Originally posted by: dumb_kid

I think this is what MBJ has been getting at. Once HD-DVD is gone, what makes you think the studios are going to use a higher bitrate? They have no incentive to do that. "We'll get better picture quality!" The studios don't care. All they care about is making money. With HD-DVD gone, that'll be one less expense. Why bother with going with a higher bitrate when the picture looks fine as it is?

Actually studios do care when the consumer cares. When DVDs first came out they many were still P&S, or if you were lucky 4x3 letterboxed. Today DVDs are almost all anormorphic widescreen (minues the GOUT of course). Studios are not friends-- they are direct competitors. I'm thrilled that the format war caused many good things... rapid player price drops, dumping of MPEG2, BOGO sales, etc. But just like DVD, when there is a lone HD format, studios will continue to innovate... at least to double dip from early adopters

Let's also not forget that the first DVD releases were all under 4GB because they were pressing on single-layered discs. What happened? Studios started releasing double-layered discs once the cost was efficient enough and there was demand for better quality. Studios started releasing anamorphic widescreen DVDs to satisfy the quality-hungry consumers. But did studios stop there? No, they re-released their most popular titles touting better picture quality and extra features. Anyone remember Super-Bit? The point I'm trying to make here is that just because HD-DVD may be exiting the picture soon, that doesn't mean we're going to be stuck with "crappy" 30GB encodes on Blu-ray forever.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the quality of an encode is all about the bit rate - not the amount of space on the disc. There's a huge quality difference between a 90-minute movie that takes up 36GB and a 120-minute movie that takes up 36GB. The maximum transfer rate on an HD DVD is 36.55 Mb/s (mega-bits per second) vs. 53.95 on Blu-ray. (DVD is 11.08 Mb/s.) The maximum bit rate for video is limited to 29.4 Mb/s on HD DVD. Blu-ray is capable of 40 Mb/s.

I don't believe for a second that studios won't eventually take advantage of the full capability of Blu-ray. They'll do it because it's been proven that consumers are willing to pay for better quality, and because of competition.