Blu-Ray has won the Hi-Def war!

[Ben]

I think it will be over and we'll be fighting over a new format by then!

[GeorgeC]

An interview with Mark Cuban and why he thinks the Internet is dead...

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/ ... Mark-Cuban


Further into the article, he repeats what I've been saying -- there simply isn't enough bandwidth on the current Net (in the US at any rate) to support even DVD-quality movie downloads.

There's more about Congressional hearings where he urged lawmakers to subsidize higher-speed and get the fiber optic networks running to speeds of 1GB a second or faster, but this obviously has not happened.

[Daniel]

If you thought two formats was bad, well....

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/ ... s_Fall/930

Ugh.

[ShyViolet]

Oy vey!

[Ben]

Interesting...it has been mooted for a while but I didn't think I'd see it happen. This will fold and die before anyone has had a chance to even think about it.

[GeorgeC]

Interesting...it has been mooted for a while but I didn't think I'd see it happen. This will fold and die before anyone has had a chance to even think about it.

Another new format or even combi-format player is going to fail.

I just saw my first combi-player at Best Buy, Ben.

Yes, it can play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but the player is being sold by a company that I don't know by reputation and the asking price is $999.

Sticker-shock much?

Anyhow, the home video market has to settle on one next-gen DVD format or it's going to stifle. No question standard-def DVD isn't going away anytime soon, but to take full advantage of hi-def a new standard ought to be launched and supported by everyone. Unfortunately, corporate greed by four companies (M$, Toshiba, Universal, and DreamWorks) is forcing the issue to be unresolved that much longer.

Downloading hi-def is just not going to take well and I refuse to support M$ and the other companies that are trying to force consumers onto that path.



P.S. -- The way things are looking, it's increasingly likely that I'll settle on a PS3 to satisfy my longing for both a next-gen video game and hi-def DVD player system. The PS3 is supposed to be one of the best Blu-Ray players on the market at any rate.

[Ben]

$999 is a lot from a non-branded manufacturer. I know there's been a lot of attention given to the LG combis, but don't know of anyone else going that route.

The only other answer is WB's "Total HD" disc, of course, which has the Blu-Ray on one side and the HD-DVD on t'other.

But...isn't it strange how THAT idea was supposed to launch this summer, only to be put off until after the New Year...?

[GeorgeC]

$999 is a lot from a non-branded manufacturer. I know there's been a lot of attention given to the LG combis, but don't know of anyone else going that route.

The only other answer is WB's "Total HD" disc, of course, which has the Blu-Ray on one side and the HD-DVD on t'other.

But...isn't it strange how THAT idea was supposed to launch this summer, only to be put off until after the New Year...?

My point is Ben that two formats really can't survive a video war. It's gotta be Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

Also, for any company that chooses to do both formats on one machine or one disc, they're paying royalties for BOTH formats. Machines and DVDs made like that are never going to be cheaper than a single-format player/DVD. They'll never be as profitable, either, bottom-line.

HD-DVD/DVD combo discs have been coming out for a while and the verdict is that most collectors HATE these discs. They want them all HD-DVD or nothing. It boggles my mind to conceive that people think a Blu-Ray/DVD combo disc or HD-DVD/Blu-Ray combo disc will do any better. Uh-uh.

I don't know who LG is and that's problem enough for me. If I'm going to invest over $200 in a piece of equipment, let alone $500 or more, I want to know that I'm getting equipment from a reliable manufacturer or company that will honor its warranty.

I bought my first DVD player back in 1999 for $300 and it stilll works to this day. Barring perhaps 3-4 discs with wonky authoring, it's had no major problems reading any major label DVDs including the infamous T2: Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD that was the first to have extensive seamless branching. It's a rock-solid Pioneer brand DVD player.

Heck, my Pioneer LD player just celebrated 13 years and it still works well as I author DVDs from my LD collection. (The stuff just hasn't been released on DVD yet and some of it likely never will anytime soon.) Pioneer is a rock-solid brandname where I'm concerned and there's a good chance I'll add a Pioneer Blu-Ray player in the future when I can afford it.

I'm hoping that I can get a next-gen player that's just as reliable and as good when it turns 8-years-old, too.

[Ben]

Basically...agreed on all counts. I never suggested there could be more than two formats.

I won't buy hybrid discs either...they don't make sense.

[walt1928]

I was wondering what everyone thought of classic animation on hi-def with Sleeping Beauty coming next year. The lines will be crisper and more detail probably in view but will it be worth the upgrade. My dvd library is mostly animation and I am not looking forward to upgrading it.

[eddievalient]

Unless there are exclusive bonus features that would be worth buying it again for, you shouldn't need to worry about it. From what I understand, if you play a regular dvd in a hi-def player it upconverts the picture to HD. You don't get true HD, but it upconverts enough for the picture to look really good (I know this is true because my sister showed me the last time I visited). So don't sweat it. The discs you have now should be fine.

