[Quadra]

I'm surprised to see nobody has mentioned this interesting bit of news from dvdfile.com, buried in an article about the new TotalHD discs (emphasis mine):

Quote:
To further buoy support, both HBO and New Line have also committed to the new dual-format disc solution. I seem to recall that Warner handles distribution for New Line and HBO so I'm not at all surprised that they are deferring to Warner concerning format. This is a big deal. New Line had been sitting on some popular films, assessing the HD format war from the sidelines. Among them are such titles as Se7en, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Final Destination series, and the Blade series. New Line Home Video President Steve Einhorn was quoted as saying, "We plan to completely support THD specifically. This will move our schedule ahead considerably." He also confirmed that the studio is currently at work preparing the Lord of the Rings trilogy for release in high definition.

http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?opt...5860&Itemid=11

 

[Capek]

This was posted a while back during CES, but maybe somebody didn't catch then that will see it now.

 

[fa8362]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Quadra /forum/post/0


I'm surprised to see nobody has mentioned this interesting bit of news from dvdfile.com, buried in an article about the new TotalHD discs (emphasis mine):



http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?opt...5860&Itemid=11

Time Warner owns both, so that's not a surprise.

 

[Dixie Ruptin]

my big fear, as a blu-ray fan, is that they pull a least common denominator on us and release it either over-compressed using the same encode as HD-DVD to fit in 30GB, or maybe even worse split it up on two discs.


come on new line, do 2 custom encodes to take full advantage of the 50gb blu-ray discs!

 

[hmurchison]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Dixie Ruptin /forum/post/0


my big fear, as a blu-ray fan, is that they pull a least common denominator on us and release it either over-compressed using the same encode as HD-DVD to fit in 30GB, or maybe even worse split it up on two discs.


come on new line, do 2 custom encodes to take full advantage of the 50gb blu-ray discs!

That's NOT going to happen. To date there's been no evident proof that higher bitrates corrolate to higher quality. I need to see that a 25Mbp looks better than a 15Mbp. I keep reading promises that somehow that this is going to translate to outstanding picture quality but no studio has proven this.


Expect common denominator video. Warner is already doing this.

 

[UxiSXRD]

How about including the all EE extras in HD on the leftover space on the BD50 then?

 

[hmurchison]

The LotR extras for the EE editions are among my favorite extras. However I view them so rarely it's a mistake to put them on the same disc.


I'm bullish on Managed Copy. You let me stick the content that I rarely need on a magnetic discs I can sync the content when I need to and I'm happy. I think 50GB is tops for what we need. Sony's looking with BD50 and if Toshiba gets 51GB moving with volume production by years end then we're fine. 100GB, 200Gb all that stuff is garbage for movie disty. I like the safety in having data across multiple discs.


Just make the movies look great no matter what it takes. If that's a two disc set ..make it happen.

 

[onanie]



Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison /forum/post/0


That's NOT going to happen. To date there's been no evident proof that higher bitrates corrolate to higher quality

Well, then, we should have stuck to DVDs.

 

[hmurchison]



Quote:
Originally Posted by onanie /forum/post/0


Well, then, we should have stuck to DVDs.

I should have said within a particular resolution.


There's a dangerous assumption that is consistently made on these boards. That assumption is that one needs to crank up the bitrate to consistently improve quality. Like any art, compressing movies and maintaining quality takes skill.


AVC and VC-1 are codecs that have been designed to scale from 3g phones all the way up beyond HD resolution. Datarate is important but only to the point where you have near transperancy. I'll defer personally to the product that delivers exceptional quality in the most efficient package. I'm looking at the future in which I want to take advantage of Managed Copy but the difference between 30GB and 50GB is a real cost to me.

 

[chad_cincy]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Dixie Ruptin /forum/post/0


my big fear, as a blu-ray fan, is that they pull a least common denominator on us and release it either over-compressed using the same encode as HD-DVD to fit in 30GB, or maybe even worse split it up on two discs.


come on new line, do 2 custom encodes to take full advantage of the 50gb blu-ray discs!

I thought some of BD's best looking discs were Warner's HD DVD to BD ports? Sounds more like a safe bet!

 

[UxiSXRD]

I'd say the current Sony and Lionsgate titles are as good as any of my Warner BD or HD-DVD's myself. Crank, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, etc. All MPEG2, no less.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurtchison /forum/post/0


100GB, 200Gb all that stuff is garbage for movie disty. I like the safety in having data across multiple discs.

Speak for yourself!

If I have a player that can play it, I'm looking forward to copying my HD copies of the LOTR and Star Wars films on one disc each. As well as whole seasons.


And then some "best of" highlight reel type things, etc.

 

[hmurchison]

What happens if you scatch said disc?


What prevents you from using Managed Copy to simply dump the media to a HDD drive and assemble the movies in the same way you'd assemble a music playlist.


100-200GB disc are a solution in search of a problem. Hitachi has a 1 Terabyte drive coming for $400. Why do give a rats arse about TDKs lab creations that are 1/20 the speed and 1/5 the size?


I'm looking forward to have 3TB of space if Zettabyte File System (ZFS) pooled storage. This will contain whatever I can get in Managed Copy and my music files. Adding more storage is as simple as plugging it it. Then I just sync the content that I have a rights to the appropriate portable player.


