Two opposing views on who will win the HD battle (1 Viewer)

[Peter Overduin]

Actually; I have found this thread interesting and entertaining. I bought MI3 HD today as my first HD disk, pending arrival of my player which I will get next week when I can also get the three freebies.

My local Future Shop manager in my city of 60K conceded they had sold only 1 BD player and are being paid to maintain the highly visible display. He admitted as well that more people inquire about HD than BD and interest in the XBox add on is strong. In anticipation of this post, I asked if any customers or sales staff report discussions about 50GB disks and their potential. He actually walked with me to talk to each of his staff, and not ONE report ever having anyone ask/talk/discuss this issue.

I made a point of going with the store manager to talk to his gaming department manager, who likewise says that not one inquiry he gets - from the many every day - have to do with BD movies at all....it is 100% about gaming, online gaming, graphics, etc., etc., etc.

It is a utterly MOOT issue; excpet to a minority of those on this and a few forums and will continue to be moot for so many reasons to the general buying public. The disk size issue is a dead horse and will NOT affect this war in any way, shape or form in the trenches of Best Buy, Future Shop, etc., etc., for the simple reasons that bigger will NOT be shown or heard to be better to the vast majority of people out there. It really, really is that simple.

I dare say that any one else who repeats my little experiement in their area will have similar results.

 

[dpippel]

It was a JOKE PeterTHX. Lighten up, will ya? And as far as flames go, you tend to try and put the fire out with gasoline more often than not.

 

[Vincent_P]

That's because Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, et al, are buying a multitude of copies of the single-disc versions for their rental shelves. The consumer who's buying the DVD for his or her collection will almost always buy the 2-disc set.

Vincent

 

[ppltd]

Amen.

 

[Tim Glover]

Agreed. I edited it...a bit Hard to choose which title to remove

I've said from the beginning that the name HD-DVD is MUCH more user friendly and easier for the laymen to buy into. That will probably have NOTHING to do with who wins out though ...

Maybe down the road if these 2 can somehow combine efforts and call it HD-BDVD

 

[Robert Crawford]

It's still too big!




Crawdaddy

 

[Ryan-G]

I disagree in theory,

I think the difference will show in one of two possible areas.

1. TV on DVD, BR has the ability to pack more episodes per disc, and could conceivably end up a few dollars cheaper than comparable HD-DVD releases.

2. With LCD technologies rapidly pushing beyond 1080p resolutions, BR could end up with a better resolution than HD-DVD. I don't know the math behind it, and I do know there's diminishing returns, so I don't know if even 50gigs is big enough to manage a res increase high enough to be noticable. But I've seen LCD monitors approaching the 2k range in resolution already(2xxx by xxxx, not xxxx by 2xxx), and LCD TV's are usually a little behind monitors as back-supply is cleared.

But, I suspect this discussion is truly academic, as I believe the deciding factor will be studio support. Without studios going over to HD-DVD, their display's just going to look "bad" compared to BR's as time goes on and more movies are released. J6P will take one look at the size of the two displays and conclude BR is superior because there's more of it, regardless of which one is superior. J6P's been trained that bigger == better.

 

[PeterTHX]

If you look at videoscan numbers or just go into the store on release day. You'll see customers carry out far more copies of the single disc versions. It also helps that the single disc new releases are priced far more attractively...$14-$16 vs. $25-ish for the 2 disc set.
The true collector of course wants the 2 disc version. But if the BD version has all the extras on one disc you think that somehow they will object?

 

[MarekM]

Thomas I am not going to quote whole post, it will be too huge..........

- as far as I know DVD as Christopher mentioned is HERE FOR GENERAL PUBLIC and it will be MAINSTREAM format for several years........, HD is not for average JOE, it's for people who love BETTER and BIGGER PICTURE, BETTER SOUND etc.... so no, we are not SMALL group..

- well several studios are adding BD JAVA, with lossless track and several other tracks...., so I think studios do care about those features...
(and yes I am waiting to see music only loosless track )

- I hope they WILL NEVER release to the lowest common demoniator to ensure the highest level of sales, NEVER, they can do it with DVD not with HD

- again, disk space will be limit with longer movies even if they are improving VC-1 capability, but BITRATE will be first LIMIT for HD-DVD, and read again post from AMIR wich was posted here by DavidD, and he confirmed that there is bitrate limit barier.... it's something I came up by myself.... juts check it please.......

- don't worry about myself enjoying both formats, I am not talking here about FANS of HD-DVD or BD at all,....... but those limits are THERE if you want to see them or not - please don't start about me believing in some GHOST THEORY or something - IT HAS BEEN CONFITMED (I don't know how many peolpe here have to tell you this...),

I am happy your are enjoying HD at all, me too, but dont tell me I am some crazy believer ok ? Please read those messages again about AMIR's confirmation, and put away those believe words...

Marek

 

[ppltd]

 

[Shawn Perron]

If he admits something about HD-DVD is true, then it is. If there is a bitrate limit and he states it as a fact, then it's a fact. He'd actually know.

 

[ppltd]

Two comments on this.
1: I have not seen an official MS release that this was stated, only a post on a forum. If you know differently, please post the URL. Pointing to his BIO doesn't cut it. Until then, my statement stands.
2: You miss my point. It had nothing to do with whether or not limitations could be hit, as they can in either format, but whether they ever will.

 

[Shawn Perron]

Amir posts on avsforum. It is known beyond doubt to be him. There are no official press releases, just his informal postings there. As he is one of the biggest HD-DVD boosters you will ever find (it's his job), any negatives he admits to are undoubtedly true. Just because you don't believe it doesn't make it any less of a fact.


They've already hit the capacity limit of a 30GB HD-DVD. They've filled both available layers. The only thing they can do now is compress things even more. If you include several high bitrate elements at the same time like a TrueHD audio track and a video commentary or 2 TrueHD tracks, you have to starve the actual feature's bitrate to fit under the 30mbs cap. Amir basically said that it's not possible to include more then just a single TrueHD track and a few regular DD 5.1 tracks without seriously hurting the main feature's video quality. It's not exactly rocket science. If the feature needs (just making these numbers up for an example) 18mb/s for optimal video quality and a video commentary and a TrueHD track use 14mb/s togther, then 30 -14 = 16mb/s left for the main feature. Quality is going to suffer.

 

[MarekM]

well Thomas I respect your knowledge and that you are enjoying both formats.... but it's a fact that HD-DVD can't hande two full loosless tracks wtihout taking bandwith from video.......... end.

Marek

 

[ppltd]

As I stated, not a feature that looks like it will be implemented any time soon. A statesman far smarter than I stated it best; "There are facts, and there are damn facts". We will part this discussion, each of us believing we are right, with the 'facts' supporting us.

 

[Cees Alons]

Fact: Currently no consumer is able to get even 1 lossless track off a Blu-ray disc.


Cees

 

[Shawn Perron]

Yes, and therefor the fact that HD-DVD can't use 2 on the same disc without ruining the video quality is ok.

 

[MarekM]

so you don't count PCM ? right Cees ?

 

[Cees Alons]

Better two with slight repercussions (and still always 1 flawlessly) than none at all.


Cees

 

[Shawn Perron]

All lossless tracks are transcoded to PCM in the existing Toshiba HD-DVD players. Therefor the best sound either format is capable of at the moment is PCM audio. Blu-Ray has only included LPCM tracks output as PCM and HD-DVD only outputs PCM (or transcodes to a lossy DTS stream). Any more hairs you'd like to split?