45GB HD-DVD discs? Fact or Fiction? (1 Viewer)

[Paul_Scott]

I'm not optimistic at all about more studios going bi-format anytime soon. I certainly don't expect Fox too within the next 12 months- but then looking ahead their Bd plans for 2006 aren't all that impressive anyway. Barely 2 dozen titles (and frankly, I'm not itiching to pick up Garfield or ID4 or Fantastic Four...)
I suspect they aren't looking to HD DVD now the same way they aren't scrambling to release on Bd with just the Samsung in the market (it doesn't make a big diff as far as codecs and capacity...its more how many units they will move, and is it worth it to bother...yet).

as far as hardware vs software subsidies goes- The Toshiba player has several qualities that make it more expensive than it is priced to sell at right now- where its built & what's in it. These will change in the future and prices will come down accordingly. I don't know where the quality will go-up, down, or sideways- and that will be a key question. But moving production from Japan to China (or Korea), using cheaper parts and less of them- these aren't a big technical challange to overcome.
On the other hand, you are dealing with a situation that- while it may be duplicatable in a lab environment- just may not make economic sense when all is said and done.
I think one side may have to contend with a logistical snafu, while the other side might be up against issues of physics. The only way to circumvent the latter may require a massive drain of resources that just doesn't make bottom line sense given certain time constraints.
Main thing to remember is Bd 50s are not neccessary for games right now (and probably for the next 10 years). 100,000 x 24 games will justify building the rep facilities. 100 movie titles x 20,000 copies may not (consider the price points each of these two will be selling at).
I don't see any point where Bd50s are absolutely neccessary within the next year- unless Sony remains married to mpeg2 and/or they are frozen out from releasing some big films that are penciled in. And what would be the simpler solution if the yields on one specific disc size continue to give you a big headache? Change codecs and switch to the other. Problem solved for 95% of the time, at least. Will Disney refuse to move into HD media if they can't have an extra 20-25 gbs on the same disc? At a resonable cost? Or are they just more likley to release a 2 disc set? Are the people with the PS3s and who buy the $1500 Panasonic and Pioneer players going to revolt and throw their machines away because a lot of 2 disc SE sets are being released? Or are they going to just grin and bear it?
If they have the money to burn, they can throw it at the problem and maybe physics can be bribed and they can get a breakthrough that allows this to occur sooner rather than later- No one here really knows.

However I think its very telling they would launch the format like and when they did, if they thought the the killer advantage breakthrough were really just around the corner.

 

[Rob_Walton]

If consumers just want special features they can buy DVDs which will remain far cheaper than either format into the foreseeable future. The studios aren't stupid, and they're probably aware of how good upscaled DVD can look, so they're unlikely to place all their eggs in the greater PQ basket for these next gen discs. New special features are what is being lined up as a key marketing feature, with interactive being the new buzzword. As you say it remains to be seen if people really want this stuff. Time will tell. As to costs of BD50, it seems there are different rumours each week concerning the current cost/yield ratio of this disc. The only fact we have is that BD50-R/RE is currently on the market, and at a similar price to that at which CD and DVD recordables first launched.

The pace at which this all has to occur is gonna depend on the speed with which the market adopts high def optical disc, isn't it. So far it's not exactly been Speedy Gonzales.

 

[Rob_Walton]

I agree. Especially as studios appear to be gearing up to use AVC or VC-1 to encode their movies on BD. This will probably be a transitionary period, in many ways. And to begin with the numbers will probably not support much activity from companies who don't hold a stake in the eventual outcome of this format war. Weren't a number of studios absent from DVD for a while after that format launched? We may well see a similar situation play out this time round as well.

This whole debate has gotten pretty far from the original topic, hasn't it. Are 45Gb HD DVDs feasible? The discs certainly could be, since they appear to be based on the earlier triple layer DVD spec. That format was never used, and it seems Toshiba have not demonstrated whether they can build a player capable of reading these discs. In fact I can't remember the last time Toshiba even mentioned the possibility of 45Gb discs coming to market. Perhaps it was some time after Disney decided to go with BD. Anyone remember when Toshiba last commented on 45Gb discs coming to market?

 

[Brandon Pop]

It looks like Disney marketing researchers have all the information necessary to decide technology specs for the future.

And here I thought working on the technical side of film mastering and dvd compression gave me somewhat qualified response to the alleged need for 20GB of space to compress video. Lol.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

is the desire to have a format with enough space for open-ended authoring so terrible?

Would you rather a format that has "just enough" bandwidth for a typical feature film?

