How To Encourage More More Movies/Television To Be Released On DVD Or Blu-ray? (1 Viewer)

[YANG]

Region coding on dvds was already defeated back in late 1999, when the dvd css drm encryption algorithm was entirely cracked.

i had deliberately set a bluray player to play just DVD with 720p upscaled output...

although region coding had been cracked, newer release on either hardware or software is still region “enforced”!
hence, the barrier is not cleared yet, even though DVD is an old tech that can be “spared” like UHD disc release.

 

[YANG]

In practice, sophisticated upscaling of SD/dvd ntsc or pal resolution sources is largely an exercise in futility. Unfortunately it will never be as good as native HD/bluray or UHD/4Kbluray sources.

There already exist very sophisticated upscalers, such as the madVR renderer used with the media player classic mpc player. The developers behind madVR are exploiting every single feature on current cutting edge graphics cards which the hardcore videogamers (and cryptominers) are using.

i agree with u that the FHD and UHD source is certainly better than DVD.
what I'm suggesting is to give DVD tech a boost such that any DVD releases will come with SHD native transfers... with new codec reference to public broadcast or streaming such that a single layer or dual layer DVD can carry...

 

[jcroy]

although region coding had been cracked, newer release on either hardware or software is still region “enforced”!
hence, the barrier is not cleared yet, even though DVD is an old tech that can be “spared” like UHD disc release.

For computer dvdr drives, this region coding enforcement can also be defeated at the hardware level. Awhile ago I figured this out and made a long post about it on here.

Technical comments on DVD specs

Factually I can say that the dvd region locking mechanism appears to mostly function by hardware. Years ago I looked at the dvd's generic css drm system, by writing some of my own computer code to understand how the official authentication mechanism functions. I've ran my own dvd...

www.hometheaterforum.com

In a standalone dvd player, the only other way to defeat region code enforcement is to hack the firmware. Though nowadays this isn't really worth the effort anymore.

 

[jcroy]

what I'm suggesting is to give DVD tech a boost such that any DVD releases will come with SHD native transfers... with new codec reference to public broadcast or streaming such that a single layer or dual layer DVD can carry...

I'm not entirely sure on what is being asserted here.

Are you suggesting the video content in the *.vob files on a dvd-video disc, be encoded at a native 720i/720p or 1080i/1080p resolution?

 

[jcroy]

Can you define SHD more precisely?

Are you defining FHD as 1080p or 1080i resolution?

 

[YANG]

ehh... something like that... create a video content in 720p resolution, and develop a way to compress that data which comes embedded with audio, then transfer to an optical disc for later decompress for playback purpose...

i got this idea from a 8GB SDcard that could hold 10 episodes of the PACIFIC series with stereo audio leaving some space available in the card. hence i figure, its got something to do with compression thingy that may give the DVD spec a boost in quality...

 

[YANG]

Can you define SHD more precisely?

Are you defining FHD as 1080p or 1080i resolution?

yes.
1080 either i/p is considered as FHD.
while 720i/p is SHD- standard high definition... which you can see frequently used in YouTube menu from your TV.

 

[ScottRE]

 

[jcroy]

ehh... something like that... create a video content in 720p resolution, and develop a way to compress that data which comes embedded with audio, then transfer to an optical disc for later decompress for playback purpose...

At minimum, this would likely require a change in the dvd virtual machine code specification. This is the "machine language" that the *.ifo files are written in. Unfortunately there is no provision for anything beyond the old ntsc/pal standards.

IFO file

Also the mpeg2 decoder hardware chip would likely have to be updated, if existing dvd player chips do not know how to handle anything beyond ntsc/pal video data.



It sounds like you are suggesting an "S-VHS counterpart" of dvd-video.

 

[Capt D McMars]

Seems like a comlpicated "work around" to a non problem for most of us. Or is this just a conversation of what ifs? I've always just been about keeping it simple, find the solutions and not go looking for issues...but that's just me!! Good on ya!!!

