What is the problem w/ Warner and Blu-Ray?? (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

Ed,
Joking or not, we have enough spirited discussion going on without making personal references towards other members about being misguided.




Crawdaddy

 

[BrettB]

I get The Cowboys from BBV last night. No orig. audio, just 5.1 I guess. It seems like this was a much bigger deal with dvd. You almost never hear any complaints now with the hi def fromats.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

I don't make the rules.

EDitEDbyED:
Wish I did though.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

I was misguided; by my sense, or lack there of, humor.
For the record: I did call DaViD "nice" & even added to that "nice guy".
I stand by that. Thanks Robert.

Want to publicly add that Cees is doing a S U P E R job running the asylum!
Your lucky too have him & thanks for all your work as well Robert. Didn't mean to make it, again, more difficult.

Again too all:
WB wants to take ALL of our $$$, not just Reds.

 

[RobertSiegel]

David, I also went to pick up The Cowboys, and refused to buy it because of the compressed dd 5.1. I really don't want any without updating sound. I will wait and see, maybe Warner will get enough complaints to reissue the ones so far, it's sad because there are some great classics and movies like Superman Returns and the original Superman movie, Happy Feet, Phantom of the Opera (which is a musical with a great orchestral score, should have one of the formats)ect. This is really a bummer, thank God they havn't released any of my favorite movies so far.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Robert,

have *you* complained to them? Not just posted here, but contacted the studio?

I'm with you. What's especially frustrating is that Sony and Disney manage to put lossless on EVERY Blu-ray title... new/catalog alike. And they're even using PCM (usually 24 bit!) which takes up even more space than TrueHD, and STILL they manage just fine. WB clearly has some sort of studio "issue" with providing optimal sound quality. They fought forever that "384 kbps is good enough on DVD" even when other studios heard the improvement of 448 kbps and quickly moved to that bit-rate instead.

 

[MatthewA]

TV shows are still getting 192kbps soundtracks.

We need to let the studios know what we want. Those addresses on thecinemalaser.com? Use them.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

That (^^^) may be the BIGGEST problem in all of this (for everyone concerned. both sides in the war)!
As I've posted before:
WB wimps out on audio. Any format.

Still, a GREAT home video studio; just not for us audiophiles!!!

 

[RobertSiegel]

David, do you know an email to Warner Home Video, or their address for postal mail? I have not been able to find an email like Universal has (thopugh they never listen hehe).

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Yes, it makes me furious every time I hear a WB rep say "we'll try to use TrueHD on titles that would take advantage of the sound quality."

Hugh?

EVERYTHING sounds better in lossless than in lossy. PERIOD. Even old optical soundtracks with crackle and hiss! Take a CD made from an old 78 rpm master with crackle and hiss and compress it to MP3... you'll hear how much musical information is LOST in the lossy compression even though the source material is a far-cry from "high fidelity" to begin with.

WB has got some problems with audio... period. They mucked up the sound on world-famous (award winning) soundtracks like Ben Hur and Camelot and took some sort of pride in doing so. One of those "this dial goes to eleven" vo-tech school mentalities of hi-fi. Someone should blind fold those guys and sit them down in front of a turn table and tube-amp for an hour until they finally learn to hear.

 

[Paul Arnette]

Well, Warner Bros. just announced Alexander Revisited: The Unrated Final Cut on BD and HD DVD. Once again, BD gets the shaft receiving a DD track instead of a DD+ track the HD DVD receives. What's frustrating here is that I know there are numerous BD players that can decode the DD+ codec. Just another in a long line of passive-aggressive slights from WB.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Hey Paul,

in WB possible defense, do you know the bit-rate of that DD+ track? I say that bcs many DD+ tracks on HD DVD are actually just a way to acheive 640 kbps DD performance as HD DVD uses packet-sizes that are based on DVD which limits standard DD to 448 kbps (so to go higher they need to go DD+).

Now, if they do a DD+ at 1500 kbps, then yes, that's not giving equal status. More frustrating is that if it's a BD50, there's probably plenty of room/bandwidth just sitting there that could have been used for TrueHD.

LOSSLESS SHOULD BE STANDARD PRACTICE ON BD because there's almost never a case where there's not space to provide it.

 

[Paul Arnette]

No, I don't. The news just "broke" over at themanroom.com. I understand what you're saying however. I guess we'll wait and see.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Paramount has been the biggest offender of giving high-bit rate DD+ on HD DVD (1500 kbps) while we only get DD at 640 on BD... when they could have given us lossless!!!

Dreamgirls... :frowning:

 

[John Berggren]

Especially considering the nature of Dreamgirls. Although I'd otherwise be likely to buy titles like Happy Feet and Dreamgirls, I'll just hold off in the hopes they do a re-release down the line.

 

[Jari K]

I thought that Blu-ray doesn´t support DD+ or something like that? Not a major issue if the release has PCM/Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD, but if not, then it´s annoying that Blu-ray has "only" 640 Kbps.. Not a deal breaker, but annoyance.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Good question. I'll do some research. I thought that DD+ was allowed on BD but that decoding wasn't mandatory. DD+ I believe does have a true "core" DD track with an extension frame, so it should always be backwards compatible with BD hardware that doesn't regonize the + extensions. This is different than TrueHD which doesn't really have a "core" since it's not a Dolby Digital codec at all (it's MLP with some tweaks), so they have to bundle a discrete DD core track along side in order to provide the "core" backwards compatiblity (requried when TrueHD is used on BD).

-dave

 

[Paul Arnette]

Well, I'm looking at the Additional Information regarding Firmware Ver.3.40.1 for my Pioneer Elite BDP-HD1, and it clearly states that Dobly Digital Plus is decoded. So, that's at least one player.

 

[Jari K]

Sounds good David, thanks.

One of my older threads (DD+ has been a bit confusing to me):
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...d.php?t=257912

 

[RobertSiegel]

My Panasonic blu-ray player outer box (dmpbd10a) has the Dolby Digital Plus logo on it.