A Few Words About A few words about...™ 300 -- in HD & BD (1 Viewer)

[Douglas Monce]

There is clearly a sweet spot with VC1 beyond which a higher bit rate doesn't produce obvious improvement. As a film gets longer though, blu-ray will have a definite advantage over HD DVD for now. But for the average movie of 2 hours or less, a higher bit rate will, in most cases, not produce a better picture.

I am starting to hear rumors that Toshiba has worked out their 51 gig 3 layer disc, and that it will work with all players with a firmware upgrade. However this is just a rumor at this point.

Doug

 

[ppltd]

And if the encode has been optimized, would not help.

 

[Shawn Perron]

Ah, but optimizing for maximum quality with a higher ceiling and optimizing for the max bitrate they actually have available are not necessarily the same thing. They could optimize for a bitrate half of what they use on this disc, but that doesn't mean that it would look identical to the current encode.

All people are asking is that Warner give the same attention to Blu-Ray that is given to HD-DVD. With 2/3s of Warners sales coming from Blu-Ray, it's certainly a fair thing to ask of them.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I don't think Warner cares all that much about Blu-ray, at least it seems to be an afterthought for the most part.

Doug

 

[Shawn Perron]

The only way to waste space on a disc is not to use it at all.

 

[Cees Alons]

If you had written "the most certain way", I would have agreed.
But there are many other ways besides not using it at all, to waste bit-space.

BTW, the newest one seems to be dumping a superfluous audio track in it. Delivers a vague aura of usefulness, of course.


Cees

 

[Douglas Monce]

Well no if the using of that space provides no advantage then it is a waste, as it is only carrying redundant information.

Doug

 

[Shawn Perron]

And yet it would do no harm, and possibly do good. I still say the masters are the weak spot at this point. It'd be the same pattern we saw with DVD at the beginning. I think the extra bitrate will be more beneficial when studios are all mastering in 4k and working from there. Obviously the benefit for an older movie can be less, but newer movies may really shine when given room. All the bitrate in the world won't help if the master isn't top notch.

Over at AVS some of the fellows have been doing some down conversion then up conversion. Turns out most masters don't even contain 1080p worth of information to preserve. Either that or the masters are being prefiltered, which would indicate a lack of bitrate to preserve the detail (or just trying to filter out the grain which is bad too).

 

[Robert Crawford]

I bought the BRD of this title because I'm not interested in the interactive stuff and the BRD is cheaper than the HD DVD combo-disc.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I think the speculation at AVS about some HD masters being unconverted from SD masters is highly questionable and I would take that information with a huge grain of salt.

The only point I'm making, and I'm making it as someone who authors SD DVDs as part of my job, is that at a particular point increasing the bit rate isn't always going to give you a better image. To be honest on SD discs for a movie that is 90 min or so, you can easily fit that film onto a 4 gig DVD with the extras being on a second disc. Yes you could increase the bit rate and fill up a 9 gig dvd, but the image on your tv screen isn't going to look any different. The same is true for any lossy file format. You eventually reach a point of diminishing returns.

Doug

 

[DavidJ]

Which is why I will rent the HD DVD and would buy the HD DVD if I liked the film more. I am very interested in seeing this special feature. Still, I expect it to sell quite well on Blu-ray and I could see the PS3 being a factor.

 

[Edwin-S]

I feel like an idiot due to my poor use of the word optimize. I'm in the camp of wanting the least amount of bits as possible being thrown away. I know that a lot of people are of the opinion that high bitrate video is a waste of space, and they may well be right; however, I think that something subtle gets thrown away as the level of compression rises. so I want the least amount of compression. As you noted that is not optimizing.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

I thought "300" was shot digitally?
Isn't the "film grain" fake?
Thanks.

EDitEDbyED:
Thought this was interesting;
One of the elements that the filmmakers wanted to explore was the photographic look of the film. Snyder had the idea of manipulating the color balance to create a process that was ultimately nicknamed "the crush." "Zack developed a recipe where you'd crush the black content of the image and enhance the color saturation to change the contrast ratio of the film," Jeffrey Silver explains. "Every image in this film went through a post-image processing. The crush is what gives this film its distinct look and feel."

 

[Michel_Hafner]

Shot on 35mm.

 

[Tino]

I would have normally purchased the Blu Ray version, but for only $4 dollars more, I felt the extra features, especially the PIP, was worth it.

 

[Cees Alons]

And this illustrates exactly why we should like the presence on the market of two competing formats.
The consumer makes his/her choice!


Cees

 

[Tino]

You said it Cees. I fortunately have both, so I'm a happy camper.

 

[Romar Armas]

For $4 more, you get the HD DVD, the DVD and extra features. I think it's definitely worth it.

 

[Jari K]

..or: You have to pay $4 more of the SD DVD-version that you don´t really need..

 

[Jari K]

Some wild, but interesting rumors:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/sh...y_Re-Issue/828

"Deborah Snyder, the film's executive producer (and wife of '300' director Zack Snyder) revealed at a Comic-Con panel last week that indeed an in-movie experience feature for the Blu-ray edition of the film wasn't yet ready for this week's release. Later, according to an article in Home Media Magazine, she went further, saying "I think there's going to be another Blu-ray special edition later on."

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/new...ticle_ID=10969