45GB HD-DVD discs? Fact or Fiction? (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

To answer your question, no. I don't have enough time to watch most of the bonus material on SD DVDS. For me, the thing I want most is to see the best HT presentation of my favorite films, after that, a commentary with some featurettes and/or alternate film version might be in order, but I don't need an entire 50 GB of material. This is just my opinion on my expectations so I'm sure others will disagree with their own expectations.




Crawdaddy

 

[DaViD Boulet]

think of it this way. You're going to get those bonus features whether you want them or not. Don't you *also* want to have great picture and sound quality? (clearly you do)

That's the way the studios view the "comodity" of entertainment software. They're going to provide bonus features because that's what drives much of their sales. So we stand a better chance of getting what we want as AV enthusiasts (high quality feature presentation) by having the most bitspace and bandwidth possible (minimizing, or eliminating the need for compromise of AV quality in the process).

That would be a win-win. Everybody gets what they're after without any one group's items of interest taking anything away from any other group's priorities.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I want great picture and sound quality more than anything else and I'm not so sure that some of the interactive stuff being promoted for either of these new video formats will be a major force in driving up sales.




Crawdaddy

 

[DaViD Boulet]

The Princess Teaparty may not be the feature that causes mom and dad to get a Blu-ray player for little Nancy.

However, as BD player penetration increases beyond the core early-adoptor enthusiast (over the next few years), Special Features will help drive software sales for average folks.

Keep in mind that special features need not be "interactive" games and such. Three lossless high-res audio soundtrack options are bonus features too... and they are the type of thing that would matter to the HT enthusiast collecting that foreign animated film.

"Bonus Features" get a bad rap on DVD among some HT enthusiasts because they've typically implied a compromise in AV quality of the feature film.

That problem can go away for ever on HD media given the proper bandwidth and bit-space, which would allow for a new generation of bonus-material that could really enhance the film experience... even for the "just the movie" hard-core collectors who find that having the option to toggle between the 1080p work-print and finished feature-film as the director talks about his thoughts isn't such a bad thing after all.

 

[RobertR]

Full 1080p extras are fine, David. I'm just not so sure they need to be simultaneous video streaming 1080p extras.

 

[Pete T C]

David I think you are too focused on paper and not focused enough on the actual product. Sony hasn't even been able to get together software to deliver a movie-only disc with artifact-free 1080p video, yet you think they are going to be able to pull of simultaneous video streaming with good quality & 1080p extras? The best software development company in the world (Microsoft) backs HD-DVD; if anyone were to pull off trickery with software, it will be HD-DVD long before Blu-Ray.

Further, the release of 16 Blocks was on HD-15 and its a 105 minute movie. Double that and you have the runtime of LOTR:EE as well as HD-30. So easily LOTR:EE can fit on a single HD-DVD - and remember, the original DVD was spread across 2 discs. Two Dolby TrueHD tracks? Sure, with codec improvements time will bring, it could probably happen on HD-DVD - but two DD+ tracks probably could work right now with no further improvements. Now before you proclaim that this is where Blu-Ray will shine, Blu-Ray hasn't even been able to deliver a plain old 110 minute movie with good quality, nevermind any fancy extras, dolby truehd, or long runtimes. Again, if you look at what both companies have actually been able to deliver, its obvious HD-DVD offers everything we need and more while Blu-Ray isn't even close to ready for primetime. Rather than dragging the war on until Sony can gets it act together - which will likely result in a big loss for BOTH camps - let's end it now with HD-DVD that has all the tech it needs to sell like hotcakes while giving HT enthusiasts what they want (1080p artifact free).

The real question is if 50gb is such a major deal for you (and by all means, it shouldn't be based on what HD-DVD has delivered), why are you continuing to complain about the limitations of HD-DVD instead of the much more obvious larger limitations of Blu-Ray that are having a huge impact on quality? I don't mean slapping Sony on the hands either, I mean where are the full out protests about Sony's failure to deliver even passable video quality?

Ben-Hur massive special edition on one disc? No problem. Put the movie on an HD30 Hybrid and have the full movie w/dolby truehd on the HD side and 3 hours of extras on the SD side. Now thats an SE. Let's not forget though that studios on standard DVD figured out that it was more profitable to release 2-disc sets for big SEs because 2-discs were perceived as being more valuable than just 1 by the consumer.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

This early in the game, I think it's not reasonably to be using words like "already".
Colour me nutso, but to my way of thinking neither product has any significant presence in the marketplace yet, much less in homes, and we haven't seen what may come in the next few months, not to speak of long-term developments.