I'd like to be watching my 1080P IMAX movies in 3-D just like they were filmed, along with 24/96 lossless audio on my Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia... I'm also looking forward to avoiding the marathon of disc-swapping for HD television season sets... along with whatever other great uses for that space become clear over the next 10 years.

 

[RobertR]

Are you saying that's not possible with HDDVD?

 

[Marc Colella]

You make it sound like we'd be swapping discs after every episode. Disc swapping would happen every 3+ hours (which is roughly 6 episodes for 30 minute shows, or 3 episodes for 1 hours shows). That's a lot of material to watch in one sitting. Swapping discs at that point won't be a concern to most people.

 

[Lew Crippen]

What all of these IMAX, 3D movies anyway? And as to avoiding the marathon TV series disk swapping, we must have very different views of getting up to change disks every couple of hours or so. The marathon would be sitting on the couch without getting up for as many hours as would fir on 50GB. Maybe I’m misremembering Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur but as I recall they have intermissions where the audience was expected to get up, go to the lobby, buy some popcorn and Cokes, go to the bathroom and return to their seats. Surely you wish to duplicate the original theater experience (and to those items, you can just add changing disks). Put another way, it is not yet demonstrated that you can’t fit an outstanding picture and superb audio for these pictures on disks that break at the intermission. I’ll acknowledge in advance that you may find some movie that would be better without a break, but I suspect that they are few and far between.

You can make a better case, if you get away from side issues such as the ability to a whole TV series on a single disk, so you can sit without moving for longer than is good for your bladder.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

DaViD,
I know you realise your arguing for a format that only has 25GB, at best at the moment, against a format that has 30GB at the moment.
In the future, your argument might indeed be considered more 'substantial'.
However, right now, it just seems silly to me.
I believe the time for Blu Backers to start telling everyone just how great 50GB is, is the exact same time the HD DVD Hordes should start telling everyone just how great 45GB is...
WHEN IT"S HERE!!!

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Ed,

I'm not arguing for *anything* "at the moment".

I'm talking about the future of a 10+ year HD format. Not what you see on the shelf today.

And if you've read this thread you'd know that the 45 gig HD DVD disc is not speced for the video HD DVD application... only computer use.


It's been made. Repeatedly.

Signing off.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Many have noted that current hd-dvd titles already use 29-30 GB. Now, some have presented this as evidence that hd-dvd is already at its limit. Others have explained that it's good production practice to use all the available space.

But, let us examine a 30 gb hd-dvd title. Is it flawless? Is the soundtrack lossless? If 15 more gigabytes were available, would it be possible to improve the video and audio quality?

Given a large enough bandwidth, which video codec is best? Mpeg-2, mpeg-4, or vc-1? Pretend you don't have to worry about squeezing the video down onto a puny 30 gb disc.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Jeremy,
Check out Sony's 25GB MPEG 2 titles if you want to "see" (my quote) "evidence" (to quote you) that Blu is already at its limit. And, indeed, video quality does suffer. So your right about hitting the 'brick wall', Sony's proved it for you.

Is this thread about the possibility of 45GB HD DVD?
or
How great Blu 50GB will be?

 

[RobertR]

That's the REAL question. If it is flawless, extra space is pointless. If it isn't, you need more.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Ed,
Do you have a Blu-ray player and have you played those two discs?




Crawdaddy

 

[JeremyErwin]

I don't think I even mentioned brd in my message.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

No, I do not own a HD player.
So, I have not played any Sony disc, except for the Blu demo disc.
Did I confuse you with MPEG "2"? Is that why your asking "those two discs"? No matter, I've not seen one, let alone two, Sony movie discs, so the answer remains the same.
My experience, other then the Siamese Sammy demo at my local BB, for Blu is only from the web (I just LOVE DVDBasen). So, only from what I've read, can I say no reviewer has rated any of the Sony titles to match or exceeded the top titles from HD DVD for video quality.

Should I no longer post on anything I've not seen myself?
(A true question, not to be defensive)
The reason I was posting what I did was because I thought it was a well known fact that Sony titles were lacking in video quality. I guess maybe I should just let the experts speak for themselves. I just found it annoying that people where posting on the lack of video or audio quality that 30GB disc "might" have, when it is well know that Sony's 25GB titles are producing sub par video.
Thanks.

 

[Robert Crawford]

That's what I thought so why are you trolling for responses from Blu-ray proponents? Is it your way of having some fun at others expense? If so then please stop it because there's been too much of that type of behavior on both sides of this format war.





Crawdaddy

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I haven't purchased a player from either format yet as I wait out the "war" and hardware/software issues.

