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Star Wars in High Definition: OT clips from "Science of Star Wars" in HD — Page 2

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Originally posted by: boris
Personally, if HD-DVD and Blu-Ray give us hassles, I predict that d-vhs may even over-take the market (and let's not forget how long it's already been out, it has proven reliability). If HD-DVD/Blu-Ray does get regional coding (currently HD-DVD does NOT have it, but apparently they're adapting the format to include it) - and IF they can make it stick (which I doubt) - I for one would much rather buy d-vhs, because at least I know I can import legal copies from anywhere I like, at least I know I can go down to JB HI-FI or other speciality stores and ask them to import foreign releases for me without having to worry about incompatibility. I think D-VHS is dead in the water. I don't think there's any future for tape-based formats- no matter how good the quality is, consumers now view cassette formats as a step back in terms of technology.

Originally posted by: auraloffalwaffle

Am I right that Microsoft came out on the HD-DVD side?


Yeah, that's what I hear. That's a major advantage for HD-DVD.

Blu-ray seems to be positioning itself as the "sexier" format, with backers like Apple and Sony.

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Your being duped by the hardware companies to buy something you don't really need (yet). x264 and WMVHD encoded movies on one standard dvd @ 720p resolution are plenty good enough for current HD tv's. Do you know anyone with a 1080p tv?
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Originally posted by: Jobel

There's still this bizarre idea that capacity = better for a movie playback platform. The plain and simple fact is that a VC1/AVC encoded movie will not need 50GB. Not even with extreme picture quality. Not even with the inclusion of lossless audio codecs.

Uhh, so, you believe the amount of data a disk can hold doesn’t matter? Is that why I have a two 200 GB hard drives on my computer?

There are many useful reasons to support a format that has higher storage capacity beyond simply watching a single movie. It’s ridiculous to simply toss aside such an advantage lightly. If we’re going to have some new format forced on us by electronics and entertainment companies, then I say we should get the one that is more versatile and will last longer in general.


Originally posted by: Jobel

At the end of the day, the Bluray discs have so far delivered disappointing image quality compared to HD-DVD. I think that speaks for itself.

According to what objective standard? Image resolution? Visual compression? Frame rate? If so, those elements are decided by the type of codec used and the way it is used, not the disc format.

Even then, I don’t quite understand your attacks on Mpeg-2. Maybe it is disappointing as you say, but I’m guessing your sources on that are not analytical. I could be wrong and Mpeg-2 could truly be as inferior to VC-1 as you claim and, if it is, I’m willing to be educated on those technical details.

Either way, Blu-ray players handle all of the same codecs that HD-DVD players can work with. It is the content providers that decide to use the Mpeg-2 codec when placing the actual data on the Blu-ray discs, not the discs or the players. At the very most, Blu-ray is not a mature technology yet and you’re expecting too much, too soon. It won’t be long at all before it uses other codecs if they truly offer so much more.


Originally posted by: Jobel

Bandwidth between the two is pretty much the same actually.


Did I say ‘bandwith’?

It is the transfer rate that is higher on a Blu-ray disc, and that is what I meant by “faster” reading and burning. The reason the transfer rate is higher is because of the way data is written on the disks. A BD does not need to spin as quickly to be read as fast. That means for the same speed drive, a BD will get you more information in the same amount of time. This is a nice step beyond DVD and HD-DVD.


Originally posted by: Jobel

Blu-Ray most certainly is not the only proper option. HD-DVD is just as 'proper.' That's the whole point, the formats are interchangeable. Being an advocate of either is ludicrous.


I’m advocating that one format is superior to the other. What is “proper” for individual people is another matter entirely. Just for me, personally, I want Blu-ray to be the dominant format since that will make my life easier if that’s the format I choose to go adopt (which is where I am leaning). Otherwise, I have no other fondness for either the Blu-ray or HD-DVD formats, if that’s what you were implying.

