Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD

mike2h

perfect example of what? that has what to do with our discussion of downloading movies? i have seen stuff like that before, i acatually went out & chkd bothe formats before buying(what a concept), hddvd can screw things up to you know? of course 99% of the time you never notice becuase things are moving to fast. you are also aware that various decks will do better/worse jobs of pix quality rt?
i really dont wan to get into a discussion over codecs if thats were u r heading, but i will say the mpeg2 prolly isnt the best choice out there, but it is more than sufficient in most cases. & again, what does that have to do with what we r discussing?

Callandor

I don't know if anyone else has already mentioned this, but if you ask me the format war was good coz you were never gonna get sony to reduce it's prices that much, that fast.

Zardon

most bluray discs here are £5 more expensive than HDDVD. when HDDVD truly dies will be curious to see if they go UP in price as there is no real competition.

Callandor

Knowing Sony, they very well might; buggers.

ET3D

I haven't been that interested in buying into HD formats. Having now looked a little into it, following the end of the war, I have to say that I don't think I'll get into it now, either. Might have had HD-DVD won, since far as I could see it didn't have regions. Blu-ray does, so until region-free drive arrive I won't find it too appealing.

As for prices of drives and media, I think they'll fall because of the war's end. The high end market is always small, and there's a lot more money to be made selling low and mid-priced products at high volume. With one barrier for adoption gone, the next one is price, so price will go down (how quickly, I can't say).

dipstick

That's weird as new releases around my area were the opposite. New hd-dvd releases were $39.95 whereas db were at $34.95. I have not been to best buy in a couple of months tho so that might have changed.

Edit- Personally i think the prices will go now as the only other competitor -dvd- is at half the price, if that.

mike2h

some of you guys keep getting it wrong. the companies in hd WANT prices to drop, they want a player in everyones house. they want media prices to drop so that everyone is buying movies - that is were the real $$ is.
they have already gouged the early adopters, now they have t oget prices down so it will become more mainstream. the 'war' was actually keeping prices artificially inflated due to manafacturinf being split & most peeps waiting on the sidelines for the dust to settle. the other big factor is happening to, more hd tv's are being sold.
a lote of you guys dont remeber the high cost of dvd players and media when it 1st came out - I paid $1000 for my 1st gen deck & movies were in the $30 range(paid $1200 for 1st gen directv-yeh im one of those). believe me, the companies involved got prices down as quickly as they could- once the intial early adopters profits had been gathered in.
volume is money, both camps goal was/is to make hd media as common as dvd. but the 'war' was slowing down everything. wait & see what hardware & movie prices r like by xmas. except for a few stubborn holdouts, the glory days of low price hddvd hardware will have been forgotten.

z, that price diff is weird. here the price is pretty much at parity, with some exceptions on both sides. there MIGHT be a couple of $$ diff, but overall prices r pretty much the same.

mike2h

dipstick. bb, cc, etc usually have new release bd for $29.99. median price seems to be sub $35 now. i wouldnt buy hddvd until they actually have the fire sale. prcies dont seem t obe dropping & prolly wont for now as the know they have owners over a barrle & nothing to lose. wait for the sale boys, it will come

Necrosis

A nice write up from a HD DVD owners point of view.

I'm the idiot who bought an HD-DVD player. - By Josh Levin - Slate Magazine

mike2h

while it does sk for people that have invested into hd dvd, ridiculing peeps who did is flat ignorant.
& considering what most paid for their decks thye are not that bad of. they still have good dvd players, whatever amount of free movies thye got(in some cases 10), & the ability to play their hd movies - some of wich we wont see on bd for awhile.

BWX

Audio via set top box or internet download formats can adapt.. as far as BD and "HD Audio", it is a mess right now, but this might help.
AVS Forum - View Single Post - BD Player Audio Support Comparison

If you have a nice AVR it doesn't matter what the disc player can do (to a point) and the AVR can decode the format. BTW even now Dolby Digital 5.1 is the norm on HD channels, and if it is only 2 channels, the receiver decodes the DD into 5.1. My Yamaha AVR matrixes the rear two channels (surround L,R and rear surround L,R) which is nice, I get 7.1 audio, but not like I could with a disc player, not yet anyway. It just sucks that to get lossless audio (completely uncompressed), you need a disc player. MPCM over HDMI will work if the player decodes the lossless formats even if your AVR doesn't though. With new set-top-boxes coming out, it wouldn't surprise me if in a few years you could get lossless audio from your cable company, but THAT is probably quite a few years away. BUT, when you can get fiber directly into your house, anything will be possible.



I like this one guy's response on that forum:
Great stuff.

dj_stick

to be succint here, no, it doesn't

if the Dolby Digital audio is stereo, it's played as stereo, UNLESS, the receiver upmixes it to 5.1, giving a pseudo-surround, which is not true surround - same with any source being upmixed - 5.1 into 7.1 is still 5.1 upmixed, it's NOT true 7.1

i hope that helps to clear up alot of the sh*t that's going around with all the different formats

BWX

To be precise, it is not upmixing, it is matrix(ing).

