Universal at CES (1 Viewer)

[Jari K]

Good points Sanjay. The thing here is, that some people speak more with their "hearts" than their "brains" in these format-war issues. If you´ve 200 HD DVDs, the "other format" might suddenly sound a bit more "inferior" than it actually is (when it´s a fact that it´s not inferior at.. all).

Don´t get me wrong. I can´t take anything away from HD DVD and especially from the fact that it was indeed "ready" from the start and has produced great quality and newer codecs from the start. The A/V quality of HD DVD-titles have been more or less excellent.

But - we need to be able also to step away from those "old times" (lack of the better word now..), since Blu-ray is now equal to HD DVD. They use (more or less) newer codecs now and 1.1 is (finally!) ready. And like Sanjay pointed out, there are still room for improvements.

It´s a bit like the old record playing when HD DVD-fans compare these two formats (vice versa also, no doubt). Believe it or not, things have been evolved already, so we should start facing the facts. We need one HD-format and Blu-ray is a very good choice for that. So is HD DVD in many fronts, but the other one has to go. Eventually.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Blu-ray's technical superiority on paper, so far, hasn't translated to the real world. Up to this point it has been somewhat dodgy. Yes it has the potential to be a slightly superior format, but again they should have waited at least 2 years to release it.

What exactly do you mean grow and improve? People have been saying this for a while and I'm not really sure what they mean. Do you mean that there are still some features that blu-ray hasn't implemented? Does this mean that 2.0 players will become obsolete in a few months or a year?

Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

Well the question becomes what does that mean? Did the lossless track take up less space or use less bandwidth? Is it possible that at 1.5mbps, DD+ sounded better than a lossless audio track reduced to 16 bit and yet still took up less space?

Doug

 

[Larry Sutliff]

I've had my Sony BDPS301 hooked up to my Denon 3805 via the analog cables for the last couple of months, and I do hear an improvement when there are uncompressed tracks(POTC, SPIDEY 3, etc.). However, I don't think that the improvement is of such high quality that it would be a dealbreaker if those tracks were not included. For instance, I think both KING KONG and TRANSFORMERS sound outstanding. Everyone has different priorities. What I wanted to see with HDM was a better, more filmlike video presentation. The average DD or DTS track on SD DVD smokes what I hear at my local cinema, so lossless is just gravy for me.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Sure they do! And they'd sound even better in pure lossless.

No one is saying that DD+ at 1500 doesn't sound great... we're just saying why stop at "great" when you can go all the way to true transparency for 100% of the population with pure lossless? It costs NO MORE for the studio to give you lossless on the disc. With HD DVD it was just a matter of weighing the pros and cons of PQ, SQ, and bonus features (PIP steals bandwidth so it competes with lossless on HD DVD). BD has a wide enough pipe that all three of these parties can get along with room to spare.

 

[Jari K]

Yes, well I don´t claim that I (or even hi-def digest) have proper answers for those questions. Perhaps that comment (included in the review) just came from some unprepared spokesman from Paramount and even he didn´t fully knew the answers.. Hell, perhaps Paramount switches to Blu-ray and we still don´t get lossless-audio..

 

[Carlo_M]

Oh trust me, I remember DVD's release very well. I was in the L.A. test market and bought my SD2007 in May of 1997 *before DVD's release to the general public in September*.

As alreadt pointed out: the first DVD player from Sony were $1000. And not all BD players (unless your only counting the very first Sony) were $1000.

Second, the point about DVD having problems was in comparison to the claims that were made against BD not having a "final spec" or "still evolving". The point was: DVD was still evolving post-launch. No component video for a lot of players. No progressive scan. It took a year for dual layer discs to start being made (I remember buying Contact and ooh-ing and aah-ing...until my Toshiba paused for a full second on the layer change).

All I meant was: all formats are still evolving, still buggy. BD, HDD & DVD all had problems and it's not fair for someone to ding BD for something that all formats have an issue with. And while as you point out, there may be some slight differences, the net result is the same: players that weren't 100% compatible with the discs they were supposed to play.

Like it or not, once we got away from VHS, the home video formats are now software/hardware relationships, sharing more alike with PCs than old analog systems like VHS/Beta/LD. As such, there's going to be bugs, the standards will evolve, or slightly change, etc. And it's always worst at the beginning, thus the hard life of us early adopters.