However, I've spent hours watching both HD DVD and Blu-ray on my own 720P projector, my friend's JVC 1080P projector, and my other friend's Sony 1080P SXRD projector (comparisons all made on the same projectors in the same systems via HDMI 1080i and in the case of the Sony Ruby projector proper deinterlacing back to full 1080p).

In all cases I can state absolutely that every HD DVD title we've reviewed has looked spectacular (we avoided the 3 improperly mastered titles with the "1080i" bug). Compression with VC1 was transparent in a way that consumers have never previously enjoyed, and the images looked utterly film-like and natural with no "digital signature" my eyes could detect.

So far I've screened Ridick, Sorwdfish, Blazing Saddles and a few others I can't remember just now.

Blu-ray, on the contrary, has consistently dissappointed. And even the best-quality BD image only looked "almost as good" to my eyes as HD DVD (Underworld). It had good sharpness and detail, but I still saw tell-tale signs of video compression like "noisey" film-grain that looked blocky and some occasional instances of banding etc. The image just felt more "digital" and wasn't as relaxing to watch as the VC1 compressed HD DVD titles.

The poorer BD titles (all mpeg2) have ranged from "ok" to unwatchable. I actually had to *stop watching* Lord of War the MPEG artifacts were so bad and Hitch, while "ok", looked barely more detailed than a decent upconverted DVD (but with more artifacts).

This indicates to me that BD isn't ready to go prime-time until it get's VC1 going (or AVC), which should be very, very soon. Then it will be interesting to do some real comparisons when both formats are encoded using the same video codec.

At least the Lions Gate BD titles had Dolby Digital Plus! That's a start...

 

[Kyle McKnight]

I'm sure my view would be different if I envisioned myself watching movies on anything other than a 42" screen from now until the next video format (what, 4-5yrs from now?) but, if I can get a 2-3hr movie in HD, with great video/audio, and HD-DVD will offer that to me, that's all I care about. I'm going to wait a bit for some more movies to come out and see what the outcome will be, but I'm going to be buying up the HD-DVD movies that I'm interested in now, as they come out, because I think this format will "win the war!" I was all for BluRay before, but unless prices drop/VC1 accepted and used/50GB discs come about, soon, I don't see myself going that way.

 

[Max Leung]

Sorry, but this is flawed - you can't extrapolate space taken by future titles because authoring can be completely different. Also, the soundtracks are not taken into account. My understanding is that HD-DVD titles out today do not have lossless audio.

If you want an LOTR: EE movie with DTS then yeah, you could get it to fit on an HD-DVD. Let's do some calculations:

Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition is about 208 minutes long. The HD-DVD maximum bitrate is 36.55 megabit/second. So, for maximum A/V quality we would need 36.55*208*60 = 456,144 million bits = 57 billion bytes. Oh crap, we just exceeded the HD-DVD spec by a factor of two, and exceeded the Bluray spec by 15%.

So, we would need to scale things back. Perhaps limit the video bitrate to 25 megabits/second (I believe the BBC-HD broadcasts are using AVC at a constant 25 megabits/second, so let's make that the minimum - we want to be at least as good as broadcast HD right?). Now let's add in the audio - according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital_Plus, the bandwidh needed would be 6.144 Mbit/s - almost 10x the bandwidth of 640 kbit/s for regular DD5.1 (and 15x the 448kbit/s used by most DVDs today). So now we need 25+6= 31 megabits/second. So now we need 48.3 billion bytes. That will just barely fit on a bluray disc with lossless DD+ audio.

To get that to fit on an HD-DVD disc you would need to use variable bit rate for the video.

Now, the wiki page did say that HD-DVD can support up to 3Mbit/s for DD+ audio, while BD can handle up to 1.7Mbit/s - (strange, I guess DD+ is not lossless then?), so I guess the numbers will be smaller - but you still wouldn't fit LOTR:EE on an HD-DVD without reducing the video bitrate by quite a bit. The average bitrate for audio and video could not exceed 19 megabits/second! Ouch - that doesn't look good - that's lower than broadcast bitrates! And we're not even talking about extras here - but I wouldn't mind if they were on a second disc, because there is so little bandwidth available for a 200+ minute movie.

Personally, I would rather have the highest possible bitrate for movies - otherwise, what's the point? I've seen my share of hidef material and I can see quite a few flaws even with the high-bitrate HD broadcasts (mpeg2 at 20-25 megabits/s). I dunno - maybe I can see flaws that most HT enthusiasts cannot? Even those that watch hidef material?