You on the other hand are attacking Blu-ray technology before it has even had a chance to mature and in unfair ways (codecs). So, who exactly here is the one being a “ludicrous” advocate?


Oh, and boris is right about the copy protection nonsense. But, I’m not personally afraid of it. It won’t be too long before it is bypassed and cracked. After that the entertainment industry should be too afraid to alienate its average customers by ever removing functionality from certain HD-DVD or Blu-ray players. Is called free market economics.

If entertainment companies insist upon making access to their products so difficult for average people, we will only be more inclined to go through bootleg and other “illegal” sources. In that case the movie industry will die out.

As for Blu-ray being worse than HD-DVD in terms of copy protection, that is potentially true, but they probably won’t implement every possible feature. Even if they did, its not that much worse compared to HD-DVD.

Otherwise, the “region codes” for Blu-ray seem to embrace simplicity more than DVD. There are only three:

A North America, South America, East Asia except for China
B Europe and Africa
C China, Russia and other countries

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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I personally think that Blu-ray will win. I don't think however that the name of either product will be it's downfall. If someone during the VHS days told you "Digital Versatile Disc is going to be so much better." Would you know what the heck they were talking about? Plus, occording to wiki VHS's original name was Vertical Helical Scan... So, yeah you can't just judge by a name....


http://twister111.tumblr.com
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I disagree, the Blu-Ray format goes way too far. The HD-DVD format goes too far. And what's up with those regions? Now we share "ours" with China and Russia? The courts will make region coding illegal like they did with DVD anyway, but that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Average consumers didn't and still don't understand region coding as it is. It's a failure. You're right though, d-vhs is dead in the water, but you just wait - holographic and/or flu recent data storage will overtake reflective data storage, and as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are both reflective there's no way they're going to last for very long on the market. I don't like either format, I'm not excited about either format - they do not break any new ground, they're capacity is pitiful really, it's not a huge leap from DVD, it's just a baby-step and it won't last long mark my words.

By the way, the people I know who own professional-grade home movie projectors buy WAY more DVD's then the average consumer. So I bet that their market size is very considerable, and getting them onside will ultimately determine the final success of any format.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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Originally posted by: Tiptup
Originally posted by: Jobel

There's still this bizarre idea that capacity = better for a movie playback platform. The plain and simple fact is that a VC1/AVC encoded movie will not need 50GB. Not even with extreme picture quality. Not even with the inclusion of lossless audio codecs.

Uhh, so, you believe the amount of data a disk can hold doesn’t matter? Is that why I have a two 200 GB hard drives on my computer?

There are many useful reasons to support a format that has higher storage capacity beyond simply watching a single movie. It’s ridiculous to simply toss aside such an advantage lightly. If we’re going to have some new format forced on us by electronics and entertainment companies, then I say we should get the one that is more versatile and will last longer in general.


Originally posted by: Jobel

At the end of the day, the Bluray discs have so far delivered disappointing image quality compared to HD-DVD. I think that speaks for itself.


According to what objective standard? Image resolution? Visual compression? Frame rate? If so, those elements are decided by the type of codec used and the way it is used, not the disc format.

Even then, I don’t quite understand your attacks on Mpeg-2. Maybe it is disappointing as you say, but I’m guessing your sources on that are not analytical. I could be wrong and Mpeg-2 could truly be as inferior to VC-1 as you claim and, if it is, I’m willing to be educated on those technical details.

Either way, Blu-ray players handle all of the same codecs that HD-DVD players can work with. It is the content providers that decide to use the Mpeg-2 codec when placing the actual data on the Blu-ray discs, not the discs or the players. At the very most, Blu-ray is not a mature technology yet and you’re expecting too much, too soon. It won’t be long at all before it uses other codecs if they truly offer so much more.




