When does movie length make a difference on HDDVD vs BluRay? (1 Viewer)

Hi everyone,

I just bought a Toshiba HD-A2 and a couple HD DVDs (Hulk and Batman Begins). I decided to buy HDDVD because at this point, they have more titles out that I want than BluRay. I'm wondering at what point does a movie's length factor in the picture quality being possibly better on BluRay due to its 50gb capacity? Hulk is about 2 hours 15 minutes with a good bit of extras (in SD). It looks amazing. I can't imagine it looking any better.

Your help with this question will ease my mind when it comes to choosing which version of HD titles to buy from studios who support both formats. I plan on buying a BluRay player as well, because I definitely want some of their exclusive titles as well (Bond, Spider-Man, etc.).

Thanks,

Bob

Bob,

We can be very happy that the studios nowadays make it a point to get the movie, the whole movie (and often much more than the movie) to HT format.

The movie length, therefore, is the length of the theatrical release (in case of a theatrical release) or the director's cut (in case of a Director's Cut ), and exactly the same for each on HD DVD, BD or SD DVD.

About the quality: althought several of the first BD releases weren't exactly as good as the first HD DVDs (most probably caused by a careless use of MPEG-2 transfers on BD by some studios), they now can be considered equally good. Especially movies that are brought to both HD formats by the fine studios who practice that habit, contain exactly the same transfer (so to say) and thus should look exactly alike on both formats.

Also, it is not felt (yet) that extras have been present on on one format and not on the other, the releases being alike as far as content goes.

There are one or two recent BD movies who seem to use more than 30Gb (and thus would not have fit on a HD DVD), but it's not totally convincing yet, because they also happen to have uncompressed audio tracks (as opposed to lossless compression), which is a bit wasteful.

Bottom line: don't worry!


Cees

Actually, it's not the picture length that will impact the video quality as much as the bit rate available. Blu-Ray has 1.5x the bandwdith available for video and audio, so it's capable of consistently supplying more bits per second to any feature, no matter the length. In the end I believe this has a greater ability to deliver higher quality then the difference in the disc size, unless the movie is exceptionally long.

Which so far has been proven to be a totally theoretical point of view with todays modern codecs. VC1 and AVC combined with losslessly compressed audio make this point one of only academic interest. Check out the running time and encode quality of "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "King Kong" on HD DVD for a couple of real world examples. And these were encoded a year or so ago which is an eternity when looking at the progress and enhancements with the VC1 codec.

Ted

Neither of which has a lossless audio track. A lossless audio track would not only take away from the total amount of space on the disc for the feature, but it'd leave less bits for the video per second. I feel this is where HD-DVD has really dropped the ball. There just aren't enough discs with TrueHD lossless audio. To me lossless is as big a feature to have as the upgraded video. HD-DVD is supposed to be "The Look and Sound of Perfect.". While you can make a case for the look, the sound of perfect has been sorely lacking thus far. Any titles without lossless sound are prime double dipping opportunites for the studios someday.

Which is exactly why I have been picky about which titles I purchase. I would not have picked up The Prestige last week had it not had PCM. I passed on Superman Returns but will pick up the UK version with PCM. For whatever reason, HD-DVD supporters seem to be less interested in lossless audio. I'm not saying I will never purchase a BD without lossless, but it plays a heavy factor into my purchases. For example: Do I think Blazing Saddles will ever get a double-dip with lossless? Doubtful and I doubt it would beneft much anyway. But the Mission Impossible films? I definitely see it coming down the road, so I skipped those.

I've read some calculations on available disc space for HD DVD and how it will relate to the upcoming release of any of the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings films. Since these clock in at over 4 hours a piece, it would be impossible to present any of these films with a decent video bitrate AND lossless audio on HD DVD. Not the case with Blu-ray. I agree with Shawn and Jeff that the addition of losless audio is as important an issue as excellent HD video quality. King Kong is a current example of how the HD DVD format has already caused corners to be cut in this regard. There simply isn't enough space on the disc to allow for long films with lossless audio.

We are less than a year into the life of HD DVD. The fact that the disc space limit has alreay become an issue does not bode well for the format.

Superman Returns has lossless audio on the HD-DVD version, I don't know about the Blueray. It’s 154 mins and looks pretty good (with some minor flaws in the underwater sequence) particularly when you consider it has almost 3 hours of extras.

Batman Begins is 140 mins with lossless audio and around 2 hours of extras. It looks just amazing.

Grand Prix is almost 3 hours. Granted it only has a Dolby Digital plus sound track but it looks just stunning, and has around an hour of extras.

I have never authored a High Def disc but I do standard def discs on a regular basis. There is a point with MPEG 2 (in standard def) where there isn't much of a visible difference when you get above a particular average bit rate.

