HD DVD chat (2 Viewers)

[Yumbo]

and the cheapest HD DVD player (not the 360)?

 

[ppltd]

Actually it wasn't misleading using your interpetation. BD players range from 899.00 to I believe 1599.00 for the Pioneer. HD players range from 499.99 to 999.99 retail.

 

[Jason Seaver]

No, but they might not even head in the direction of the video game systems when looking for "next-generation DVD players". And, of course, there's the question of how many of those people who paid $500-600 for PS3s are actually using them to watch movies. Bottom line is, a cursory examination of their options will show Blu-ray as a more expensive buy-in than HD-DVD.

 

[Tim Glover]

I just read through the entire chat and have to say I'm more excited than ever about HD-DVD. True, Kevin's job was to be positive but it worked for me. Good stuff for HD-DVDers in 2007.

 

[Cees Alons]

I'm glad they filled the medium to the brim, like they should. The size of a video track is not a given, though. Of course it's not clear without having done it yourself, to tell what the effect of adding other information, like an additional or a different audio track would have been.


Cees

 

[Juan C]

Well, it so happens that we, as Europeans, have a pretty good idea: we just have to look at was is being released this side of the pond. King Kong has been released in Europe with six lossy language tracks vs the three tracks of the American release, and all bonus features have been dropped.

This has been confirmed by French site dvdrama and German site areadvd.

 

[ppltd]

King Kong (2005) was released in the States with virtually no special features on HD.

 

[Hartwig Hanser]

Yes, but with quite some SD video interviews etc. The German version has NOTHING.

 

[Cees Alons]

No, we don't, because for the European version they used the same master as for the US version (and, frankly, I'm glad they did).
In that case, the size of the video track is a fixed given, of course.


Cees

 

[Juan C]

So if the American disc is already full, and you have to add language tracks for the European release, either you drop bonus features or you reencode the video at a lower bitrate; there is no other way round it. Either way, it is a compromise.

If they are selling 'the best in picture, sound and interactivity,' we shouldn't get 'the best in picture or sound or interactivity.' (of course BD has been the worst offender in this regard.)

 

[Shawn Perron]

This could be a downside for north american users. If a studio wants to use the same encoding for NA and Europe, they will have to take into account the space that multiple foreign language tracks use and subtract that from the maximum bitrate they could have used. If they also plan on having multiple supplements in addition, there could be some real compromising going on it terms of disc space and video quality.

 

[ppltd]

Or have multiple disk releases, which is fine with me.

 

[Cees Alons]

Juan,

We simply have to many different languages over here!

But you're right. We have a potential disadvantage.
The best solution for the technician doing the authoring here (if he doesn't want to compromise the video tracks too much) would be: use compressed voice tracks for the different languages, use a high quality music-and-effects track - and then negotiate with his alter ego between dumping some extra stuff from the disc (perhaps add another disc to the release for the extras) or remastering the video at a slightly higher compression...



Cees

 

[Juan C]

You may have a point there. When doing an encode, the compressionist might be required not to use a certain amount of GBs unused in order to leave room for the eventual additional language tracks.

This was never a factor with DVD because the European releases were PAL and hence could not use the same encode as the American release.

 

[gandolf01933]

lets have one common Language English

 

[Daniel-M]

Then i say produce one master for the countries that normally use english anyways, and let the other countries that absolutley wants their language make their own. How much disc space does subtitles actually need.

 

[Cees Alons]

In the future that may become standard.
But for the releases mentioned here (mainly King Kong), they just used the existing transfer as created in the US for HD DVD.


Cees

 

[Shawn Perron]

The problem is the expense. The studios don't want to pay for multiple encodings of the same material if it can be taken care of for the price of one encoding. Like another poster said, it didn't really matter on DVD because Europe uses PAL and the north american NTSC encodings could not be used. Now when the studios look for ways to cut costs, making a single encoding for worldwide usage is going to be very attractive. If they do make one encoding for worldwide usage, the territory that needs the most space for languages and other features is going to be the one that decides what the bitrate for the movie is and how much space it can use on the disc.

 

[Geoff_D]

Haven't people reported that the Euro version of Serenity features a more recent transfer? I'm sure I heard the same thing about Apollo 13 too.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

Also, "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas" from Universal has lossless audio.