First Blu-ray Disc Reviews Posted Online

An anonymous reader writes "With the first Blu-ray player and discs officially making their market debuts tomorrow, High-Def DVD Digest has posted the first reviews of three of the first Blu-ray discs -- The Fifth Element, 50 First Dates, and xXx. So what's the verdict? So far, in terms of video quality, the results seem to be mixed: standard DVD fave 'Fifth Element' underwhelmed ('just not the best HD I've seen'); likewise, 'xXx,' was a disappointment ('up close just looks like a messed-up bunch of dots'). Somewhat surprisingly, it's '50 First Dates' that ranked highest of the three in video quality ('holds its own with the best high-definition transfers out there')."

Comments

Sums it up perfectly...

[MarkByers]

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

Re:Sums it up perfectly...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Let me know when I can watch The Matrix Trilogy or Lord of the Rings in glorious HD. I think I'll pass on 50 First Dates and something called xXx.

Re:Sums it up perfectly...

[Traiklin]

It would be nice if we could watch those trilogys on one blu-ray disc aswell.

Re:Sums it up perfectly...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever mooded this flamebait obviously didn't catch the layered humor embedded in the comment! I thought it was funny.

and this is going to catch on how?

[yagu]

So exactly how are HD videos (blu-ray, or HD) going to capture the hearts and imaginations of the buying public with this kind of debut? Ostensibly (you would think) the best and brightest would be selected for their ability to shine and put the best face on an already murky new format battle.

It's an interesting task, convincing Mom and Dad, friends, etc., this is the latest and greatest thing... "no, no, just wait, you'll SEE the difference in the next scene... just let me pause it on this one frame, THERE!... see how clear the pattern is on Drew Barrymore's shirt!"

I've seen HD from comcast. I've seen HD demo'ed in Circuit City (when they FINALLY got some source). My experience and subjective opinion is that what is being delivered is being delivered with unacceptable compromise, whether it be to rush to market, or just shoddy quality, it doesn't matter. I've seen compression artifacts, I've seen jittery playback. I'm not "getting" it.

This kind of rollout will underwhelm the public, especially at the rollout prices. The only thing keeping this from dying on the vine is the digital mandate to convert to digital, and the tide of HDTVs only requiring customers to buy in.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[PrescriptionWarning]

I suppose their high data retention (and hopefully data rate) for computers seems to be the only good thing going for them... too bad they haven't released those yet

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Winterblink]

Partly it's rushed, yes. But there's also the fact that HD has been so hyped, especially the next generation of media players, that nothing will really blow away viewers short of being able to reach into the screen and feel Drew Barrymore up.

And even then, I don't think that would be worth the outlay of cash for the hardware.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[toleraen]

Honestly curious: For the artifacts and jittering, did you see that while watching HD on Comcast? Because they compress the hell out of everything, and in a given hour of watching TV the image will artifact and stall probably 3 or 4 times at least. Wouldn't surprise me to hear it from a demo setup at a store either, just wondering.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Dominatus]

The problems are almost always in the source material.

Hell, TNTHD upconvertes and stretches (!) normal SD content for most of the day and calls it "HD".

I've noticed that the most important part of HDTV is the source, and this is evident just through simple channel surfing. Shows that I assume can afford better cameras because they need less of them, and less mobile ones, such as Jay Leno/David Letterman, SNL, etc, have absolutely amazing quality. Watching it on a 1080p 50 inch Sony SXRD is phenomenal, with no artifacts, or lack of detail. The colors, contrast, and image quality is so good that it appears your looking through a window.

Anyone who has seen this TV displaying true HD content at my apartment is immediately excited. And almost everyone says "oh oh! put in a DVD so we can see how that looks", unaware that DVDs are of a much lower resolution.

So I put one in, usually something fun like The Matrix or what have you, with a warning that it's going to look much worse then what they just saw. I have a pretty good upconverting DVD playing that puts out 1080i/60 over HDMI. Looks better than a normal DVD player but considerably worse than the HD content. Everyone so far has been disappointed with DVD quality (except my mom, but she's ...well...a mom).

Point is, there *IS* a difference, a huge difference, and those of us with good TVs are begging for a way to watch our movies in the same detail we watch our TV...other than HBOHD.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[TheRealFixer]

I really wish TNT wouldn't do that. It's not so much the upconversion, as if upconversion is done right, it can be almost watchable. My problem is with their stretching technique to fit 16:9. They do some kind of weird "partial" stretch process, where the center of the picture is left almost normal aspect, but as you approach the edges of the picture, it starts to stretch out more and more. The result, at first glance looks pretty good, as long as your attention is drawn to the center of the frame. But when something covers both the center frame, and reaches out to the edges, it gets REALLY distorted and doesn't look good at all. And it presents a very disorienting fish-eye lens effect when the camera pans over static content.

HBO-HD looks fantastic, however. I've been marveling over Batman Begins lately. The picture quality for that rivals DiscoveryHD.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[baadger]

"I've noticed that the most important part of HDTV is the source"

This goes for all video. Period. If you visit a digital video enthusiast forum like Doom9 you'll see that statement over and over and over in threads. As the first post said, move along nothing to see here.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[bsartist]

In Soviet Russian HD, Drew Barrimorski reaches out of the screen and feels you up.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Red Flayer]

Spot on.

This furor over current sample quality is similar to that of those who decried CDs because crappy masters dubbed onto CD still sounded like shit.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russian HD, Drew Barrimorski reaches out of the screen and feels you up.

Where do I get a Soviet Russian HD player?

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[TheRealFixer]

As I recall, weren't there multiple "standards" for audio CDs way back when? I seem to remember seeing CDs that were either tagged DDD, DAD, ADD, or AAD - depending on how "digital" the disc really was. I believe DDD meant it was digitally recorded, digitially mixed and digitially transfered, which was the highest quality you could get. That was popular on classical music CDs. But most popular music CDs were of the much lower AAD quality, because they were just reusing the original analog masters.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[IAmTheDave]

And even then, I don't think that would be worth the outlay of cash for the hardware.

It depends on if it's just Drew's, or if this new disc technology is reach-out-and-touch-some-boobs delicious for all movies.

Although, even JUST Drew... ;)

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[AC5398]

If you really want to see impressive HDTV, you need to watch the free, over-the-air stations. OTA has the best video signal. Rogers Cable's HDTV came a distant second to OTA.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[opti6600]

I can tell you the only way to go for an upconverting DVD player is the OPPO with the Faroudja DCDi chipset. We use one with a 32" BRAVIA WXGA panel at our college apartment, thing's unbelievable, even with source like the Office Space or Sideways DVDs. With Superbit the results are very nice - beats out even Pioneer units I've seen.

The downside? The OPPO only puts out the upconverted video on DVI - and I believe the SXRD, like other Sony sets, has the shortsighted wonder of only one HDMI input. So you'll be down $200 for the player and another $400 for an all-digital HDMI switch.

Enjoy!

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[QuantumPion]

Hell, TNTHD upconvertes and stretches (!) normal SD content for most of the day and calls it "HD".

They somehow manage to mess up the audio on HD shows as well. I've noticed several shows, like Law & Order, have the audio pitch reduced significantly, so everyone's voice sounds deeper. It is very unnatural and distracting.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing will really blow away viewers short of being able to reach into the screen and feel Drew Barrymore up.

Drew Barrymore? pshaw!

I won't switch to HD untill I can interactively spill a bowl of hot grits over a petrified Natalie Portman.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[angle_slam]

Those aren't exactly "standards". It was just a notation system used by record companies to ostensibly indicate quality. It was long ago abandoned as not being informative at all.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[marmoset]

Yeah -- Discovery HD, INHD 1/2, and HBOHD all look fantastic. Surprisingly, even the "little guys" get things right sometimes: one of the consistently *great* looking shows over the past season was Supernatural, a trifle that aired on, of all networks, the WB. They deliberately played up the film grain and did some really distinctive color processing (really punched up the browns and blues) to give everything a really textured but somehow eerie look.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[deathy_epl ccs]

The A/D thing on CDs referred not to a standard, but to the quality. It referred to whether or not it was Analog or Digital.

The first letter referred to the original recording. The second letter referred to the mastering. The third letter referred to the playback.

So, the last letter was always a D. DDD was digital all the way, and so on. DAD, while being technically possible, is something you probably never saw. What a deadbeat. ;-)

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Steepe]

Actually that goes for everything audio and video. If you screw it up from the source then nothing is working as it should. if the source is good, then it travels through the series much better.

I spend more money at the source and still have my old onkio t500 receiver. its a decent receiver, but everything around it is better quality, so everything running through it approaches excellent. :)

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Dominatus]

the Sony SXRD has 2 HDMIs

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[hackstraw]

As I recall, weren't there multiple "standards" for audio CDs way back when? I seem to remember seeing CDs that were either tagged DDD, DAD, ADD, or AAD - depending on how "digital" the disc really was. I believe DDD meant it was digitally recorded, digitially mixed and digitially transfered, which was the highest quality you could get. That was popular on classical music CDs. But most popular music CDs were of the much lower AAD quality, because they were just reusing the original analog masters.

Wrong.

Just because a disk is DDD does not mean its good. Just because a disk is AAD does not mean its bad.

Some of my best sounding disks are AAD. Today, most all disks are DDD, but they still can sound like shit. Many DDD disks from around 1995 to 1999 sound horrible, this is mostly due to the "lets compress the hell out of this to make it sound LOUDER!". Thankfully, audio engineers learned from the mistakes of the era. Take a look at this URL:

    http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicdeath.ht m

Also, there were not different "standards". Before the DRM days, CDs were all "Red Book" standard.

Keep in mind that music is analog. Digital encoding of analog material is limited by the ADC (analog to digital converter) and to a lesser extent the DAC (digital to analog converter). There are a number of issues with digital recordings. The biggest issue is the harsh sound that digital encoding frequently brings. Today, most mixing in the digital domain is done at much greater than "CD quality". The best thing going for them are that digital sources can be transfered losslessly. You do not get the loss with each analog generation like you used to. But a lossless copy of junk still sounds exactly like the original junk.

The lossless copying of media has scared the media cartels for years. That is why we have DRM and other fun stuff like SCMS.

Yes. I'm an audiophile.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[CODiNE]

Oh I'm sure at least one guy would pay for that.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[gstoddart]

nothing will really blow away viewers short of being able to reach into the screen and feel Drew Barrymore up.

And even then, I don't think that would be worth the outlay of cash for the hardware.

You give me hardware which allows me to feel up the ladies on screen, and I'd be willing to pay a lot of money for that.

Heck, I bet the porn industry would be all over that; and we all know how the porn industry are such a great indicator of the likely success/failure of new technology.

I mean, grope-o-vision is the holy grail, isn't it?

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Asphalt]

Porn. Standards follow porn. VHS was built on porn. The consumer Internet was built on porn. DVD's were built on porn. Webcams were built on porn. The only reason we REALLY need broadband is for porn. "50 First Dates" and Vin Diesel are irrelavant. Until you can see boobies in crystal clear definition that makes you feel like you can actually reach out and squeeze them, the market for Blue-Ray will tepid at best. Nobody needs to see Drew Barrymore THAT clearly. Jenna Jamison on the other hand .....

