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A Statistical Comparison of HD DVD & Blu-Ray Reviews
An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo today posted a statistical comparison of over 300 HD DVD and Blu-ray reviews published at High-Def Digest since the start of the high-def format wars last Spring. Their findings? Overall video quality between the two formats is nearly identical, however Blu-ray titles were slightly, but definitely superior in audio playback, while HD DVD titles had far superior standard def features and moderately superior high-def features."
Both formats have gone beyond the resolution of my eyes (and ears).
No, HD-DVD will win because fewer people misspell it, so more people will be able to Google it properly.
I think I'm going to start a porn site and call it "blue ray." I could make millions!
The article is a total crock of @#$#. Just looking at the charts shows you that the audio "difference" is so incredibly tiny that the actual players probably have far more to do with it than the format.
My blog
My money is on Circuit City. Just look at how successful DIVX was.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Quality will not decide this format war - the PS3 will.
Betamax was superior to VHS...and the MacOS was superior to Windows (at least for some time...let's avoid the flame war on the current state of affairs). They were both beaten by superior positioning of technically inferior competitors...and the PS3 has been a huge success for Sony in one regard - it got a lot of BluRay players in the hands of consumers...and the sales of BluRay titles are dwarfing those of HD DVD correspondingly.
Will the trend continue? Who knows, but I'd rather have momentum than not have it...so I'm not betting against Sony yet. The posted article may be interesting for some, but I am disinterested in any discussion of quality or features until the market settles. I do not have the discretionary income to buy an expensive player that will be obsolete before it is useful...regardless of any perceived quality difference. Early adopters may disagree, but Joe Sixpack and I are sticking with our standard DVD players and HD over cable/satellite until we see who wins this war.
Your mileage may vary.
What I got was that the audio in Blu-ray was "better" because of the availability of higher quality audio content, not performance of the particular technology. A little misleading I think, when HD-DVD can simply add higher quality audio content and be equal to Blu-ray in terms of audio performance.
Or is there something else?
Why are so many posts with factual errors modded up?
Agreed, bittorrent is fine when I miss a TV show or am not sure if a movie will be good, but it's not going to be replacing an actual DVD for me. And as I am a sucker and have both an Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on and a PS3, i'll be sticking to movies in 1920x1080 on my HDTV via HDMI ;-)
Not to say there aren't HD rips out there, but most are usually at lower res than the original BR/HDDVD and if not are redicuosly huge and you still need a way to get it to your TV (yes, I know you can hook your PC to a TV but that just seems like way too much effort and im damn lazy.)
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
It's not even funny.
No, HD-DVD will win because fewer people misspell it, so more people will be able to Google it properly.
What's sad is the parent is rather insightful. Not so much that HD-DVD is easier to spell than Blu-Ray but looking on the package it's painfully clear to your average joe with a HDTV set that the HD-DVD is for HD-TVs. The Blu-Ray disc doesn't in it self say "i'm for your HDTV".
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Actually I was looking at a few titles (just the box) I did not get a player for myself yet.
And I was surprised to see that HD-DVD does not list DTS audio, but something else.
Someone may want to enlighten me on this.
I watch everything on DTS and I am satisfied with the sound on DVD, whenevere it is something else I am unhappy by default.
Can it be the cause of the difference ?
I think I'm going to start a porn site and call it "blue ray."
Let me guess... Is your name Ray?
Blu-ray titles were slightly, but definitely superior
This post is only slightly, but definitely sarcastic.
Neither format will win. Who won the DVD-A vs. SACD war?
bort.
Free, Anonymous surfing: Pagewash.com.
... the single-disc version of LOTR (all 3 films, plus extras) arrives. I don't think it's going to fit on HD-DVD. Also the potential of putting entire seasons of TV shows on a single disc.
Which format looks best once converted to Xvid? :)
All the DVDs I own and watch more than once a month get squished down onto a 4.7G backup disc or ripped right into the hard drive. (The pangs of only having one optical drive in the computer.) If iTunes or Xbox Live videos were seriously available in my country, I'd be buying those.
HD gear is for people with too much time and money on their hands. And when I become one I'm sure it'll be great!
This is true, but I think that if somebody cares enough to drop $1000 on a high-def player they're going to at least take a cursory glance at what the technology is which would usually result in them becoming aware of blu-ray if they weren't before. I mean, even if $1,000 is nothing to you, if you go into best buy and tell the clerk you want an HD-DVD player he'll likely point out the blu-ray players as well.
Ummm... I diagree. Those early adopters of HDTVs often bought them without tuners, and without HD support from the cable company.
