Will PS3/360 DIVX support cause the death of HDM? - Page 3

It just means you haven't been long enough in this... Otherwise you would have enyojed it.

On a serious note: no, it doesn't take serious horsepower and tinkering is limited...

Diogen.

Well the dashboard update is out now...how long until HDM dies?

Huh? Like I said before, maybe that's the case on a very small display, but "better" than DVD in terms of image qualitycan mean a lot of things, but "in the same league" as HD DVD or Blu-ray on a large screen it most definitely isn't.

And even that notwithstanding, the main problem with bootleg HD is the hassle factor, which is absolutely enormous by optical media standards.



Yup. Major PITA, and something that ain't popular with the masses.

I just don't understand how even geeks can claim that illegal HD downloads are not a hassle. To repost what I said earlier... And by the way, this question from my GF actually was asked, and that first response is actually what I told her.


Even if you used usenet, you'd still have all the other barriers to getting the movie played on your 360...

If you have
-a projector accepting 1080/24p
-a player capable of 1080/24p output
-1:1 pixel mapping between the two
-proper setup of the whole chain
then you have a chance to see the superiority of native HD/BD playback.

Leave the illegality aside for a second.
Ripping an HD movie, re-encoding it in 720p by cutting the size in half (under 10GB) using x264,
attaching EAC3 and playing on a 720p projector - you'll notice immediately it is not a DVD and you'll have to
pause and look at frames to see the difference compared to native HD playback on the same projector.
I don't mean in theory. I did this myself (no, I don't have golden eyes).

Diogen.

Instead of killing HDM, I think it will stop dual adoption. If someone has HD-DVD already and does not want to pay a lot for a blu ray player, they may opt to download the bluray movies they want, while still buying HD-DVD's.

Yes you do, but you don't need any of the above (except the proper setup part) to see the superiority of native HD/BD playback.

However, that's not the primary issue here for wider adoption. The wider issue is the hassle factor.


And that wasn't a hassle? At least you didn't have to go scouring the torrent sites and usenet to find the movie yourself... only to find that it's in a format that is not compatible with the Xbox 360.

You know, I somehow missed this was not the HTPC section.
I believe some (most?) will find this a hassle. I won't.

Diogen.

Well, that's the point. Most people are not HTPC fanatics.

First off, I find DVD to be quite good on my 110" (@1.5x viewing distance) 720p CIH setup (IN76). I find the difference between DVD and HD to be apparent, but not earth shaking. I would say OTA HD is "in the same league" as HD DVD or Blu-ray. "In the same league" to me means the differences you're talking about are not "major". Or to put it another way, if you consider HD DVD/Blu-ray to be a league, there is quite a range of qualities there, if the difference between another option and HD DVD/Blu-ray is within the variance of quality in HD DVD/Blu-ray then I say they're in the same league.


Personally I find HD DVD and Blu-ray to be quite a hassle as well. In my Netflix and purchase experience, I've had a number of discs not play for various reasons. Bigger hassle is that there are no good players for either format on the PC. Being unable to place a copy on my media server without resorting to extraordinary measures is a hassle. Firmware updates for my player are a hassle.


Honestly, that's the way I feel about HD in general. Can't record HD, can't play HD without "blessed" hardware, can't rip HD, yada yada yada.


Because geeks are geeks. We build our own PCs, we build our own HD movie players, PVRs, we configure our own systems, program our own remotes. Downloading something on the internet is nothing compared to all that.

And again, my point was that the inclusion of DivX says a lot about the priorities of the mass market, that their priorities are convenience and portability over quality. IT's been shown time and time again. I don't think anybody in this thread has said that downloading movies off usenet or the like will kill HD optical. I know I have not.


It amazes me how nit-picky many here are, that they can't seem to acknowledge that (for example) the difference between HD lite and HD DVD/Blu-ray is quite subtle. Sure most of us here can spot it, but most people have no idea, and I know I for one am not bothered by the difference.


Of course that was a hastle, as someone who's been following things so that I can begin archiving my HD DVDs I'd say it's far more of a hastle to do that than it is to go find an illegal copy somewhere. But you missed the point, diogen is saying that a 720p conversion of an HD movie is not obviously different than the original.

I'd actually forgotten what this section of the forum was like, where nobody cares about fair use, connectivity, or anything else so long as it's got the bitrate maxed out and lossless audio.

Wouldnt it be ironic that by Sony (or MS) officially supporting Divx/Xvid they actually encourge file illegeal sharing. We all know Sony is a torn company with conflicting interests of supporting what consumers want on the hardware side along with what studios want as a content provider. Of late they have been heavily biased towrds the content side of the company, to the detriment of the consumer. Maybe this added feature is a little giveback from shoving their foot up consumers as*es for so many years?

Wow!
Are you saying Sony has done something that actually makes sense?
Nahhh... PS3 doesn't sell as good as hoped for. This affects many business divisions of the company including the BD wing.
Anything to remedy this situation is now "the right thing to do". If/when the sales numbers are fixed they will f*ck up this feature with an "upgrade".

Diogen.

That's the point of the thread actually.


Good, then we are in agreement.


