A few words about....Blu-Ray (1 Viewer)

[PatWahlquist]

quote:I think I'll pass on Blu Ray

Great, but the article ends with:

quote:The Imperial College team believe it could take five years to perfect their technique, with a commercial version available by 2010, depending on funding.

 

[DannyS]

well, you can't build rome in a day!

 

[Robert Anthony]

well, it's 2004..you'd think studios would like the 6 year run to help milk the hell out of what's left of the DVD market before introducing a format that will hold a terabyte of information on a 5 inch disc.



I'm just thinking out loud--looks like Blu Ray is going to reign in about 3 or 4 years anyway.

 

[Grant H]

quote:I'm just thinking out loud--looks like Blu Ray is going to reign in about 3 or 4 years anyway.

Can I be put into a coma until Star Wars is on Blu-Ray?

I'll have to wait until after Episode III. Of course, depending on how the release turns out I may want to be put back in.

I'm kidding of course. My apologies to all the coma patients reading this.

 

[Kwang Suh]

quote:Obviously a lot of you were impressed with the show. Great. But it was a show - can you discern reality from the smoke and mirrors? Comparing DVD to Blu-Ray on a huge screen merely amplifies the differences - a smart salesman's trick (except for the few among us that watch DVDs on the side of a very large wall). Not to mention doing the comparison with a film that is already in large screen format and has been restored. Talk about salting the mine. How would the comparion have been if they had put it on a 60" screen? Less impressive.

1080i HDTV is _way_ better than DVD. Even upscaled SDTV to 1080i is pretty impressive. 1080p would just be mind blowing.

 

[Robert Crawford]

quote:Obviously a lot of you were impressed with the show. Great. But it was a show - can you discern reality from the smoke and mirrors? Comparing DVD to Blu-Ray on a huge screen merely amplifies the differences - a smart salesman's trick (except for the few among us that watch DVDs on the side of a very large wall). Not to mention doing the comparison with a film that is already in large screen format and has been restored. Talk about salting the mine. How would the comparion have been if they had put it on a 60" screen? Less impressive.

Rich,
You're not talking to any rookies here, everything you brought up was already talked about in our discussions during and after the demonstration. Also, Sony readily admitted the differences in displaying the two formats on the large screen.

 

[ScottCor]

quote:But then before you can turn around there'll be a technology arriving that will save even more space by containing ALL seasons on a single disc....

I know..that's what worries me...what to do.....this is all giving me a headache..lol ..I was very content just collecting DVDs in ignorant bliss

 

[Citizen87645]

I think we all realized this and took the presentation as a promotional piece. Nevertheless, we were excited by what we saw and, as Robert said, we aren't all rookies. And just because it was impressive enlarged beyond anything any of us would have in our homes (well, with the exception of RAF )- well, how is that a bad thing? If it's less impressive (e.g. harder to discern) on a smaller display that makes it a harder sell to the average viewer with a 34" widescreen display, but that doesn't mean the advantages aren't there and readily apparent once one moves up in screen size.

 

[AndreGB]

Just a stupid question. Did they mention anything about region coding? That is still the only small problem I see with these discs. I want to buy some original DVDs not from my region and, ironically, the only way of doing so is buying pirated cracked DVDs.

I don't want that.

Besides that I am all for HD! Let it comes! Thanks a lot guys.

 

[Ricardo C]

quote:

I want to buy some original DVDs not from my region and, ironically, the only way of doing so is buying pirated cracked DVDs.

Ever hear of a region-free player? You don't need to buy pirated discs.

 

[Tony Kwong]

I wonder if there will be recording decks the first year of release... I have more D-VHS recorded content than I have on prerecorded DVD, so hopefully recording will not take as long as what happened with the DVD forum.

I doubt they will use paper for the disc... but paper will be great for promotional items!! Very light! Heck it will save AOL lots of money in postage!

 

[T r o y]

I read on the bits site today that DTS will be the standard for HD DVD and BluRay discs.

