Digital Bits Reports: APPLE joins Blu-Ray. Brace yourself for a format war! (1 Viewer)

[DeeF]

The Music Man looks amazing in HD -- a completely different transfer from its DVD incarnation.

It is indeed OAR.

 

[Vader]

No, I have never heard the quality of multi-channel inputs, but based on the points you just made,....well.....crap. I remember when I first got a DVD player and had the player downconvert the Dolby Digital from bitstream to Prologic. It sounded horrible (absolutely lifeless, with zero bass), and I hope that similar downconversion of HD-DTS to lossy DTS does not suffer the same fate.....:-(

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

I disagree. You wont be able to play a HD-DVD disc in a Blu-Ray drive or vise versa. Thus if the majority of PCs all come with Blu-Ray drives and not HD-DVD drives then it will boost sales of Blu-Ray software. In fact considering the niche market, I would expect most of the consumers that will be interested in HiDef DVD probably have several computers and perhaps even use them as HTCPs in their theater systems. If they are like me, they also enjoy using their laptop on occasions to play movies and are not likely to have both a Blu-Ray and an HD-DVD drive installed.

Further more, Microsoft has not even fully committed to using HD-DVD for their next generation X-Box, so if both the PS3 and X-Box come out with Blu-Ray drives you can expect that to definitely effect software sales.

In my onion, Blu-Ray is clearly the better performing standard of the two so that is what I will support for now, but I suppose in a few years if Warner still doesn't release HD titles on Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD players significantly drop in price, then I might add a HD-DVD player to the rack.

Of course by then I hope to have an HVD player and at that point I will be doing all I can to encourage studios, including Warner to release titles on HVD.

 

[DeeF]

Nils, why do you think that you won't be able to play both, in a player adapted to play both?

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

Who is going to make that?

There are no current designs or even plans for such a drive, and most of the drive manufacturers appear to be only interested in Blu-Ray and thus are not likely to want to take on the added cost of trying to make a universal drive that would only help HD-DVD sales. Besides, from a financial stand point they would prefer there only to be one format so what would be the incentive to support both?

Time will tell, but I seriously doubt we will see a "Universal" HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive any time soon.

 

[PeterMano]

All inidications from GDC are that MS will stick with standard dvd for xbox 2 next gen.

 

[DeeF]

I don't agree about a multi-purpose drive.

I've got a very good CD drive from Marantz, which plays CDs, DVD-Audio disks, and SACDs.

If there really are multiple formats, it will behoove the drive manufacturers to work with both sets of customers, and what better way to do this than to create one drive for both.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

I will wait this one out. This will be interesting because unlike DVD, both those formats will be stuck in a niche mode for a good while. It is going to take ~10 years before the average consumer is willing to pony up money to
re-reinvest in a home theater setup again.

 

[Vader]

Dave,

The analog inputs on both my Denon and Marantz are direct feeds to the onboard poweramps - do not pass go, do not collect $200 - completely bypassing all DSP. I'm thinking that there is only one D/A conversion, and that would be in the player itself after any processing (ie. bass management) is done. It is then converted to analog for direct playback by the amp it is sent to. Am I all wet here? I can see your point in that no D/A is always prefereble. I just don't see multiple D/A conversions; just the one prior to leaving the player. Of course, then the audio would be analog and not digital, but that would be a trade-off. It would still be completely discrete 7.1, and would have only gone through one D/A conversion. I'm gonna have to listen to both back-to-back when the time comes...

 

[Mike Frezon]

As someone who went Hi-Fi Beta back in the early '80s, I am "once-burned". I've got a hi-def TV...but I'll be among those waiting for it to shake out. Standard DVDs look plenty fine to me for now...while I wait.

For a bunch of "early adopters" here, there's an awful lot of folks willing to wait it out. Maybe that'll be the clue to the studios to figure it out before its too late. They should realize the potential delay/loss in revenues.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Hey Derek,

If you have only one source signal in your system that has level-control then running right into your power amps is great (I used to do that in my 2-channel days via the L/R output of my D/A converter).

But realistically...how are you going to provide switching between mutiple sources? You'll need a preamp/processor in the signal path. Now, if your preamp has mutli-channel pass-thru then your not incurring any additional a/d/a conversion steps. However, this means that all your DSP adjustments need to be duplicated in your HDDVD/BluRay player so everything works the same (distance timing issues with delay, sub crossover, center size etc.) If that's still the case...great.

