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

[Cees Alons]

Cees

 

[MarekM]

so we are ready for HD-DVD Blu-ray drink party ?

Cees you are the LOOSLESS boss now

Marek

 

[ppltd]

I have got 7 new HD and BD movies being delivered this week. If I watch them during a drinking party, I won't make it through the first.
And will be in no shape to watch any in the morning.

 

[Shawn Perron]

I'd actually like to see this competition between the formats pay off bigger. I'd like HD-DVD to step up and make lossless 96/24 standard. Blu-Ray couldn't match that with LPCM. We'd get 2 benefits. Standard 96/24 on all new releases and Blu-Ray would be forced to step to the plate with lossless since 96/24 LPCM would take up so much space they'd either have to make dual layer standard or switch to lossless.

Really, this isn't much of a heated competition. HD-DVD stepped up with the low hardware price which Blu-Ray hasn't matched. In fact HD-DVD cut features on the lowest model and raised the price on the full featured higher model. Also neither camp has stepped up in the software price area.

The whole bickering match between fans of the 2 formats seems to be keeping us from demanding more. Instead of home theater fans demanding more of the promised features like 96/24 standard or the ability to output 1080p without having the video first interlaced and then deinterlaced, they instead sit there and fight about how thier current format is already everything they want. Everyone must have some feature that they feel thier format should be including right now, like HDMI 1.3 standard or analog 7.1 outputs.

 

[Cees Alons]

Good post, Shawn.

That includes making more noise about a few things we want out too.
Indeed, the "war" should benefit us, for us to allow it to continue.


Cees

 

[Shawn Perron]

Look back at this whole thread, which is unfortunately typical, and think about what an exec for either format would think:

HD-DVD exec: We got this thing nailed already. Our fans rave about it.

Blu-Ray exec: Hah, let them argue, we'll deliver all we promised next year sometime. They are content to wait.

Neither format has delivered anywhere near what they promised:

HD-DVD: Where's the triple layer disc? Where's the 1080p standard output? Where's the rest of the studio support?

Blu-Ray: Where's the lossless? Where's Universal? Dual Layer standard? Where're the movies with a decent master?

Both: Why 1080p to 1080i back to 1080p? HDMI 1.3 so we actually get lossless output? Where's the 96/24 we were promised? 2 words for you "Managed Copy", anyone remember about that? We were promised this. It was a hot button topic for a minute. Now it's dropped off the face of the earth. I'm sure there are more.

 

[MarekM]

 

[PeterTHX]

Cees, lossless is lossless. Bu PCM 24/96 is available on several BD releases so far, that's pretty much the highest resolution audio available. Because it isn't compressed into a TrueHD or Master Audio wrapper doesn't make it any less.

BD ***has*** the bandwidth to deliver uncompressed 24/96 audio, HD DVD does not. You HAVE to compress it, either losslessly (Dolby TrueHD) or lossy (Dolby plus). BD doesn't need to do that because you have 54Mbps to play with. The streams are also different, HD DVD follows the DVD "vob" type structure, BD does not, which allows more bandwidth.

 

[ppltd]

I seem to recall in an earlier post that the 360 massayers stated that the 360 would not have the power or bandwidth to support full 1080p through component outputs. Seems that that was also in error, as the current Dashboard update released today by MS pushes the 360 to a full 1080p component output. Go figure. MAybe the technicians know their hardware better than we think we do.

I just wonder if the HD technical designers also know something we don't. We will see in time.

In the mean time I will watch V For Vendetta in Dolby True HD

 

[Ryan-G]

Actually, That was from me. And I own both a 360 and a pre-order for the HD-DVD drive.
I also think it was on another thread.

IIRC I was theorizing on why the X-box 360 wasn't outputting 1080p, and I think the major line of thinking I was on was the USB not having the bandwidth, which someone later corrected me on.

The post is here...

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...d.php?t=244067

The topic is why HD-DVD was "3x" better while BR was "6x" better and I was theorizing it had to do with the originally announced 1080i limitation.

 

[Cees Alons]

Of course, Peter.
That's why I posted a big smile earlier in reply to Shawn's post.

(But in the context of discussing compression codecs, I didn't discuss PCM indeed.
It must also be clear that reading uncompressed tracks from the disc takes a bigger bite from the bandwidth, just like using MPEG-2 instead of VC-1 uses more of the disc space. In fact *none* of the formats provide for reading uncompressed video tracks. That's why we have compression in the first place - to save space and bandwidth where it matters.
And as long as the result is lossless - which it isn't in the case of the video-compression -, it's not a practical limitation.)

Also, exactly because lossless is lossless, I'm not really waiting for more than 1 lossless track (especially not using two *different* codecs) to accompany the images.


Cees

 

[mfabien]

May I recommend reading the following on the HD DVD player's audio capabilities:

http://www.highdefforum.com/showpost...05&postcount=1

 

[ppltd]

Ryan,

I reread my post and realized it could sound like I was insulting the person that posted the XBox comments. None was intended, so I hope you did not take it that way.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Compression does not mean loss.

 

[ppltd]

And if Cows could fly, I'd never venture outside. Hard to justify a position when you add the words 'just making these numbers up for an example'.

 

[Ryan-G]

None at all Communicating on a message board is never an easy thing, so if something's ambiguous, I try to assume the poster didn't intend to be offensive.

 

[Nick Graham]

mfabien, thanks for posting that link....in the few days I've had my HD-A1, I was wondering why it sounds so much better audiowise than every player I've ever used in regards to regular DTS and Dolby 5.1 tracks......I'm using insanely cheap cables (I'm talking Big Lots, here) and when hooked up using the 5.1 analog outs, the HD-A1 sounds breathtaking.

 

[mfabien]

If a reader of this thread owns an HD DVD player and a Universal DVD player, I would be very interested to learn that person's impression when comparing the DTS surround of a DVD-A played on the 5.1 multichannel analogs of the HD DVD player vs the High Resolution rendition of the same DVD-A on the Universal player.

In my case, when I play Steely Dan's "Everything Must Go" from the DTS selection on my HD-A1 analogs (uncompressed LPCM), I can't see how High Resolution could be any better... I may be wrong, but I doubt it.