SUPER BIT or SUPER BUST? (1 Viewer)

[RicP]

Marketing gimmick? Definitely.

I would.
That's all I was saying. That perhaps you may want to temper your assertion that they are "definitely" a "marketing gimmick" until you actually have a chance to see them firsthand.
I'm sorry you saw fit to take what I said personally.

 

[RicP]

For anything over two hours, you're going to have to go with variable bit-rate encoding to get it to fit on a DVD at all, which means there will be substantial sections of the film encoded at relatively low bit-rate. This is true whether it is a normal or SuperBit edition

MPEG2 is a variable bit rate compression by nature. However, you can adjust what the upper limit of the encoding rate is. You can use VBR with a max of 7Mbps, or you can use VBR with a max of 9Mbps.
That's what my point is. That even with a half-rate dts track, you can still specify 9Mbps as the top level for sustained bitrate under MPEG2. And as you pointed out, the quality will be great with a VBR encode and a max of 9Mbps. So Superbit allows you to get the closest as possible to best audio and video quality on one disc.

 

[Adam Barratt]

The lowest DD bit rate that can deliver a 5.1 channel mix is ~334 Kbps. Are you saying that the extra 434 kbps are going to make that much a difference in the video presentation? I don't think so

Rates as low as 224kbps have been used on DVD, although this is well below that recommended by Dolby Labs. Don't forget that a Dolby Digital soundtrack would also need to be included on your theoretical disc, making the difference between a single 384kbps Dolby Digital track and a combination of a 754kbps DTS and, say, a 192kbps Dolby Digital soundtrack 562kbps with a maximum video transfer rate of 9.1Mbps. With a single 384kbps soundtrack the maximum video rate only drops to 9.7Mbps, just short of the format's limit.

Anything over 8Mbps should be adequate, but a single 448kbps Dolby Digital soundtrack would allow SuperBit titles to offer the best of both worlds: excellent audio quality and video very close to the format's technical limits.

As purely a matter of preference, I have yet to hear a SuperBit DTS soundtrack that sonically justifies its presence on the disc when compared to its Dolby Digital counterpart (the same goes for every Columbia TriStar DTS soundtrack, SuperBit or otherwise).

Adam

 

[RicP]

As purely a matter of preference, I have yet to hear a SuperBit DTS soundtrack that sonically justifies its presence on the disc when compared to its Dolby Digital counterpart

As you know Adam, I disagree totally, but I'm not opening that can 'o worms.