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Fozzyuw]

What no Terminator 2: Super Championship Turbo Edition?

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Firehed]

I'm sure it'll go down better than those smellovision demos they were trying out a while back.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Partly it's rushed, yes. But there's also the fact that HD has been so hyped, especially the next generation of media players, that nothing will really blow away viewers short of being able to reach into the screen and feel Drew Barrymore up.

And we wonder why more girls don't come into this field...

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Keep in mind that music is analog"

What do you THINK that means?

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[hunterx11]

Music is digital...

...at the Planck length.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest issue is the harsh sound that digital encoding frequently brings.

It is of course possible to overly compress or otherwise mishandle digital recordings. But an interesting thing is that the oft sited opposite "warm and musical" analogue sound some people fx attributes to LP over CD actually survives copying onto CD from LP playback... People may _like_ the sound, but it is an artefact, that also CD digital can convey when given it as source.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if it were Natalie Portman?

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Lord Apathy]

I rushed out and bought a HD reciever some 3 years ago. Paid 800 bucks for it. Got home plugged it and had to look in the mirror to see if sucker was tattooed across my forehead. Yeah, HD movies do look clearer, but compaired to DVD, I don't think its worth it. I managed to sync up a DVD and a HD movie that was playing on at the time. Yeah, you could see a difference but you had to be looking for it.

Now between HD and regular TV if the source is recorded in HD there is a difference and you can notice it.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[onkelonkel]

In Soviet Russia HD Player gets you!

sorry...

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[wiredlogic]

The system is hardly abandoned. While it is prettly useless for heavily ProTools'ed contemporary pop with no dynamic range. The DDD, ADD, AAD designations are frequently used in new digital and remastered analog recordings of classical music. It gives you some sort of idea of what you're getting. Of course there is always the mystery of what they "fixed" in the ADD discs.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have been a big fan of Twister.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[RancidPeanutOil]

It's so weird - I went to the Sony style store, at south coast in the oc yesterday, and they had the blu-ray demo playing on a rear-projection sxrd (heard those chips are good) - and I'll tell ya, someone needs to let them know that not only do they need a good source, but man, they need to calibrate their displays. The fifth element was NOTHING but orange and blue. I know guys who work in those kind of stores sometimes think they need to push all the settings up to eleven, but if they'd just subdue their colors a bit more, they'd have people bringing wheelbarrows in to buy their stupid new technology. Granted, a coupla losers were sitting there talking about getting the movie whenever it comes out (it played near ultraviolet - I think they thought it was the same), but jeez... A good HD display makes you stop, and say, "you know, maybe I DO need to buy 'Charlei's Angels'... I walked over to the Bang & Olufson, the only place they even try to make their displays look good. If calibrated right, hdtv gives you that "pop" of color. Any idiot can see it immediately. Wouldn't they want to showcase that in their little boutique? Their flagship of consumerism, so to speak? Instead of crap display settings showing discovery "hd" in an endless, bright-green jumbled loop?

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[glitch23]

This is the slashdot crowd. We'd give our right leg to feel any woman up.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[CODiNE]

You give me hardware which allows me to feel up the ladies on screen, and I'd be willing to pay a lot of money for that.

It sounds great at first... until you start grabbing around and the scene changes, taking your arms with it.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Mark Maughan]

Are you sure it isn't your cable box or TV settings? TNTHD looks fine at my house on my 50" Panasonic. Most shows seem to be at 720 with bars on the sides.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Dominatus]

The RP Sony SXRDs have a couple viewing modes. One is "Vivid" which is the default config. This resembles what most Plasmas look like in stores. Over saturated, but good for the type of person who buys a Bose system.

One of these modes is also "Pro" which is much better.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Word is the feature will be available on the HD version of E.T.

Re:and this is going to catch on how?

[poizenisXkandee]

Definitely. See I don't understand the point of everything all HD and crap. Like yeah it's cool to see things more clearly...but why?

It's like the point of movies. I'm not much of a movie person, so really movies are a way for some person to write some script like every single other one out there and get someone to make it into a stupid movie with overpaid actors that can't act and aren't even that great looking so all those people can make money and normal people like us can spend our like 9 bucks and 2 hours watching it.

I don't care about the pattern on Drew Barrymore's shirt (no offense) and I don't want to see what brand of jeans whoever is wearing on tv. I want to go out with my friends and spend time with my family. And all this HD crap makes all the actors and famous people all insecure. Because now we can see their wrinkles or whatever. And they can get all complainy and get plastic surgery. Or not. And the public can go criticize them for that, on top of their acting.

$499 PS3 Here We Come

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god for the death of the image constraint token!

$499 PS3, component cables, 1080p set, BluRay movies...yeah baby!

xxx

[nFriedly]

> http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/xxx.html

you gotta wonder how many porn filters will block that third link...

Re:xxx

[p2sam]

Mine got blocked. :(

Re:xxx

[stratjakt]

Ever go looking for some porn on a torrent site, and get nothing but pages and pages of different versions/cams/releases of that crap movie and its sequels?

Re:xxx

[mpathetiq]

I was going to say that I love being in control of the filter. But then I realized it was going to a description of xXx. Now I'm just pissed off. Thanks, nFriedly!

Re:xxx

[adamlazz]

Looking at this article at school... The 'Net Nanny' picked it up and added it to the extensive DB of the blocked pages I have been to. Especiall from the 'Games' section of /. . :|

Re:xxx

[schmiddy]

"Triple X" first came out in 2002. Coincidentally, Kazaa was becoming extremely popular at the time for swapping movies.

My friends and I came up with a theory as to why they named the movie "XXX" -- so that users searching for it on Kazaa would come up with nothing but porn. Note: since there's no way in hell I would even waste downstream on that movie, I haven't seen it, so maybe they came up with some flimsy background for the naming. *Shrug*

How many of these were shot on digital?

[Orrin Bloquy]

Seriously, 5th Element was shot on film, and the other two I don't know about, but aren't there any well-known digital productions which would transfer cleanly? How pristine are the masters for 5th Element by now?

And to agree with the earlier poster: Whoever's greenlighting chick films like "50 first dates" and "Phantom of the Opera" for testdriving a new medium needs a new job, preferably selling hot dogs on a street corner, to get an idea of what a market actually asks for.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[Winterblink]

That's an excellent point, something which the reviewer completely ignores. Something like Star Wars Ep 3 would showcase the capabilities of both HD-DVD and Blu-ray nicely, at least give something with a high enough quality of transfer to really compare the formats.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[Rob T Firefly]

No joke. You'd think they'd dig up some killer app for this stuff, but instead we get a substandard action movie, a junky Drew Barrymore chick flick, and cult French scifi flick (which I personally love, but which isn't exactly a must-upgrade title for Joe Sixpack.) Why wouldn't they use some Criterion-level classic that's available on high-quality masters, and that everyone wants? Doesn't anyone else remember how many VCRs were sold by "E.T." in the 1980s?

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[tourvil]

And to agree with the earlier poster: Whoever's greenlighting chick films like "50 first dates" and "Phantom of the Opera" for testdriving a new medium needs a new job, preferably selling hot dogs on a street corner, to get an idea of what a market actually asks for.

A relevant Penny Arcade comic to answer your question:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/19

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[WillAffleckUW]

Whoever's greenlighting chick films like "50 first dates" and "Phantom of the Opera" for testdriving a new medium needs a new job, preferably selling hot dogs on a street corner, to get an idea of what a market actually asks for.

Well, I actually watched Phantom of the Opera at the movies on the big screen, and I think that they're aiming for the Opera and Cinema buffs with that one - a lot of early HDTV adopters are into opera for some reason, have the sound systems to appreciate it, and might want to get it in a higher resolution format.

It won a number of awards for cinematography, with good reason.

Plus, the blood, burns, and mask are just plain cool.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[DilbertLand]

Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't E.T. held from release on VHS until it's 15th or so anniversary in 1996? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/6304143184/103-85 28752-9792644?v=glance&n=404272 In that case, it probably didn't sell too many VHS players...

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[Rob T Firefly]

It was first released on VHS in the late 80s sometime, 87 or 88 I believe, and stores couldn't hope to keep them on shelves for quite a while. I remember pretty much everyone getting or giving a copy as a gift that holiday season. It was an odd tape, black with a green flap, and it was the closest thing to a killer app that VHS had, at least in my area.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[Golias]

a lot of early HDTV adopters are into opera for some reason, have the sound systems to appreciate it, and might want to get it in a higher resolution format

What does HDTV appealing to opera lovers have to do with the Blu-Ray release of a shitty Andrew Lloyd Weber musical?

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't they use some Criterion-level classic

Yeah, no substandard action movies, chick flicks, or cult French scifi flicks there.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[el_gordo101]

They probably picked "50 First Dates" to show off the lush scenery in HD (the film was shot in Hawaii). There were many tropical vistas, rain forests, ocean views, etc. used as backdrops in the film.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[WillAffleckUW]

What does HDTV appealing to opera lovers have to do with the Blu-Ray release of a shitty Andrew Lloyd Weber musical?

I'm basing this on Wall Street Journal articles on: HDTV, the movie you seem to despise, and the fact that a large number of the fans of said movie are: a. women and/or b. opera fans.

Noone said you had to like the movie. You asked why it was chosen. And I responded with the obvious marketing reasons why it was chosen.

Personally, I would have chosen the Ring Cycle myself, but I'm not involved in this.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[91degrees]

I think Fifth Element was a good choice. I'd imagine there's a decent overlap between the people who like cult movies, and the early adopters. But a key point with Fifth Element is simply that it has some scenes that are absolutely fantastic. All those cityscapes shots almost justify it alone.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[bubkus_jones]

Jennifer Ellison and Emmy Rossum in HiDef. Hmmmmmm...............

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[Don_dumb]

As no one else seems to have pointed out the obvious answer, I will - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114709/ (Check out the first entry in the trivia section).
Although I was under the impression that the film used in movies is still of a far higher quality than 1080i (a trip to a cinema should confirm that). So the key is how well the digital recording (is it called 'mastering') is done.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clue: "The Phantom of the Opera" is a Broadway musical, not an opera.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[garver]

Geeks love that "cult French scifi flick". Geeks buy new toys. Profit.

I can't explain the chick flick and substandard action movie. Rich chicks and rich dicks?

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[twistedsymphony]

I think 5th element was a good choice too but I don't understand why it woulnd't look good on Blue-Ray... I have the Special Edition of the DVD release and it was supposedly redone from HD quality masters.. it's easily one of my best looking DVDs and I would have pegged it for one of the best looking HD releases..

Though I think Sony would have done well to have picked some action films/cult classics that were shot in digital HD from the start. No one cares about the quality of the video in a drama or comedy. It makes a big differences in a thriller or action flick. But thrillers and action flicks have such a short lifespan... xXx and Fifth Element were poor choices. Fight Club would have been an excellent choice. It's got a cult following and could really benefit from being in HD, the original masters are of fantastic quality as well.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[Overly Critical Guy]

They're obviously testing the waters here because they know only early adopters will have $1,000 Blu-Ray players first, and why waste the marketing and distribution costs on big-name franchises when not as many people will be able to purchase it? When the Playstation 3, expect the popular stuff to follow.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[Anonymous Coward]

Phantom of the Opera does NOT appeal to Opera fans.