Sorry, I'm not buying your argument. It's based purely on a bit more capacity (which is pointless anyway). If you want capacity get a HDD. If you want to be forced to pay double the price just for a disc with a bit more space on it (again who needs it when consumers can just use a HDD) then be my guest. Enjoy bleeding your wallet dry for a format that wants to copyprotect to death.

I personally think HD-DVD will win the war based on it's name alone. The brand name is just too familiar for it to lose.

People won't get what Bluray is without it being explained. They will be hesitant to support anything sony has it's hand in. They don't exactly have a great track record.

At the end of the day, Bluray is trying to be revolutionary (and failing so far) just for the idea of it, rather than any actual demand for it.

I'm willing to give them a chance once they start putting out discs that offer image quality that is at least as good as what HD-DVD have put out, but until then, the ball is no longer in their court.

We shall see what happens.



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Originally posted by: boris
I disagree, the Blu-Ray format goes way too far. The HD-DVD format goes too far. And what's up with those regions? Now we share "ours" with China and Russia? The courts will make region coding illegal like they did with DVD anyway, but that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

I’m not sure where Australia/New-Zealand would be since the page I found doesn’t say. I’d assume you’d be in the Japan/Americas region. Even then, hopefully they’ll dump the region idea completely. I don’t know if the currently released Blu-ray discs are region free or not (so far the HD-DVD discs seem to have no region encoding).


Originally posted by: boris
Average consumers didn't and still don't understand region coding as it is. It's a failure. You're right though, d-vhs is dead in the water, but you just wait - holographic and/or flu recent data storage will overtake reflective data storage, and as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are both reflective there's no way they're going to last for very long on the market. I don't like either format, I'm not excited about either format - they do not break any new ground, they're capacity is pitiful really, it's not a huge leap from DVD, it's just a baby-step and it won't last long mark my words.

A truly new and superior technology is definitely a possibility. Both HD-DVD and Blue-ray are kind of like minor upgrades for DVD. But, I’ve been holding off on buying DVD movies as I waited for a high definition format. Perhaps I will wait longer for something even better, but I’m hoping the new formats will last long enough that if I switch to one I won’t be totally screwed. If anything, I could just get some important movies in the HD format, enjoy myself, and then upgrade again when the time comes.


Originally posted by: Jobel
Sorry, I'm not buying your argument. It's based purely on a bit more capacity (which is pointless anyway). If you want capacity get a HDD. If you want to be forced to pay double the price just for a disc with a bit more space on it (again who needs it when consumers can just use a HDD) then be my guest. Enjoy bleeding your wallet dry for a format that wants to copyprotect to death.


Wow, you really are reaching far in your criticism of Blu-ray over HD-DVD. You’re incredibly repetitive regarding topics I have already answered in detail and you are thus increasingly unfounded in your opinions. Do you work for an HD-DVD company or something like that?

First, let me talk about storage: I don’t always want to purchase an HDD every time I might want to store data. A large capacity, DVD style format would be handy in general. Even then, you’re being irrational, since I’m not in the entertainment or electronics business and I’m not the one spending billions of dollars to force these formats on people. The most-adopted format will offer me the most CONVENIENCE and I prefer that format be more versatile. Is that so hard for you to understand? I’m not fucking asking you to “buy my argument” and go buy Blu-ray yourself. I’m asking you to see my point of view. If you are so unreasonable that you can’t do that, then please, simply remain silent.

As I said earlier, Blu-ray discs cost a bit more to produce, but they are not selling for more than HD-DVDs. As a consumer I won’t be “bleeding my wallet dry” in comparison. Where the heck does this “double the price” nonsense come from?

Of course, publishing companies won’t be making as much money with Blu-ray at first, but as more discs are printed and more machines are built, the discs will have very little cost difference with HD-DVD discs. As for the cost of players, they’ll go down in no time, just as HD-DVD players dropped in price after their initial release.

Also, HD-DVD is almost just as bad with the copy protection, so I don’t understand why you’re phrasing that element as if it offered some major critical contrast. You’re once again sounding “ludicrous” (using your chosen word).