If we're still having these conversations one year from now, when all new players should be BD 1.1 if not 2.0, then you can say that the BDA hasn't gotten its act together. It's no secret they rushed to the market with an unfinished spec because HD-DVD was ready first. But personally I can't blame them for not wanting to give HD-DVD a 1+ year head start. That would have spelled certain doom.

In retrospect, I think the entire HD launch was entirely too early. According to most market projections, the HDTV penetration rate will greatly increase this year and subsequent years. Now would have been a better time to launch than a year and a half ago. Back then less than 10% of households had HD sets, let alone 1080p HDMI sets, to really show the benefits of HDM. I know on my old 2001 HDTV the difference was minimal, it wasn't until I bought a new 1080p SXRD that I could really tell the PQ difference.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Just so people remember how expensive this HT hobby can be, I paid $1000 for the Sony-7000 back in the late summer of 1997. That player was non-progressive so I bought my first progressive dvd player in 1998, which was a Toshiba for $1200. Furthermore, neither player could decode DTS.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

Totally false. BluRay's storage and bandwidth sizes were based upon MPEG2 video and uncompressed LPCM audio and that was all they were going to support, period. Toshiba showed that 30 Gig of advanced codec video and lossless compressed audio was superior video and equal audio and was cheaper to boot.

If there really was strong karma, all those who think HD-DVD should never have existed would be immediately transported to a reality where that was true. They could be watching their 50 Gig MPEG2 $40 movie on their $1000 player blissfully ignorant that:
A. The players could be cheaper.
B. The movies could be cheaper.
C. The video could look better.

I prefer to support companies that get it right the first time (although there is plenty of room left to improve video at this point) than the reactionary companies who only reluctantly provide technologies to improve quality because of their competitor and then claim they are superior because they have higher bandwidth and more storage.

"But the HD-DVD consortium was going to go with ultra-low bitrate HD on DVD that was worse than MPEG2!"
That was never going to happen and was something Blu supporters were touting as a reason to back Sony before any HD product was even on the market.

 

[Zack Gibbs]

Totally False. HD-DVD was most certainly going to use red laser technology, but changed to Blue because of... Blu-ray. Innovation came from both sides, and arguing about what could have been if things were completely different is pretty pointless. Both formats included advanced codecs in their spec long before either of them were released.

 

[GlennH]

I think that what has happened is that each side has pushed the other. If HD DVD was originally going to just be red laser, it was pushed to go blue by BD. If BD would be MPEG2 and high prices it was pushed to do better by HD DVD's strengths in those areas.

So while it seems necessary that we get to a single format for mass adoption, I think in the end the format war has been beneficial in some ways. I just hope now that continued improvements and price reductions in BD won't be slowed in the wake of the apparent victory over HD DVD. As has been noted, they need to keep pushing the envelope to overcome the "DVD is good enough" perspective.

 

[Dave>h]

Glenn,

"I think that what has happened is that each side has pushed the other. If HD DVD was originally going to just be red laser, it was pushed to go blue by BD. If BD would be MPEG2 and high prices it was pushed to do better by HD DVD's strengths in those areas.

So while it seems necessary that we get to a single format for mass adoption, I think in the end the format war has been beneficial in some ways. I just hope now that continued improvements and price reductions in BD won't be slowed in the wake of the apparent victory over HD DVD. As has been noted, they need to keep pushing the envelope to overcome the "DVD is good enough" perspective."

My point exactly.

Personally, I would be quite happy to see this war continue unabated until a truly superior technology emerges as the victor. And sorry folks, at this point Blu Ray is not there. And if the competition stops, I am not sure what incentive Sony will have to get it there.

Ideally, from a consumer perspective, the war should continue until Blu Ray show us true interactivity ala in movie experience, true connectivity via internet, true compatability (pick a friggin standard and have all machine comply with it!!!) and true accessability (machine that don't cost a small fortune and software that is competetively priced with DVD). And how about some innovation of your own Sony? What have to got to wow us? All I have seen is playing catch up to the inferior HD DVD.

Until such time, I say go HD DVD. Don't give up the fight to bring HD to the masses. Keep being innovative, keep being aggressive.

Studio support will ultimately win this war but the studios should not blindly support a lacklustre product (hd or blu). At the very least, they should expect a lot more from the hardware that is running their product but I am not sure if they even care.

