Industry Insiders Master Q&A thread IV: ONLY Questions to Insiders - Page 105  

*EDIT 12-30-07* Bought the first two HARRY POTTERs tonight along with a few others (thank you, Best Buy buy-3-get-2-free deal!), and both play at 1080I via the component output of my HD-A2. So, something must be wrong with Hyrax's set-up...

Vincent

Pre-edit original post:

As an owner who currently only has a projector with component inputs and no HDMI or DVI, I'm very concerned about the possibly use of the ICT flag, whether intentional or due to a "mistake" (i.e., the German RESIDENT EVIL releases). As such, this post has me very worried:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...0&postcount=93

I have the last three HARRY POTTER films on HD-DVD and they all play at full HD resolution from my HD-A2 to my projector, but now I'm worried about buying the first two. Can any insiders confirm or deny what Hyrax is seeing when he tries to view the second HARRY POTTER film via the component output of his player?

Vincent

This poll shows that 21% of the users in this forum who answered have playback problems with The Bourne Ultimatum combo.

If I consider all the combos I bought (and I bought them all indeed), I also got at least 20% of them failing, failure meaning at least one skip, drop or freeze.

This is of course completely un-acceptable for an optical format. Every time I watch a combo, my movie experience is diminished because I keep wondering if I'll be able to finish it or not.

Are the studios aware of the situation? What are they doing to remedy to it? We are almost 2 years into the HD DVD format, isn't it time for the studios to acknowledge that combos do not work reliably, and give up on them?

An please don't give us the canned answer about studios not seing a significant return on combos. The poll above clearly shows that the problem is real.

To any insiders willing to touch this:

Any signs at all on the horizon of a final and lasting AACS agreement, with or without (mandatory) managed copy?

I usually ask this question every few months and take the lack of responses as tentatively negative. And I believe even the extended interim agreements are expired now.

Any insider comments?

- Tom

As I said, Titles can only access their pstorage. Players themselves are already required to have pstorage management features.

The response to this post and the subsequent discussion has been split off into its own thread here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=965757

To any Toshiba insider (Robert?),

I have already posted this problem in another thread, but will repeat it here: I have now a 3rd gen Toshiba, the EP-30 (EU version of A-30) and it will not play Advanced Content mode HD content from + media (tested +RW, +R DL and +R DL with booktype -ROM). It gives the 'This is no DVD format' error message. However, the same content on a - media plays perfectly fine (tested -R and -RW). Also the disks themselves (I mean my stack of +R DL) play perfectly in the A1, E1, XE1/XA2 and Xbox360. What's the deal?

There would still be quite a bit of technical and political work to do in specifying a "binding" between the Title's bits (whether they be in HD DVD or Blu-ray flavor or new unification of both) and the "plastic". UDF file format(s), ROM Mark, etc.

Not that I am saying it couldn't happen, just that these things take more time than most can imagine to run through the various committees and sub-groups, and what with the large number of stakeholders already heavily invested in the now-shipping blue laser formats, it'll be quite some time before they look to move to a new frontier (in my personal opinion).

Also, from the Title authoring perspective, until there is a substantial commitment from the CE and PC industries, it would be difficult for a content creator to commit to a new "plastic" format if only from the QC/QA perspective. (On what do I test & check my new Titles?)

- Tom

To Tom McMahon:
You make the chips for HD-DVD/Blu-ray? Do any of your chips support 1080p50 & 1080p60 and are any of these in current players (or players currently in development)? What are your thoughts on when we will see players (from either format or holographic players) with higher resolutions than 1920x1080 or 1920x817 of actual picture content?

Are you talking about supporting 1080p50 or 1080p60 content on the disc (which neither blue laser format currently supports) or taking what's on the disc (which is largely 1080p24) and temporally upconverting it to 1080p50/60 on output to the display or the AVR?

Both. Take Planet Earth (25p? or was it 50i/p I forget). Take concerts/live music events some of which, on Blu-ray are 24p. In my view 24p is rubbish for concerts/live music events/some documentaries/fast moving sports etc.

If there is a chip in there capable of 1080p50/60 for outputing to the display what is stopping it reading from the disc in that way? Yes bandwidth for the stored content is limited, but in today's world we should not still be resorting to things like interlacing - they could compress the video a bit more (or use higher video bitrates than the very small bitrates they seem to be going for these days. I think non-fictional stuff should be at realistic frame rates (I would also like to see feature films - at least some of them use higher frame rates too) - as long as we don't get really fast MTV style cuts/bad camera work etc. Film looks good not just because of the 24p frame rate, but because of the way it is filmed (dolly/camera cranes/slower cuts/basically higher production values and thought put into every scene)).