Originally posted by: Jobel
I'm willing to give them a chance once they start putting out discs that offer image quality that is at least as good as what HD-DVD have put out, but until then, the ball is no longer in their court.


If the images produced by the Mpeg-2 codec are truly worse than those produced by VC-1, then please provide us with technical information as to why or how that is. At the very least, could you give us a link offering an actual scientific analysis proving your assertion? Until then your argument in this respect is pretty empty I’m afraid. Simply repeating yourself like a broken record does not help you prove anything.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Originally posted by: Tiptup
A truly new and superior technology is definitely a possibility. Both HD-DVD and Blue-ray are kind of like minor upgrades for DVD.
I agree- DVD is still such a young format, and many people have only just recently bought their first DVD player. The difference in picture quality is really going to have to be spectacular, in order for consumers to accept either HD-DVD or Blu-ray anytime soon.

Originally posted by: Tiptup
As I said earlier, Blu-ray discs cost a bit more to produce, but they are not selling for more than HD-DVDs.

Yes, I've heard that the companies are planning on taking a loss, initially, on their Blu-ray discs to make them comparable price-wise to HD-DVDs, until the Blu-ray format is accepted and the discs become cheaper to produce.

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For those of you that have access to HDTV, Discovery HD Theater is showing "Science of Star Wars" again. This consists of various one hour long shows. The shows include various clips from all the Star Wars movies, including the OT. It gives a good sampling of what Star Wars will look like in High Definition. The OT clips look quite superior to the 2004 DVDs on my 70 inch Sony in color and detail.
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As someone who works in the "upper-mid level" audio/ video industry, I have to agree COMPLETELY with those who say that HD-DVD will emerge victorious in the format war due simply to the fact that the technology's name contains the two sets of initials burned into the collective consciousness of the CE public....HD and DVD.

People have inquired to me about HD-DVD for the past few years. Just this afternoon I was talking with a client who was inquiring about HD-DVD VS dvd. As I went into a bit of a lesson on DVD and HD-DVD, things became clearer for him. When I mentioned Bluray, his response was, "what's that?" He had no clue. And to be honest, LOTS of people don't.

All the techno-babble about storage capacity, yada, yada, yada doesn't mean a damn thing to them, and it shouldn't. All they, or anyone, should really care about is, "does it look good?", and "does it sound good?" That's it. And, to be honest with you, you'd be amazed at how many people think standard DVD discs are high definition resolution. Even today, an astounding number of people believe that and are amazed to learn that even higher definition formats are emerging. A common response I get from folks is, "how much clearer does it need to be?" Granted we calibrate and wire our display rooms as perfectly as we can, but it isn't anything folks can't achieve at home. For many, many people out there, DVD as it is is good enough for them. Aside from techno-geeks, which I don't really consider myself to be, all the back and forth technical minutae is all boring and meaningless to them. As I said, they care about two things, good picture and good sound. They don't want to know a damn thing about thet tech aspects of any of it.

I also wouldn't bet on optical discs going away any time soon. Consumers have invested a huge amount of money in dvd video libraries, and none of them is interested in replacing all of those titles all over again. I wager that any "revolutionary" video format would face a FORMIDABLE task in just survining, let alone dominating the market or replacing dvd. And don't throw the "dvd beat vhs" argument at me either. When VHS was king, we were a nation of renters and recorders. VERY few had voluminous video libraries. Today...just look at dvd sales figures. Hell, studios plan on dvd sales as a part of their profit model. I have over 400. At last count, my boss had over 650, and most on my staff have upwards of 50 titles or more on their shelves.