Off-key singing with no vocal support, shoddy, cheap orchestral arrangements, and actors that in no way actually represent or carry the characters in which they are futilely attempting to play all shot over the worst visual effects money can buy will NEVER appeal to anyone who has even the most basic following of opera in their backgrounds.

It does appeal to dumb women however, so the market here must purely be them.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[ClosedSource]

"Although I think Sony would have done well to have picked some action films/cult classics that were shot in digital HD from the start."

So there's Star Wars II and III that were shot in digital HD. I suppose there might be a few others. If being shot in digital HD is a requirement for a movie to be great on HD DVDs then we are going to be waiting a long, long time before upgrading makes sense.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[moochfish]

And I was expecting the reviewer to be a one-sided promotionfest for blu-ray. My was I wrong! All three of his reviews sound pretty much like this:

"The movie isn't that great, but I guess it's not terrible. The sound isn't bad. The video isn't terrible either."

Ignoring the crappy titles, what strikes me is how little enthusiasm he has for the video and audio quality. As a consumer, I have a hard time understanding why I want blu-ray over, say... HD DVD, which he mentions has very similar quality numerous times in all three reviews.

1. Crappy launch titles
2. Only marginally better quality product
3. Huge financial markup

Aside from the obvious PS3 jokes, this really doesn't excite me worth a damn about Blu-ray. In fact, these three reviews pretty much killed my interest in the technology.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[Golias]

I'm basing this on Wall Street Journal articles on: HDTV, the movie you seem to despise, and the fact that a large number of the fans of said movie are: a. women and/or b. opera fans.

Noone said you had to like the movie. You asked why it was chosen. And I responded with the obvious marketing reasons why it was chosen.

1. I didn't ask why it was chosen.

2. You still haven't said what that movie has to do with opera. It sure the hell is not a "fact" that opera lovers and "Phantom of the Opera" lovers are groups which have much, if any, overlap. In fact, they are probably damn near mutually exclusive.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[mario64]

You are talking about 'official' release, but the pirate copies were everywhere not long after the cinema release.
I knew lots of kids at school that wanted a player just to watch the pirate copy (even though it was poor quality).

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[mario64]

We will have to wait, while Lucas spends a few years tinkering before he releases HD versions of Star Wars. By the time he is ready to release, we will know which format has has won the war and that will be the one he uses.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[WillAffleckUW]

Phantom of the Opera does NOT appeal to Opera fans.

I must disagree. I know of three opera fans, two from Germany and one from Seattle, who all liked the Phantom of the Opera.

In marketing magazines for the film community, opera and classical music fans were identified as the most likely purchasers of Phantom of the Opera.

Just because you don't like it, but like opera, doesn't mean that other people who like opera also dislike the movie Phantom of the Opera.

Re:How many of these were shot on digital?

[GWBasic]

... Because they're better off working the bugs out of the system on nitche and popcorn movies. Don't you hate it when you get a classic on DVD and it's a poor transfer from the early 90s? (Both of my Stanley Kubrick DVDs had unnaceptable transfer errors. The first 2001 DVD wasn't anamorphic, and the first Clockwork Orange DVD was in mono, even though the soundtrack was composed in quad.)

Shoot me

[vga_init]

I skimmed the summary the first time, and when I read "xXx", I thought to myself, "hi-def porn." I mean, that must be one incentive to go HD that will actually bring in customers. Fifth Element? Please.

Re:Shoot me

[Anonymous Coward]

Fifth Element, hello? How could you miss Milla's nipples?

Re:Shoot me

[vga_init]

It's going to take more than mere nipples to titillate your average geek, mister; we have the internet.

Re:Shoot me

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually just a website a couple days ago that claimed to have the first HD porn videos.

Uh...

[Quiet_Desperation]

close just looks like a messed-up bunch of dots

Well... that's sort of what it is, yes? :-\

Interesting Choices for First Releases

[IceDiver]

I didn't see these in the theatre, I didn't rent them when they came out on DVD, and I CERTAINLY don't want them in my permanent collection.

What makes Hollywood think I'm going to want them now, just because they are high def?

Re:Interesting Choices for First Releases

[soft_guy]

The executives of the major entertainment conglomerates sit around a large table, cigars in hand...

Disney Rep: How can we get "Ice Diver" to see 50 First Dates?

Sony Pictures Rep: I have an idea! We'll invent a new high definition DVD format and release only 50 First Dates.

Disney Rep: Great idea! If that won't get him to see it, nothing will!
 

Re:Interesting Choices for First Releases

[N1AK]

Oh come on I bought it on DVD and then bought the special edition DVD and when finally I go HD I'll get a HD version. But wtf does that matter? Ones persons preference does not a business plan make.... and people modded parent informative :-|

Re:Interesting Choices for First Releases

[Anonymous Coward]

one word: tits

Warning: reviewer does not understand technology

[Anonymous Coward]

From the 50 dates review:

Happily, this transfer proves that the Blu-ray format can deliver a picture as good as anything I've seen yet on HD DVD.

This is a nonsensical statement. There is nothing to prove. They both support the exact same compression formats (MPEG-2, VC-1 and the best of them all: H.264/AVC). The maximum bitrates are high enough to not cause noticeable artifacts in either format, when AVC is used with a good encoder. Both formats support storing the movies in 1080p24 and pull-downed to 1080i60 at runtime. Therefore, there can not be any quality difference inherent to the formats, only errors caused by external factors such as scratched discs. Blu-ray comes ahead in this case, because it has stupendously good hard coating technology by TDK.

lame movies

[justkarl]

Somewhat surprisingly, it's '50 First Dates' that ranked highest of the three in video quality

However, the quality of the film itself is still questionable. Likewise for XXX. Fifth Element is the only film in that list that I would even watch voluntarily. Why would they release 2 of the worst movies ever made for a new format release?

Re:lame movies

[imrec]

When asked to comment, Adam Sandler's response was recorded as...

"FACKING, SHIT!!"

Re:lame movies

[Cadallin]

Because GOOD movies are so old, that DVD has more than enough bitrate to hold all of the data that still remains on the mistreated film reels. I'm guess they're probably trying to find stuff in good enough condition to actually get something like HD from the transfer. Think about it. Star Wars Episode IV, is there even 480 lines of resolution left? How about Casablanca? Citizen Kane? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

Re:lame movies

[Minced]

I thought it was obvious, they didn't sell on DVD so perhaps those desperate bleeding edge tech people would be so desperate for some HD goodness that they would willing suffer through those horrible movies just to say, "I watched an HD movie and you didn't." Hell, the article proved my point.

Re:lame movies

[NoMaster]

... DVD has more than enough bitrate to hold all of the data that still remains on the mistreated film reels.

So you don't understand how compression works in the real world. That's fine, but it's no reason to go spreading misinformation.

All that noise, jitter, grain, flecks, scratches, etc means that old sources compress less well than nice clean modern film stock & TV source. MPEG-2/4 compression works to a large degree by interpreting and encoding interframe differences - the transient noise in old/poor/noisy film stock tends to vary a lot between frames, so needs higher bitrates, not lower, to approach the quality of the original source. Put simply, the worse the source, the higher the bitrate you need to keep what quality there is in the original.

Then again, older movies are often shorter, so some of their need for higher bitrates on DVD is offset right there...

Re:lame movies

[dank zappingly]

I don't know what version of Star Wars you're currently watching, but I think the new remastered dvd's are some of the best looking ones I own. I seem to remember something about them cleaning it frame by frame by hand or something. Lucas has some of the finest equipment in the business, and I am certain that when Star Wars comes out in Blu Ray it will look as good as it did in the theater 20 some odd years ago. The only problem I see Star Wars running into is that Episode I Jar Jar is going to look even more polygonal in HD. It would really bother me if I was ever planning to subject myself to that movie again. But Lucas might just re render him or something. Anyway this idea that HD is going to show all the imperfections in the original film is probably not an issue for most films. I have a copy of Kurosawa's Ran where they show what the film looks like before and after they cleaned it up, and after. Displays are not the only technology progressing, and the encoding process is important as well. Sure there will be crummy transfers, but chances are that important movies will get the royal treatment and look amazing.

I have to admit, I was tempted

[WillAffleckUW]

when I found out Kate Beckinsale's latest, that Underworld sequel, was in Blu-Ray, but I don't have an HDTV, and am waiting a few years, so I'll just hold out until the prices drop below $100.

Which, as any student of marketing and sales will tell you, they will.

I have to say, though, I'm severely underimpressed by the Blu-Ray marketing campaign.

Re:I have to admit, I was tempted

[Winterblink]

The same can be said for HD-DVD's as well. Both formats have been launched with a whimper, not a shout. Not quite the revolution in format that they promised if they're not going to make a big deal out of its release. To be honest, both (esp. Blu-Ray) seem rushed to market in order to try to beat the other. I'm not sure that's going to lead to a quality experience for consumers for a while.

Re:I have to admit, I was tempted

[WillAffleckUW]

I agree, both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are severely underwhelming, for some reason.

This is quite surprising to me - I was one of the first people to buy an Apple II+, bought one of the first RCA VCR models (all my friends said buy Beta, but I was working shift ...)

It's just that, as my son showed me this past week, the only thing that really seems to matter is Net speed. To explain, he had an iMac that I gave him when he was 7 - he's now 15 - and we had crammed RAM in but we finally couldn't upgrade any more, and things weren't working. So, we went and bought him a Mac mini.

First thing he said, after a friend helped him set up Firefox and Adblock and NoScript was ... "It's not any faster!".

I said, look all the images resolve faster, the graphics on your new flatscreen Samsung panel are at higher res, but in the end, we're still using the same speed of cable modem, and the only thing that would change that would be if we went to Gigapop Internet.

Same thing with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD - just no need for them. Most people don't have 1080p HDTVs that are 50 inches or bigger. Most games won't need them. None of the fun ones that he wants to play will.

So, the revolution in data storage (Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) dies with a whimper, because there's nothing behind the Mask.

Re:I have to admit, I was tempted

[Winterblink]

I have a 61" Samsung DLP that does 1080p, though I do not have a HD-DVD or Blu-ray player. I have a nice Panasonic upscaling player that outputs 1080i, and the TV does an awesome job at deinterlacing the signal for its native resolution (1080p). I have to say, the new Star Wars trilogy DVDs practically leap off the screen. They look phenominal on my set, just like they look phenominal on most other TVs. The transfer is just great.

Do I NEED to see something even higher resolution? Probably not. There's almost no need, considering how nice the current generation looks. Movies like Serenity and Batman Begins also look amazing, even with a large amount of dark colors. DVD right now is at a really good place in terms of advances in compression.

I'm sure there's a noticable difference between DVD and the new high def formats, but as you say, the average consumer either won't need it or won't have the equipment to really get their money's worth. And given that cost:benefit ratio, I can't see it going too far, not for a couple of years at the earliest.

Re:I have to admit, I was tempted

[Overly Critical Guy]

I agree, both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are severely underwhelming, for some reason.

You won't be saying that when you're in line to re-buy the Star Wars trilogy, the Matrix trilogy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Blade trilogy, etc.

Re:I have to admit, I was tempted

[WillAffleckUW]

You won't be saying that when you're in line to re-buy the Star Wars trilogy, the Matrix trilogy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Blade trilogy, etc.

