Originally posted by: lord3vil
Very true. I never meant to imply that Lucas was saying anything close to the truth in the quote I mentioned. Based upon his rough story ideas and the way he invented elements on the spot, I can't see how he can argue that much of anything was outside of what he wanted besides some technical feats.
Originally posted by: Scruffy
So far, the superior specifications of Blu-ray have not been realized. All Blu-ray titles to date are 25GB, while HD DVD titles can be 30GB. (I don't know if 30GB discs make up the majority of HD DVD releases, but I suspect they do.) All Blu-ray titles to date have used MPEG-2, while HD DVD uses VC-1. HD DVD supports Dolby and DTS lossless audio, while the only mandatory lossless codec for Blu-Ray is PCM (yes, uncompressed)! And the current HD DVD players are half the price of Blu-ray players.
Eventually, Blu-ray probably will adopt an advanced video codec, and may produce affordable 50GB discs. But for now, they are widely considered inferior to their cousins. In any case, the vast majority of people are looking at them today with the same wariness they cast towards DVD eight years ago. DVD Video's going away, or at least stepping down from the number one spot, there's top-down pressure for that. It's just a matter of when.
Originally posted by: Tiptup
I just read an interview of his where he said the original Star Wars was only 25% of what he wanted.
This is most likely incorrect. Lucas likes to portray himself as a visionary by revision, so it is possibly true that the original Star Wars is only 25% of what he would have preferred it to be today. However, going by the interviews he gave back in the day, the original Star Wars came pretty close to what he actually wanted back then, even though it still wasn't quite 100% perhaps.
I just read an interview of his where he said the original Star Wars was only 25% of what he wanted.
This is most likely incorrect. Lucas likes to portray himself as a visionary by revision, so it is possibly true that the original Star Wars is only 25% of what he would have preferred it to be today. However, going by the interviews he gave back in the day, the original Star Wars came pretty close to what he actually wanted back then, even though it still wasn't quite 100% perhaps.
Very true. I never meant to imply that Lucas was saying anything close to the truth in the quote I mentioned. Based upon his rough story ideas and the way he invented elements on the spot, I can't see how he can argue that much of anything was outside of what he wanted besides some technical feats.
Originally posted by: Scruffy
So far, the superior specifications of Blu-ray have not been realized. All Blu-ray titles to date are 25GB, while HD DVD titles can be 30GB. (I don't know if 30GB discs make up the majority of HD DVD releases, but I suspect they do.) All Blu-ray titles to date have used MPEG-2, while HD DVD uses VC-1. HD DVD supports Dolby and DTS lossless audio, while the only mandatory lossless codec for Blu-Ray is PCM (yes, uncompressed)! And the current HD DVD players are half the price of Blu-ray players.
Eventually, Blu-ray probably will adopt an advanced video codec, and may produce affordable 50GB discs. But for now, they are widely considered inferior to their cousins. In any case, the vast majority of people are looking at them today with the same wariness they cast towards DVD eight years ago. DVD Video's going away, or at least stepping down from the number one spot, there's top-down pressure for that. It's just a matter of when.
Blu-ray releases, at the moment, may be inferior to HD-DVD releases, but that is far different from saying the actual Blu-ray format is "inferior" to the HD-DVD format. In any objective, technical comparison, Blu-ray discs are capable of superior performance compared to HD-DVDs if they are utilized correctly, and that is theoretically at the same price as well (assuming you account for the protective coating that makes BDs much more resiliant than CDs, DVDs or HD-DVDs). For instance, HD-DVD, when double-layered, offers a 30 GB disc, but BD achieves practically the same size (25 GB) with only a single-layered disc and almost double (50 GB) when it is double layered (and I'm almost certain that most of the current HD-DVD releases are on the 15 GB single layer discs using the superior VC-1 compression). Next, when looking at BDs, they are capable of faster reading/writing speeds over HD-DVDs as well with their superior transfer rate. There are a number of superior features that BDs have over HD-DVDs. It's not all as clear and easy to understand as some would think.
The main problem with both HD-DVD formats at the moment is the maturity of the technologies involved, and since Blu-ray is attempting to bring an even more advanced technology to the market, it is not only behind HD-DVD, but it is having more problems. This isn't difficult to understand. If BD is allowed to mature properly before the real HD-DVD format war begins, then it will easily deserve to be the winner. Currently, however, Blu-rays require entirely new production lines for one thing, while HD-DVDs are a cheap upgrade to the current DVD technology and were able to begin mass production far sooner. If you can only have so much production capacity for the first Blu-rays it makes sense to me that the initial releases in the format will be transferred cheaply and quickly to pump the BDs out faster. With time that should change. Otherwise, in terms of the end price, BD customers pay no more for their movies than HD-DVD customers since the publishers have decided to take smaller profits, and even with the Mpeg-2 codec, there is little difference in quality.
(Oh, and for those who do not know, audio and video codecs are merely a way to place data on a physical format, they do not speak to the superiority or inferiority of such formats in and of themselves.)
Lasty, the only reason the HD-DVD players are half the price of Blu-ray players is because they are being sold at a tremendous loss right now. Financially speaking, HD-DVD is certainly not in the best of positions either at the moment. Both formats are in a crappy state right now and the companies that are pushing all of this early support for one format or the other are justifiably facing major issues right now. That's not even mentioning the crappy copy protection that movie studios will want to start forcing on the industry that will eventually make many of the current HD-DVD and Blu-ray players useless. I simply like Blu-ray more because the technology in the discs is clearly better, but I don't intend to upgrade to HD televisions or an HD-DVD format until a lot of this crap is worked out. I might purchase a PS3 (if the Nintendo Wii doesn't meet all of my gaming needs) but even for a gaming system it’s in a mess and worthy of a lot of doubt at the moment. We'll see I suppose.