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I don't want to sound like the "laserdisc" guys but...

15K views 12 replies 9 participants last post by  tomtastic 
#1 ·
There was a quality in the VC-1 encoding/HD-DVD transfer that is still on part with the reference blu-ray title of today. Even if my player is 1080i, I am using my Pioneer elite to upconvert to 1080p. The movies looks fantastic. The difference for me with more modern blu-ray is Dolby TrueHD vs DTS-HD MA. The later is superior in almost any title I ever listen too except for maybe the 5th Element re-issue.


It looks to me like my Toshiba A1 still have a few years of service left in it and I will continue using it It is slow to load but once it started, it works fine.
 
#3 ·
HA, agree. Your A1 like my A1 is slow to load. But it still is faster than most Blu-ray's with there "awesome" java code that runs the interactivity.


XML is so much faster in this scenario with similar results. No point to do Java as there was no cross platform OS. Money talks I suppose....


I still run my A1 for all my DVD's and HD-DVD's... thing is a tank.
 
#4 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by benes  /t/1511578/i-dont-want-to-sound-like-the-laserdisc-guys-but#post_24241130


HD DVD and Blu-ray are digital formats. There is nothing inherent to these formats that can make one better than the other (besides Blu-ray being larger and capable of higher bitrates).


There is no such thing as an "HD DVD transfer". Any HD DVD encode could be put onto a Blu-ray as well. In fact this is exactly what Warner did with most of their titles.

Agreed that their capabilities are similar, in that both provide hi definition displays and lossless sound when supported and delivered.


The real issue is the quality of the transfer and any shenanigans that were done along the way. Some transfers were done well in HD-DVD and were not done well initially in BD.


A case in point about bad transfers even within one format was the bluray release of Fifth Element, which was reissued with a new transfer because the first was godawful.


So there are different transfers even if it was because the time when they were made available in each format is different.


The fault is not with either platform, but what the studio did as far as producing a quality transfer. Another example is that some titles in HD-DVD were not released using lossless sound yet are available on bluray with it. Both formats can support it, it's the choice by the studios which master to use, any video filtering applied, etc. and the sound format that was used.


The only thing, as an example that I believe these new "mastered in 4K" blurays give you is a much higher bitrate and rescanned masters. I buy them because of that, but that is something that the studios could have done from the beginning.


I have both HD-DVD (HD-A35) and bluray (Oppo 83), so I have no leanings one way or the other, but while the formats are similar, there can be differences in the actual movies.
 
#6 ·
I've got over 200 HD DVD's so far only one title has failed to load, I haven't gone thru all of them yet. Yeah, VC 1 is used on Blu ray too, not specific to HD DVD, Blu ray had larger specs and PS3 support so it won. My biggest complaint about Blu ray, is the TrueHD tracks lately have been messed up. Monster's University 7.1 wouldn't work had to use PCM and same with Total Recall. No problems with DTS HD. I think the problem is specific to certain players with TrueHD, there doesn't appear to be a fix yet. Oh, well, I just rip them all and put them on Plex. I really don't hear a difference between the core tracks and the lossless anyway, unless it's 7.1 vs 5.1.
 
#7 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomtastic  /t/1511578/i-dont-want-to-sound-like-the-laserdisc-guys-but#post_24462088


I've got over 200 HD DVD's so far only one title has failed to load, I haven't gone thru all of them yet. Yeah, VC 1 is used on Blu ray too, not specific to HD DVD, Blu ray had larger specs and PS3 support so it won. My biggest complaint about Blu ray, is the TrueHD tracks lately have been messed up. Monster's University 7.1 wouldn't work had to use PCM and same with Total Recall. No problems with DTS HD. I think the problem is specific to certain players with TrueHD, there doesn't appear to be a fix yet. Oh, well, I just rip them all and put them on Plex. I really don't hear a difference between the core tracks and the lossless anyway, unless it's 7.1 vs 5.1.

It is more visible in some players, but it's due to Disney getting cute with the BD authoring. They are trying to cut down on copying, so they program the release to have many unnecessary branches in the code to process sound, causing trouble for all players. They did the same thing to Brave, I think and mucked up the works with several players.


It comes down to the studios and their attempts to limit piracy. We go along for the ride and hope that our bluray player manufacturer (in my case Oppo), can recover quickly.
 
#8 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by hernanu  /t/1511578/i-dont-want-to-sound-like-the-laserdisc-guys-but/0_100#post_24462723


It is more visible in some players, but it's due to Disney getting cute with the BD authoring. They are trying to cut down on copying, so they program the release to have many unnecessary branches in the code to process sound, causing trouble for all players. They did the same thing to Brave, I think and mucked up the works with several players.