Always bet on stupid. Even the clerks are stupid, you say an HD DVD player, odds are you'll get HD-DVD.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
All my food says "I'm for your face", however I'm too busy trying to spell HD.Clever people will win because they won't die by forgetting to breathe.
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
Not really. Although an average is a statistic, it only shows central tendancy of a distribution and indicates nothing about the variance of the distribution. A statistical comparison implies that the averages were compared using some defined distribution to test some null hypothesis. I'm not seeing that here.
BluRay: Has better audio, probably because of the larger capacity and better support for advanced codecs. Bonus features should catch up once more BD-Java tools are developed.
Blu-ray doesn't have better support for advanced codecs. In terms of 'optinal' formats, it's a wash; both support the same list. In terms of mandatory codecs, HD DVD gets the win. HD DVD requires many codecs that are merely optional for BD. The (lossless) Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD codecs are optional, not mandatory, on Blu-ray. TrueHD decoding is mandatory on HD DVD.
That being said, I can see how an audiophile would say that Blu-ray has better sound. Since TrueHD isn't mandatory, most BD discs target compatibility by using raw uncompressed PCM. (BD also uses Dolby Digital & optionally DTS, as does HD DVD). So the 'better' sound comes down to the old argument between uncompressed/lossless vs high-bitrate lossy sound. (HD DVD titles with TrueHD soundtracks rank on the same level as BD's raw PCM).
The bitrate of the lossy Dolby codecs on HD DVD is 1.5 Mb/s. This is well above the transparency level of 1.2 Mb/s for the codec. I wonder if it's a case of subconsciously thinking "this one is lossy, so it can't sound as good," and that a double-blind test would have different results.
BD-J is also an optional extention to Blu-ray; it's not a mandatory part of the spec. While BD-J has the possibility of giving excellent interactivity, the end result may be far below the potential. The reason: HDi is not much more complex than editing HTML, whereas BD-J requires Java skills. Ease of development counts, and BD-J doesn't appear to have it.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
More like extras are for filling up the DVD ... or, these days, to give them an excuse to add a second DVD to the package and jack up the price. Seriously, how many times can you watch a 10-minute documentary on how they used a computer to create a certain effect? Or interviews at press junkets where the actors explain how great it was to work with the director? The so-called extras they cram onto most discs are obvious filler. Even the deleted scenes are usually just slapped on there, not even formatted anamorphic, sometimes with time codes still onscreen.
There are very few DVDs in my collection that have made an effort to provide good extras. The Lord of the Rings movies are one example -- in fact, their extras include more information than I'd ever want about any movie. "Taxi Driver" is another -- it has a button that you can press at any point in the film that takes you to the corresponding page of the script. But otherwise I'm usually ecstatic to see DVDs packed full of extras...because I know the main feature will look that much better once I run it through DVDShrink.
Breakfast served all day!
Any differences that actually do exist are more likely attributable to the player or the mastering software than the disc it came from.
Audiophile: Somebody who listens to the equipment rather than the music.
Looks like this one is rapidly being translated into the video domain.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
So, basically, this is a review of a review? When are the reviews of reviews of reviews coming out?
Joshua J. Kugler
I think I'm going to start a porn site and call it "blue ray."
Let me guess... Is your name Ray?
Hundreds of people die every year from autoerotic asphyxiation, you insensitive clod!
;)
Being the Asshole that I am, I decided to check on Piratebay. HD-DVD's winning. and porn, too. Porn Always wins.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Or you'll get a DVD player that up converts, like a Futureshop in Toronto tried to sell me when I asked for an HD DVD player.
Oddly, I noticed distinct bias from the manager, who, when I asked again where the HD DVD players were, pointed to the Blu Ray (take THAT, Parent!!). When I insisted that I was looking for an HD DVD player, he eventually told me that the HD DVD player they had was not on display near the HDTV's in the store, like its Blu Ray cousin, but actually on a completely different floor.
Because of that bias (as well as my own bias in favour of HD DVD -- not a fanboy, just don't like the idea of closed formats dominating markets), I don't go to that store any longer.