 

[jcroy]

i had deliberately set a bluray player to play just DVD with 720p upscaled output...

For almost a decade, I just ripped dvds to the computer into *.vob files for individual movies/episodes and played these vob files on media player classic or VLC. My computer is connected to the tv flatscreen via an HDMI connection.

VLC or media player classic (mpc) does the ntsc -> 1080p upscaling automatically when one blows up the picture to occupy the entire screen.

Easier to watch marathons of many episodes/movies one after another sequentially, without having to swap out any discs every 2 hours or so.

 

[jcroy]

Seems like a comlpicated "work around" to a non problem for most of us. Or is this just a conversation of what ifs? I've always just been about keeping it simple, find the solutions and not go looking for issues...but that's just me!! Good on ya!!!

S-VHS was the equivalent complicated "work around" more than 25-30 years ago.

S-VHS - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[YANG]

let's look back at the evolution of the format...
in the beginning, DVD format got the big win from the homevideo hobbyist because it offers higher resolution than laserdisc, cuts the hassle of the need to flip during play, as well as by default, multi channel audio and subtitles.
then follows by Anamorphic transfers, as well as dual layer for more data encoding that not only improves on video quality, at the final stage it’s about enhance audio quality with additional channel audio encoding, such as DDEX/DTSES and we had been riding on that ever since then... 15yrs or so had passed, we need something or new techniques to enhance the DVD quality... video codec or encoding is the one and only way to get people turn their attention away from FHDBD or UHDBD.

 

[jcroy]

15yrs or so had passed, we need something or new techniques to enhance the DVD quality... video codec or encoding is the one and only way to get people turn their attention away from FHDBD or UHDBD.

IIRC slightly before bluray, the half-assed "improvement" was in the form of "superbit" dvds by Sony.

Superbit - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[YANG]

Seems like a comlpicated "work around" to a non problem for most of us. Or is this just a conversation of what ifs? .........

the current workaround for me is setting a bluray player to be a DVD only player with 720p output.
with such FUR- Forced Upscale Resulution, NTSC 480p DVD looks vibrant on my 4K 50inch TV, while the PAL 576p DVD looks more Yummy to my eyes. however such FUR test, so far the maximum sized screen i had employed on, only 55inch makes.

 

[YANG]

IIRC slightly before bluray, the half-assed "improvement" was in the form of "superbit" dvds by Sony.

Superbit - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

however, SuperBit success is limited as other studios followed up with their own “Audio Visual Enhanced” releases...

 

[YANG]

...It sounds like you are suggesting an "S-VHS counterpart" of dvd-video

SVHS only splits the gamma chroma thingy from composite video, in a certain way like component video splitting of signals, but adds no resolution to DVD video format.

 

[jcroy]

... with new codec reference to public broadcast or streaming such that a single layer or dual layer DVD can carry...

One semi-half-assed approach would be to use a 9gigabyte two-layer dvd disc, with bluray's java virtual machine with 720p video. (IIRC, the official bluray spec mandates 720p video).

Though the issue here would be how it handles the encryption drm. DVD-Video's css system behaves very differently than bluray's AACS. Not entirely clear if bluray's java virtual machine can be reprogrammed to get the correct encryption keys from dvd's css mechanism.

 

[YANG]

...we need reverse engineering to beat off the barrier in coding to make visual aspect of DVD format that will work with the most basic hardware in Bluray player...

 

[jcroy]

...we need reverse engineering to beat off the barrier in coding to make visual aspect of DVD format that will work with the most basic hardware in Bluray player...

The only widely known hack at the firmware level which is available nowadays, is Libredrive as a part of the makemkv ripping program suite. The makemkv authors figured out how to get around the nasty bluray/4Kbluray drm issues like key revocation, bus encryption, etc .... on many current computer bluray-r/4Kbluray-r drive models.

(IIRC for the dvd portion, Libredrive might be programmable to bypass the region code enforcement on dvd discs).