Slashdot Mirror

They've only JUST NOW finished the first completed disc? Crazy

  I was bored this summer, and made a feature-length HD DVD using MPEG-2 and Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. In a weekend. Targeting DVD-9 media. Looked pretty good, and would have looked great if DVDSP4 supported using H.264 for 1080 content, or VC-1 at all.

I can't share that disc image unfortunately, but I can, once again, share this link to a HD DVD disc image I made before I tried the feature. A mix of MPEG-2 and H.264, 720 and 1080, i and p. Plays back perfectly in DVD Player 4.6 on a G5 Mac, and probably in other software players as well.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.dm g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90

Lots of folks are throwing around lots of scary numbers about how much bandwidth will be needed for HD movie downloads. The good thing is that they can be much smaller than many seem to fear.

I posted this in the last HD disc thread, but here it is again: a very hard movie trailer, encoded at 1080p24, at 8 Mbps VBR. And bear in mind this is unusually challenging content. And bear in mind we're about to see a next generation of codecs (VC-1 Advanced Profile and High Profile H.264) which will give us another very welcome boost in compression efficiency.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/The+Island+8+M bps+VBR.torrent?75320A1EBA045F4BCC75992F2461E9FAC5 952498

Note the data rate here is also sufficient for putting a HD feature on DVD-9 media.

All that said, 8 Mbps at a 4 Mbps download gives 4 hours to download a 2 hour movie. Way faster than Netflix, and WAY better looking (6.5x the pixels!).

Having RW media certainly isn't a mark against Blu-ray as a movie format, but it isn't really an advantage either. It's not the same manufacturing process as movies will use, and the players don't support the actual movie data. It's like saying having a few thousand CD-RW drives on the market gets you close to making SVCD a mass-market format.

And, again, I MADE a HD-DVD disc image months ago, as referenced earlier. You can download a .dmg disc image of it here:

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.dm g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90

HD DVD is 6-12 months closer to mass market release at this point. Spec is farther along, production lines for media are farther along, and movie-format players are farther along.

Folks,

I've posted this at Slashdot before, but it seems germane.

I made a HD-DVD format disc with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4 a few months ago. It's a complaint disc, and should work fine in any HD DVD hardware player when those are released. It plays today in Apple's DVD Player 4.6 on a G5. I've heard folks have been able to get media to play back in Windows and Linux with other software, but not with menus.

Here's a Torrent for it. It's an Apple format DMG file, but there are mounters for it that'll work on other OSs.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.dm g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90

Again, I did this MONTHS ago. And I can't do this even today with Blu-ray. Format isn't far enough along, no tools (there are two for HD DVD already), etcetera.

If you want to see some samples of what we're talking about,

Here's a test HD DVD I made with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. It plays back in Apple's DVD Player 4.6 on G5. I've heard folks have been able to get the video to play back as well on Windows, although there isn't an available player with UI yet.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.dm g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90

Also, here's a test looking at what quality could look like with a hybrid HD-DVD/DVD, using MPEG-2 (obviously the HD quality would be better in a real title, using H.264 or VC-1, but it's not bad at all hear with a 10 year old codec). These use bitrates appropriate for a 2.5 hour movie with 448 Kbps audio.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HDDVD-DVD_Enco ding+Tests_m2v.torrent?ABE9BEFF514525B8B0B4EE4FEEF 5681178B14F50

And lastly, here's a file I made of "The Island" trailer indicating the video and audio the HD disc formats could provide. It's ATSC compatible, and plays great in VLC on a reasonably high end machine.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/The+Island+ATS C.ts.torrent?7C824F8B9AF6D35B4EE0B78F5B208EBD5F55A A30

If you want to see some samples of what we're talking about,

Here's a test HD DVD I made with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. It plays back in Apple's DVD Player 4.6 on G5. I've heard folks have been able to get the video to play back as well on Windows, although there isn't an available player with UI yet.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.dm g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90

