Big Releases Heat Up High-Def Format War

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @07:13AM from the still-a-dead-heat dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Choosing sides in the high-def format war becomes that much harder today, as two powerhouse movie franchises hit store shelves on opposing formats. Exclusive to Blu-ray are the first two 'Pirates of the Caribbean' flicks, while exclusive to HD DVD are two different configurations of the 'Matrix' Trilogy. So which format wins this battle? According to High-Def Digest, this one's a draw. The article has capsule reviews of the four releases ('The Ultimate Matrix Collection' & 'The Complete Matrix Trilogy' on HD DVD, and 'POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl' & 'POTC: Dead Man's Chest' on Blu-ray) with links to excruciatingly in-depth reviews. In the end the site says both sets of releases boast benchmark video and audio, but a preponderance of standard-def supplements prevent all of the above from being the perfect high-def package."

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Re:How about NONE! by llZENll · 2007-05-22 08:05 · Score: 5, Informative

Using HDNET, or any cable channel, is a poor source of HD material compared to a disc. Video and audio will be much better from either HDDVD or Bluray. Discs typically carry 30-60 Mbit/s of information, while ATSC (over the air HD) is 19.2 Mbit/s and cable is probably less than that. Probably around 15-20 Mbit/s for cable. BTW standard DVD is around 11 Mbit/s. To add to that providers commonly crop, resize, stretch, and modify the original HD signal further for formatting to their liking, degrading the quality even further.

So Bluray and HDDVD discs have around double to triple the information compared to a broadcast HD signal.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc
http://www.filmbug.com/dictionary/hdtv.php