Beyond HD-DVD? (1 Viewer)

[Larry Sutliff]

I would buy the DVD's you want now, and then replace select titles later. I don't plan on rebuilding my entire collection when HD-DVD arrives, just select favorites.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

The technology may be "only a year or two away," but you can be bet that anything approaching the variety and selection we enjoy today is a lot longer away -- maybe decades.

Exactly. DVD has been here for a while and I still don't own the Lion King or Cinderella on DVD.

And it was just recently when we got Grease and Citizen Kane.

HD-DVD won't suddenly avail you to every film title your heart desires. Your SD collection will have to get you by in the meantime (and judging by the titles being released on D-VHS, HD title selection may not exactly exhaust the library of "classics" too quickly).

 

[Neil Joseph]

It always amazes me that Disney has titles on deck for 2008 - 2010 for DVD.

 

[Robert McClanahan]

Is everybody forgetting about HD cable?My area will have it in January.If I can have regular and pay per view programming in HD,than why would I keep buying DVD's?

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Possibly for the same reason you'd buy *any* movie...
to own it.
And if you have a D-VHS recorder I've got two other reasons for you to still (at least occasionall) buy a DVD:
1. OAR (2.35:1 films are most often cropped to 1.78 for HD broadcast)
2. Extras. I doubt that the commentary tracks, trailers, and documentaries on your HD channel are as involving as what you'd find on SD-DVD at present.

 

[Steve Bjorg]

I'd really like to see lossless technology become more mainstream. With the likes of MP3 and MP2/4, too many people seem to have accepted compromised digital delivery schemes. For instance, I can't believe we are still at 8-bit per color channel. Isn't it obvious that 256 shades of grey are not sufficient? Luckily this situation seems to be changing somewhat on the computer front with dynamically generated content. However, DVDA and SACD sales (or rather lack thereof) seem to indicate that the general public just doesn't care. Sure, there is the issue of content, but I don't see customer banging on the sales desks at TowerRecords demanding for more selection in that medium either. But, if there was a successor to HD-DVD, assuming it remained 2D, I certainly would like to see 32-bit floating point color per channel with no lossy video compression and 8-bit DSD in a three-axis sound configuration (can't remember the correct term, but it basically captures 3D sound with just 4 channels and can be mapped back onto any number of speakers). Anyway, one can only dream about the possibilities.

 

[Jim Peavy]

I have a friend that has suggested this very thing: a leap-frog over HD-TV technology, using software to make the DVD picture, basically, Hi-Def equivalent. I am certainly no techy, but it doesn't really take one to see that Hi-Def TV is not exactly catching on, at least with the "masses" which, like it or not, will decide if it flies or dies. It certainly hasn't caught on the way DVD has.
I don't think most people care about watching the news, "Friends", or even sports in HD. And who can blame them? Even the best of TV, "Seinfeld" or "The Simpsons" for instance, would seeing it in HD make it better? Would seeing Jerry Seinfeld in HD be funnier? I say no.
The very best application of HD-TV is in the home theater experience, and what do we find there? Good ole' NTSC DVDs are the hottest thing going right now (from what I understand, one of the hottest things ever), and show no signs of letting up. Kinda' a conundrum, huh?
This is an interesting discussion, even though I understand very little of the tech-speak ("proprietary imaging algorithms??" !!). So, I hope more with folks with better knowledge than I of the tech side of things chime in. But the popularity of DVDs and the superiority of the Hi-Def format is making for an interesting situation...!

 

[Robert McClanahan]

HDTV's will not catch on until the cable industry crams them down the consumers throat.Eventually everyone will have to own a HDTV just to get cable.

 

[Mark_Mac]

HDTV's will not catch on until the cable industry crams them down the consumers throat.Eventually everyone will have to own a HDTV just to get cable.

This is not true, I have a HDTV satelite tuner that has s-video out(dish6000). I watch down converted HD material on my analog tv in my bedroom. The picture is great, its widescreen and I record this down converted HD material on my panasonic e20. Its downconverted to 480i but the picture is better then most of my DVD's. The e20 makes great widescreen DVD's from this source.