And, interestingly, when clients and "lookers" inquire about high definition video discs, they almost overwhelmingly, 99 times out of 100, refer the the technology as "HD-DVD". That's what the consumer knows, and my bet is, that's where they'll throw their support in the long run.
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Originally posted by: JediFlyer06
I also wouldn't bet on optical discs going away any time soon. Consumers have invested a huge amount of money in dvd video libraries, and none of them is interested in replacing all of those titles all over again. I wager that any "revolutionary" video format would face a FORMIDABLE task in just survining, let alone dominating the market or replacing dvd. And don't throw the "dvd beat vhs" argument at me either. When VHS was king, we were a nation of renters and recorders. VERY few had voluminous video libraries. Today...just look at dvd sales figures. Hell, studios plan on dvd sales as a part of their profit model. I have over 400. At last count, my boss had over 650, and most on my staff have upwards of 50 titles or more on their shelves.



Thank you, i have been saying the same thing.

Regardless of what format "wins" the war...none of them will become common consumer products or replace DVD. DVD is here to stay for a long time and HD format will become the new Laserdisk--a high-quality alternative for home theater enthusiasts who are willing to spend the extra cash on high quality. People aren't going to give up on DVD just as it becomes the new standard.

As for "Blu-Ray is better so it will win"...well, I'm not so sure. Keep in mind i am a Blu-Ray supporter: i do indeed believe this is the superior of the two current formats. But let us not forget that Betamax was clearly superior to VHS. Convienence and price go a long way, though admittedly because HD is not going to be widely owned this factor is not as crucial as it was with the early tape format wars where the battle was for the heart of Joe Blow consumer. Still, something to keep in mind.

Really, HD-DVD botched their early release very majorly but have now caught up with themselves, and then Blu-Ray botched their early release. Lets give them a chance to get back on their feet. Both of these things are due to the rushed manner in which they were put out obviously, trying to race each other to release date and neither was ready. Soon we will see VC1 encoded disks instead of MPEG and then we will see what Blu-Ray is really made of. I think Christmas or early 2007 is an appropriate time to actually start guaging how well either format is. Until then, they both have some good and bad qualities about them.

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I own about 500 dvds and I hate the thought of having to buy all my movies again on a new format, so I just wont do it. Maybe I'll get my personal favorites on BD or HDVD (which ever wins), but I wont re-start my collection.
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Here's the thing, my TV is 68cm or so. The difference between SD and HD would be miniscule at the most at that size. DVD is roughly the resolution of 16mm film, and HD is roughly the resolution of 35mm film (though depending on the quality, even a 35mm film can have a significantly greater resolution then HD). It's not until you project it onto a much larger screen - or use a much larger TV that you would begin to see noticeable differences. Heck, a lot of older movies are shot on 16mm (even some movies today are) and so there's not going to be any technical increase in resolution of these movies - you may as well just get an up-scaling DVD player.

This is one reason why I predict average people skipping the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats, and people with high-end equipment waiting for a format that will work on their equipment. At least with macrovision you can buy "signal stabilizers" so you can use them with your movie projectors.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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Hmm. The Mpeg-2 codec cannot achieve VC-1’s HD image quality unless you can have a faster transfer rate for it. Also, the compressed data size is pretty large even for the larger Blu-ray drives and thus VC-1 is superior to a nice degree.


Concerning future formats though, it seems to me that a major problem with optical media is the transfer rate limits. To achieve truly advanced image quality beyond the current 1080p TVs you'll need something with faster reading than even Blu-ray or HD-DVD I'd imagine. So whenever that finally comes along we should see DVD pass into obscurity.

To achieve 1080p at 60 fps (which would represent 24 fps, analog film best I'd imagine) using Blue-ray or HD-DVD and the VC-1 codec, you need at least a 4x drive (1x is at 36Mbps for both models). I don't believe there are any Blu-ray or HD-DVD drives that fast available on the market yet (hopefully the PS3 will be at least 4x but it will probably be a 2x drive). Even then, higher resolutions might be nice someday and that will probably require a new format altogether. Though, a lot of home users might never want higher resolutions and thus HDTV might be it for a very long time to come. I really don’t know.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005