BUT

what still annoys me is that the quality of the d/a conversion in most "multi-channel out" DVD players is AWFUL. For high-end makes like Denon that double as DVD-A players, that's a different story. But for the most part it's not an audiophile solution to take the analog output when the sound of the d/a section in your high-end preamp-decoder is so much better.

Just imagine if you're the guy with some fancy Lexicon preamp processor that is digitally EQ'd for each speaker to compensate for driver and room anamolies...don't you want the high-res sound of your high-res BluRay/HDDVD audio to benefit? If so...you're stuck with another a/d/a cycle and you're also stuck with the sound of the DVD player's d/a section...you can't improve upon that weak link in the signal chain.

Solution...feed the high-res signal digitally to your Lexicon and let it perform it's magic as it would with any other digital source.

All of these issues are system depended...a system using a high-end audiophile-designed BluRay player as the only signal source has no issue. But any non-audiophile player, or any system that requires that the surround processor perform additional d/a to get everything just right...will be compromised.

 

[Vader]

Dave,

Your points are all well taken (depressing as they may be.... ), but for the time being neither the Denon (AVR-2105) nor the Marantz offer EQ functions. All my paths are direct, with no processing inbetween points A and B, so my only concern is researching the DACs in the Blu-ray player I finally get. Regardless, even the best DACs will still not equal direct digital transmission. Of course, by that time, I may have upgraded my amp, making this whole thing moot.....

 

[Jeff Whitford]

If the only hookup for Blue-Ray is HDMI or DVI how will these millions of people buying PS3's see their HD type DVD's???

 

[Ernest Rister]

As a friend pointed out, any company that gets Disney's support is the one likely to be holding the brass ring; they're the ones who sell the most DVDs because of the kids' market.

Disney has already stated publically that they will not be exclusive to one format. They may or may not throw some more bones to the Blu-Ray owners (and who knows what these will be), but they'll be releasing product on both formats.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Like many people here, I will be waiting this one out for the following reasons:

(1) I will not risk buying the "Betamax" of this format war.

(2) Neither format will likely support HD connectivity to my current widescreen HDTV, which has only component inputs (no HDMI). I will not be buying a new television for the sole reason of supporting one of the contenders in this absurd dispute between the manufacturers and studios.

(3) The copy-protection schemes being discussed here are ridiculous.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

I will not be taking part in VHS vs. Beta: The Sequel. If they can make a player that plays both formats I will buy that, otherwise I've still got hundreds of regular DVDs and laserdiscs to watch for a while.
At least in the VHS/Beta wars there were advantages to having 2 VCRs- being able to copy tapes or record 2 things at once (back when there was still stuff on worth recording), there's no good reason to have two play-only devices! (How many people had both CED and laserdisc at the same time?)

 

[Mark Bendiksen]

Me, too. LOL...it took some major campaigning to convince my wife that we should get the Toshiba widescreen that we acquired three years ago. Part of the deal was my promise that we wouldn't purchase another one for a long time. (One potential loophole for me is that "long time" was never formally defined. ) However, even if it were up to me I wouldn't buy a new television right now just so I could get full resolution from HD-DVD/Blu-ray players. The studio and manufacturers better think long and hard before they release expensive new DVD players that don't deliver high definition resolution via component inputs.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

"Come with me if you want to watch movies"

 

[David Coleman]

What I find interesting is HD-DVD has pushed Blu-Ray into a better product.

I think in the end Blu- Ray will win out but i'm loathe to think about what incarnation it would be had it not been HD-DVD pushing for newer and better codecs.

On that issue alone Blu-Ray had to play catch up !

 

[Chris Wagner]

With all of my recruiting for soldiers to fight this war from my earlier post aside,
This is excellent news.
I've been an Apple guy my whole life, and have been leaning towards
the Blu-ray camp from just about day one on a purely technical perspective.
Being an Apple loyalist, I am, as most, somewhat biased against M$.
Biased enough that I've dismissed the X-Box altogether and stuck with PS2.
It also helps that Sony's gaming system has the best software selection.
With that being said, I already have at least two future Blu-ray drives in my home,
when the PS3 is launched and when it's time to upgrade the Macs.

I honestly believe that if this kind of momentum continues on the
Blu-ray side, HD-DVD may not even make it out of the gate.
And if the people backing HD-DVD continue to launch without
reconsideration, it could get ugly in their financial departments.
Stock holders beware.