Both formats disallow it. So you can't do it even if you wanted too. If it became mandatory, it would require the decoders to run faster which makes them hotter and more expensive but I suspect not a showstopper. But you may have had to wait another year or two for deployment of these formats....

As did the polls before them. Including Mr. Hunt saying most of his combo discs not playing along with that of his readers.

So I pushed the studios and our team to go and collect these discs and perform a scientific analysis a few months back. Figured it would be easy. Right? Imagine my surprise, when after posting here and other forums including asking Mr. Hunt and him positing in his blog, the number of bad combo discs we got could be counted on one hand.

Suffice it to say, my credibility and that of other folks went down you know what. Note that I am not saying there is no problem. But if the numbers are what they are, then we should have gotten decent number of discs to analyze. But we didn't even come even remotely close to that . So unfortunately, I won't be the one pushing folks to investigate once more. A call to the studio then is the best recourse as is returing the disk to the retailer.

Amir,

Any truth about the "meetings" that occured on Friday between Microsoft, Toshiba, Universal, Paramount and Warner behind closed doors?

Agree with what you say and I also understand the filmic cinematography issues.

But right now neither blue laser format supports 1080p50/60 on the disc, and until those formats appear to be making their way into the respective specs nobody is going to invest in a silicon & firmware spin to be able to deal with those formats coming off the disc. Of course there would also have to be a commitment on the part of authoring tool vendors (encoders), content creators, and CE/PC companies to plumb the whole food chain for 1080p50/60 before the respective committees would initiate that work. So there's a big Catch-22 here.

Interestingly, going to 1080p50/60 does *not* result in a proportional increase in off-the-disc bitrate (a non-intuitive result in the way video codecs work - it'll be higher but not 2.5 X). But it does potentially result in 2.5 X (very expensive) video decoder memory bandwith requirements in the player, and it can also double (or more) the (very expensive) bandwith requirements inside the chip where you have to deal with compositing & scaling of the various video and graphics planes (PiP, presentation graphics, interactive graphics, the main video program, subtitles, etc.).

Temporal upconversion of the currently supported formats to 1080p50/60 for output most likely would happen after all of the above operations are completed at 1080p24 or 1080i30, so it's pretty much a separate downstream problem in the overal architectural design. If and when this happens wth the silicon suppliers and/or the player vendors I cannot comment on.

In talking about taking next steps in the blue laser HD disc video specs, we also shouldn't forget about possible going to 10 bits. Surprisingly (again because of the way video codecs work), this would result in no increase in the nominal bitrate on the disc but it definitely would have an impact in the silicon data paths and memory BW.

- Tom

I have no knowledge of day to day activities around HD DVD anymore.

But such meetings were commonplace when I was running the group as what you list above, is the active members of HD DVD promotion group. So meetings among them, especially prior to CES is nothing unusual.

Again, I don't know of specifics here....

Ok, Thanks

This is a question for the Blu Ray insiders. Do you guys view the current format war not just a battle to see which format is adopted as the single HDM but also a fight for the future of HDM and the possibility of others pushing the agenda of downloads.

How do CE's view the possibility of downloads making their BD players redundant and the millions of dollars in lost revenue?

Thanks. In the quote above are you talking about motion interpolation for 24p->60p etc? Isn't that what some of the latest 120Hz LCD HDTVs are doing?

What about the PS3 does that have the video capabilities to handle full res P60 content assuming it was on the disc and the software updated as I read that it can do this for games or does that too lack fast enough video decoders?

Tom McMahon>
Hello,
Sorry if it's been already discussed but it didn't reflect on the players topics :
Do the Samsung BD-UP5000 et LG BH200 limitation at 2.0 on True HD comes from "your" chip limitation, voluntary (licensing) limitations by Broadcom or either of the player manufacturers or bad implementation by those manufacturers ?
Also, how come "bitstream" doesn't output the "real bitstream" like DTHD outputting at 2.0 instead of 5.1 via the hdmi output ? samsung and lg fault's or broadcom ?

(Sorry for my bad English)

Thank you for your explicit answer.

if I lived in the US, I'll would make a point in returning bad disks. But unfortunately, I live in France, so returning disks is just impossible.