I do know this : paper specs sell hardware. How many people bought VCRs [perhaps instead of LaserDisc] "because they could record" and then only ever used them to watch prerecorded tapes? Quite a few, I guess, since surveys late in the VHS era showed that most machines had never been used for time-shifting. People like specs they never use. Even the cheapest amps you can buy will be rated for less than 0.1% THD, and then people hook them up to speakers which don't generate anything resembling the input waveform.

Besides the "it's got better capacity, it must be better" factor, which I don't see as likely to kick in any time soon, you have to remember that one of the applications of the next-generation optical disc is computer storage. BD has the advantage there, with drives already in place, and capacity does matter to PC users [as witness the almost total disappearance of single-layer DVD drives in the past 3 months].

Honestly, I think the movie studios are seeing the move to the next optical format as a long-term thing [remember : LaserDisc lasted almost 25 years], and since they can't predict what they will be doing in 10 years, they're going to want the most options they can get : which translates not only into raw capacity, but also into data transfer rate and a flexible transport stream.

 

[Vincent_P]

Maybe those surveys were taken on the planet Jupiter, because EVERYBODY I've ever known has used their VCRs for videotaping programs off of TV often.

Vincent

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Are you aware that "Sony" is not going to be mastering every BD title that goes into production? Are you aware that Microsoft's VC1 codec is part of the BD format spec and the Warner Brothers will start using it for their BD titles in just a few months?

Come the fall, when other studios like Warner and Disney and Fox start mastering/prepping titles for BD things will start to look very different than what you see with the handful of crappy titles done in-house by Sony right now.

Sony is not "BD". They own the royalties and they're getting the format rolling. But BD will look and sound like whatever the studio wants it to look and sound like, just like with DVD. If Peter Jackson wants VC1 compression done transparently with full 1080p video commentary to detail his special effects on a 50 gig BD, he'll do it with or without Sony's help.

If 50 gigs doesn't get here by the fall then it will be time to start talking about BD not being able to "deliver". The discs out right now will not be representative of the quality by any non-Sony studio within just a couple of months. AVC authoring is already beginning for BD and Warner already has VC1 compressed BD masters waiting to go into production for sale.

 

[JulianK]

Disc capacity - whether or not it's imminently available - is the main factor in my support for Blu-Ray over HD-DVD.

That additional 20Gb will be of huge benefit when it comes to authoring long films, or for complex presentations - something that might only happen if the capacity is there to play with.

Admittedly, the number of long films that might take full advantage of the additional capacity is limited, but what about television shows?

If you can squeeze - say - 30% more episodes onto a Blu-Ray disc than onto a HD-DVD disc, then there are significant savings to be made: instead of a six-disc HD-DVD set, you might have a four-disc Blu-Ray set that's 20% cheaper.

It's not all about movies!

 

[Brandon Pop]

An extra 20GB of space is needed for "bonus material?"

Compressing a film transfer master from a D5 video cassette to an optical disc is one thing, compressing MiniDV or DVCPro onto an optical disc and needing 20GB's is laughable.

 

[Edwin-S]

I think a 45G HD DVD disc is mostly fiction. If it was feasible then Toshiba would have included it in its spec for the format. The fact that 45G discs are absent from the spec seems to be a good indicator that Toshiba did not think that triple layer HD DVD discs were viable.

This HT hobby sure is funny. It has to be one of the only hobbies where people actually complain about the possibility of having too much of something, in this case capacity. I have a belief about anything to do with electronics, computers, and/or computer storage. I believe I would rather have the capacity, speed, etc., and not need it then to need it and never be able to have it. With BD the chances are better than 50% that any issues with dual layer discs will be worked out, making 50G discs a reality. With HD DVD, the chances are better than 50% that 30G discs are all we are ever going to see. I would rather see the success of a format that has room to improve technologically than see a format succeed that is already at its technological limits.

 

[Rob_Walton]

The rumour was that Toshiba started talking about the 45Gb disc around the same time they were trying to tempt Disney over to their side. It seems Disney are very concerned about their ability to re-selll their catalogue to consumers with just the promise of improved PQ/AQ. Like many of the studios (judging by their statements) they want the ability to add interactive special features, which requires additional capacity on the disc above and beyond the main feature.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I suppose that this is a good thing, but I have a hard time understanding the benefits of putting a TV series on fewer disks. After all there are plenty of 30 minute or 1 hour breaks that allow a person to change disks (and get some more popcorn or go to the bathroom).

