Consumers Must Demand an Increase in Audio Quality for 'HD-DVD', Not Just Video! (1 Viewer)

[Joe Schwartz]

It is absolutely rediculous to not equate HD-DVD with better audio, which is EQUALLY IMPORTANT AS IMPROVEMENT IN VIDEO, or nonetheless is SIGNIFICANTLY IMPORTANT.

Speaking as a videophile (and not as an audiophile), I must respectfully disagree. Although I think audio and video are equally important, I think video has far more to gain from HD-DVD. To my ears, current DD and DTS soundtracks sound great -- I don't notice the flaws and compression artifacts that audiophiles hear. For all intents and purposes, current DVD soundtracks are as good as (or better than) the sound in a great movie theater.

But to my eyes, DVD video quality is not even close to the image quality of film, especially when projected on a large screen. This is where HD-DVD stands to make a major improvement over DVD, bringing the image quality much closer to that of film.

I realize that many of you will disagree, especially if you're dissatisfied with current DD and DTS soundtracks. But you should realize that some of us are very excited about HD video quality, but we won't demand an increase in audio quality.

 

[ChrisA]

But to my eyes, DVD video quality is not even close to the image quality of film, especially when projected on a large screen. This is where HD-DVD stands to make a major improvement over DVD, bringing the image quality much closer to that of film.

Nobody here would disagree with anything you say, except perhaps that you are 100% satisfied with Dolby Digital for movies and music.

As an owner of a front projection CRT and 1.85:1, 100 inch Stewart Flmscreen owner, I don't think anyone is more of a 'videophile'... I detest having to use scalers, I detest interlaced video, and if you read the HD-DVD petition that we wrote, I'm sure you can see us pushing hard for 1080p video for consumer HD-DVD. The fact that 1080p can be achieved EASILY with near perfection with the latest video compression methods is whay we are pushing to have HD-DVD released as 1080p... we can always have 1080p downconverted to other HD formats by the HD-DVD player itself and output 720p, or even a native rate output such as 768p for native rate devices requiring such resolutions such as certain plasma screens. Blue Ray players could come in a variety of forms, just like DVD players today. Blu-Ray players can be backward compatable and play standard DVDs as well, which just requires a dual optical pickup I believe...

But bandwidth from BLU-RAY HD-DVD changes the whole ball game, especially with high quality, high effeciency video codecs like Corona, where you could literally achieve near identical copies of the 1080p master with perhaps 15 Mbit/second, you have 34 Mbit/sec total bandwidth to work with on Blu-Ray... It is a whole new ball game. There is no 10 Mbit/sec total bandwidth limitation as current DVD technology.

In general I agree that video is much more demanding than the audio in terms of benefit for utilising greater bandwidth. So even if you have a 25+ Mbit/sec bandwidth utilization for HD-DVD video, you still have so much room left over for improving the audio. You CAN HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO, as long as HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS and MANUFACTURERS make wise decisions.

 

[Lewis Besze]

Don't believe the marketing literature. It took me some digging to find out exactly what the Denon did. When it was firt released I was like "COOL!" thinking they had come up with some real miracle universal player that could indeed engage DSP on a DSD signal. Some more intensive research proved that assumption wrong

Can you point me into those research?

 

[Dan Hitchman]

If this is really true about DSP manipulation and DSD not ever being synonymous (and conversion to PCM must take place), then I do agree that MLP compressed 6 channel discrete 24/96 PCM and 1-2 channel 24/192 PCM should be the bare minimum standards for the primary language soundtrack. No audio watermarking, however!!!

If there is space, given a highly advanced video compression codec, then there should be an ability to provide 8 discrete channels of MLP compressed 24/96 kHz PCM. We should not have matrixed channels introduced into the mix like with DD EX!!

For music only applications uncompressed 24/192 kHz PCM or higher fidelity DSD at up to 8 discrete channels should allowed.

Dan

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Lewis,

I'm pretty sure that I read in a review in Home-theater-Review magazine (it's jut the magazing title I'm wondering about...not having read it) regarding a Denon "universal" player that apparently all of Denon's universal players converts the DSD bitstream to PCM for D/A conversion via their traditional DAC designs (DSD uses a completely different D/A architecture if employed direction without a prior PCM conversion). Even the reviewer was a bit disappointed that such a player was being touted as a universal player because the listener will never really hear the DSD audio...just the PCM conversion.

I'll dig around and see what I can find and I'll post back if I can find the magazine issue I'm remembering.

-dave

 

[ChrisA]

There would be no watermarking on a movie soundtrack... in fact, no audiophile label is using watermarking that I know of... I don't know of any DVD-Audios that have used watermarking yet... but I'm sure they exist... it is optional and it costs serious money to use watermarking.

At any case, I look forward to a significant and serious improvement in audio for HD-DVD....

 

[ChrisA]

Nice article about Blu-Ray in the September Widescreen Review... Looks Like Blu Ray is 100% going to be here in full force, and as I described, will come in a variety of flavors just as current DVD manufacturers produce all kinds of DVD players...

Also, please continue to sign the HD-DVD petition...

Some great comments by the way:

1080p 24 is an absolute must, anything else will not take full advantage of 1920 x 1080 resolution display devices such as Sony SXRD and other HD display devices capable of 1080p that will no doubt be the most popular Hi-Def display device. Also, Must majorly improve the sound by having at least one audio track that uses high bandwidth. Doby Digital and even the latest DTS offerings are not acceptable. Finally, it is hard to believe MPEG-2 would be utilized when it is such a DOG with fleas compared to todays advanced algorithms such as Corona and other wavelet type of algorithms. Do not use MPEG-2 for Blu-Ray or any other HD-DVD format... it makes no sense! Why on earth would you want to use outdated MPEG block encoding for a future HD-DVD format? It has been clearly demonstrated that block encoding is outdated and vastly inferior to todays modern video compression algorithms.

Keep the petition signatures and comments coming...!

 

[ChrisA]

Stefan writes:

Mpeg-2 and newer codecs allow always CBR and VBR. The VBR-mode is about 30-40% more efficient than CBR! (Estimation by Jim Taylor, author of "DVD Demystified").

My objection was that "Corona" isn't necessarily better than H.264. They won't use "only" Mpeg-2, but it will be included in the specifications.

As has been stated:

One can
expect that the new high-resolution optical disc players will also
include DVD-Video playback capability, so they'll already have MPEG2
video decoders in them.
That's it. The players will reproduce DVDs. And Blu-Ray recorders are recording HDTV, this is Mpeg-2.
The Blu-Ray standard will therefore include Mpeg-2 AND at least one better video-codec. (It could be well H.264 AND Mpeg-4/Divx, because a H.264 decoder can "easily" decode Mpeg-4).

Stefan Schreiber