Slashdot Mirror
First HD-DVD Disc Reviews - Mixed Marks
An anonymous reader writes "As the first HD-DVD players and discs hit store shelves nationwide today, the new site High-Def DVD Digest has posted extraordinarily detailed reviews of the HD-DVD disc releases of 'Serenity' and 'The Last Samurai,' with more reviews to come later today. The site gives both discs mixed marks, with the Tom Cruise flick edging out the Whedon-fest for demonstrating more pure high-def eye-candy appeal. Also worth a look-see: a detailed account of their 'review reference system' (ie: their gear)."
The more I read and hear about this stuff, the less interested I become. If it were just about the difference in quality and that difference were BIG, I'd be thinking about going for some equipment, and some new DVDs. But, toss in all the other BS, this one's going nowhere. I'll wait until there's one format, or both play compatibility everywhere, DRM goes away, and a player costs less than $150.
The differences in quality as described aren't blowing me away, and I love upgrades in technology. The improvements I'm reading sound much like some digital camera reviews where they describe the difference between 8 megapixel and 3 megapixel, which unless you're blowing up to side-of-a-building size, or doing mega-cropping isn't noticeable to the casual consumer.
I posted on this yesterday. I guess I haven't changed my mind, I'll go and look for a demo somewhere where they've got it set up correctly (heh, good luck with that!), but this is going to be a non-starter for a while.
In the meantime, to the industry, please:
- TrueHD
- HDTV
- HD-DVD
- 720i/720p/1080i/1080p
- Do
l by/Dolby
Digital 5.1/7.1 Surround - DD+
- VHS
- HD-A1/(and it's
snazzier cousin HD-XA1)
- D-VHS HD
- HDMI
- ICT
- Component
outs
For the record, I thought I was up to speed and I had to look up a couple of these. Sigh.I'll be in my bunk ..
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
I would love to try this out on my own - but I have to get back to work. Another 5-6 years of overtime should help me afford the reference system.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Something else to consider... if you are disinterested in this new technology because the difference isn't that noticable and from the looks of things you seem to be technically fluent, how is the average joe going to react? I'm talking about those people who watch standard def contents on their HDTV sets without even realizing it/knowing the difference.
- Toby
Damn your cruel, but inevitable betrayal HD-DVD. Mine is an evil laugh.
That's all nice and dandy... but when do the writers come out?
"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
Well, I hope you are not tired of reading; because the media hype is just going to get worse.
When both formats are up and running you will not be able to go anywhere and not read about this stuff. There is too much cash involved just to leave the decision up to the consumer. The companies backing the standards simply are not going to trust you to make the choice--they are going to let you know what to think. And the way they are going to do that is by running thousands of ads; ghost writing reviews, etc.
It's just beginning and you haven't heard nothing yet.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Uh, nope, not right... Westinghouse makes a very nice 42" LCD with 1080p resolution. (on both DVI and HDMI connectors) http://www.westinghousedigital.com/c-7-1080p-moni
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
My wife would like me to replace it with a Plasma or LCD because the current one looks bulky, but I cannot think of any reason to "throw away" such an investment. It has to stay at least another 6 years. After that, we'll see.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Netflix (and competitors, I assume) claim they will have HD-DVDs available when they are released. To the degree that people use these companies to rent media, instead of owning it, I wonder if that will speed adoption. Sure, HD-DVD and BlueRay players will be backward compatible with my existing DVDs, but if I've got a stack of plain-old DVDs next to the player, I think I'm less likely to upgrade.
Have the DRM schemes on either blu-ray or HD-DVD been cracked yet?
I bought a DVD player early on, partly because I knew it was standard mpeg2, and there were DVD-ROMS becoming available (but I didn't know about DRM then). I suspect there are many other early tech. adopters here. I will not be buying HD-DVD until the DRM is overcome. I wonder where the rest of slashdot is on this.
Perhaps a slashdot poll is needed.
I will buy HD-DVD/Bluray:
1) As soon as one of them is sold.
2) When one of these formats wins
3) When the DRM is removed or overcome
4) When the price drops
5) When the HDDVD-ROM/RW is available.
6) 1-5
7) When Hell exists and is frozen
No, seriously. The parent may well be trolling, but the point is actually insightful in a roundabout way. I don't think the format will take off until you can make a copy for yourself. Do you really think Netfix would be where it is today if you couldn't rip and burn DVDs? Of course not. A cracked format will be the doorway to universal accptance of the new format. Otherwise, it will just sit next to DAT on the shelf of technology that could have been big.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Key phrase: Inverse Telecine.
1080p purists, please stop whining. 1080i vs 1080p for film-source content is irrelevant.
Films are filmed at 24 frames per second. They're stored on the HD disks as 1080p24.
1080i is displayed at 60 fields per second, 30 full-frames per second.
The player performs a telecine operation on the material to convert from 1080p24 to 1080i60 and then outputs it to the TV.
There is this nifty techinque called inverse telecine that lets your 1080p-capable TV reconstruct the progressive frames from the interlaced output of the player. Ignoring additional image processing happening inside the TV, it will be displayed as bit-identical to the stored content on the disk, as 24 progressive frames per second, 1920x1080. Please set your TV to "film" mode and get over it.