Quote:

Matrix decoder is an audio technology where a finite number of discrete audio channels (eg. 2) are decoded into a larger number of channels on play back (eg. 5). The channels are generally, but not always, arranged for decoding by an encoder, and decoded for playback by a decoder. The notation for matrix encoding consists of the number of discrete audio channels separated by a colon from the number of decoded channels. For example, two discrete channels decoded to four-channels would be notated: 2:4 Five discrete channels decoded to six channels would be notated: 5:6

-and It sounds pretty good too, clicking back and forth between 5.1 and matrixed 7.1 with a 5.1 signal sounds pretty good. The surround channels sound more even and full in the room - I know it is not true 7.1 though in that mode.

Quote:

Dolby Digital EX EX adds an extension to the standard 5.1 channel Dolby Digital codec in the form of matrixed rear channels, creating 6.1 or 7.1 channel output. However, the format is not considered a true 6.1 or 7.1 channel codec because it lacks the capability to support a discrete 6th channel unlike the competing DTS-ES codec.

For instance my cable box -- comes in via HDMI or optical cable. In the case of 5.1 to 7.1, it (the AVR, not the box) is matrixing the SR and SL to create four surround channels.. SL, SR, and SBL, SBR, or just one rear "center surround" for 6.1. (surround left, right, back left, back right).


BTW, on my Yamaha rx-v661- it has a menu where it tells you how many audio channels are coming in via HDMI or optical, and the sampling and bit-rate. Sometimes it has all 5.1 shown coming in, sometimes only 2 are shown depending on the channel (the TV channel Nothing comes out of the rears on news channels, etc.), but it still outputs 5.1 channels if the movie is in 5.1. It sounds like the rear channels are playing different sounds than the front three, or nothing at all depending on what's happening in the movie, etc. It is not as good as true 5.1, but it is definitely not just stereo upmixed to 5.1. There are surround channels, and the AVR separates the LFE in that case.

For true 7.1-- via BD or HD DVD
In my case- the AVR does not Decode Dolby TrueHD though, but it does process 7.1 multi-channel PCM via HDMI -or 8 discrete channels from a player that has that capability. That was my point though- The AVR doesn't have to be able to decoded it, as long as the player can do it- output to the AVR and the AVR output it to 8 separate channels. Some non TrueHD AVRs can, some can't. Most good AVRs now do both if they are HDMI and 7.1 capable... Last year that wasn't the case.

Notice the 8 separate channel inputs.. (i think you use zone 2 out for SBL & R) or something like that. Or PCM via HDMI.

Quote:

8 Ch Ext Input 8 additional input jacks for discrete multi-channel input. Front (Left, Center, Right), Rear (Surround Left & Right, Surround Back Left & Right) and Subwoofer

RX-V661



(wiki)

Quote:

Connecting a TrueHD source to a TrueHD receiver requires a digital-link capable of transporting either the encoded bitstream (up to 18 Mbit/s), or the unpacked linear-PCM audio (>35 Mbit/s). HDMI 1.1 (and higher) can transport multichannel PCM-audio, and therefore can transport an unpacked TrueHD audiotrack. HDMI-equipped players can internally decode TrueHD to LPCM, and output the LPCM over an HDMI 1.1 (or higher) interface; all HD DVD players and the PlayStation 3 currently support this.[2] If a player cannot internally decode TrueHD, it can transport the bitstream over HDMI 1.3 to a receiver capable of decoding it; this feature is now supported on Toshiba HD-A35 HD DVD player, as well as the Samsung 1400 BD player with a firmware upgrade. HD DVD players can also transcode the TrueHD bitstream into a different legacy format (such as Dolby Digital or DTS), providing a high-quality approximation of TrueHD audio over a legacy TOSLINK cable for those that do not have HDMI.

Markzio

man blu rays have so much advertizement thats why so many people buy em

kris23

its also a better disk.....

Lowfat

the funny thing is even now that HD-DVD is dead, Bluray isn't selling all that much more than when HD-DVD was around.

Sic Puppy

Personally I just like the name "Blu Ray" sounds much better that (que geeky voice) "HD-DVD"
Sony are not my favorite company, but they did their homework with the PS3 to get Blu Ray in homes before HD-DVD was off the blocks. People arn't going to be buy discs in thier hordes while the prices are so high. I remeber this when DVD first came out and it was 25 pounds a DVD or 15 for VHS. It probably won't take as long mind you as punters know more about the technology now than they did when DVD came out.

BWX

I makes sense that the one with the highest potential capacity wins. Higher capacity = higher POTENTIAL image quality and sound.. potentially.

Gaijin

Personally I didn't really care which of the HD formats would win. I won't be upgrading to HD until the players can be bought for 100 euros or less, with "cheapos" costing 50 euros or so with all features enabled and pref. no goddamn region code bullsh*t lockdown.