I don't own DVDs of those right now. Thus, it would be difficult for me to "re-buy" them.

Anyway, I can watch Blade on SciFi starting this month. It's now a TV series.

Re:I have to admit, I was tempted

[Anonymous Coward]

Why buy the Matrix Trilogy when there's only ONE good movie in that bacth.

Re:I have to admit, I was tempted

[Overly Critical Guy]

Are you the same guy who heckles comedians by snidely explaining the implausibility of the jokes?

And the first Blue-Ray DVD Disks online in..

[Dark Paladin]

3... 2... 1... - happy pirating!

OK, seriously, I know this will take some time (I don't know of any PC Blue-Ray DVD readers even available yet), and no, I don't encourage downloading of movies/music online unless you own it blah, blah, blah (that said, I have to admit my own guilt for downloading a TV show that my Tivo missed or that iTunes wasn't selling, so call me a hypocrite if you must).

I'm still wondering what the HD to Standard Def (SD) ratio is. My wife and I have decided that 2 years from now is when we'll finally change the TV set, first to hit the digital TV standard, second to finally get the infamous "big screen", and lastly that's when the current TV (which is already annoying me with it's "RCA jack only" - it was a cheap hand-me-down replacement for another broke in a move about a year ago), but 2 years from now should be about when the current machine dies.

I know two people who have an HD setup, the first is retired and still works so he has the cash, the second is a bachelor who doesn't have the wife+3 rugrats that myself and my other buddies have.

So with HDTV costs still pretty high - what's the real current ratio, or is Blue Ray and HD-DVD looking ahead to 2-3 years down the line when people are more likely to go out and buy the $400 HDTV and need shiny new media to play on it?

Re:And the first Blue-Ray DVD Disks online in..

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the current ratio of HDTVs to SDTVs is still pretty low; I remember reading a report earlier this year that stated that HDTVs were finally accounting for more than 50% of the TVs sold (and the definition of HDTV was pretty low, I believe it included EDTVs). Being that the average person will upgrade to a new TV when their current one breaks, I would expect that HDTV will not be the standard until 2010-2015. I think what is really holding back the adoption of HDTV is still the cost because the Average person is still looking for the Biggest TV they can get for under $500.

Re:And the first Blue-Ray DVD Disks online in..

[cwj123]

Too late, I recently saw a couple of releases on PirateBay that were 720p and even some in 1080i. Not sure what the source material was though....

Older Movies

[flitty]

Did it seem like the guy had a hard time finding extras? I think that this is too much too soon for the public. I know many people are aching for a Blu-ray release of 50 first dates, why not Hot Chick or Deuce Bigalo 2? "Rob Schnieder is... a carrot, derba-der-ba-der.."

Yeah, I'll buy the Brooklyn Bridge too.

[Recovering Hater]

Right after I spend around $1000.00 on 50 First Dates. Puh-Leaze!

Re:Yeah, I'll buy the Brooklyn Bridge too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats $20 per date, where do i sign up?

Re:Yeah, I'll buy the Brooklyn Bridge too.

[blibbler]

Bah, who cares about first dates? I'd pay the money for 50 third dates.

TGI: Newest movie has best clarity!

[Anonymous Coward]

After comparing two movies that are, by today's youthful standards, quite old, with a movie that was produced less than two years ago, the newest movie has the best picture quality!

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we'll have the following headline:

"X3 has better picture quality than XMen and XMen2!"

Coming Soon...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

We can expect Blu Ray releases of Istar and Gigli any day now. Actually, a quick Google shows that the real problem may be that the Sony movie catalog is almost completely dreck, Princess Bride excepted. If what Sony owns is crap, crap is what will be released first on Blu Ray.

Re:Coming Soon...

[nincehelser]

>We can expect Blu Ray releases of Istar and Gigli any day now.

That's "Ishtar"! Please have respect for the classics! ;)

Re:Coming Soon...

[rjstanford]

We can expect Blu Ray releases of Istar and Gigli any day now. Actually, a quick Google shows that the real problem may be that the Sony movie catalog is almost completely dreck, Princess Bride excepted. If what Sony owns is crap, crap is what will be released first on Blu Ray.

And judging by the crappy mastering evident on the Princess Bride DVD, I shudder to think how it would look in high definition. Although, sad to say, I'd probably buy it anyway just in case.

This post seems biased

[Aellus]

The 5th Element review that the news post referenced paints an entirely different picture than "it completely underwhelmed". The review says it was still a damn good picture, it just literally was NOT the best HD could be. That can easily be explained since the original was film, not digital. Other than that? Its still HD, which is a whole lot better than standard definition. I havent read the other two reviews yet, but it doesnt seem like Blu-Ray really flopped like this post makes it sound like it did...

Re:This post seems biased

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, standard 35mm film supports a higher resolution than "modern" digital cameras. The way I understood it was that film lacks the discrete pixels and therefore can scale much better than any rasterized source. Should we ever move to a High High Definition standard in the future, movies shot digitally aren't going to upscale as well as traditional film has from VHS to HD. Personally, I think larger film would be the way to go.

Then again, I've been pretty disappointed with image quality post VHS. We traded a pretty good medium, all things considered, with a less defined image for near-instant coasters that artifact like crazy if they even work in your player. It's ridiculous and, what with digital cable and the early reviews of HD/BR, it looks like we're in for more of the same with worse lock-in and an even higher price :/

Re:This post seems biased

[rjstanford]

This is why some studios are looking to reissue old TV shows in HD - shows like M*A*S*H (and even, ironically, Hogan's Heros IIRC) were filmed on actual film instead of on video, and will look a lot better that your average crappy "high tech" video production.

Re:This post seems biased

[Overly Critical Guy]

Didn't you know? Slashdot hates Sony and has had an agenda against both HD-DVD and Blu-ray for quite some time. The standard mantra is "consumers don't want HD" or "consumers will be confused by competing formats" (even though it's good for the free market to have competition). There's been little else on HD but negative articles.

Frankly, I can't stand watching 520 (or whatever the resolution is) blurry DVDs on my 1600px monitor. I want to actually take advantage of all the pixels I have and see crystal clear picture. My eyes hurt watching DVDs for too long, it's like seeing movies through a foggy lens.

Re:This post seems biased

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you legally blind?

Everytime I hear "Coming soon to Blu-ray"...

[denebian devil]

I can't help but hear these words in my head:

"Get it now on DVD and PSP."

And we know how well that turned out (PS What?).

What?!?!

[SimpleBinary]

They'd be better off making HD versions of movies that people actually wanna watch...

And why?

[ericdano]

And why did something so lame as XXX make it to Blu Ray? Why not something good, oh, say the first Harry Potter Movie. The Battlestar Galactica Mini-Series (not the tv series). Star Wars? T3?

Re:And why?

[ThrasherTT]

Did you really just lump T3 in there with the others?

*boggle*

Re:And why?

[rehtonAesoohC]

He said: "Why not something good, oh, say the first Harry Potter Movie. The Battlestar Galactica Mini-Series (not the tv series). Star Wars? T3?"

We heard: "Nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd. Nerd. Nerd?"

Re:And why?

[ericdano]

No no. We heard "Sell sell sell sell sell". People would buy these titles, not 50 first dates. Or Xxx crap.

Re:And why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nerd, of course, being the target audience for overly expensive new electronic kit with flashy lights and bluer lasers...

Re:And why?

[dotoole]

Odd that. I heard: guaranteed early adopter over here

Re:And why?

[Anonymous Coward]

> No no. We heard "Sell sell sell sell sell". People would buy these titles, not 50 first dates. Or Xxx crap.

Came out like

"Nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd sour loser loser nerd nerd. "

Reviewers are Idiots

[GoRK]

I find it very hard to stomach these reviewers who are trying to compare the 'picture quality' of Blu-Ray to HD-DVD when the codecs used are exactly the same. Blu-Ray offers the edge on size and maximum bitrate, but it's doubtful that the early titles are going to be taking advantage of it. Any title that did take advantage of the extra space would very logically look better (if the compressionist is not an idiot, anyway). Whether or not anyone would really notice is another debate. You could make a comparison to the acutal players ability to decode and post process the footage as well, but this would require identical MPEG2 or H.264 content to be fed through both format players -- which has not been done either.

So anyway, I guess the gauntlet is down and the proverbial "masses" will decide. Unfortunately they will probably end up doing it based on title availability, brand loyalty, price, and "picture quality" instead of technical merit. All it really means to me is that I have to wait to buy a player until: a) one camp gives in, b) someone makes a dual format player or c) companies start releasing *everything* in both formats.

Re:Reviewers are Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

So yes, the success of the players will depend on having good movies to watch on them. What is the point of having the technically best video player if the videos available to watch on it are crap quality? If Blu-Ray uses the same codecs as HD-DVD, why aren't the first Blu-Ray discs as high quality as the HD-DVD disks?

Re:Reviewers are Idiots

[stratjakt]

Unless it's from Sony and specifically a BluRay showcase disc, I'd imagine the HD-DVD and BluRay releases will be exactly the same data - after all, why encode and remaster the thing twice?

The masses though can't get over the Beta vs VHS thing.. So the non-techies out there can't grasp that this time around the only difference is the discs themselves, and the markets being split for no reason better than competition for the sake of it.

I think HDDVD vs Blu Ray is a battle that everybody will ultimately lose.

I know severeal folks with fancy new HDTV plasmas, and most don't get why they should pay a few extra bucks for component video cables, when s-video or composite looks just as good to them... Frankly, unless you're a videophile, they're right.

If I'm just passively watching or playing a game, I can't see the difference between progressive scan and interlaced..

Maybe I'm just getting to old -- but most people are as old or older. I don't see the point.

I feel the same way about XBox 360, PS3 and Wii.. They aren't a "new generation", the whole thing seems to be the industry trying to force us to upgrade to something we don't want or need. The last generation was "good enough", and once the market got saturated, they conductor of the gravy train yelled "end of the line" and they freaked out..

What were we talking about anyways?

Re:Reviewers are Idiots

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Tell that to someone that is comparing audio files encoded with WMP vs Vorbis. I think it was more of an attempt to compare the two 'packages', which could vary wildly in execution and quality.

Re:Reviewers are Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, did you read the reviews ?

There's no doubting the discs, if using the same codec, were encoded from the same source, and used the same equipment for encoding, would then look the same regardless of the disk. However, in this case they don't.

- The HD-DVD disks reviewed use VC-1. The Blueray disks use Mpeg-2. The reviewer theorises that perhaps the disks are single layer blu-ray disks - who knows, but it says _many_ times in the different reviews that the reviewers wish they could compare the _same_ film on both disks (and probably we'd see no difference)

- When talking about picture quality, especially on older films, transfer from the original source is all important. And this is on the individual studios, who back the different formats, to do well. From these early disks it appears the HD-DVD backers are doing better on this than the Blu-ray backers, but who knows if this will stay the same.

- The Blu-Ray backers seem to have got ahead of the game on sound, which is available in uncompressed PCM which the reviews universally say is better than anything from HD-DVD. So maybe the additional space is being used for something good after all.