For example, if I have a program that is under 1 hour long, then I can max out the bit rate and still have half of the disc free if I'm using a DVD 9. That means an average bit rate of about 10.5 mb. However if I back that bit rate off to an average of about 6 mb, I really won't see MUCH of a difference in the quality of the video. Of course some material in the program will be more challenging than others. But that’s why you don't use a constant bit rate.

Again I've never done a HD disc but I imagine the same is true. Now if a movie like Batman Begins which is 2 hours and 20 mins can fit on one HD-DVD with lossless audio and something like 2 hours of extras....I think most movies will be just fine on HD-DVD or Blueray. Once you get to a movie like the extended cut of Return to the King then they should be looking at a 2 disc set for both formats.

I did notice something interesting on the Bullitt HD-DVD. All of the extras, even the standard def extras, are encoded in VC1. Up to this point almost all of the HD-DVDs have the extras encoded with MPG 2. Hopefully this is a trend that will grow. It will surely leave a lot of extra space for the main feature.

As for lossless audio, my sound system isn’t really good enough to be able to tell THAT big a difference between DD plus and DD true hd.

Doug

I'm not sure the King Kong was really a space issue or not considering that Universal doesn't put lossless audio on any of their discs. Again Batman Begins is almost two and a half hours and it has lossless audio and LOTS of extras. Same with The Departed.

Cool... that doesn't change the fact that HD DVD doesn't have the capacity to handle HD video and audio on titles over 3 hours and still maintain quality. If you look at the content on King Kong, it is very apparent that the disc is maxed out. HD audio wasn't an option.

It was even confirmed by Amir in insiders thread on AVS forums, that it was also the case of SPACE but most importantly with KK and DolbyTrueHD it was case of BANDWITH !!! bitrate of video and DolbyTrueHD will exceed MAX BITRATE of HD DVD ! so if they add DolbyTrueHD on KK, there were several places on the movie when DolbyTrueHD will cut to VIDEO bitrate, and of course they wanted TOP QUALITY VIDEO presentation,it was covered here many times here and on avs...

And if you check few threads with some problems of Superman Returns and KK's picture due bandwith

Marek

I didn't have a 16:9 TV until a few years ago, but I'm sure glad that I avoided most non-anamorphic DVDs prior to that. You may own a better sound system in the future and you'll be happy for those lossless titles. Hell, my sound system isn't very expensive but yet I can hear a big difference between the PCM track and the DD track on The Departed. I don't want to fall into the double-dip trap too often if I can help it, so if a title like Dreamgirls doesn't come with a lossless track then I'll just rent it. I know a lossless version will be released eventually. Just like with non-anamorphic DVDs, it will become a selling point to buy the movie again.

I hear you about the bandwith issue, but I'm not totally sure about that however because unlike standard dvd I don't know what the bitrate limits are on HD-DVD. In the next 6 months or so I'll know a lot more about HD-DVD authoring as I will probably be working with much more HD content in the next year.

As far as the image issues with Superman Returns or King Kong, the simple solution is just to put the extras on a second disc. Also based on the size of PCM stereo tracks my guess is that a PCM 5.1 track is going to take about 1 gig per hour, so a 3 hour movie is going to take about 3 gigs if you use a PCM file. If you use DD True HD or the DTS equivalent it will take up MUCH less space. Now when your talking about a 30 gig disc, 3 gigs isn't much. The extras are going to take up a lot more space than that.

Doug

The Superman BD didn't have a space issue. As a matter of fact, they only used 28 GB of an available 50GB. Warner just dropped the ball on the BD version. With King Kong on HD-DVD, there were either no or minimal extras to my recollection. The disc only had about 60MB free, so lossless was definitely not an option there.

50 > 30

It isn't rocket science.

King Kong should have been a two disc set, as should Superman Returns (though honestly I really only have a very minor quibbles about Superman Returns with the underwater sequence)

However again I don't know what the average bitrates on those discs were, or if they could have come down a bit to accommodate lossless audio with out compromising the picture. With out being able to actually experiment with a VC1 encoder myself (again hope to have one soon) I don't know where that sweet spot is.

Doug

Why would Superman Returns need to be a 2-disc set when they left 22GB of empty space on the current one?

I'm sure he's talking about the HD-DVD, not the Blu-ray version.

Vincent

Well even the with the blueray, you put the extras on a second disc and you have that much more real estate for the movie. More real estate means higher bit rates and that means its going to look more like the original master.

Even if you had 100 gigs I would still say put the extras on a second disk.

Doug

Doug there is a thread on avs with bitrates on movies, I will try to dig up link, so you will have at least average bitrate for movie and audio....

Marek