[James]

Not exactly true. If you have a high definition TV, you're going to want HD movies. Unconverted movies can look better than non-unconverted movies - that is their purpose. But unconverted movies do not look nearly as good as HD movies.

Here is a very basic explanation of why. Older TVs, and therefore movies made for them, have about 480 lines of resolution. In other words, if you look very, closely at the picture you'll see that it is made up of about 480 lines stacked on top of each other to make a full picture. High definition TVs have at best 1080 "lines" of resolution. So if you upconvert a regular DVD movie to HD what the machine basically does is some fancy stretching of the picture to make it bigger. Stretching a 480 line picture to a 1080 line picture involves filling in data that isn't there so the picture ends up soft and a little blurry. A true HD movie will be made with 1080 lines of resolution so there is no stretching involved at all and the picture is perfectly crisp as it was made for that screen.

Here is an example you can probably try right now depending on what type of computer monitor you have. Change your monitor display resolution to a much lower setting (for example if your computer display says 1024x768 change it temporarily to 640x480). What you've done is made the picture coming from your computer smaller and it is stretched it to fit your monitor screen. Notice that the picture is not nearly as sharp as before. Is is usable - yes, but not ideal!

So is it worth it? If you have an HDTV there is no question is it worth it. If you don't have an HDTV you probably don't have an HD DVD player or a Blu-ray Player so it doesn't matter yet!

[droosan]

Well, I have to say that I wasn't very impressed with the high-definition 'transfer' of Dragon's Lair that has been released on blu-ray.

It's full of grainy 'noise' which is very distracting at playback 'speed', to say nothing of stepping through the animation frame-by-frame; the delicate linework of the drawings is all 'murky', and the soft gradients of the background paintings is a 'noisy' mess.

Sure, Dragon's Lair's picture looks 'okay' when viewed from across the room .. but it falls far short of the video quality of Meet the Robinsons, Ratatouille, or Corpse Bride .. all of which boast 'crystal-clear' images whose details 'hold up' to close inspection, at mere inches away from the screen.

-----------------

That said .. the trailer for Enchanted on Disney's blu-ray releases features brief 'snippets' from Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and Tarzan .. and all of these look amazingly great. However, all five films were also produced with digital ink-and-paint; the 'transfer' to blu-ray is pretty much directly from the digital file .. it doesn't have to be scanned from film; thus, there's no 'grain'.

-----------------

I am indeed interested to see what Sleeping Beauty will look like in HD next year .. I do expect that much more care will be taken with its 'transfer' than was the case with Dragon's Lair (somehow, all of Don Bluth's films seem to get 'slipshod' treatment on video).

I don't think it can look as 'pristine' as a purely digital file does in HD .. though, the fact that Sleeping Beauty was originally shot on 70mm film will certainly help to boost its image quality.

[GeorgeC]

Frankly, I like film grain better than the "video-ey" feel of most films today.

Same goes for that lush, colorful of old technicolor classics like the Wizard of Oz and Disney's true animated masterpieces. It's a shame everyone is hell-bent on making things look so darn realistic on film. If I wanted ultra-realism on film, I'd stay at home and watch the news! It sort of defeats the purpose of fictional entertainment by making it too true to real life. Hollywood just doesn't know the difference any more.

It just doesn't feel like film when there's no grain and the picture is TOO clear.

A perfect example of this is the last home video release of Snow White on DVD. Great extras but Disney screwed the pooch on the video transfer by going through yet another film restoration and taking out all the film grain! We got a classic film transferred to DVD that ended up looking not much better than their direct-to-video projects as a consequence!

I can understand people wanting the pinholes and scratches and taken out on film, but DVNR and other restoration efforts have ruined the look of not more than a few older animated classics on home video.

Careful what you wish for!

[droosan]

Well, the 'grain' I'm complaining about on Dragon's Lair is not film grain .. it's a mess of noise that 'shimmers' in just about every pixel of the image, making the finer details of the linework harder to discern than even my laserdisc copy! It's almost as though each frame has been sharpened & contrasted individually in Photoshop. Further, some goofball decided to 'goose' the saturation, as well.

Thanks to the 'wonders' of HDMI, though .. I haven't yet found a way to 'grab' a blu-ray frame so that I can 'illustrate' what I'm talking about.

---------------------

I do agree that film grain can impart a pleasant look on a (well-shot) film .. and as a visual-effects artist, I've often-times relied on film grain to help with 'hiding' the blend between the real plate and the 'effect'. Indeed, on some DTV projects we've actually added grain to HD footage to help it resemble a film 'look' (with 'mixed' results depending, again, on how well it was shot to begin with).

And actually, HD video can (and often does) make our job harder .. since most cinematic 'tricks', from caked-on makeup, to wires, to painted papier-mache sets .. look like exactly what they are.