The only place 1080p is going to matter is for video-source material with 30 or 60 progressive frames per second, like sports, live events, and pr0n. There isn't going to be a lot of that released on discs, at least at first. IIRC most HD production trucks aren't even capturing in 1080p30 or 1080p60, and it certainly isn't being delivered in 1080p by ANY consumer solution at the moment.
So please, stop whining about 1080p. There's nothing being produced to watch with it yet.
This XMas, Niner Domestic and I treated ourselves to a Samsung DLP 50" 720p rear-projection TV.
This replaced the 27" JVC CRT we'd had for well on 13 years.
We have a JVC DVD player that will output 480p (aka "progressive scan") and we updated our digital cable box to the HD-capable + built in DVR box provided by the cable company (Cogeco) with an upgrade to HD service.
And for grins, I picked up a calibration DVD (Digital Video Essentials) to set the screen settings on the TV. I wasn't able to get them reference-perfect, but got pretty close.
The old CRT TV had a really good tube for its size, so the primary benefits would be the bigger screen size, the increased resolution on DVDs (480p vs 480i) and the occasional HD broadcast (720p vs 480i).
We're running component inputs switched through the sound system, but I hooked up the SVideo cables in parallel for debugging and comparison purposes.
My take on it is this:
1) DVDs are much nicer in 480p full widescreen than in 480i over SVideo. An SVideo signal blown up that big starts to show pixelization and other scaling artifacts. 480p adds enough extra information to eliminate most artifacts and lets you concentrate on the movie. Superbit transfers that increase picture bitrate at the expense of extra fluff are the best.
2) Standard TV depends a lot on the quality of the source material. Stuff filmed with a 480i NTSC camera is a little blocky, and sometimes (like on animated shows like the Simpsons) you can see visible ringing. It's not horrible, but it is there.
3) HD TV also depends a lot on the source material, and a LOT of "HD" is really upconverted NTSC stuff; most network TV in particular. Quality is a little bit better than standard TV (I assume the networks have better upconverters than I do) but you can still tell that you're looking at an upconverted NTSC signal. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure that "HD" movies, as shown on "Movie Network HD" are 480p DVD signals upconverted.
4) But real HD, shot with a real HD signal, is INCREDIBLE. Like, WOW, is that ever pretty. Amazingly, PBS-HD usually has the best/most real HD content, with the sports networks coming in second. Watching the Super Bowl in HD was just amazing, and to my mind, justified the purchase.
Summing up, on my system, I rate standard TV as "acceptable" (the increased picture size is slightly offset by reduced quality, with the size increase winning out by a noze) DVD is "good" to "very good" depending on the bitrate of the transfer (the big win is getting a good quality picture all the way out to the borders of the screen) and real HD signals are "outstanding".
Now, assume that somebody dropped a free HD-DVD player on me. Would I go out and re-purchase all my current flicks in HD?
I suspect not - there's a real step up in quality on a real HD signal when compared to a 480p signal; it's totally there. But that's not enough for me to go out and re-spend all that money. But I *would* get all my new purchases in HD, for sure.
How about early adopting? No bloody way - not until the industry sorts out which format is the standard, and until DRM is eliminated. The pain of choosing the wrong standard and having to deal with brain-dead DRM greatly exceeds the happiness of getting real HD content.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I didn't think the Westinghouse was one of them though. I thought it only accepted 1080i input (same as a Sony SXRD), despite having 1920x1080 resolution.
Note that although the HP accepts 1080p, it isn't true progressive display. There is no such thing as a true 1080p DLP, as 1080-res DLPs use wobleration and thus are inherently interlaced.
Sharp has sold a couple 1080p-inputting, 1080-res, true 1080p output flat panels for a while now, long before the woblerating DLPs came out. These are available affordably up to 45" ($3K), and up to 65" if you can sport $20K for one.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
No, thanks, I'll wait for Blu-Ray. After all, Sony has such a great track record with media formats: Beta, MD, MemoryStick, SACD, UMD.
;)
I just can't wait to lay my hands on this blu-ray goodness, there's just no chance that HD-DVD might win!
Robert
PS
PPS For me, both formats look like crap from the consumer's point of view... I'll just stick to PAL upconverted to 720p, thankyouverymuch.
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Yeah, Joss Wheadon just couldn't keep those spaceships in focus. The guys floating around in space filming it must have had too much to think about besides camera focus. :)
I am just tired of everyone saying Serenity had bad cinematography. Joss intentionally did zoom focus shots and motion blur shots to make it look like there was a camera guy right there filming the action. But of course since all the action is usually done against a green screen, or no screen at all, these affects were purposefully added later just like the space ships that were zoom focused on. It was a creative decision, and while it might not have been the best one, it has nothing to do with crappy cinematography. In fact after watching the making of on the dvd, I realized he went to great effort to make those effects happen.
Making everything look crisp and clear is easy today. He wanted the old spaghetti western camera shots for his space western movie. Show some respect for his genius even if you are too ignorant to appreciate it.