Don't sound off about 'picture quality' assuming it's just the raw bits and bytes or codec of a particular format that make the difference. The quality of the film source, and the transfer to the disk _do_ make a difference (although whether it'll ever be great enough to encourage the masses to change is another matter).

Re:Reviewers are Idiots

[Gulthek]

I understand what you're saying about the XBox 360 and the PS3, but dissing on the Wii as not being a new generation is just lunacy sir.

What freak out are you talking about too? Video game sales still make the big bucks, at least for companies that know how to sell them.

Re:Reviewers are Idiots

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Actually I meant 'Flask encoded'. I am not really up on this stuff but the encoder is important.

Re:Reviewers are Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are missing the point. Perhaps if star wars episode 3 was the source material, than movies from either format would look identical, because star wars was filmed entirely in digital. Most movies are still filmed good ole fashioned analog.

If you start with two different reels of the same movie, certainley one can be in better shape than the other. Less dirt, less film grain, less scratches, less color bleed, less fading, etc. Now the process of converting an analog movie frame to a digital picture is not universal either. Some transfers are much better than others.

One reason criterion films look so good is because they dedicate all the dvd storage to holding bits for the movie. The other reason they look so good is because they have an excellent transfer methodology. This is what the reviewer is comparing and contrasting in addition to the techonology.

These are not player reviews, they are movie reviews!

Re:Reviewers are Idiots

[stratjakt]

What I mean is, everybody who's ever going to buy a PS2 has already has one. The 360 and PS3 aren't in my eyes a "new generation", I see a new generation as being capable of a whole new range of functionality. The NES could clearly do things that the Atari 2600 couldnt. The SNES could do things the NES couldnt. The PSX could do things the NES couldnt. The PS2/XBox can do things the PSX/Saturn gen couldnt. These are all different generations.

I can't think of anything the XBox 360 can do that the XBox couldn't, it does the exact same thing, just at a higher resolution.

VHS to DVD is a better example. There's a clear technological leap from analog to digital, as well as a leap in quality. DVD to HD-DVD, just more of the same..

I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode with tagline for the Gamestation 256... "It's slightly faster... TO THE EXTREME!!!!"

The funny part of all of this is, that many games being released for XBox and the 360 look worse on the 360, since all the texturing was done with a lower resolution in mind. King Kong and Tony Hawk Wasteland come to mind.. Run Quake 1 at crazy high resolutions and see what I mean... It looks much more natural, entirely better, at the lower resolutions it was designed for.

As for the Wii, Nintendo could easily market that funny looking controller for the gamecube, and put the broadband adapter back into production.. Though of all the new systems, this will be the one I'll probably buy this year, I'm believe in Miyamoto's Nintendo, they are after all the only video game hardware company left - actually trying to design systems that play games and not going the "jack of all trades, master of none" route that the must-dominate mindset that Sony and Microsoft have dictates.

PS3 will be as good a Blu Ray player as the PS2 was a DVD player, which is to say, half-assed at best.

Re:Reviewers are Idiots

[Overly Critical Guy]

The masses though can't get over the Beta vs VHS thing.. So the non-techies out there can't grasp that this time around the only difference is the discs themselves, and the markets being split for no reason better than competition for the sake of it.

What I don't understand are all the negative opinions about the fact there are two competing formats. This is a free market, and competition means each faction will try to undercut the other and attract customers, which is only good for customers. What, do you only want one format, one choice? I'd imagine we'd then be seeing people complain that there are no alternative HD formats to choose from.

I fully welcome a Blu-ray versus HD-DVD battle. It seems obvious to me that Blu-ray will out last HD-DVD, but it will be beneficial for all of us as both sides compete to win our purchase dollars.

Re:Reviewers are Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

-"The Fifth Element" looks fine on HBO HD. Sony is using too low a bitrate for MPEG2 on a single layer disc. Sony seems to be having issues manufacturing a dual-layer disc. All single-layer MPEG2 releases (unless the movie is really short) will be using a much lower bitrate than what you can get right now off of HD cable. Sony should just use a codec that isn't 15 years old!
-The AVS forum guys will disagree with your audio assessment. Sony is using uncompressed 16-bit audio while HD-DVD is using lossy-compressed 24-bit audio. Which would you rather look at, a lossless 8-bit GIF or a lossy 24-bit JPEG image?
Sony just seems to be on a losing streak this year. UMD, PSP, PS3, now Blu-ray.

Surprise! It's easy to render talking heads

[stratjakt]

Somewhat surprisingly, it's '50 First Dates' that ranked highest of the three in video quality

Not surprising, there's no action to speak of, not a lot of motion, etc.. Less movement means less to encode, which means less work to decode.

The Matrix was always the DVD stress-tester of choice, specifically the kung fu scene, because you would really notice the quality of the decoder during the more intense scenes, where every pixel on screen is changing with every frame.

So my question is, is this an issue with the encoding of the discs or an inherent design problem with the discs themselves, perhaps too low a bitrate, or just a cheap shit decoder in the playback device? My money is on the latter.

It would've been better if...

[larsoncc]

I think I would have liked these reviews more had they provided some screen shots, or even short "detail" movie clips of what to expect from Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD -or- regular DVD.

For all the talk, there's been precious little that we can SEE.

Re:It would've been better if...

[senatorpjt]

Doesn't the DRM prevent that?

I've bought the Fifth Element three times!

[Trigun]

First for the VHS. Then the DVD, then the Directors cut. Now the Blu-Ray version?

At least most of hollywood's current movies don't outlast the media that they're released on. Gigli Blu-ray? I don't think so.

Re:I've bought the Fifth Element three times!

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

From what I have read, there is no point to buying the Blu-Ray version. However, you should try out the Super-bit version of the Fifth Element on a good up-converting DVD player. It will hold me off for a few more years until the next-gen DVD war declares a true winner.

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[Anonymous Coward]

In one of his articles he notes that they're still only using MPEG-2, not the other, better codecs. This could easily account for the lack of quality.

Maybe film transfer to compressed HDTV won't work.

[Animats]

There may be a big problem looming for Hollywood. If you transfer 35MM film to 1080p, the film grain often shows up. Compressing all that useless film grain noise, which has no frame to frame coherence, will use up a big fraction of the data capacity. It will also mess up the motion compression, which usually results in annoying jaggies. So it's probably necessary to filter out at least some of the film grain. But if you filter out the film grain, you lose resolution.

The reviews of the new Blu-ray disks ("the picture looks too soft and flat") indicates that there's probably too much filtering.

Somewhere in LA, there are probably members of SMTPE struggling with this, trying to figure out the right tradeoffs between resolution loss and compression overload when converting existing films.

its nothing like the jump from vhs - dvd

[asv108]

The first DVD player I had was a kit from Creative, which came with this huge decoder card in order to handle playback on the computers of the age. ( 12/1997)

In a period of 2 years DVD went from geek toy(97) to mass market adoption(99). Fueled by the features, quality, price, and convenience of the discs. The falling prices of the hardware players helped a lot too.

I'm a early adopter with an HD setup, but I have no interest in Blue-Ray or HD-DVD at the moment. I'm sure in a couple years I will pick one (probably when Netflix chooses a technology), but right now regular DVD's using an upconverting 1080i DVD player and an HDMI cable look and sound great for me. The upconverting setup was only $250 a year ago, and it makes my existing DVD's look great.

What is the motivation for these HD formats from a user perspective? Higher priced players, high priced discs, and limited selection. What is the consumer paying for? A little bit better pictured quality is not going to motivate people to switch.

There needs to be something more for the average consumer to consider using any of these formats. Looking at the audio world, there have been hi-def audio formats out for quite some time with little success. There needs to be something more besides a quality increase to get people to jump ship.

Re:its nothing like the jump from vhs - dvd

[Raul654]

One word: durability. DVDs are good, but their fatal flaw is that they are too damned easy to break. Just ask any netflixian about the problem. The biggest motivator for upgrading to a new format would be a more durable format that didn't become useless after a year of wear and tear.

Re:its nothing like the jump from vhs - dvd

[Anonymous Coward]

1999 was not the year you could claim that the Mass Market had adopted DVD because until 2003 most movie rentals were still on VHS; to this day I still meet people who have yet to buy a DVD player because their "VCR is still good". I would say that early adopters had all accepted the DVD format by the end of 2001 (2000/2001 was huge for DVD with Apex Digital's $99 DVD player and the PS2).

I personally suspect that HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will have a much slower adoption because the barriers for entry are much higher (new TV required for most people) and there is too little HD content available for people to be getting frustrated with DVD; I would say that 1/4 to 1/2 of all Television programming is still in SD (you can't forget simpson's reruns) and until most of what people watch is in HD it will be difficult to kill DVD.

Re:its nothing like the jump from vhs - dvd

[Kralizec]

(probably when Netflix chooses a technology)

Actually, Netflix is already offering HD-DVD disks. All you have to do is set it up in your account settings.

Re:its nothing like the jump from vhs - dvd

[Vancorps]

For the price difference just buy a couple of the same DVDs. Of course this wouldn't be a problem if you were allowed to copy the media. You'd buy the dvd, copy it, then out the original away only bringing it to make a new copy because your old one got scratched.

The funny thing, I know a lot of people that still have tape players in their cars because tapes are more durable than cd. Even though the quality is less they stick with tapes. So you may be on to something here but I think Blu-Ray places itself out of the market with its pricing both for media, burners, and players. $1,000 to playback, $2,000 to burn? Thats insane considering the technology that is currently available. I could buy 10 DVD burners, put them in a stack and bam, I have the recording capacity of Blu-Ray without the DRM, that can be read back by ubiquitous DVD players, and I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for media. Sony is also targeting this at the data center where I think they will fall flat on there asses as well. They are abusing a market and there are too many alternatives in existence these days for this to be acceptable.

Re:its nothing like the jump from vhs - dvd

[evilviper]

A little bit better pictured quality is not going to motivate people to switch.

Tell that to all your DVDs. VHS to DVD was only a 3X improvement at best, while DVD to HD is a 6X improvement.

Looking at the audio world, there have been hi-def audio formats out for quite some time with little success.

Audio CDs are actually at the limit of what most people can hear, so they can't really improve the quality (for most of us), just add channels and other fluff. HDTV suffers from no such problem, and anyone who isn't blind can tell the difference.

If I sound annoyed, that might be because I've said this exact same thing about 20 times in the past few months on /., as everyone who hasn't seen any HDTV keeps repeating this nonsense.

Most people don't know this

[this great guy]

Most people don't know this but the quality of current Blu-ray titles does not match the quality offered by HD-DVD's for a very simple reason. The couple of Blu-ray titles that have been released so far are all encoded using MPEG-2, while HD-DVD titles are using the more advanced MPEG-4 based VC1 codec.

What is even more frustrating is that Blu-ray titles could have been VC1 encoded. The Blu-ray and HD-DVD standards both support the same set of video codecs. But for some reason the Blu-ray camp decided to encode the first titles using MPEG-2. I don't follow closely enough the format war to know why such a decision has been taken, but I know this is a stupid decision because most non-technical people will have a bad first impression of Blu-ray. It is even more frustrating knowing that Blu-ray titles have the technical potential to look at least as good as HD-DVD titles.