It comes down to the studios and their attempts to limit piracy. We go along for the ride and hope that our bluray player manufacturer (in my case Oppo), can recover quickly.

The problems seem to focus on newer players only. My "older" (and perfectly functioning without cinaiva, thank you) players have handled all these Dolby TrueHD soundtrack titles perfectly fine. The problems seem to be very much related to recently authored Dolby TrueHD titles played back on newer players from what I have read.
 
#9 ·
Not sure what kind of display you're using, but on my VT60 I find almost all of the older VC-1 encodings to look overly smooth and filtered. A lot of this is probably just because older transfers were used and DNR was more in vogue at that time, but those ultra low bit rates cannot help either.
 
#10 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by hernanu  /t/1511578/i-dont-want-to-sound-like-the-laserdisc-guys-but#post_24462723


It is more visible in some players, but it's due to Disney getting cute with the BD authoring. They are trying to cut down on copying, so they program the release to have many unnecessary branches in the code to process sound, causing trouble for all players. They did the same thing to Brave, I think and mucked up the works with several players.


It comes down to the studios and their attempts to limit piracy. We go along for the ride and hope that our bluray player manufacturer (in my case Oppo), can recover quickly.

Issues with playing back TrueHD has nothing to do with Disney, branching etc etc. It only has to do with problems with the player or other issues with an individuals setup. If you are talking about putting on disc, then of course you have the possibility of running into a lot of other problems that again have nothing to do with the disc.

In the case of Brave, I assume you referring to the couple titles it has that you can see when looking to rip it, causing confusion as to which is the correct 'main' title. These are actually different legitimate playlists that have to do with what language you are playing as they have things like intro and credit scenes with the different language. This is very different that a title like Lionsgate's Hunger Games - Catching Fire which has pages and pages worth of fake titles which one can only assume is to try to slow down pirates and/or have bad copies on pirate sites. But neither of these situations has to do with the players ability to play TrueHD correctly and there is no seamless branching on either of these titles.
 
#11 ·
The problem as I understood it was that they released the new anti piracy ahead of what the firmware on Blu ray players are being released with. I need to check mine and see if there's an update yet. I know in the case of Total Recall they were offering a replacement disc, but I never bothered because the core 5.1 track was fine and it plays as LPCM fine, and honestly the movie wasn't that great anyway. In the case of the Disney movies, I'd like to have them working.


The fake titles I doubt has anything specifically with TrueHD other than it has to skip tracks more and maybe that's where the Blu ray player can't decode the TrueHD bitstream properly. If you rip it, the core track is fine. They need to knock it off because manufacturer's especially Sony, can't keep up. I've read most of the Sony players have this issue, not sure on others.
 
#12 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomtastic  /t/1511578/i-dont-want-to-sound-like-the-laserdisc-guys-but/0_100#post_24566093


The problem as I understood it was that they released the new anti piracy ahead of what the firmware on Blu ray players are being released with. I need to check mine and see if there's an update yet. I know in the case of Total Recall they were offering a replacement disc, but I never bothered because the core 5.1 track was fine and it plays as LPCM fine, and honestly the movie wasn't that great anyway. In the case of the Disney movies, I'd like to have them working.


The fake titles I doubt has anything specifically with TrueHD other than it has to skip tracks more and maybe that's where the Blu ray player can't decode the TrueHD bitstream properly. If you rip it, the core track is fine. They need to knock it off because manufacturer's especially Sony, can't keep up. I've read most of the Sony players have this issue, not sure on others.

I would dispute that comment, as my Sony players (3 different models) all play anything thrown at them without a hitch (including all the titles mentioned here, running the lossless audio codecs) - and they seldom need a firmware update. Of course my Sony models are pre-cinavia, 3D, streaming, etc. vintage. The message traffic I read the most regarding playback issues with certain Dolby TrueHD tracks was related to Oppo players, and Oppo seems to release firmware updates more frequently than anyone else.
 
#13 ·
Oops, I meant to say, Pioneer players, like mine. Although from what I've read here and other places on these titles, it is in fact effecting a broad variety of players from different manufacturers. So it may effect Sony players too. The Disney titles effected appear to be the 3D titles, like Brave and Monsters U, not sure on recent 2D releases. I need to check Monsters Inc, and Finding Nemo 3D versions, I'm willing to bet they both can't play with TrueHD on my Pioneer Elite player. I'm at the point where I'd rather just have DTS HD MA instead of TrueHD because of this. This problem simply does not happen on DTS titles that I've seen but maybe it has more to do with the encryption but it's only happening on TrueHD titles.
 
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