 

[Ben Crouse]

But, if there was a successor to HD-DVD, assuming it remained 2D, I certainly would like to see 32-bit floating point color per channel with no lossy video compression and 8-bit DSD in a three-axis sound configuration (can't remember the correct term, but it basically captures 3D sound with just 4 channels and can be mapped back onto any number of speakers). Anyway, one can only dream about the possibilities.

Thanks Steve. This is interesting stuff. Kind of what I was hoping for in a response.
And don't get me wrong, Mark. I'm not afraid of progress. I've just got a gut feeling that HD-DVD will likely come soon, and if it's not theend of the line, it will at least have a longer life than any of it's predecessors. I'm wondering how far off target you guys think I am in my thinking, and it's great to hear what some of you imagine might best the upcoming HD-DVD technology, however distant that future might be.

 

[Ben Crouse]

I feel evetually though, hardcopies of movies may not even exist. With connectivity speeds increasing, movies and games will all be downloaded from a server farm for a nominal fee per viewing.

and how many people want to see this happen?
:star: (not me!)

 

[ErichH]

It's just like computers. The trick is to get in and use it.
If you wait till something better comes along, you'll be asking the same question again.
Your collection will not be available overnight in HD, and updating is fun.

Eric

 

[Steve Bjorg]

Eric,

Actually, it is not quite like computers. The human perception has a natural limit. We have some more-or-less fixed number of receptors in our eyes, sample sounds at some frequency, and our brains process the information only at a given speed. There is a theoretic limit as too how much information a human can absorb. Now, that number is of course fairly high and equally ill-defined. However, as to the question of what is possible, we only need to make sure that the information content greatly exceed our processing rate and, for all practical purposes, we should be fine. Of course, we also need to consider the limitations of the original media (in most cases film) and going beyond its resolution is simply not feasible. Computers don't come close to this limit in the realtime domain (rendering is different, but still not there either, but not because of computational limits).

However, I believe the more important question is not technology, but content. What if your business model is to resell the same old tried-and-true content over and over again? What if, the new technology made every sale your last sale? This scenario applies to both manufactured media and downloadable media (the latter being a problem already today). I don't have any information about the ramblings and thinking in the media industry, but I can easily imagine quite a few people being very uncomfortable with the current situation and where it will lead us.

 

[Steve Bjorg]

Ben,
With regard to the next generation of content, I strongly suscribe to the line of thought where content will be captured in a form similar to rendering models today. That is, all the information to re-create the scenes is provided and then rendering is done in realtime. The reason, I would like to see this happen, is because it would allow me chose my favorite director/cinematographer and maybe allow for some minor adjustments to the story-telling. For instance, imagine Minority Report directed by John Woo, or Beauty and the Beast by Quentin Tarantino! (ahh, the possibilities). Of course, capturing the essence of framing a shot is no trivial task and will take a while until it becomes parametrizeable. Furthermore, it will also have to address the many other aspects of creating the visual component of a movie. However, the biggest hurdle at this time is voice and not graphics. We can easily generate acceptable looking graphics (certainly besting South Park), however, we can't generate (nor describe for that matter) voices in a convincing matter. It's simply not there, and I don't see anything in the pipeline that will really address this issue in the next 5 years, but then again, technology does have a knack at sneaking up on people.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

One thing anyone here who's interested can do is sign the "HD-DVD" petition in my signature to help make sure that our next HD-DVD incarnation is, in fact, a worthy sucessor to our standard definition format and that it elevates perceived quality as much as the limits of today's technology will allow (1920 x 1080 progressive-scan encoding with playback-side downfiltering for 1080I output).
Let's end the DTS vs DD wars on HD-DVD too by having *real* (lossless compressed) multi-channel audio.
Sign.
dave

 

[Steve Bjorg]

Let's end the DTS vs DD wars on HD-DVD too by having *real* (lossless compressed) multi-channel audio.

I'll support that, but with DSD enconding.

