 03:16:50
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It looks like Toshiba is about to let HD-DVD turn up it's toes and Sony's Blu-Ray will feast on it's corpse. It's about time, a couple of years overdue IMO.
I think the turning point was Sony supplying a Blu-Ray player in it's PlayStation 3. What better way of increasing market share than giving your players away for free? 
Here's an article from today on the matter, and another from a couple of days ago. I think HD-DVD's fate is sealed.
Just curious, has anyone got an HD-DVD or a Blu-Ray player, or started buying/renting their discs? I haven't, I've been waiting for a winner before even thinking about it.
Although to be quite honest, I'm not sure the difference between Blu-Ray, and a 576p (progressive scan PAL) DVD displayed on a TV with a good upscaler is particularly great. I got myself a 50" HD-capable TV a couple of months ago, and play DVDs on 576p, and even my letterboxed 4:3 format movies (i.e, no anamorphism) look great, and look much sharper than they did on my 32" non-upscaling interlace-only 3-year old TV. From my sofa I'm not aware of any pixellation, it's all been removed by the upscaler, so I can see Blu-Ray being only a slight improvement. 
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Edited by - Sean on 02/18/2008 03:18:02 |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 02/18/2008 : 05:33:15
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| A Playstation 3 is about as far away from free as you can get. |
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ChocolateLady 
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 02/18/2008 : 07:25:59
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You know, I still have movies on VHS (mostly Disney) and all this ticks me off big time. While a friend of mine lent me a program that can copy my videos onto DVDs, and I'll see how that works, I'm certainly not going to go scrapping my regular DVD collection for HD or Blu-Ray disks. At least not yet. Of course, if you consider that I still even own a video player, then you can understand how conservative I am about these things.
Thing is, upgrading the home movie technology so quickly is pushing the bootleg and illegal download market forward no end!
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 02/18/2008 : 08:34:30
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quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
A Playstation 3 is about as far away from free as you can get.
Correct. Obviously the Playstation 3 wasn't free. It was priced about where it could be expected to be whether it contained a Blu-Ray player or not. And the total package (PS3 including Blu-Ray player) was about half the price of a stand-alone Blu-Ray player. Hence Blu-Ray players as part of a PS3 now outnumber stand alone Blu-Ray players by 100:1 (and HD-DVD players by something similar), it was totally successful. |
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demonic
"Cinemaniac"
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Posted - 02/18/2008 : 09:24:46
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| I'm a bit disappointed. Not because I'm particularly interesting in high definition DVDs until there's a significant increase in quality, they are cheaply available and standard DVDs stop being made, but because I always thought "Blu-Ray" was a stupid name. Oh well. |
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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 02/18/2008 : 10:12:15
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quote:
Originally posted by dem08nic
I'm a bit disappointed ... I always thought "Blu-Ray" was a stupid name. Oh well.
They were originally going to call it Blu-Ray Cyrus!
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 02/18/2008 : 10:52:52
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quote:
Originally posted by dem08nic
...I always thought "Blu-Ray" was a stupid name. Oh well.
Interesting. I think it's a clever name, it's catchy (people will remember it) and it describes what it is; a blue laser.
Whereas try explaining to a moderately non-technically-minded consumer who records stuff on their HDD recorder with inbuilt DVD player to watch on their HD TV that HD-DVD is something quite different altogether.  I think "HD-DVD" was one of the worst product names ever. |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 02/18/2008 : 11:40:39
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| I bought a new computer last fall and it says the built-in DVD player can play Blu-Ray disks, but I've never checked it out. |
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Sal[Au]pian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 02/18/2008 : 14:03:21
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quote:
Originally posted by dem08nic
I always thought "Blu-Ray" was a stupid name.
Yeah, names beginning Blu- are a bit Tacky.  |
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Sal[Au]pian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 02/18/2008 : 14:04:28
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| I had no idea before this thread that there was a difference between the two, so I doubt I'll be rushing out to get one. |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 02/18/2008 : 22:09:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
I had no idea before this thread that there was a difference between the two, so I doubt I'll be rushing out to get one.
It was like the VHS/Beta war, one was destined to fail. The two are completely incompatible. |
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benj clews 
"...."