Dave

 

[Douglas Monce]

Actually the folks that are telling me that DD+ practically indistingushable from the original master are sound engineers that I have worked with, they have nothing what ever to do with HD DVD.

But David assume for a moment that you have a film of the running time of Return of the King. Suppose that even on a BD50, you are running out of space. Suppose that a 24bit lossless audio track won't fit, because of the running time and the fact that they are trying to put 4 commentary tracks on the thing. Maybe even PIP commentary tracks. Would you rather have a 16bit lossless or a 1.5mbps DD+?

Now granted this situation probably won't come up very often, but it may very well come up. When authoring a disc, EVERYTHING is a compromise.

Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

This is definitely true. Both sides have benefited enormously from the format war. Thank god for the format war!!!

Doug

 

[Dan Hitchman]

That's EASY... split the films to two BD50's and create intro, intermission, and exit music like a premium road show release of yore and make sure the mix is 7.1, 24 bit/96 kHz! Someone should put this in Peter Jackson's ear so they don't do it like the four disc DVD sets!

 

[DaViD Boulet]

And BD incurs far fewer compromises.

 

[Dave Moritz]

I have to agree that it should be available no matter what. While I currently do not have the ability to decode DTS-HD MA I will in a few months. I do however have the ability to listen to DD+, Dolby True HD and PCM. IMHO while DD+ does sound good, its basically a souped up DD. I do not consider DD+ to be a huge improvement of DD and I am not a big fan of DD+. I would not be suprised if DD+ only came about because Toshiba needed a format because they knew that not all there releases on HD-DVD could use Dolby True HD. Or Dolby had a feeling that not all of the HD-DVD's could use a Dolby True HD track, hell maybe my second theory is closer to the truth.

From what I have heard both PCM and Dolby True HD are both superior to both DD and DTS lossy formats. I would be willing to go out on a limb and say that DTS-HD MA will be just as good as PCM and DTHD. One of my biggest pet peaves is that most of the HD-DVD titles only have lossy DD+. Its almost funny that DD+ seems to be a HD-DVD only thing, as most of the Blu-ray titles seem to have a lossless solution. Maybe part of the reason lossless seems to stand out on my HT is the use of a pair of Altec Lancing Voice Of The Theater A-7's? But I firmly believe that lossless audio is superior to the old lossy formats we have been use to for the past 10 years. I will continue to support titles with lossless audio and will start passing on HD-DVD titles that have DD+. I will be focusing my purchases on titles that offer lossless solutions.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Yes that would be one way to do it. But may not be the way they want to do it.

Doug

 

[RickER]

You know Doug, this was making me think of one very important point. In regards to both HD formats. The way you feel about the audio is how most average Joe 6 packs feel about both audio and video. It just doesnt matter to them. Shoot i only know a handful of people that have a 5.1 surround set up at all! Some of them are not even done right. Course i also know a few in that handful that have a nice A/V setup, but they still get something wrong. Stretching or zooming pan and scan DVDs, or putting the surround speakers on the TV, next to the mains, for instance. When all is said and done, people dont "get it", and a bunch of them dont want to. Its just TV.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

we heard the same arguments about DVD back in 1997.

There's truth to it. and Sure, lots of VHS consumers migrated to DVD for convenience-factors that had nothing to do with AV PQ.

However...

the same VHS consumers that came in kicking and screaming about "black bars on their TV" are now enjoying 16x9 anamorphic DVDs on their HDTVs and listening to 5.1 on their surround systems. You see, DVD wasn't just a reactive medium: it actually helped educate and shape the market at the same time the market shaped it. If the J6P's of 1997 had never changed their expectations of DVD, we'd all be watching 4x3 P/S movies.

Same thing will happen with HD media. Sure, today there's not much of a groundswell of public appreciation for the nuances of lossless audio and 1080p video. But just wait as more and more HT systems get installed in dedicated media rooms... with front projection screens. A few years from many of the same consumers who say "huh?" when you mention 1080p and lossless audio will be bitching when their discs aren't properly mastered for their media room system.

No reason to believe that progress can't happen again. In fact, this time the hardware manufacturers (TVs and audio gear) are on top of things... remember how long it took to get 16x9 480p displays on the market back in the late 1990's? We already see 1080p being the hot ticket in HD sales right now... same with HDMI 1.3 and lossless audio codecs in AV gear.