As more and more people get multiple devices, the push-back against DRM will increase, and move from the small population of early adopter tech-savvy consumers, to the larger population "normal" consumers- once they find that they can't move their legally bought content between their devices they will tell their friends not to buy it. My prediction is that the format with the most easily "cracked" DRM will also be the most popular format & will win.
d -viewing-distance-to-screen-size/
Also, having just been through the deep-dive purchasing decision process for a new plasma TV, it was interesting to see that at a normal viewing distance, on a 50" display, HD or good progressive scan DVD produced a similar picture quality to my eyes (HD picture was subjectively about 5% better... this is comapred to 576p upscaled by the TV to 768 lines).
http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/12/09/1080p-charte
Summary- at more than 10 foot viewing distance with a 50" plasma screen there is no benefit to more than 576 lines (us PAL types are in luck here). About 13 foot for NTSC 480P. So for 42" HD is probably a waste of time everywhere. For 50" it is more useful in NTSC territory as long as you sit fairly close up, and marginal for PAL territory.
Also, I saw one HD feed split into similar sets from the same manufacturer, one set was 1080 line the other 768 line. At normal viewing distances no noticable difference.
As usual, most people comment without reading the article.
The summary is quoting the article, but not the explanation.
The audio advantage seen in the blu-ray is about more audio tracks with better formats (or even uncompressed audio), not any encoding/decoding difference.
BD is using its additional space to offer more audio tracks.
On the other hand, the interactivity feature is mandatory on HDDVD and still developing on BD, so the HDDVD gets the edge there. So, those are not so much qualitative judgements as more of a snapshot of the current state of affair. BD leads with better storage (expected) and lags with their BD-java that is not quite understood by the studios yet. As time go, BD should retain the audio advantage while negating any interactivity advantage of HDDVD (provided that both tech should be about equal).
Nothing really surprising here so far. The bigger sale number of BD *is* surprising though, as the player that sold the most *IS* the PS3. Those numbers are showing that people use it as a video player, as Sony had planned.
Only the futur will tell us if this will give them the dominance in video players at the cost of video games and especially if that sacrifice was indeed a paying strategy.
That's not stupid, that's commission.
When I worked at Philips, we had such a friendly relationship with a couple of stores that they let our marketing guys design their AV dept layouts.
Three more Blu-Ray players sold and that manager was probably gonna get a free weekend in a beach house or some shit.
I guess you haven't seen the 720p or 1080p x264 (H.264/AVC - same codec that many of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray movies are using) rips on private bittorrent trackers or Usenet. A standard two hour movie will fit on a DVD5 at 720p with 6 channel AC3 audio and a bitrate of 4.5-6 mbit/sec. While this wouldn't look great using xvid, H.264/AVC High profile can create great quality. x264 using Sharktooth's HQ-Slowest profile is very impressive. A 2 hour movie can fit on a DVD9 at 1080p at 7-8 mbit/sec, again with very good quality.
Hell, I've seen some 2 CD sized x264 rips from 1080p sources that blow DVD out of the water. Forget about the MPEG-4 ASP codecs like Xvid and Divx. Now that we have H.264/AVC, we can achieve excellent results at 720p and 1080p down to DVD5/9 sizes.
If it's a porn site, you might as well go with "blew Ray"
Neither format will win. Who won the DVD-A vs. SACD war?
:: DVD-A and SACD.
I disagree with the analogy here between HDDVD to Blu Ray
DVD-A and SACD had/have their issues due to a number of reasons. SACD is Sony, and that is enough of a reason for failure (even with a Sony receiver and a Sony SACD player it takes separate wires to play a SACD than a CD or DVD, dumbasses*).
Also HD CD formats are not backwards compatable (mostly) with existing technologies like MP3, regular stereos and car stereos.
Now, HD video is going to take off in some way. Why? DVDs and SD content don't look very good on your brand new HDTV. 1080[ip] and beyond content will blow you away compared to SD stuff. Even non-technical people can tell the difference between HD and SD, but most people are not that tuned towards audio. I guess it has to do with 1/2 of the human brain going towards vision or something like that.
You know you might be a geek when you say things like :
I guess you haven't seen the 720p or 1080p x264 (H.264/AVC - same codec that many of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray movies are using) rips on private bittorrent trackers or Usenet. A standard two hour movie will fit on a DVD5 at 720p with 6 channel AC3 audio and a bitrate of 4.5-6 mbit/sec. While this wouldn't look great using xvid, H.264/AVC High profile can create great quality. x264 using Sharktooth's HQ-Slowest profile is very impressive. A 2 hour movie can fit on a DVD9 at 1080p at 7-8 mbit/sec, again with very good quality.
Hell, I've seen some 2 CD sized x264 rips from 1080p sources that blow DVD out of the water. Forget about the MPEG-4 ASP codecs like Xvid and Divx. Now that we have H.264/AVC, we can achieve excellent results at 720p and 1080p down to DVD5/9 sizes.