As a computer nut I just can't see locking 200GB of data on a molasses slow technology.

 

[zzap64]



Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison /forum/post/0


To date there's been no evident proof that higher bitrates corrolate to higher quality. I need to see that a 25Mbp looks better than a 15Mbp.

That is a ridiculous statement. 15Mbp is pushing less data than 25mbp therefore it will technically have less quality if coming from the same source. Just because you cannot perceive the difference does not mean it is not there.


According to your theory why not release the HD movies at 11Mbp and save even more space, as there is no loss in quality.


Why do you think movies were released on Superbit? So that they would have the maximum bitrate allowable to fit onto an 8GB DVD disc. And yes the quality on Superbit was better than the standard DVD release.

 

[fa8362]



Quote:
Originally Posted by zzap64 /forum/post/0


That is a ridiculous statement. 15Mbp is pushing less data than 25mbp therefore it will technically have less quality if coming from the same source. Just because you cannot perceive the difference does not mean it is not there.


According to your theory why not release the HD movies at 11Mbp and save even more space, as there is no loss in quality.


Why do you think movies were released on Superbit? So that they would have the maximum bitrate allowable to fit onto an 8GB DVD disc. And yes the quality on Superbit was better than the standard DVD release.

Why stop at 11mbp? Why not 640K?

 

[zzap64]



Quote:
Originally Posted by fa8362 /forum/post/0


Why stop at 11mbp? Why not 640K?

Even better. Think of the amount you could fit on one disc.

It is a common statement by HD DVD fans that 30GB is all we are ever going to need and that the quality of the encodes on HD DVD movies is the pinacle of quality. How silly of Toshiba to announce a 51GB three layer disc. What are they going to do with that extra 21GB of space as 30GB is all we will ever need?

 

[darinp2]



Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison /forum/post/0


That's NOT going to happen.

Is your claim that they won't do separate encodes, or that they might do separate encodes, but it won't matter?


--Darin

 

[KINGOFOOTBALL33]



Quote:
Originally Posted by zzap64 /forum/post/0


That is a ridiculous statement. 15Mbp is pushing less data than 25mbp therefore it will technically have less quality if coming from the same source. Just because you cannot perceive the difference does not mean it is not there.


According to your theory why not release the HD movies at 11Mbp and save even more space, as there is no loss in quality.


Why do you think movies were released on Superbit? So that they would have the maximum bitrate allowable to fit onto an 8GB DVD disc. And yes the quality on Superbit was better than the standard DVD release.

I sincerely hope youre JUST talking about mpeg-2 codec.

If youre comparing the bitrate of one codec to another youre way off.

VC-1 has MUCH better quality for the same bit rate , and surpasses BR's mpeg-2 quality despite the lower bitrate and file size.

BR desperately needs to use all 50 gigs..its the only way they can get PQ as good as hd-dvd with there better codec/smaller file size combo.



Outside of that theres certain points where no theres no visible difference at higher bitrates with newer codecs. It all depends on the source and codec , bit rate is secondary.

 

[hmurchison]



Quote:
Originally Posted by darinp2 /forum/post/0


Is your claim that they won't do separate encodes, or that they might do separate encodes, but it won't matter?


--Darin

They won't do seperate encodes. If they can deliver top notch quality at 15mbps avg why would they do some mega bitrate encode to please the spec whores who are but a infinitesimal fraction of the market at large? Consumers don't pick up DVD boxes and opine about what the bitrate of the movie is. Sometimes people on here get too geeky.

 

[hmurchison]



Quote:
Originally Posted by zzap64 /forum/post/0


That is a ridiculous statement. 15Mbp is pushing less data than 25mbp therefore it will technically have less quality if coming from the same source. Just because you cannot perceive the difference does not mean it is not there.


According to your theory why not release the HD movies at 11Mbp and save even more space, as there is no loss in quality.


Why do you think movies were released on Superbit? So that they would have the maximum bitrate allowable to fit onto an 8GB DVD disc. And yes the quality on Superbit was better than the standard DVD release.

Law of diminishing returns. If I cannot perceive the difference then I will simply choose the smaller encode as dealing with less data is generally easier than dealing with more. Microsoft "is" working on delivering excellent quality movies at 11Mbps. AVC will be able to deliver quality better than what we have today at that datarate once compressionists become familiar with the myriad of encoding tools at their disposal.


Unlike DVD HD DVD has no such limitations for movies. It used MPEG2 which likes as much datarate as you can toss at it. VC-1 and AVC are designed to scale from phone datarates to beyond what we have now. Comparing today's codecs to MPEG2 and what you feel comfortable with is your mistake zzap64. It WOULD sound rediculous to you because your base assumption is that your missing out on quality unless you crank the bitrate up.


Again I've invited ANYONE to show me the legions of BD50 discs that are head and shoulders above the HD30 and BD25 discs. If you can't do that then your sunk.

 

[Michael Mullis]



Quote:
Speak for yourself! If I have a player that can play it, I'm looking forward to copying my HD copies of the LOTR and Star Wars films on one disc each. As well as whole seasons.

Whole seasons of what? I believe the Sopranos came on multiple discs on BD didn't it?


So much for that theory.