Honestly this whole format war has made for some horrid technology decisions. Besides neither format really is very future minded. 30/50gigs for a 1080p movie is acceptable but only just that. For a 2 hour movie assuming it used the entire 50 gigs for the movie which it won’t, would be 6.94 megs a second. Uncompressed 1080p takes up a sec 119 megs at 29.97 FPS (8-bit of course, not counting 10 bit). That’s roughly 5% of the original size, and that’s the theorical max for the video, no audio.
Now DVD has theorically 9734 kbps bit rate for video, almost a meg a sec. Its roughly 20 megs a sec, its almost the same compression ratio, 5% of the original. Now the benefit of course is HD will sport the huge rez, downside is you’ll see that artifacting even more.
Of course I’m over simplfying some of the codec mashing and various other factors but the data rate ratio should increase to really make for more quality gains.]
Here’s my prediction: HD DVD will take a lead because its cheaper. It literally costs less to produce two HD DVDs to one BluRay disc. We’ll see special feature HD-DVDs sperate from the movie.
Yeah, that or movies will start coming in cases the size of season box sets, with ten minutes of the movie on each disc. You’ll need a pickup truck to take your copy of Ben-Hur home!
This all depends on whether the ball is dropped on digital distribution.
I, personally, like owning a physical representation of my purchases… but if digital distribution really takes off then the DVD wars might be a moot point.
But hey, “entertainment hubs” have been attempted for years, so what do I know.
Well at $600 for an HD-DVD player or Blu Ray (PS3 actually being the cheapest Blu ray player on the market by $250), if the ball got in motion for say, iTMS HD movies, I’d actually go that route as it’d cost LESS, assuming the Digital Distrubtion was made like $15 a movie, as it should cost less for lack of packaging.
I used to think that Blueray was the winner by default, but it seems that HD DVD is getting a lot of love, so I don’t know how it’ll turn out at all. Personally, I hope digital distribution will win it. Fuck physical media.
Well at $600 for an HD-DVD player or Blu Ray (PS3 actually being the cheapest Blu ray player on the market by $250), if the ball got in motion for say, iTMS HD movies, I’d actually go that route as it’d cost LESS, assuming the Digital Distrubtion was made like $15 a movie, as it should cost less for lack of packaging.
I think we all know by now that you save little to nothing on digital distribution: it just means more money in the hands of the producers. Nothing seems to get passed on to the consumer.
Just look at TV shows or movies on the iTMS, or games on steam: there’s no savings over buying physical media, which I think is kind of bullshit. Xbox live marketplace is even worse: you “own” a TV show for $2, can’t back it up, can’t move it to an external drive or player, and it’s stuck on a $100 20gig proprietary hard drive.
Well, I knew it was going to come eventually. Since the Playstation 3 was released, it was almost inevitable. I agree with Maveric56 above, what is wrong with DVD’s?
What’s wrong with DVDs?!?!? They became popular just like 5 years ago and we’re already trying to replace them!
Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that if human advances in technological prowess continue at the near-logarithmic rate they do now, within a few decades machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence. This is just the beginning!
What’s wrong with DVDs?!?!? They became popular just like 5 years ago and we’re already trying to replace them!
Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that if human advances in technological prowess continue at the near-logarithmic rate they do now, within a few decades machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence. This is just the beginning!
I’ve been downloading 720p versions of the TV Show heroes, complete with AC3 for 5.1. It gives the show a bit more cinematic feel watching it in surround sound and its noticably better looking. I’ve since gone to downloading HR rips whenever possible (HR = Half rez, downscaled 1920 x 1080 i to to 960 x 540 to make up for the line rez) with AC3 as well. I’m sorry but that’s the absolute easiest way to enjoy HD goodness. The container format, MKV also allots for DVDish features so subtitles, alternative audio languages and chapters, menus and such can be used with the HD formats with video and audio codecs of preference. Its rather painless to use. I imagine HDTV piracy becoming huge as more people have capable PCs, displays etc. Right now playing the 720p MKVs puts my Dually 2 GHz G5/X800 XT to work while passing the AC3 to my Denon where as AC3 2.0 decoding in an old AVI at 960 x 540 doesn’t even make the ol G5 sweat.
Now I know bork isn’t a place of piracy and what not, but I suggest for the fun of it others checking it out, its really brings home how close digital distrubtion is. Ironically the illegal scene has dictated media trends for years, starting with MP3 sharing evolving to legal services, TV shows and movies being traded for years evolving to legal methods, PDF copies of magazines/books/comics leading legal distributions. Its only a matter of time before HD does the same.
DVDs are alright but they’re really inadequate for the HD display era. Problem is right now, neither format… HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, really offers much compelling evidence that they’re up to the task, being slow, clunky, every bit as compressed as DVDs so the ratio is the same of what we expect for a disk to pack (although much sharper and better audio) no improvement to color gamut for increased dynamic range (isn’t it about time we went to 10 bit color per channel? That’s 1024 light value differences vs 256) and too much copy protection. I’ve been an early adopter for DVDs, surround sound, HD but I’ll skip out on the HD wars while I download my TV shows not quite so legally.
Now I know bork isn’t a place of piracy and what not, but I suggest for the fun of it others checking it out, its really brings home how close digital distrubtion is. Ironically the illegal scene has dictated media trends for years, starting with MP3 sharing evolving to legal services, TV shows and movies being traded for years evolving to legal methods, PDF copies of magazines/books/comics leading legal distributions. Its only a matter of time before HD does the same.
Well, NBC does offer full Heroes episodes without commercials on their website (as most networks do with big shows, now), if I’m not mistaken. I don’t think downloading the episode off of torrent is a big leap of morality.
What’s really interesting is the ability to download arguably better-than-DVD quality copies of TV shows. I’m nabbing 24 season 5 in HR and AC3. Granted the compression is much higher, its also notably higher rez.