Would you have the e-mail of some person at Universal for example who could analyze the complaints?

If you do, I'll post it in the Bourne thread, or even make a separate thread asking people to start e-mailing every time they have a problem.

Well I was thinking in terms of 'bootstrapped' code, a minimal utility running at a layer indepedent of the title itself and allowing only for simple management of the 360's storage. Essentially a recode of what's in the Dashboard fixing the bitmap issue but accessible by hotkey (or even on a separate utility disk).

I take from your answer that any 360 application will have to live either in the title or in the dashboard with nothing in between permissible.

Hi Amir

I thought that advances in video codecs (ala compression) could be easily delivered on both formats and didn't require new discs or equipment.
Am I missing your meaning somewhere??

The advancements can only be on encoder side. That is, the decoder is fixed in the player. So yes, we can improve things. But if there is a new radical technique for video compression as VC-1 and AVC were after MPEG-2, we can't put them in.

Amir or any other insiders.

Can you please reply to my questions in the context of the following quotes;



1. Is it true that any future co-marketing dollars for studio's are linked to them giving Microsoft exclusive digital download rights?

2. Can you tell us when the results of the offer to WB will be made?

3. I guess that if companies sign up for deals with Microsoft that those same movies won't be able to be offered on iTunes? Is that the aim?

Daniel.

To HD-DVD and Blu-ray insiders:
When you talk to the studios about their HD-DVD/Blu-ray encodes, are they/do you encourage them to:
A) Maximize the video bandwidth to the limits of the format for the best possible picture quality on that format, no matter what the size/resolution/etc. of a viewers HDTV
B) Use the lowest video bandwidth possible even if this results in some compression artefacts/softer picture etc.

If B is this still to help with things like managed copy/playback of a copy from a hard disc later on or anything to do with digital downloads?

We already have acquisition and film scanning at resolutions higher than 1920 by 1080 for content destined for consumer distribution. At some point we may also see consumer displays resolutions higher than 1920x1080 as well.

Both of the above can result in improved image quality even if the stuff in the middle (in this case, on the disk) is encoded at only 1920 by 1080. This has to do the with mathematics of the various filtering processes and the overall modulation transfer function of the system from glass to glass. It may seem counter-intuitive, but this is a well known truth in engineering circles. There's a great paper by John Watkinson about this floating around somewhere. He produced it for us when I was working at Microsoft.

As for distributing the content on the disc (in the "channel") at anything higher than 1920 by 1080, I don't see that happening for consumer applications in our lifetimes. With an oversampled source (as per above) and an oversampled display (as per above), and at normal viewing distances in consumer environments, it is my personal opinion that you'll never need or be able to justify anything more than 1920 by 1080 in the channel in the middle (the disc). 10 bits, yes. Higher frame rates at some point, maybe. But "channel" resolution increase with all of the other stages in the system plumbing improved as per above, no.

- Tom

Neither. They make the creative decision to include whatever content they like and create their bit budgets from that. They do the encode and if they are happy,they ship it. If not, they come and ask us questions/get help with fine tuning the content.

Keep in mind that major studios have 100+ discs under their belt now. They don't need to get input from outsiders on what to do.


No, there is no consideration in this regard.

Tom -

You are mostly preaching to the choir here.

But why only 10 bits? There is some evidence that going all the way to 12 or 16 doesn't cost anymore at a given bit rate, at least in the encoded delivery stage in lossy encoding, because it is more effective to let the encoder quantization step drop the extra precision instead of truncation/dithering the video down to 8/10 bits ahead of time.

If this is could be shown to be generally true then it seems by the time we actually have chips & work flows for more we should take a bigger step. Lower bit rate video would be no worse but higher bit rate video could achieve greater fidelity.

- Tom

I don't think the CE's consider this a threat in the near-to-mid-term. While Amir has put forth some advantages of digital distribution, the fact remains that for the next few years the vast majority of consumers will have neither the bandwidth nor the infrastructure (i.e. home server and networked display) available to make digital distribution as attractive as optical distribution. Some minority of early adopters will undoubtedly enthusiastically adopt digital distribution, but the masses won't. Walmart having discontinued their download service this week and HP pulling back from offering infrastructure to support it is clear evidence that the market simply isn't there today and isn't compelling enough in the near-term for Walmart and HP to invest in.

- Talk

I agree completely with you. I don't get to say that very often.

Any opinion on how many more years before download distribution becomes more realistic?