 

[Ben Crouse]

With regard to the next generation of content, I strongly suscribe to the line of thought where content will be captured in a form similar to rendering models today. That is, all the information to re-create the scenes is provided and then rendering is done in realtime. The reason, I would like to see this happen, is because it would allow me chose my favorite director/cinematographer and maybe allow for some minor adjustments to the story-telling. For instance, imagine Minority Report directed by John Woo, or Beauty and the Beast by Quentin Tarantino! (ahh, the possibilities). Of course, capturing the essence of framing a shot is no trivial task and will take a while until it becomes parametrizeable. Furthermore, it will also have to address the many other aspects of creating the visual component of a movie. However, the biggest hurdle at this time is voice and not graphics. We can easily generate acceptable looking graphics (certainly besting South Park), however, we can't generate (nor describe for that matter) voices in a convincing matter. It's simply not there, and I don't see anything in the pipeline that will really address this issue in the next 5 years, but then again, technology does have a knack at sneaking up on people.

There's a bizzare thought.
Considering the importance so many of us place upon a Director's artistic integrity and vision, I'm not sure this idea is gonna fly.
We insist on OAR to preserve the artistic integrity of a film. I don't think I'd be interested in a version of Minority Report that has been retooled by a computer program's line of code. That's asumming this fairy-tale technology ever comes to be.
But hey, maybe that's just me.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Steve,

your idea has merrit. In fact, much research has gone into "fractal" encoding of imagry that would work exactly as you suggest...no linear quantizing of an image scan, but rather the creation of an algorithm that "describes" the image which is *rendered* upon playback. In fact, before MPEG2 was perfected, "fractal" encoding was considered for DVD.

The negative is that the accuracy or faithfullness to the original using a fractal encoding is questionable. however, the gain is that it can be rendered to any theoretical level of resolution/detail by the playback hardware/software amd so it may "look" like a better "something" than a linear-scan even though it may be a slightly "different something".

-dave

 

[Steve Bjorg]

Ben,
I have to apologize for my poor wording. I really did not mean to convey the idea of retooling anything. My examples were just badly chosen. Really, what I was after was the idea of new, original content, where camera techniques are applied by a human being and assisted by algorithms. So there are two points I want to make here: first, existing movies/videos are not affected, we are all safe from revisionist artists, my statements are just about a new kind of partially-interactive content; second, we already see some of what I have described today. When you see a pre-rendered sequence in which the camera judders (because, for example, a large object just zipped by), the judder was not produced by hand (i.e. manually), but it was applied instead. That is, an algorithm took over and transformed the original camera position over a period of time. More detail on this in my response below.
Dave,
My notion of fractals must be too naive to see how they could be applied. For instance, not every image is composed of itself (which I thought was the hallmark of fractals). Let's consider wood: it has grain and layers. However, zooming in, this structure slowly disapears and new details come into light. So, I think the right approach to create virtual wood, is to virtually grow it (please, not Hitchhiker remarks here ): simulate how a tree grows, how weather affects the formation of new rings, how the chemical composition of the plant affects the color and hardness of the wood, etc. Then you're in a position where the same knowledge base can be used to grow forests, or heavily zoom into your dining table. I know this might sound a little ridiculous to some and the best argument I can propose is the following: if every detail has always to be specifed by a human (such as the direction of a judder for every frame of a shot), we will quickly max out the human talent available on this planet. Hence, the only possibility to get the overwhelming amount of information into virtual imagery, is to make a simulacre of it and generate it. For many things, the audience won't care (wood, stone, plants, forests, mountains, etc.). For a change, it will be the artificial things that will be hard to describe: how to you describe the Mona Lisa? Or the well know things: how do you describe Mount Rainier?
And, to close my wordy post off (thanks for bearing with me so far), while we all have thoughts and ideas on how the above goal could be accomplished in the visual domain, we are pretty much clueless to its auditory counterpart. So, any practical application of this is way beyond HD-DVD (just to make sure we're still on topic).

 

[Michael St. Clair]

The future is never safe. They always screw things up. There is never a definitive collection on any format unless your tastes are VERY narrow.

I've got tons laserdiscs of titles that STILL aren't on DVD (and titles they screwed up on DVD).

Buy now.