Re:Most people don't know this

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

What is even more frustrating is that Blu-ray titles could have been VC1 encoded. The Blu-ray and HD-DVD standards both support the same set of video codecs. But for some reason the Blu-ray camp decided to encode the first titles using MPEG-2. I don't follow closely enough the format war to know why such a decision has been taken, but I know this is a stupid decision because most non-technical people will have a bad first impression of Blu-ray. It is even more frustrating knowing that Blu-ray titles have the technical potential to look at least as good as HD-DVD titles.

I know exactly why this happened. It's because Blu-ray doesn't yet actually work with any codecs except MPEG-2. Sorry, I don't have the link, but a little more than a month ago I read that nobody really knows if VC1 will be working in Blu-ray by the end of the year even. They use MPEG-2 because right now they have to. They are hoping that eventually the technical problems with the other codecs and the format can be worked out, but for now if it's on Blu-ray, it will be MPEG-2.

Re:Most people don't know this

[thule]

Since Blu-ray supports highbandwith, what advantage is MPEG4/AVC going to give you? I would expect, given a high enough bitrate that MPEG2 will not look any different that MPEG4/AVC unless it's 4:2:2.

Re:Most people don't know this

[Anonymous Coward]

actually vc1 is worse than mpeg2 is all worst case tests.

then, mpeg2 has been proven to work, while vc1 has already a few issues to iron out.

i guess it won't surprise anyone considering who made the codec ..

and well even when that will be done vc1 will only take less space and eat more cpu to decode

and it's not like space is missing with 25BG discs either

Re:Most people don't know this

[Bourdain]

I'm anything but an expert on this topic, but from my limited experience in lower bitrate/resolution video with varying codec's, the codec doesn't exclusively determine the quality of the video, but a combination of the codec and both the method which it is applied (i.e. bitrate choices, other algorhythm options inside of each codec) also, given the very high capacity of these discs, it doesn't appear that using a potentially more efficient codec (i.e. mpeg-4) is necessary unless the movie is very long and the disc is both one-sided and single-layered just my one-cent

Re:Most people don't know this

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ever took the time to encode some non-filmsourced, 32-bit color media into MPEG2 (CCESP or whatever floats your boat) and any of the newer codecs, you'd have your answer. MPEG2 has inherent limitations which mean it will always exhibit certain artifacts, regardless of what bandwidth you throw at it. Traveling contours, especially during fades in/out. Hideously poor detail between hues, particularly blacks and dark scenes. There's plenty of room for improvement.

It's interesting to read the reason why Sony decided to go with MPEG2. So, rather than it being a conscious decision to split the prosumers into two camps even on codec preference, it was something as basic as engineering incompetence. Nice. Anyway, the bottom line is that HD-DVD looks better, and will apparently continue to do so for a year or so, and when Blu-Ray finally gets things in order... what? A lot of $1000 doorstops? And I can guarantee you that a 50GB H.264 movie is not going to look better than a 30GB H.264 movie. You'd have to literally do something like negatively interpolate two frames to even be able to identify pixels which don't match.

Re:Most people don't know this

[this great guy]

The advantage of MPEG-4 or VC1 over MPEG-2 is that given the same bitrate, they offer a better quality than MPEG-2. When MPEG-2 is used, a single-layer 25 GB Blu-ray disc do not offer enough capacity to encode 1080p video content at a quality matching a DVD. A Blu-ray video frame (1920*1080) contains 5 times more pixels than a PAL DVD frame (720*576), while a single-layer BD (25 GB) offers only 3 times more capacity than a dual-layer DVD (9 GB) => the storage cap increase does not match the pixel count increase.

That is why people notice so many encoding artifacts on MPEG-2 BDs while the quality is better on VC1 HD-DVDs.

Re:Most people don't know this

[poot_rootbeer]

They are hoping that eventually the technical problems with the other codecs and the format can be worked out, but for now if it's on Blu-ray, it will be MPEG-2.

Wouldn't this mean that when VC1-encoded Blu-ray discs do come out in a year or two, I won't be able to play them on my cutting-edge, bought-the-first-day-it-was-available, only-MPEG-1-passed-QA-testing $1000 Sony Blu-ray player?

Harry Potter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wtf?!!? Harry Potter??

We heard: "Nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd. Nerd. Nerd?"

More like Gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay!

Re:Maybe film transfer to compressed HDTV won't wo

[Anonymous Coward]

There's already a solution to this although I haven't seen any reviews of it. Thomson has FGT (film-grain technology). They actually analyze the film grain in each frame, filter it, and then regenerate it at playback time (after decompression) using coefficients from when they initially measured it. Supposedly you get better compression and mostly-accurate film grain.

Film should be fine as a source

[Sycraft-fu]

Quality 35mm shot on a good lense, as you get with hollywood movies, is good to somewhere in the realm of 2000-6000 lines of resolution each direction. That's a ball park, of course, since there's no direct correlation to pixels on analogue film, but still. A good negative can resolve about 6000 lines of resolution, the positive shown in theatres is good for about 2000.

35mm has plenty of resolution for a good HD, it just takes doing a good digital transfer. If you want to see an example, get the T2 Extreme Edition DVD and watch it on a modern computer running Windows. The 2nd disc has a HD transfer in WMV9 (VC1) format. They chose an intermediary resolution that's not part of the ATSC spec, 1440 horizontal (the verticle is cropped to fit the aspect ratio of the film). Because the bitrate is only that of DVD, it gets a bit blocky during action sequences but for all that the detail is superb. It is clearly head and shoulders about the DVD version, despite being sourced from film, and an old one at that.

While pure digital movies certianly are easier to get good copies of, since there's no transfer just resampling, it's not that film lacks the rez, it is just that they don't want to invest the time and money in to a good transfer.

Re:Film should be fine as a source

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

This would be assuming that the 5th element blue-ray disk was made with a new transfer. I wouldn't be suprised if the scan used was 10 or more years old, and was one of the reasons the quality was underwhelming. Digital transfers are pretty expensive.

Re:Film should be fine as a source

[hackstraw]

Having an HDTV and high def content, I can attest that much of the HD content from remastered film sources can be beautiful.

The catch is that when a film's scene is cropped pretty hard you can see the grain in the film.

ET was a poor sales alien

[FerretFrottage]

I don't think ET sold that many VCRs. The poor little guy had a slow distribution system (kids and their bikes--granted they could fly, but still, those bike baskets don't hold many VCRs, plus ET could have stayed on the office and have left more space for the VCRs, BUT then the bikes couldn't fly then could they?). Anyway, he also was more concerned with constantly trying to report into his home sales office rather than focusing on customer satisfaction. Why the "competition" was so concerned with catching him is beyond me. The only thing he had was the "light finger promotion" deal and the claims that his prices didn't "Ouch".

Whoa!

[Beefslaya]

Slow down, I haven't even purchased my HD television yet.

While watching a hockey playoff game a month ago, my buddy paid extra to have HD broadcast straight from the Cable provider (Charter charges for this) and was all proud of his Samsung wide screen LCD/hybrid TV.

To be honest with you, it didn't change the game experience for me that much. Wide screen was nice (got to see a few more dirty hits off the "regular" camera angle)and it wasn't enough for me to justify paying an extra 100-200 dollars for HD capability.

I don't honestly see the reason for the hype. Blu-Ray---Schmoo-Ray. Not worth my money for at least the next 5 years. Talk to me then (if they still make Blu-Ray disks).

I won't be the guy caught with the Hi-Fi system and laserdisc system...again...

--I'd be more interested in smellivision.--

Re:Whoa!

[be-fan]

I disagree completely. I've spent the last few days watching the world-cup in HD, and it is a completely different experience. The wide-screen aspect ratio gives you a much better feel for where players are on the field, and the picture is sharp enough that you can actually tell which player has the ball, even if he's on the opposite side of the field. I could do without the "closeup of the coach so tight you can see his nose hairs" shots, but damn, those are some well-rendered nose hairs!

Re:Whoa!

[MrMickS]

I don't know about the US but we've had widescreen aspect ratio over here in the UK for a number of years, without having HD. If HD and widescreen have been linked then that's a cunning plan on behalf of the broadcasters and manufacturers to get HD widely adopted.

My latest TV is HD capable. I don't see me getting any HD playback device any time soon though. DVD quality is good enough.

Re:Whoa!

[be-fan]

Do they sell wide-screen SDTVs over there? They do have wide-screen broadcasts for SDTV material here in the US, but they don't usually use it for stuff like sports broadcasts because you end up with a letter-boxed picture on 4:3 TVs.

Re:Maybe film transfer to compressed HDTV won't wo

[agent42b]

Even worse -- imagine films where the grain is MEANT to be there ... plenty of film makers use the grain as a style trademark.

Independent Review

[oahazmatt]

Another reivew, from a Mr. Sony McSonyson, informed me that Blu-Ray provides not only a superior picture quality, but also interfaces directly with my brain to extract my personal preferences. For example, in Star Wars, regardless of which version, Han would always shoot first. In every scene. Also, "Into the Blue" would focus on Jessica Alba not in the ocean, but a kiddie pool filled with baby oil. Also, it was revealed that HD-DVD would kill my dog, leave me sterile, and emit cancer-inducing radiation if viewed for more than 0.18 seconds at a time.

Re:Independent Review

[WombatControl]

However, reviewer Gill Bates wrote in Shill Monthly that Blu-Ray discs are made from a combination of radioactive waste and freshly-shredded mewling kittens. Also Blu-Ray discs can cause cancer in lab rats, and may cause birth defects... retroactively. Furthermore, the HD-DVD version of Serenity features an extended fight scene in which River is dressed like a ninja when she totally flips out and kills people. So there...

In all seriousness, this whole battle is rather pointless. HD content isn't yet a big enough draw to make consumers want to replace their whole movie library. As another poster mentioned, when you're transferring from film you end up encoding a lot of grain and noise that can really play havoc with the compression. Until films (other than Star Wars) are filmed entirely in digital HD, we'll never really see the most of the benefits of HD.

Why Digital Isn't Better Than Analog

[Jerf]

My experience and subjective opinion is that what is being delivered is being delivered with unacceptable compromise, whether it be to rush to market, or just shoddy quality, it doesn't matter. I've seen compression artifacts, I've seen jittery playback. I'm not "getting" it.

The title of this reply, for those who may have skipped over it, is "Why Digital Isn't Better Than Analog".

Usually that starts into a discussion about how much better analog is at reproduction and why vinyl rocks. That's not where I'm going with this; personally I'll take a CD any day.

The problem is that with digital, you can compress the signal lossfully. This theoretically is an advantage, allowing you to fit, say, 3 TV high-quality TV channels in the bandwidth of 1 old-style SD analog channel.

However, given the choice, everybody seems to prefer to fit in 8 low-quality TV channels instead. Satellite radio, rather than have 50 high-quality stations at 128 or 192 Kbps, would rather have 150 barely-tolerable stations at 64 Kbps.

The reason they think they can do this is that most people can not articulate the difference between the old analog signal and the new, way-over-compressed digital signal. If you ask them with just a couple of minutes exposure, they'll say they are the same. Only people who are very familiar with the technology can say "It's overcompressed".

But I think that even if most people can't articulate why the digital experience is worse than the analog experience, they do have a different experience with this over-compressed content that results in lower immersion, lower enjoyment, and in the long run, less inclination to pay for the experience. In the end they see no reason to jump or even want to go back to analog.

