Sony's Blu-Ray accepts WM9 (1 Viewer)

[Alistair_M]

KylePete - thanks for the link to the pdf presentation.

In the examples they talk about 16 bitrate. But it says maximum bitrate is 48.
So it looks like we may see superbit Bluray! Expect more double dipping in the next generation...

Still - I can't wait for high def. I expect there will be 2 formats to buy. Hopefully both systems will release PC based rom drives - so that should keep the cost down for the hardware to purchase.

I'm intending of using my PC for High def feeding my projector - so all I'll need to get started are the BD-Rom pc drive and HD-DVD pc drive (plus possibly a hardware acceleration card).

Bring it on.

 

[Gary Palmer]

"Nobody using a non-High Definition set can view High Definition content without a transcoder which filters down the picture information into a number of scanlines and a bandwidth of horizontal resolution which his set can accept. Not in the United States, Canada, Japan, England, South africa, or the Moon. By definition [as it were]."

Thanks for that helpful response to my earlier posting. But I just want to be clear on this point: Does this mean all HD discs (whether Blu-ray or HD-DVD) be unplayable on regular TV's? In other words, will the discs not contain some means of playing an alternative (non-HD) version of the film, for those without the necessary equipment? After all, as far as I know, the HD players will allow the playback of standard DVD's on HD televisions...

 

[KylePete]

Yes, Blu-Ray will support standard definition, also.....in the form of 59.94i.

Blu-Ray will have SUSTAINED transfer rates of 36 Mbps, and it will have peaks that go higher than that (variable bit rate). I believe BD-ROM drives will spin at 1.5x, which yields the ability for a theoretical max of 54 Mbps.

I'm sure they will have some version of Superbit titles in the future.

Remember, too, that Blu-Ray will incorporate a java layer along with much more dynamic and interactive menus. Very neat stuff, indeed.



Kyle

 

[KylePete]

Gary, that may indeed be the case that they will have a non-HD version on the same disc, but then you have to wonder what the point of owning a BD-ROM or HD-DVD player would be.

DVD player sales are expected to peak this year and start dropping in 2005. They will not stop making regular DVDs for many years, yet. Mirroring the VHS tape today, I believe the DVD will be sold right alongside BD-ROMs or HD-DVDs for years to come.




Kyle

 

[Gary Palmer]

Well, I'm speaking specifically as someone who lives outside the US (I'm in the UK), where things are *much* slower on the HD front! And we have to be concerned that the US is going to adopt a system that is basically unplayable outside region 1. While I agree there's no danger of regular DVD's going anywhere for the forseeable future, they may end up being phased out much sooner than anyone thinks (in the US, at least), at a point in time when the rest of the world simply hasn't caught up. Of course, some studios and distributors may simply put a standard and HD version of a film on the same disc, to save inventory, so consumers can simply upgrade to the superior version whenever they decide to switch over to HD. We'll see...

 

[Marc Colella]

Don't see how that's going to work.

People with standard DVD players won't be able to play the disc.

 

[Gary Palmer]

Well, either the standard version will be programmed to play on non-HD machines, or you'll have to buy an HD-ready player in order to access the material. No one said this process was going to be cheap...

 

[Richard Paul]

Blu-ray will be able to downconvert HD to standard defintion (SD). There is no reason or logic for them to include a SD version of an HD show. Every single HD receiver built has a digital downconverter so HD can be viewed on SD televisions. Also I can almost gurantee that every Blu-ray player will not only play DVD's but will also upconvert the DVD to HD resolutions. This will make DVDs look better on a HDTV, but nowhere near as good as real HD.



Actually the US HDTV standard was based on the internationally agreed resolutions of 720 by 1280 and 1080 by 1920 along with an aspect ratio of 16:9. Truthfully this was done even though it would have been better for the US to use 960 instead of 1080. 1080 was used since its 9/4 the resolution of 480 and 15/8 the resolution of 576. It was a compromise between the doubling of the NTSC and PAL resolutions. The 16:9 standard was a compromise between two factions with most Europeans wanting 5:3 and most Americans wanting 2:1. In the end 16:9 was agreed on since it was close to the 1.85 aspect ratio. Also the color space of HDTV is ITU-R BT.709, which is how the combination of RGB is combined in the display. This too was a compromise that is in between the color spaces of the US and Europe. HDTV is therefore a internationally made standard with the only difference between the US and Europe being the frame rate. Still since every other specification is the same it will cost only sligthly more to make HD displays that could do both 60/50 Hz and would therefore be able to display HDTV regardless of location.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

There are, as I said, transcoders, mostly set-top-box type devices, which will convert HD content to a non-HD video format, although it can look pretty bad by all accounts [EDIT: dependent upon the electronics doing the noninteger downconversion, which at least in early units frequently failed to deliver high quality]. A typical implementation is a HD tuner which converts all incoming signals to a set resolution format. Also, we may expect that HD players may have this option built in, since not all "HD" sets have the same native resolution, just the same way ordinary DVD players can convert a 16:9 image to letterboxed 4:3. You will be able to watch it, but there won't be any improvement over EDIT: but not in High Def; the image will be displayed just as if from a standard DVD. Of course, if you're "future-proofing" yourself, and plan to have the sources in place for a planned switchover to an HD display, that may be what you want. I can't really tell.