Will the DTS be in full resolution?



Any thoughts?

 

[AndreGB]

quote:Ever hear of a region-free player? You don't need to buy pirated discs.

Yes Ricardo, I heard. But I was wondering whether this "problem" would be transferred to BD, I mean, I had to look for free region BD players. I took some time to buy a region free DVD player, and some DVD players I like still don't have a way of changing the region code.

Yes Troy. DTS will be fullbitrate (as for DTS++ I don't know since it is a new thing). Now we have plenty of space for a fullbitrate track.

 

[Citizen87645]

The Blu-ray unit in the Japanese market is a recorder. This was actually something the reps from Sony pointed out - that rolling out a recorder first is usually more successful for the format and pointed out HD DVD is taking the opposite approach.

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

Now that DVD has been around for as many years as it has and has been devloped and grown to reach a mass commercial market appeal, I would hope that the studios that would commission the production of the new blue-ray technology would set things off right from the get go. With the advanced a/v ranges and extensive storage capacity, there should be no excuses to follow in the trend of the early years of DVD. If the studios started following in the format of first and second stage reissues than I certainly would not support the venture. It's now obvious that the majority of the movie-buying public demand their DVD's to be presented in original aspect ratio with quality anamorphicly enhanced video transfers and original audio tracks, unedited and with an assortment of supplemental features. I think it would be pointless if the next step in home video didn't follow in this trend. The last thing I'd want to see is a jump back to the early days of DVD when Warners was issuing bareboned single-layered pan&scan flipper discs in flimsy snapper cases with cheap artwork, only to be reissued with upgraded transfers and than again revisitied in special editions with more bonus features, commentary tracks and better artwork, etc. If I am going to support a new format, I would expect the studios to get it right from the start as this time we have a context to look back upon in order to see what worked and what obviously didn't.

 

[Matt Leigh]

I wouldn't count movie theaters out. Soon theaters will be delivering digital images in resolutions that will destroy Blu-ray. Images completely free of dirt hair or scratches. In a few years when digital movie making catches on stronger you'll be able to see the frame with incredible clarity.



That is one of the reasons IMAX has such a pull on me. The resolution of the film is incredible and every minute tiny detail can be seen.



Just like films turned to wider more panoramic frames to combat television they will also move to a higher resolution process to combat HDTV.



Don't get me wrong, when Blu Ray comes out and I can afford it I'll certainly be buying and enjoying it. I'm only excited about the possibilities for both the theater and the home.

 

[Kwang Suh]

quote:I thought the concern for copy protection is in the digital realm. I don't see why the analog component outputs would need to be downrezzed, anymore than HD content is now from cable or satellite boxes.

With DVDs, upconverting players that output 1080i are prohibited from outputting that signal through component. There's the Zenith that has this feature, and Zenith has had to remove it due to a lawsuit. Same with Momitsu, Lite-On, etc...

There's lots of threads over at AVS Forum about this.

 

[David Von Pein]

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3696306.stm]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3696306.stm[/url] ........

>> "The technique developed by the Imperial College team could offer much more on a disc. The researchers believe their technique could be used to create a disc with four layers, each with 250GBs - the equivalent of 118 hours of video per layer. A four-layer DVD could hold one terabyte (1,000GB) of data, enough for 472 hours of film, or every episode of The Simpsons ever made."

 

[David Von Pein]

Related items of Blu-Ray interest ............



http://www.blu-ray.com/



http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200409/04-050E/



http://www.blu-raydisc.info/

 

[GlennH]

I don't get too excited by articles about new mega-storage technologies like this new one from England. It just isn't likely to affect any of us for the foreseeable future, if ever.

What about all the hype about FMD (Fluorescent Multi-layer Disc) that was going around about 4 years ago? Does the company (C3D) even exist anymore? What happened?

[url=http://www.digit-life.com/articles/3ddisk/]http://www.digit-life.com/articles/3ddisk/[/url]