I've done the latter. I took the digital TV deal from Comcast a while back that gave me the basic digital package for just over their analog rates. But a combination of leisurely channel changing (since it has to re-sync with the rarely-sent I frames), visible artefacts even on my bog-standard low-def 28 inch TV, and incredibly sluggish set-top box made go back to analog, and I'm exactly the kind of person who "should" be drooling for digital. I hear they've since fixed the last problem, though I have no evidence of this.

I'd love a good digital experiece. I'd love a digital radio that's actually an improvement over analog radio instead of (to my ears) a slight downgrade since they only use 96Kbps. I'd love good digital TV, but they always jam too many channels down the line. I'd love satellite radio, but again, to my ears they are quite obviously right on the edge of unlistenability. And to those non-techies I've asked, when they wonder what I mean by "isn't this TV/radio just sort of missing some life?", I always get nodding heads, not arguments.

Until the digital entertainment purveyers are willing to actually live up to their quality claims, where digital becomes a consistently superior experience, instead of something that is inferior to analog in inexpressable-but-important ways, digital stuff just isn't going to take off. Digital ought to be better than analog. The potential is there. But it's not being realized.

Re:Why Digital Isn't Better Than Analog

[daniel422]

Your experience seems to indicate there may be a market for native HD material that isn't massively compressed -- like HD_DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. I've come to the conclusion through many posts that comcast sucks (everybody say it together!) for HD content and that the guys at ciruit city and best buy couldn't properly set up an HD system to save their jobs (let's daisy chain 20 HD sets together and see what the picture looks like!). It's sad that our retailers are doing such a disservice to themselves. Maybe HD discs will change that by making good HD content easier to see and set up correctly.

Re:Why Digital Isn't Better Than Analog

[Golias]

Instead of paying for Comcast, get a simple YAGI roof antenna for over-the-air HD broadcasts.

1. They are free to tune in.

2. FOX and ABC have their prime-time shows in beautiful 720p. That covers House and Lost (the best two shows running) right there.

3. NBC and CBS have their prime-time shows in also-good 1080i.

4. PBS has a signal that is 24/7 1080i (although they just use it to re-broadcast the a Cringely TV special on how great HDTV is, a documentary on covered bridges of Iowa, and historical reality shows like "Ranch House" on heavy rotation.)

5. PBS has five other SD channels running, some of which has some cool stuff.

6. It's free to tune in.

I haven't paid a cent to either a cable or a satelite company since moving out of my apartment six years ago. Sure, it means I must wait for the DVD releases for a couple of shows I like (Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos, etc.), and I need to download the new Doctor Who episodes off alt.binaries.drw... er... umm... I mean I need to go to a friends house and watch last year's Doctor Who on the Sci-Fi channel (Gosh, I wonder if that David Tennent guy will be any good in the role... you know... next year... when I can finally see those episodes... which I haven't seen yet. ^_^;;) but in the long run a roof antenna and a NetFlix subscription serves me far better than Cable TV ever will.

Where's the torrent?

[erikdalen]

I for one don't meet the hardware DRM requirements to buy those movies. But hopefully the non-DRM'ed versions will be out soon :)

formats

[pi_is_after_you]

Is this based on MPEG-2 format, like the DVD? or is it something completely different?

Thou speaks too soon (was:$499 PS3 Here We Come)

[Lead Butthead]

Thank god for the death of the image constraint token!

Image constraint token is enabled by content; for the playback devices to be certified, they are required to support it. The content providers at this point has decided not to rape consum... (ahm) enable it does not preclude it from being enabled at a later date.

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[thule]

In one of his articles he notes that they're still only using MPEG-2, not the other, better codecs. This could easily account for the lack of quality.

Better in comparison to what? MPEG2 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 is still used for studio and satellite. The shows you see on HD sets were high data rate MPEG2 4:2:2 coming over the satellite and later downconverted to 4:2:0 for 8VSB transmission. HBO-HD is MPEG2 on C-Band. It seems to me given a high enough bitrate, MPEG2 will look the same, if not better, as MPEG4 AVC. MPEG4 AVC is "better" because good quality video can be had at a lower bitrate.

I would imaging that since broadcast TV is all MPEG2 based, studios will be using MPEG2 for some time to come. Only consumer satellite companies like DirecTV and Dishnet are using MPEG4 for broadcasting HD. The reason is they want to maximize their bandwidth and still get a decent picture. If you want the "best" picture a person would want to get the network MPEG2 feeds off C-Band.

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[sidb]

Therefore, there can not be any quality difference inherent to the formats

Well, maybe not in the formats, but there is a quality difference in the current players. The first Bluray players are supposed to be able to output the disc's native 1080p at 24fps (film is natively 24fps), while the HD-DVD players released so will show a picture converted to 1080i at 30fps. If you had a reallly good TV, you could theoretically get a better result with BluRay, at least until HD-DVD starts releasing 1080p players.

Chick flicks sell well

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Let's face it, it is really the blokes that want 500 inch TVs, 12 inch sub-woofers and BRay to watch big action movies. But when they say "Honey, I've been thinking of ....", senior management soon says "No".

By serving up chick flicks first, the blokes get to have a more effective line of attack: "Honey, I love you so much I've been thinking of buying **you** a new BRay system to watch chick flicks. Just imagine, you'll be able to read the clothing labels & see the individual tears running down Drew's face"

Bang. (was:Shoot me)

[Lead Butthead]

I skimmed the summary the first time, and when I read "xXx", I thought to myself, "hi-def porn."

But do people really need to see all the tiny hair follicles or other abnormal growths on other people's gentals?

Re:Bang. (was:Shoot me)

[Asphalt]

But do people really need to see all the tiny hair follicles or other abnormal growths on other people's gentals?

Dammit! I left the webcam on again while changing underwear!

Re:Bang. (was:Shoot me)

[Overly Critical Guy]

That's not an abnormal growth, it's Vin Diesel's head.

Transcodes

[scolen2]

Well, as a developer of these two new formats I have seen the original source and transcodes in person. While nothign will ever touch Uncompressed Online Video, but the new H264 transcodes look very nice. You lose a little depth, but you always will with compression. Now I'm not sure what those films were transcoded too, but you have 3 options for HD. MPEG2, VC-1 (WindowsMedia) and AVC (H264/MPEG4). I haven't seen these streams played back on Bluray hardware yet, but I really am not impressed by the HD-DVD hardware at all, So i can assume the same will occur with the Bluray HW. Anyway, its new and exspensive, and all things have growing pains. So the point i'm just trying to make is this... Its the hardware decoders fault, not the source transcodes. So be nice.

My favorite part

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite part is how in the "Fifth Element" review, they comment that the picture is significantly worse than that of other blu-ray films they've seen. Smooth!

The public deems this irrelevant

[InsaneProcessor]

Since about 1 out of 90 people I know even have HD TV, Blue-ray and HD-DVD are somewhat irrelevant technologies. Hell, I don't even have an HD TV but I do have some killer computer displays. I probably won't buy any of this until I have no choice.

Re:The public deems this irrelevant

[be-fan]

Well that's very nice for you, but here in the US, 1 out of 5 people have HDTVs, and sales of HDTVs are projected to overtake sales of SDTVs this year, which means that figure will get bigger in the next couple of years.

Re:The public deems this irrelevant

[poot_rootbeer]

here in the US, 1 out of 5 people have HDTVs

Where are your figures from? The surveys I've seen put HDTV penetration currently at somewhere between 10-15% of households, and even that I believe is higher than actual, due to consumer confusion about (among other things) the distinction between "digital TV" and "high definition TV".

Re:The public deems this irrelevant

[be-fan]

This month's EGM, though you'll see similar figures in many places, like this article on CNET (note that there are about 100m households in the USA).

One thing you have to remember is that HDTV growth has been extremely fast. You can see statistics and projecetions on page 17 of this presentation. Note that the chart on page 17 is from Feb 2005, so the 2006 and on numbers on it are projections. Still, they jive quite nicely with the more recent numbers reported in the CNET article above.

The "nobody has HDTV" meme is out of date. It was true in 2003, when HDTV was at 3%, and maybe in 2004, when it was at 6%, but it's growth since then has been extremely strong. As I said, this year, HDTV's will outsell SDTVs, and multiple sources project 25% percent penetration by the end of this year or early next year.

What size HDTV did they review these on?

[adachan]

My 30 inch screen looks great even with divx movies at a low res and bitrate. My 60 inch SXBR on the other hand clarly shows the limits of the divx files. DVDs look pretty good, HD-DVDs look better. The difference is in the bitrate on the large screens. This is the clear benefit I can see from the new formats. Black backgrounds look MUCH better on a large screen. Check it out yourself if you dont believe me.

so you take low quality video and expand it?

[Goeland86]

Sorry guys, this just doesn't seem like a good idea.
For HD to make a good debut you can't take something that's been filmed digitally on a camera designed around the NTSC standard and then just enhance the video by making the resolution bigger. Unless you've done lots of research into image sharpening algorithms, this just CANNOT work. Try taking the slashdot banner and expanding it to print on a poster-size piece of paper... The printout will be disgusting. That's exactly what they're doing by taking old movies and releasing them HD or BluRay.
Seriously, if you want to get a good quality HD image, you have to start at the source: the studios must use cameras that have resolutions greater than or equal to those of HD/BluRay DVDs. Otherwise there's just no point in even trying. Release X3 on HD/BluRay and I guarantee people will buy it! But don't re-release titles in a new format, it's just NOT WORTH IT. The quality was accepted when it was released, and as far as I know, the players are backwards compatible anyway. So why bother? To make $$? Idiotic fools. You're going to scare people away doing that, not win their wallets!
What they really should do is set a date after which all movies are going to be released in BluRay/HD, and then we'll see massive adoption of HDTVs and HD/BR players. Oh and importantly, release the HD/BR discs at the SAME PRICE POINT as the older DVDs, so people think they're getting more for their money.
Some companies just never seem to get it... =/

Re:so you take low quality video and expand it?

[cecom]

Ahem. Movies are not filmed using TV cameras. Film already has resolution greater than HD.

Re:so you take low quality video and expand it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Film has a much higher resolution than HD... you're an idiot.

Re:so you take low quality video and expand it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"For HD to make a good debut you can't take something that's been filmed digitally on a camera designed around the NTSC standard"

Further "Ahem..": Even people shooting on cheap consumer digital cameras don't tend to favour NTSC. Go ask some video people, they have plenty of gags about it: "NTSC = Not Technically Suitable for Cinema"... "NTSC = Never Twice the Same Colour" and so forth.

Even people doing relatively amateur filmmaking these days are upgrading their rigs to HD cameras, anything made professionally on digital EVER will have better resolution than NTSC DV. Movies filmed on digital are designed for projection to very large cinema screens, if you've ever seen digital camcorder footage on a big screen you'll know how obvious the pixellation and encoding artifacts are even to a layman. Quite simply, Hollywood has been working at a higher standard than you're expecting forever. 35mm film has plenty of resolution above and beyond HD, as does any commonly used digital cinema camera technologies.