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Posted - 02/19/2008 : 00:14:38
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
I had no idea before this thread that there was a difference between the two, so I doubt I'll be rushing out to get one.
There isn't a massive difference- from what I understand, they're similar technology (indeed, at one time it looked like we might get combined HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks in the ongoing battle of formats) only Blu-Ray squashes the format down to about 35% more storage capacity.
For the record, I got a very reasonably priced Playstation 3 at launch from Japan, but since I can't speak Japanese, I've so far only been able to play the region-free copy of Casino Royale that came with it. Certainly, it's a lot faster than DVD- the menus just whizz up, compared to DVD's visible disk-accessing. However, I think it's a format that'll come much more into it's own once we all have full (1080p) HD TVs and more films come with picture-in-picture extras (something DVD would likely struggle to do).
As for upscaling, unlike that bugbear of mine- the ridiculous photo-enhancing software in CSI, it can't fill in what isn't there. DVDs are roughly 700 by 500 pixels, full HD is something like 1920 by 1080 pixels. To upscale a DVD by that much would give you a somewhat blurry/ blocky image (depending on how the upscaling occurs). Sure- it's not so bad with the standard HD TVs most people presently have, but once full HD TVs become more affordable, DVDs just won't cut the mustard. |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 02/19/2008 : 05:21:11
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quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
As for upscaling, unlike that bugbear of mine- the ridiculous photo-enhancing software in CSI, it can't fill in what isn't there.
True, but it can fill in what it thinks ought to be there, which is not not going to be very different from what would be there under 1080p. If an object consists of a single pixel at 1080p then sure, an upscaled 576p isn't going to display it, but can you see a 1080 pixel from your sofa when watching a 1080p movie? I think not.quote:
DVDs are roughly 700 by 500 pixels, full HD is something like 1920 by 1080 pixels. To upscale a DVD by that much would give you a somewhat blurry/ blocky image (depending on how the upscaling occurs).
I don't agree. Take a diagonal line down the screen on the original movie. DVD it at 576 and it becomes a blocky line down the screen (like stacks of bricks on a sloping wall). Then upscale it to 1080 and the stack of bricks becomes a stack of much smaller blocks that looks like a diagonal line again. It's not going to look very different from what you'd see if you directly made a 1080 from the original celluloid (or hi-res digital movie). I know this as I've got one, and it looks awesome as I mentioned above. I can't imagine it looking much better at all than how it looks now when I watch a movie from my sofa, unless you've got eyes like a hawk. The pixels on mine disappear from view at a distance of about 2m, which means that further resolution enhancements won't have much purpose as they'll be invisible to the viewer.quote:
Sure- it's not so bad with the standard HD TVs most people presently have
I wouldn't describe it as 'not so bad', I'd describe mine now as fukn excellent. 
In a nutshell, I was aware of pixellation when watching a DVD on my 32" non-HD TV. Now on my 50" TV (with viewing area 2.7 times larger) I'm not aware of any pixellation at all, and can see individual hairs waving on someone's head, tiny beads of sweat on their face etc, and that's watching exactly the same DVD but with upscaling. So when it becomes better (as it will with Blu-Ray) then I don't think the improvement is going to be dramatic. Decent upscalers are already at the point where they're reaching the limit of what the human eye can detect.
- Obviously menu speed / PIP etc is a totally different ballgame. |
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demonic
"Cinemaniac"
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Posted - 02/19/2008 : 10:15:10
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| Hyper sharp pictures is all well and good, but I was pretty content on the whole with home video. I can help feel that beyond the tech speak to a lowly film collector with finite funds I have another redundant system I've been throwing my money at for ten or so years. Gotta love the march of technology. |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 02/19/2008 : 10:51:14
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quote:
Originally posted by dem08nic
Gotta love the march of technology.
I have two words for ya:
planned obsolescence
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 02/19/2008 : 11:08:08
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quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
quote:
Originally posted by dem08nic
Gotta love the march of technology.
I have two words for ya:
planned obsolescence
With autos, yes.
With technology, not so planned.
Remember, nobody knows anything. And then something is discovered that changes everything. At least the obsolescence war over hi-def DVDs took place in front of our eyes. But I don't think it was planned. People aren't that clever. |
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And the winner is..... Blu-Ray!