Also, here's a test looking at what quality could look like with a hybrid HD-DVD/DVD, using MPEG-2 (obviously the HD quality would be better in a real title, using H.264 or VC-1, but it's not bad at all hear with a 10 year old codec). These use bitrates appropriate for a 2.5 hour movie with 448 Kbps audio.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HDDVD-DVD_Enco ding+Tests_m2v.torrent?ABE9BEFF514525B8B0B4EE4FEEF 5681178B14F50

And lastly, here's a file I made of "The Island" trailer indicating the video and audio the HD disc formats could provide. It's ATSC compatible, and plays great in VLC on a reasonably high end machine.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/The+Island+ATS C.ts.torrent?7C824F8B9AF6D35B4EE0B78F5B208EBD5F55A A30

If you want to see some samples of what we're talking about,

Here's a test HD DVD I made with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. It plays back in Apple's DVD Player 4.6 on G5. I've heard folks have been able to get the video to play back as well on Windows, although there isn't an available player with UI yet.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.dm g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90

Also, here's a test looking at what quality could look like with a hybrid HD-DVD/DVD, using MPEG-2 (obviously the HD quality would be better in a real title, using H.264 or VC-1, but it's not bad at all hear with a 10 year old codec). These use bitrates appropriate for a 2.5 hour movie with 448 Kbps audio.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HDDVD-DVD_Enco ding+Tests_m2v.torrent?ABE9BEFF514525B8B0B4EE4FEEF 5681178B14F50

And lastly, here's a file I made of "The Island" trailer indicating the video and audio the HD disc formats could provide. It's ATSC compatible, and plays great in VLC on a reasonably high end machine.

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/The+Island+ATS C.ts.torrent?7C824F8B9AF6D35B4EE0B78F5B208EBD5F55A A30

Folks,

I also posted this as a reply, but I figured some non-nested browsers might want to see this as well.

If I could break with Slashdot tradition and post an actual example instead of half-understood innuendo, here's an actual HD-DVD for your edification

I made a HD-DVD a few weeks ago with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. Here's a torrent to a .dmg file of it. The only player I've tested this with is DVD Studio Pro 4.6 on a Mac G5, but I think there is a beta Moonlight player that could do this as well. I'd be curious to hear about anyone not on a G5 Mac that can get this to play.

It's nothing fancy, but I say a big advantage of HD DVD is that I CAN ALREADY MAKE THEM!

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.dm g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90

Capacity differences won't be that big a deal here - both are very large for movie content.

Video codecs are the same.

Copy production is likely to be the same.

But there still are significant differences:

First, you can make a HD-DVD today. Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4, which shipped a few months ago, can make a HD DVD disc. I've made two so far. Heck, here's a torrent to a copyright-free one:

http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.dm g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90

The only player I've tested so far is DVD Player 4.6, running on a Mac G5. I believe Moonlight will be releasing a player for Windows soon. But from a first mover perspective, HD DVD is quite a bit close to having content be released. I wouldn't be surprised if there are 100+ HD-DVD discs on the market before the first Blu-ray.

HD-DVD requires very little capital cost to add to a current DVD production line. Not true of Blu-ray.

Blu-ray has a thinner plastic layer, so all things being equal, it won't be as durable.

And lastly, Sony has lost EVERY consumer format war they've participated in these last few decades. If anything, them owning content has proved to be more disynergistic than synergistic. Other media companies would be more interested in UMD if Sony didn't own a competing company.

Honestly, as others have posted, it's much worse to have two good formats than one, since customer confusion could sink both (leaving HD IPTV a likely winner). Better for the industry to coalesce around one format and declare it an early winner.

I pick HD-DVD, mainly because I can already make them, and I know it's already good enough. If we just had Blu-ray, I'd back it enthusiastically, but I think it's better we geeks declare a winner early (even if it's arbitrary) to avoid a drawn out format war. It's better for one to lose quickly.