Only 1 reason to buy

[gravy.jones]

If the players did upconversion from 480p to 720p or 1080i (like a $600 Denon) and they played regular DVD's and had killer CD playing hardware that also support SACD then that would be a reason to buy into the hype. It bothers me to no end that I have to upgrade to an HDMI receiver just so that I can pipe through a 1080i or 720p DVD picture to my Sony Wega via the Sony Dobly/DTS receiver without creating a fecal storm of expensive cables.

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[chasingporsches]

and unless if you have a true 1080p24 display, who effing cares? if you're hooking it up over 720p or 1080i, then there is no difference. if you have a 1080p, then blu-ray doesn't mean better quality because of the format. it means you happen to get it first.

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[chasingporsches]

ahem. MPEG2 at 19 Mbps (or whatever is the norm for HD broadcast) IS going to look worse than H.264 at the same bitrate. if you're thinking of comparing it to H.264 at a lower bitrate, then you have a strong argument, but a completely irrelevant one. H.264 can store the exact same quality as MPEG2 at a lower bitrate than MPEG2, so that means that if the bitrates are equal, then H.264 is going to have a higher quality, assuming of course you haven't reached the bitrate point of uncompressed 4:4:4 video.

How much longer...

[DaFallus]

How much longer until the first Blu-ray Disc Images are posted online?

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[ben there...]

That doesn't really make sense to me though. MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 would look best at as close to 100% uncompressed as possible, whatever their respective limits may be. At that level, either they would be the same bitrate or MPEG-4 would require less bitrate.

At every quality level below 100% uncompressed, MPEG-4 would require less bitrate than MPEG-2, while simultaneously using a more modern codec that doesn't get blocky and shows finer detail. In other words, MPEG-4 is better than MPEG-2 at every bitrate (apples-to-apples). The only reason you'd want to use MPEG-2 is if that's all your hardware or infrastructure supports.

Digital filming may make HD formats irrelevant.

[dirkbelig]

The key factor in DVD quality is the transfer. Compression and filtering can make hash of the best source material, but done properly, the quality can be outstanding.

I watched "Find Me Guilty" - the Sidney Lumet film starring Vin Diesel - last night and was astounded at the clarity and detail of picture. It was superior to many broadcast HDTV shows I watch and it made me wonder if the secret is to limit audio track and extras on the feature discs and just pack it with bits. I know this is how Superbit is supposed to work, but this disc was just crazy with detail.

If they could make standard DVDs ALL look this good, no one would care about the format wars and rebuying their favorite movies.

Stupid review

[Jugalator]

Are we suppose to judge the quality from his words and 200x150 pixel thumbnails?

Right...

Can the discs survive the US Postal Service?

[brave1]

Has anyone tried to test the ruggedness of the new HD media (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD)? I've received a handful of unplayable discs from Netflix, but for the most part even badly scratched (regular) DVDs tend to play pretty well.

Re:Can the discs survive the US Postal Service?

[dank zappingly]

I don't know a thing about HD-DVD's, but I know for a fact that Blu Rays have some new coating on them that will make them far more resistant to damage than dvd's. Then again, I've been receiving some discs from netflix that are cracked straight through, so the answer to your question is no, there is no current technology that can survive the Postal Service, but it will be an improvement.

LowD DVD (on HDTV) Just Fine

[alohatiger]

I have HD. I watch free HD broadcasts with the built-in tuner (they don't tell about that at Best Buy because it doesn't help them sell Direct TV). Sports look great.

Anyway...

When I watch a DVD it looks great. I'm sure that HD/BluRay DVDs will look even better, but I can't imagine the difference is worth $100s of dollars. Maybe when NetFlix is carrying a zillion hi-def titles I'll think about upgrading.

VC1 = WMV9, not MPEG-4

[green pizza]

Just to pick nits:

VC1 is also known as WMV9 (Windows Media Video 9 codec)

H.264 is also known as MPEG 4 AVC (MPEG 4, Part 10)

Two totally different codecs.

I think you mean

[solomonrex]

3 of the worst movies ever made?

Re:I think you mean

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! I liked The Fifth Element. You take that back!

DDD labelling

[Webmonger]

And worse, a lot of the analog stuff sounded better than digital. Sure, the noise floor was better with digital, but analog was warmer, less harsh. So it got a bit embarassing for companies pushing all-digital.

Though I've never seen DAD, I did release a tape that was DDA.

Is this really relevant?

[Wicko]

I mean aren't these just upscaled to HD quality? I thought that it had to be recorded in HD or something like that.

T1 and T2 coming

[SuperKendall]

If you look on Amazon T1 and T2 (the ones' I'd want to see) are coming soon.

Re:Whoa! or why not wait till they R $100?

[WillAffleckUW]

I agree, why bother paying out the nose for Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, and HDTV, if by instead just waiting two or three years we can watch the same exact movie, on sale for $9.99, on a $100 player (either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, most of us really don't care) on our $150 60" HDTV?

Think of all the game titles you could buy with that money!

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[rjstanford]

Although 1080p displays are getting fairly common if you're going DLP rear projection, and are doing okay (not great, but okay) in flat panel. I just picked up a Westinghouse 42" 1080p LCD at BestBuy.com for $1500, for example - that's not unreasonable for a modest home theater budget. And yes, I'm ticked off that I can't get a full 1080p HD-DVD player to go with it.

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just too bad that Sony themselves are pushing MPEG2. Too bad for them, that is. Why are they doing it? To prove that their disc has enough storage to enable an entire 1080p movie using an inefficient codec that should have been replaced?

And there is one problem that MPEG2 always had and always will have: Poor bit-depth detail. Which translates most apparently into poor black detail. I GUARANTEE YOU, for example, that the Blu-Ray transfer of Fifth Element still exhibits the following classic MPEG2 phenomenon: Watch the sequence where the Mandalorian ship is being attacked. One scene shows the two attack ships blasting towards it, away from the camera. Their exhaust generates a bit of smoke which recedes quickly. In a proper transfer (or a film viewing), this looks like smoke. On ANY MPEG2 transfer, it looks like somebody blew their breath on a window. Why? Because MPEG2 just doesn't give enough transitional detail between hues. The other classic MPEG2 artifact is the "traveling contours" you get literally all the time. The codec doesn't recognize the concept of changes in brightness so instead it treats all such transitions as changes in position. Fades in / out always look like blobs growing or subsiding.

Sony lost any support I might have been willing to give them when they decided to go with MPEG2. And I laugh at their PS3, because it will never be able to actually output Blu-Ray movies in hi-def, so most of the extra cost of their $600 console is COMPLETELY WASTED.

DRM and SCMS

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

"The lossless copying of media has scared the media cartels for years. That is why we have DRM and other fun stuff like SCMS."

I hope at least a handful of home theater reviewers will take a principled stance on DRM & use a legacy monitor or set, so they can just curtly review these things as "could not play" when they refuse to work on such devices.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading your post, I ran across the street to the coffeeshop and asked 23 (twenty three) people to voice their opinion about their HDTV. Only one of them had one.

One in five, eh?

Which marketing firm did you say pays yer salary?

Re:Really?

[be-fan]

Yes, because that's such a representative sample. Based on the people I know, I could say 2 out of 3 homes have HDTVs, but again, it's not a representative sample, is it?

Jesus Christ, Slashdotters can be stupid sometimes.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't know much about statistics yourself, stupid. You are Slashdot.

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[Jherek Carnelian]

I would imaging that since broadcast TV is all MPEG2 based,

Not in Europe. They are mostly skipping MPEG-2 and going directly to h264. The BBC is already doing h264 broadcasts on their "test" channel.

To clarify

[thule]

What I was trying to say is that it's not enough to simply state that the Bluray movies were using MPEG2. Then complain that it should be MPEG4/AVC. A Bluray disc could look just as good as DVD-HD even if it's using MPEG2 because the Bluray disc may be using a higher bitrate -- because it can.

I further pointed out that any broadcast content a person gets on their HDTV comes from a MPEG2 source. Broadcast MPEG2 can look pretty darn good.

Re:Maybe film transfer to compressed HDTV won't wo

[Apotsy]

Grain is not "useless" or "noise", it's what carries the image.

Besides, modern filmstocks, when properly exposed, produce grain too small to be seen at HDTV resolution. If you see grain that big, it's either intentional, sloppy, or cheap.

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[thule]

What are the channels other than "test" using?

This makes no sense at all

[Nazmun]

The blu-ray drive itself just reads bits from a disc. It doesn't matter where the bits come from to the decoders, hd-dvd, blu-ray, or someone's hard drive. Mpeg4 and other similiar codecs shouldn't have any technical implementation issues.

Theres a good chance that the compressionists of the dvd's decided they didn't need anyhting higher then mpeg2 since blu-ray's capacity and bandwidth were much greater then dvd's and could show 1080p well enough without the newer codecs.

Really bad research

[suv4x4]

I wonder why the companies didn't do a bit of research before coming up with HD.

Besides actors look either like plastic dolls from all the make up on HD, or making skin flaws too obvious, any shooting with analog cameras becomes obsolete.

See the HD trailers on apple.com -> there are two types:

a) noisy ones, that surprisingly look a lot better in EDTV or regular DVD resolution (EDTV on Apple = the lowest "HD" option, it's really not HD, it's EDTV)

b) filtered ones, that look pretty bad, and seemingly have less fine detail that EDTV/DVD ones, despite having sharper edges due to the extra resolution.

To solve this, the movie industry will have to start shooting exclusively with digital cameras and develop complex software filters to improve actor's skin/make-up problems.

Having crisp, noiseless transfers of existing old analog movies: you can forget about it.

The computer effects will also have to be processed in full HDTV resolution. Right now they frequently get away with rendering the original frames in less than 1080p, and then adding fake "movie noise" to match the quality of the movies. This is close to the actual quality of an analog film, which is basically kinda blurry with noise when looked too close.

With HDTV if they wanna shoot crisp digital picture this will be no more.

Bluray SUCKS!

[babbling]

Hopefully Blu-Ray won't catch on.

Re:Maybe film transfer to compressed HDTV won't wo

[mihalis]

I think you're oversimplfying. I've seen plenty of films where the film grain imposes noise on flat featureless areas of the image. Noise that moves around. Noise that does indeed mess with mpeg compression. Ok so maybe these are low-budget or Indy films, or films where the director chose the film stock deliberately to be grainy, but that is certainly a valid artistic choice.

One example is where some footage is meant to look like old footage (for example "JFK" with its fake Zapruder-movie style Kennedy assasination sequences). Deliberately shot in the early 90s on cheap super-8 for the grain and lurid colors.

Re:Warning: reviewer does not understand technolog

[Anonymous Coward]

Normal SDTV resolution digital TV channels pretty much everywhere in Europe use MPEG-2. There aren't any real HDTV channels but "test" channels (well, depends on what Euro1080 exactly is - personally I think it's a joke). BBC's HDTV test uses H.264, Euro1080 is simulcast in MPEG-2 and H.264, that French test HD channel is H.264 etc.

H.264 is the way to go. Fortunately Europe seems to be well on track to skip MPEG-2 and go directly to H.264 for HDTV broadcasts.

I hope sony learns their lesson this time

[oostendo]

Proprietary formats have always been Sony's big mistake: thinking because they control a fraction of media output they can force us to pay them and only them for betamax recorders, minidiscs, memory sticks, and now blueray.