 

[RudolphT]

A downcoverted HD media will in many ways be a vast improvement over SD video - higher bitrate, hopefully less/no edge enhancement or other artificialities masking a lower bit rate and resolution maxed format. It would be a SuperDupperBit DVD!!! DVD upconverted is garbage in, garbage stretched. Downconverted to a smaller "portal" is easy/better.

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

After the FCC's Broadcast Flag goes into effect, these Blu-Ray drives won't be able to record much of anything in the US, will they?

 

[Richard Paul]

Blu-ray uses 128-bit AES encryption which is 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696 times harder to break than the 56-bit encryption used with DVD. As such the encryption would never be broken by brute strength, but instead if ever broken would probably be done by bad security implementation on a DVD player. The encryption on DVD was never broken by brute strength but by a very poorly protected software DVD player that allowed a Norwegian kid to get the encyption keys. Blu-ray will prevent that by allowing the decoding keys to be revoked for individual players. Also bit by bit copying is made extremely difficult by having disc numbers stamped into the inner metal disc of every Blu-ray disc (including re-writable). As such Blu-ray will definitely be allowed to not only record broadcast content but also copy once content on cable and satellite. Currently in Japan Blu-ray is the only approved optical format that can record their copy once HDTV content.

The broadcast flag actually is far more lenient on copy protection than copy once will be and the FCC has already approved 13 content protection technologies.

MagicGate Type-R for Secure Video Recording for Hi-MD Hardware (Sony Corporation)
MagicGate Type-R for Secure Video Recording for Hi-MD Software (Sony Corporation)
MagicGate Type-R for Secure Video Recording for Memory Stick PRO Hardware (Sony Corporation)
MagicGate Type-R for Secure Video Recording for Memory Stick PRO Software (Sony Corporation)
SmartRight (Thomson, et al)
Vidi Recordable DVD Protection System (Philips Electronics North America and Hewlett-Packard Company)
High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (Digital Content Protection, LLC)
Content Protection recordable Media for Video Content (4C Entity, LLC)
TiVoGuard Digital Output Protection Technology (TiVo Inc.)
Digital Transmission Content Protection (Digital Transmission Licensing Administration)
Helix DRM Trusted Recorder (RealNetworks, Inc.)
Windows Media Digital Rights Management (Microsoft Corporation)
D-VHS (Victor Company of Japan (JVC)

Though Blu-ray is not on the list I'm guessing that the BDA haven't yet taken it to the FCC since no Blu-ray players are sold in the US. I believe that Sony's MagicGate system is not used in Blu-ray but instead refers to their computer and memory card systems. Also with the approval of Windows DRM it will be possible to record HD broadcast content onto your computer even after the broadcast flag goes into effect.

 

[Gary Palmer]

"HDTV is therefore a internationally made standard with the only difference between the US and Europe being the frame rate. Still since every other specification is the same it will cost only sligthly more to make HD displays that could do both 60/50 Hz and would therefore be able to display HDTV regardless of location."

Many thanks for all the helpful replies, they're all much appreciated.

I gotta wonder: As far as HD is concerned, is there a specific technical reason for maintaining a difference in frame rate between the US and the rest of the world? Why on earth should anyone continue the current standard by which 24fps movies are reproduced at 25fps on home video and television in Europe?! This sounds like madness, when the technology exists to reproduce everything at the original frame rate. Or am I mistaken?

 

[Paul McElligott]

It has to do with the frequency of the electrical system. The 25 fps frame rate in Europe is due to the 50Hz electrical system over there. We have 60Hz electricity, so our TV is 30 fps.

 

[Richard Paul]

Around 50 years ago televisions would operate better if the frame rate was the same as the power frequency. This was the original reason for the two different frame rates, but it's no longer relevant in televisions with power transformers. All televisions made today have power transformers and today's televisions receive no benefit from the power frequency. Also the benefit itself was only moderate but at the time seemed good enough reason for choosing those frame rates.