It amazes me how far people are willing to go for the ultimate geekified HTPC setup with illegal downloaded geek format files, and then try to suggest it's no more of a hassle than simply buying / renting a disc and putting in a standalone player.


Yeah, if you want to create a home media system with your HTPC and archive all of your movies. That's fine, but right now and for the foreseeable short term future (ie. the life span of the PS3 and 360), most people's archives (like mine) consist of a shelf of physical discs.


Or where people would rather spend a few bux rather than try to download problematic files, only to have to spend more time tinkering to just get them to play.

In truth I do believe that downloaded files will eventually be the primary movie format for home use. I just don't think it will be from problematic and downloaded files requiring a complex home theatre setup.

I think the time will come, but only when the distribution and management of these things improves dramatically. Maybe that will happen with everyone has 20 Mbps pipes (and not just a few geeks at AVS), and set top management movie download systems get built with high ease of use, low cost, and good quality.

Since we moved to the "What amazes me" issue, I'd like to add my 2 cents.
I can understand people preferring standalone players to HTPCs, but it amazes me how fast anything that requires
a quater of a brain and not having the extreme form of ADD is relegated to geekdom, illegal downloads and hacking.
And as we all know, hackers are terrorists...

Diogen.

Something requiring a brain doesn't necessarily mean it's geekdom, illegal, and hacking.

However, HTPC setups for hi-def usenet/torrent downloads ARE geekdom, illegal, and hacking.

DIVX is clearly the pirates' format of choice. But if one wants to watch a movie on "Zune/iPod/etc", one might as well use a DVD-rip rather than an HD-rip. With screens that small, HD is pointless.

Seriously guys, dvd rips are easy as hell to get and are cheap. yet it doesnt make a dent in DVD sales. theres nothing to suggest that this would either. especially b/c, as mentioned, even if i could thats more trouble than its worth.

Actually, DVD rips have in fact made a dent in DVD sales.

However, the key point is that bootlegs have in no way "killed" DVD sales.

I just watched a 350mb divx episode of Deadwood on my 360 and it looked as good as an upconverted dvd on my PS3 looks which is pretty good for not being HD. But I don't think it will kill hdm, the prices of the movies and each side buying support to c**k block the other sides sales instead of letting the consumer decide might kill it.

And to all that say divx is only for pirates. try ripping a whole season of your store bought tv series and burn them to ONE disc in dvd format, you can't but you can if they are encoded to divx. Then you can use them wherever you want without ruining the originals. Plus the 360 upconverts divx files for an added bonus.

And this comes from...?

Diogen.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the ethical problems involved in illegal downloads. You can rationalize it any way you like but stealing movies is stealing. It's not good for you in a kharmic sense.

I know there are some who purchase movies and rip them for convenience, but again, let's get real. That's not even a small slice of the whole set.

I made my living most of my adult life selling intellectual property, so it's possible I'm a little biased.

Let's do that. I'm one of them. Now what?
As much as you hate people "stealing", I hate people implying that interest in encoding can't have anything to do with not "stealing"...

Diogen.

Sorry diogen, I'm not accusing you of anything. But there's been pretty graphic piracy workflows discussed.

There's NO WAY a second generation down-rezzed divx copy is ever going to compare with a pristine AVC or VC-1 original. Pirated copies is what it's used for in the vast majority of cases. I'm just saying, besides the quality loss there are other issues involved. For another thing, piracy just begets more obnoxious DRM.

No way divx or xvid would compare, x264, however would.

That's what the pirated 3 pirates copy was made in... x264. It looked pristine. It looked better than 720p, in all honesty. The file name said it was 1080p from blu-ray. I'll have to go back to that shop and take some good hi-rez photos when the sales guy isn't looking.

Not really. I have seen many bootleg x264 files and have done a fair amount of x264 encoding myself (albeit the x264 encoding I've done has mostly been at SD resolutions).

It always looks noticeably different, unless you use relatively high bitrates. One of the things it tends to do is soften out grain for example. Now, many people would prefer soft images to grainy images, but that's a different argument. The point I'm making here is that it's not accurate to the source.

x264 is an excellent codec, but it definitely isn't magic.

Oh and the majority of x264 HD encodes out there won't even play on the 360 or PS3 anyway, unless you do some file conversions. Again, big hassle factor, and that's not even considering getting the file in the first place.

AVC is H.264. wtf?

Yes AVC is H.264. WTF what?

Were you referring to my post above? If so, and if you're commenting about my statement that x264 files not playing on the consoles, it's because they don't support the .mkv container. Also for audio, the 360 only supports AAC in stereo. ie. If you download an HD .mkv file, it won't play on the Xbox 360 without conversion/modification.

I disagree strongly, but this thread probably isn't the place to get into it.

sorry i don't buy this at all - 350 mb divx rips and even 700 mb divx rips for that matter look HORRIFICALLY bad. You can see the macroblocking in the background. We're talking youtube/webcam type quality on an HDTV.

If your tv is 27", yeah it might look like HD to you, but on anything over 37" it looks terrible.

Simple question - if 350 mb looks so good, why are studios wasting time with 50 gb disc formats?