Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Ha. I have been wondering the same thing, but I ordered the HD DVD (not sure about my decision). It is my understanding that the HD DVD will have IME. The Blu-ray will have the IME content just not in IME form and that the at least some of the video from it will be HD.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

I've also been going back and forth with the Harry Potter movies (and with Blade Runner as well). I think I'll wind up ordering the Harry Potter movies on HD-DVD, simply for bookmarks. My family takes two or three nights to get through a movie...Bookmarks make it much simpler. Otherwise, I think it's pretty much a wash.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Are there any real differences? I want ALL bells and whistles. Preferring Blu, but..

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

With recent Warner Bros. releases there is generally no difference between the BD and the HD DVD versions, so when this is the case I always opt for the anti-scratch coating that BD provides. I also believe that the first four Harry Potter movies are identical in their content between HDM releases.

However, in the case of The Order of the Phoenix, I think the biggest difference between HD DVD and the BD is IME PiP on the HD DVD vs. IME material presented standalon in HD on the BD, as was already mentioned. Here I will again opt for the BD for the improvement in PQ on the extras. To me the PQ trumps the presentation.

Additionally, the HD DVD will be in the Combo Format, which I dislike because it has been my experience I am more likely to receive them scratched. I also miss the disc art.

In the end, most of these differences aren't worth losing a lot of sleep over, but I thought I would share the preferences I've developed having spent over a year collecting HDM as maybe that will help you make a decision.

Edited to add:

I decided to go to DVD Empire and compare the back covers of the Harry Potter releases for BD and HD DVD, and aside from the aforementioned differences, it also looks like the HD DVD version of Goblet of Fire gets an IME feature and a Harry Potter Timeline. For Order of the Phoenix, there are some additional Web-based features: Pick Your Favorite Scene (scene sharing online), Live Community Screening (Organize a Virtual Screening Party), and Purchase Mobile Downloads ()

So, there is a bit of a decision with the last two. Since I don't care of the Web-based features however, I'd say the only release where HD DVD has a clear advantage over the BD to me is Goblet of Fire.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Well this is very easy. You should get it on the winning format!

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

With the release of Harry Potter just weeks away I am wondering as well. How ever my delema does not revolve around IME but weather or not to own it with a Uncompressed PCM track or Dolby True HD? I am however leaning towards owning on Blu-ray.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Going Blu unless the price is the same which I doubt. IF then, i'll do a coin flip.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

If you are buying the box set, I believe they are the same price so you might want to get that coin ready. I'm thinking I might go the coin flip route myself.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Weather its the box set or the individual movies, they should be the same price on both formats. At least DVD Empire is listing both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs at the same price. The only difference between the two formats audio wise is that HD-DVD is offering a Dolby True HD track, and Blu-ray is offering an uncompressed pcm track. I may have to join you on the coin toss thing. Not sure why I am having trouble choosing what format when they will both look the same and both should sound awsume anyway.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

I don't own HD DVD so naturally I'll go blu. But if I was a dual-format guy, the issue for me would be that WB still puts Dialog Normalization on their TrueHD tracks, whereas there's no processing applied to the PCM tracks on the Blu-ray Disc. If WB would stop doing this (Sony doesn't apply DN to their TrueHD tracks), then I wouldn't care which "lossless" sound presentation I was listening to since both would be bit-accurate.


Interesting. That's sort of a toss-up... IME on HD DVD or get the same content in 1080 HD as a separate feature on the BD. With the bandwidth on the BD, I wonder if WB could have done *both* but chose not to? PIP is now running on BD with profile 1.1 (players shipped October and after).

And naturally if you feel that one format might win-out over the other in the long term, it would make sense to buy that format so your future hardware won't have any trouble playing it.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Probably but there aren't enough 1.1 profile players existing to warrant the content for it. I'm sure Warner is thinking this.

Same price will mean to me "whatever format i find". When looking at the Kubrick discs, the stores I shop at locally didn't have the HD versions. They do now but that's after the fact.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Is the IME material on Order of the Phoenix really on the BD as a separate feature?

If so then I'd have bought the BD, instead I have the HD-DVD.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Not only that, according to reports, it's in HD resolution (on the BD).

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

It's also in HD on a separate disc on the UK HD DVD but not, apparently, the US HD DVD.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Hey David,

I totally forgot about that issue with dialog normalization, I hate that. Anyway you did me a favor , that bit of information made my decision very easy now. I will be picking up the Blu-ray version of Harry Potter's Box Set.

I can not beleive I forgot about something like that, my brain must be going.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

That practice of WB annoys me to no end. The minute you slap DN processing onto a TrueHD track, you negate bit-for-bit accuracy because the signal gets completely level-adjusted/re-scaled prior to d/a conversion (ie, all your bits change).

Still better than lossy (which also gets put through a DN processing stage after decoding), but not "bit for bit accurate" to the master.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Could you translate what you just said into layman's terms? Or in other words, how does what you just said = bad?

As someone who's making a late jump into HD in terms of audio, I need to know if this is something I can really pick up on or care about.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

This just made my mind up. Bluray all the way for me. Even if I have to special order it.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix seems to be the only one of the films to have the extras in HD on blu-ray, and then it says only partly 1080i or 1080P. This is understandable as I doubt anyone was shooting HD extras on the earlier films.

