Regarding the Disks Themselves... (1 Viewer)

[JustinJB]

Hello,

I have yet to receive my HD Television, but just got my HD DVD player in the mail, and am doing a firmware update. I signed up for netflix, for the widest selection of HD DVDs, and just got the first disks from them. As may be obvious to some of you, they are certainly not flawless. Hairline scratchs, smudges, etc. I was wondering if this will affect quality. To my understanding, digital content is either an all or nothing affair (ie: it won't slowly degrade like VCR tapes and the like)...that is, either it will play in its full glory, or it won't play at all.

With these netflix disks, will i be seeing the full potential of HD DVD (or at least the full potential of the HD DVDs in question)? I don't want to ruin my first HD DVD encounter with disks of lackluster quality...

Thanks for your time.

 

[Cees Alons]

Hello Justin,

Yes you will be able to see the full potential, because it's digital.

If scratches and smudge are too much, and the error-correction logic cannot reconstruct the proper digital values) you will see *nothing*, that is: pixelation, blocking, weird images, etc.

This may be slightly more likely on HD-discs than on SD-discs, because the information on HD discs is denser.

But it won't just "deteriorate" the HD image to a lower level!


BTW, the HD DVD medium is based on the same technology as standard DVD. So most of the potential problems with the medium are known. E.g. we don't have to expect sudden DVD-rot in the near future.

But Blu-ray is based on newer technologies, so in theory it's possible that we encounter new problems in the (near?) future, like some plants producing BDs that exhibit some sort of BD-rot in two or three years. It's not extremely likely, but it's possible, because originally they planned to place BD discs in a caddy and abandoned that because the HD discs would be so much less expensive.


Cees