When will we see Opera HD DVDs or Blu-ray discs?

The people (Opus Arte) releasing Swan Lake HDDVD stated they have some 60 HD titles in the works, of which i'd presume some are Operas.

Do you see anything similar on the horizon for Bluray?

Pure speculation:

There are some operas-- Rosi's "Carmen" with Domingo and, I believe, some of the Karajan-conducted performances--that were shot to film and those could benefit from HD presentation someday. Unfortunately, I think the majority of operas that appeared on Laserdisc (I have them, too) were shot SD video, so what we've got is almost as good as we'll get.

I also suspect that The Met's HD theatrical presentations this year could conceivably end up on HD disc someday.

Lipinski has an upcoming Blu-Ray opera for the near future. Considering the quality of his SACDs, this should be smashing.

Once HD DVD and/or Blu-ray players reach a substantial installed base, I'm sure we'll see quite a few operas on HD. But only performances since 2000 +/- will have been recorded in HD. Even before this year's Met HD at the Movies, some Met performances, such as "Salome", have been recorded in HD. I think it's VERY likely that the Met performances WILL be released in HD. Someday.

But as mentioned above, Opus Arte expects to release operas in HD later this year. Initial plans are for 3 operas on HD DVD. (Perhaps since the cost of mastering and making HD DVDs is less than for Blu-ray.)

http://www.opusarte.com/pages/opusarte.asp
Opus Arte: High Definition - leading the way
Opus Arte has been recording in High Definition for over six years and has amassed a substantial catalogue of outstanding productions from around the world. The High Definition debate continues to evolve. We have already seen the launch of HD players in America, Japan and Europe, and with the arrival of Sky HD into the UK market we can expect things to develop very quickly.
Opus Arte led the way by being the first company to release a Classical HD DVD into the world market, and plans to issue Blu-Ray DVDs are also in the pipeline.

I still hope some re-issue on HD discs would give us sound quality improvement from PCM 2.0/DTS 5.1 level to PCM 5.1 level.

Exactly! I felt the same when I saw the info about Swan Lake.

I'd like to see newer productions from the Met and Salzburg in HD!

Next releases will have lossless audio (PCM or DTS Master Audio 5.1 24bit/48Khz) and will use full bandwidth for each format. Video will be encoded with AVC (not 100% confirmed, yet) and will use as high as possible bitrate.

Andrew

Hope you are correct because I refuse to buy a 1/2 HD (audio is 50% of the experience) opera like Swan Lake (or music) BD/HD-DVD.

Operas are the perfect medium for using multi angle features in HDM

I'm correct.

Next releases will push both formats up to their limits on both fields: video and audio.

It is still to decide what codec should be used: Dolby True HD or DTS Master Audio?
First one seams to have better support for now, but not all players have 5.1 analogue output and not many people have PCM 5.1 HDMI capable receivers.
DTS Master Audio is not really supported yet, but it seams to be very soon.
It gives for now DTS 1.5 Mbit core which can be transmited over SPDIF.

On Blu-ray side PCM 5.1 seams to be good choice as long as space is not an issue.

Any suggestions and comments are welcome.


Andrew

Andrew_HD: It would appear that you work for, or are associated with Opus Arte. Correct?

Ferenc van Damme of Opus Arte wrote "...it is always challenge for us to find the right balance between perfect video - perfect audio - and limited storage on a disc." (From the Swan Lake thread.)

I agree that the right balance should be the goal. We've had one-half HD for a long, long time -- audio ONLY, on LPs and CDs. For me, having the picture enhances the opera experience immeasurably. Now that we have large, high resolution displays, having HD video is a significant enhancement. But our audio components today are really much the same as they were years ago. I've generally not found 5.1 sound a big deal for staged opera recordings since we generally have, and want to have, an "audience" perspective.

Correct.

Andrew

I suppose for operas the case for 5.1 is in general less compelling than concerts in acoustically resonant buildings. I have in mind Carols from King's and Anthems from King's and these would definitely benefit from uncompressed 5.1 or losslessly compressed 5.1 tracks. The DTS 5.1 tracks on existing DVDs are good but I'm confident it could be better still. I've been in King's Chapel many times from my days in Cambridge and I know what it sounds like.

With double layered discs there would be less pressure for disc space. From recent threads here I had the impression that maximum bandwidth could be the limiting factor during encoding rather than disc space per se.

For HDDVD releases i'd opt for DD True HD.

Why?
- People with HDMI receivers get lossless sound.
- People with palyers with 5.1 analog out and reveivers with no HDMI get lossless sound.
- People with receivers that only have SPDIF connection get the lossless sound re-encode to DTS 1.5mbit at run time so no need to waste disc space with a core DTS track.

Yes.

What about quality of this DTS? Are there any problems with these real time encodings?

Please share your opinions

Andrew

I bought the Toshiba HD-A1 last fall and a new AVR with DTS. (My old AVR did not have DTS, and that was needed for the HD-A1.) The new AVR has HDMI video switching but does NOT extract audio. I could do 5.1 analog out, but I'm NOT going to bother. The 1.5Mbps DTS output is quite acceptable. (But then, I sold my Quad ESL-57s to my friend a few years ago so that he could have a four panel system and I could have more free floor space.)

DTS-HD MA's point is that it offers scalable lossy/lossless sound at lower bitrate (consequently less disc space) than sum of DD+ and TrueHD.

But my example above doesn't require a DD+ track, in which case the Dolby Digital True HD option uses less abndwidth and can be appreciated in full quality by more users than a DTS-HD-MA track can.


The real time encoding of DTS tracks has been shown to be very good, even when using lossy sources such as DD+, though using a master source such as TrueHD still yeilds noticeable (for the better) differences.

Personally i have no bias towards either company, but if both codecs preform equally (ie provide lossless audio, and can be output as DTS multi channel for people with SPDIF), then why wouldn't one choose TrueHD considering you get a current 100% installed player support (in the HDDVD domain, around 90% in the BD domain) vs a 0% support for DTS-HD-MA decoding.

I think HD-DVD mandates DD+ track, right?

DD+ is rather out of option.

Andrew

Andrew,
As consumers, we have no opportunity to truly compare the original audio tracks to the results from the various codec options. As a producer, you DO have that opportunity, assuming that the various encoders and decoders are actually available to you (at a reasonable cost). Listening tests using suitable equipment would seem to offer the data needed to evaluate the space/bandwidth/quality tradeoffs.

From my perspective, good compression schemes offer a very high percentage of the original at a small percentage of the space. On sites like AVS there's a loud clamor for lossless audio from some posters, but how relevant is this to the target market for Opus Arte? How many have good enough equipment, and how many could tell the difference in a blind test?

BTW, it would be interesting to know what kind of equipment you folks use for video and audio evaluation.

Ron

Music, balet and opera are different than movies.

The audience is different and much more of them have good equipment.
There are also big expectations about discs quality (eg. lossless audio), so each disc has to be as good as it possible.

Andrew

If the original audio is 24-bit then give us 24-bit PCM 5.1 or one of the lossless compression formats but not downconvert to 16-bit PCM as in some movies.

Audio will be 24bit as long as it possible.
There will be stereo and surround separate tracks.

What about special features, like PIP?

Andrew

I see that the web page for Swan Lake shows
SOUND: 2.0 & 5.0 48kHz/24-bit DTS SURROUND
This should make for a good first example of the sound quality.

No thanks to the PIP feature.

On HD DVD it would be nice to see time remaining, say when you press a menu or chapter button. Also to have bookmark capability -- well, really I wish it could just resume after a stop like DVDs have done for years.

I for one appreciate traditional interviews and backstage features.