Doug

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Dialog Normalization has been covered in many other threads (do a search to get details). It's something that affects virtually all DD tracks on SD DVD as well as HD DVD and BD (except Sony TrueHD tracks). It's basically a flag that instructs the Dolby Digital decoder in your receiver/player how much to reduce the volume of the audio signal to match a theoretical bench-mark. In theory, this would make all your digital cable TV stations sound the same loudness when you change channels.

The problem with high-end-audio applications is that in order to change the volume of the sound, the Dolby Decoder digitally re-caluclates (re-processes) the entire waveform. Think of it like "downscaling" the audio waveform. Anytime you process an audio signal like this it's possible for sonic degredation to occur. If you have a program on your PC that can adjust volume (like the "normlize" feature of many CD creation applications), compare the before/after of the sound from a direct CD wav-file to the "level changed" wav file.

Because of this manner of changing the level after decoding, no "Dolby TrueHD" audio signal coming out of the decoder to the DAC is bit-for-bit identical to the master if DN has been applied.

Sony has stated they will not apply DN to the Dolby TrueHD tracks they put on Blu-ray to appeal to audiophile listeners. Warner does it to every single Dolby TrueHD track.

Note: PCM and DTS-HD MA don't have any "dialog normalization" feature and are therefore true bit-for-bit accurate to the master unless you manually chose to alter the signal with additional DSP.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

It's getting processed and rescaled when it shouldn't be. We should be getting it bit for bit completely unaltered. At least that was my understanding of it. Even though it's still better than plain old DD or DTS, it could be even more so without that little Dial Norm BS. EDIT: Sorry David. We must have been responding at the same time.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

no problem. You said it in just two scentences!

dave

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Well let me put on a Blu bit-counting hat to decide. Well since Blu doesn't support IME, Warner is going to encode the whole movie twice which means at most 25 Gig for the movie. That gives HD-DVD and extra 5 Gig right at the start. But wait, there's still more. Warner is going with uncompressed lossless audio on Blu and compressed lossless audio on HD-DVD. That should be worth another gig or two. Only a bit-counting hypocrite would buy the Blu version when there is a choice.

Aw crap, you know what? I bet Warner is only going to encode the main movie once for both formats so HD-DVD is going to get stuck with a low-bitrate encoding. I really wish studios (only Warner now) would stop making discs to the lowest common denominator HD format that was released before it was ready and incomplete specs. Now I'll be stuck watching "Order of the Phoenix" and wondering how good it could have looked if it wasn't for that other format that should have just given up and never have come to market in the first place.

Well at least my ST:TOS HD-DVD discs weren't affected by limitations in that other format.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Chuck,

WB will probably do what they did for T3... the PIP comentary wasn't full-time... it came and went. For T3, my understanding is that they only included new video segements for those actual PIP moments, and they were inserted into the feature film via branching. So this didn't affect bandwidth, and the BD 50 had plenty of room. If it doesn't affect bandwidth, then it doesn't hurt anything since the BD has an extra 20GB to hold the PIP segments with no problem.

In other words, the BD won't be compromising any image or sound quality (or forcing them to compromise the video file for HD DVD) to accomplish the PIP via branching, even though it's not doing it with profile 1.1 if it's not full-time PIP.

If the PIP *is* full time, then yes, they'd do two separate encodes of the feature film which would mean the 30GB HD DVD was using a 25GB movie file. That's such a slight reduction it probably won't make any difference: even many 30GB HD DVDs use authored files that don't use the full 30GB because MS like to compress as much as they can even when they have room to spare. Anyone know for sure which it is?


Whether or not the HD DVD encode needs to fit 25GB versus 30GB is not yet known. And it's Warner's decision... they could easily drop the PIP from the BD or utilize actual 1.1 spec to do real PIP on BD instead... they just want to wait a while longer to get more 1.1 players in the field first.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Yep. The "Order of the Phoenix" UK HD-DVD is a two disc "non-combo" set, with the special features on disc 2 being in HD. I ordered mine a few days ago. Gotta love HD-DVD being region free... (I wish, as consumers, we could force the studios to abandon region coding altogether, but that's a discussion for another day...)

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

I will be buying the Blu-ray for sure and I doubt I will have any regeats with uncompressed PCM track. I am willing to be that the PCM track is going to sound awsume! I can not wait to get my Denon AVR-3808ci and watch all 5 Harry Potter discs in HD over one of my weekends. I have now decided to only buy movies in Dolby True HD on WB HD-DVD only when I have to. Meaning only if the title is not available on the Blu-ray format and will buy the Blu-ray version especially if it has PCM and the HD-DVD version has DT-HD, especially when WB is involved. Or when ever DN is used I will be buying the title using a non Dialog Normalized codex.

2 more days to go till HP is out in high def!

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

Well if that's the case, then I'm getting BD version since I love PCM tracks. I don't care for the IME crap.

Re: Which HD format to buy Harry Potter movies on ?

For me, I am going with the Blu versions. I have both but in comparing the 2, I think Blu-ray is alot better (Heck, I have about 54 Blu-ray movies and only 12 HD-DVDs)! Also, I prefer the PCM track over the TrueHD one.