 

[Pete T C]

Again, I missed the press releases indicating these things. Personally it seems like you are buying Sony's PR hook line and sinker without thinking through what has actually been presented in both formats.

With Blu-Ray, we have seen sloppy discs with little interactivity or special features & MPEG2 encoding - Sony's titles have dropouts, mediocre picture quality, and no next-gen audio formats. Lion's Gate's titles have stuttering, soft picture quality, and no next-gen audio formats. How this is going to magically transform to perfect video quality discs with all the goodies, dual video streams and lots of interactivity in 2-3 months is beyond me. Personally, I don't think that is realistic.

With HD-DVD, we have seen highly polished discs with interactivity, special features, flawless 1080p video, next-gen audio codecs, and more. Microsoft worked with Toshiba to make sure the tools were there so that studio could make such quality discs.

Pulling away from paper specs and PR for a few seconds, it's obvious that HD-DVD has the superior tools to create content and further that it has the technology ready now to deliver what every AV nut on this forum wants: flawless high definition audio and video. If you want artifacts, stutters, and/or soft pictures you could pick up a Blu-Ray disc because all of them suffer from some combination of those problems. If you want pristine video and audio quality you could pick up an HD-DVD. Settling for mediocrity just so the format you've proclaimed the winner since October 2005 (before you even saw what both had to offer) actually wins is not the best move in the eyes of the rest of us who waited to see what both actually had to offer aside from hype - who can see that HD-DVD has its act together and Blu-Ray certainly does not.

You were talking about "interactivity" before. Did you notice that all HD-DVD players have USB ports on the front for video game controllers? Did you also know that Microsoft's wired XBOX 360 controllers use a standard USB plug? Samsung's Blu-Ray player doesn't have USB. In time, HD-DVD may be able to deliver superior interactivity as well with actual interactive videogames on standalone players (which may be the hints that are being dropped in AVS Forum by the MS rep with the HD-A1's firmware 2.0 upgrade). So again, Microsoft may be helping Toshiba be far ahead of the game in yet another area.

From what I see HD-DVD is quite a few steps ahead of Sony and will be able to remain a few steps ahead with the help of its partners.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Please only post if you've bothered to read the comments in the thread that pertain directly to the point you're making.

We've already covered the issue of bonus material presented in full 1920 x 1080p versus SD 480i and we've also covered the issue of bonus material that takes *lots of space* like multiple high-res lossless audio soundtracks along with an additional 1920 x 1080p video stream coupled with the feature play for video commentary etc. 20 gigs would be just about right for a full 1920 x 1080 second video stream along with 2 lossless compressed 24/96 audio tracks for the feature film.

In case anyone needs an example: You know the *hours and hours* on bunus material on each of your three LOTR SE sets? They were all filmed in 1920 x1080 high-def. You're seeing them down-resed to SD on the DVD.

 

[Marc Colella]

I'm in the group of people that doesn't really care if the extras are in SD.
I don't watch extras more than once, and it's quality isn't as important as the main feature (the actual movie)

However, for those who do want their extras in HD... what's stopping the studio's from putting them on a second disc all by themselves? Why does everything have to be on one single disc?

The studio's love the idea of selling multiple disc sets, it gives the impression of value and allows them to raise the price a bit. If/when 50 GB Blu-Ray discs are released - you can bet you'll still be seeing multiple disc releases where the first disc had plenty of space left over, but the studios decided to create a multi-disc set anyways.

30GB discs are more than enough.

 

[RobertR]

I don’t think people are “complaining” about “too much” capacity. They’re simply questioning the benefit. No one is going to object to 50 gb if it involves NO tradeoffs (there are currently obvious cost differences between the two formats, so that’s a big tradeoff). The question is, do people think 50 gb will provide any benefit they care about? If 30gb does not impose any meaningful limit, then it doesn’t matter.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Exactly Robert

 

[DaViD Boulet]

In about 3 years the "benefit" of having an additional 20 gigs capacitiy along with 1.5 times the read bandwidth will be easily understood by everyone at HTF and need no debate.

Back when DVD was being envisioned we heard all the same type of arguments in comparison to laserdisc... people questioning the need to have "the whole movie on one side of a disc", people questioning the need for things like 16x9 etc. People thought that the 8gb on dual-layer DVD would be "way more space than you would ever need" and look how quickly we out-grew that capacity.

Might as well go for the most space/bandwidth that we can with an HD format that we might live with for the next 10 years. The questions will answer themselves in due time.




Exactly.