I've posted this at Slashdot before, but it seems germane.
I made a HD-DVD format disc with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4 a few months ago. It's a complaint disc, and should work fine in any HD DVD hardware player when those are released. It plays today in Apple's DVD Player 4.6 on a G5. I've heard folks have been able to get media to play back in Windows and Linux with other software, but not with menus.
Here's a Torrent for it. It's an Apple format DMG file, but there are mounters for it that'll work on other OSs.
Again, I did this MONTHS ago. And I can't do this even today with Blu-ray. Format isn't far enough along, no tools (there are two for HD DVD already), etcetera.
Ah, but what if HD DVD players and media come on the market a lot sooner, and are a lot cheaper.
The Chinese CE companies are already working on making HD DVD players. Making the discs is much cheaper.
And the launch should be much sooner - probably a 6-12 month lead for worldwide release of players and titles. And it isn't clearer that the PS3 will be able to play Blu-ray movies out of the box either - there have been rumors of a firmware upgrade later on. Bear in mind the spec isn't finished yet.
You've got a strange view of economics. A company won't switch their production line if there is a huge one-time cost unless they're confident of fully recouping those costs. If HD DVD is cheaper to retool for, then a lot more companies will do the switch early on, driving down HD DVD costs faster than Blu-ray. Hence making HD DVD cheaper to buy in bulk. Even if the incremental cost is similar.
Also, for the PS3 market in particular, I think Sony does PS2 replication internally, and presumably will for PS3 as well. So that's not much of an incentive for 3rd parties.
Also, dual-layer HD DVD is pretty much ready to go, while dual-layer Blu-ray is much further behind. So, at least at launch, HD DVD would have 30 GB and Blu-ray 25 GB.
Speaking of EVD, I was recently handed an interesting pile of EVD discs. Are there any software players (XP, Linux, or Mac OS X) for these discs? Any US-available players for them?
I can't imagine it'd have particularly invasive DRM:).
If you want to see some samples of what we're talking about,
Here's a test HD DVD I made with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. It plays back in Apple's DVD Player 4.6 on G5. I've heard folks have been able to get the video to play back as well on Windows, although there isn't an available player with UI yet.
Also, here's a test looking at what quality could look like with a hybrid HD-DVD/DVD, using MPEG-2 (obviously the HD quality would be better in a real title, using H.264 or VC-1, but it's not bad at all hear with a 10 year old codec). These use bitrates appropriate for a 2.5 hour movie with 448 Kbps audio.
And lastly, here's a file I made of "The Island" trailer indicating the video and audio the HD disc formats could provide. It's ATSC compatible, and plays great in VLC on a reasonably high end machine.
Actually, the audio is AC-3, aka Dolby Digital, in some souped up variants compared to what's on DVD. There are also lossless audio modes, which I personally think are a waste.
All the HD disc formats support H.264 (which has contributions from Apple, but is far from MAINLY developed by them), VC-1 (WMV9 Advanced Profile) and MPEG-2. As for VC-1 being underperforming, it does quite nicely compared to H.264 Main (they're neck in neck in compression efficiency in most implementations) and is more lightweight to decode. So VC-1 has the advantage of easier software player implementation for HTPC, for example.
However, I agree with your overall point that neither HD DVD or Blu-ray is truly a closed format. They're fully documented, but patent encumbered.
One solution for this I've been thinking a lot about is using the Blu-ray and HD-DVD binary formats on a red-laser DVD-9 media. That would let high-end computers with today's hardware play the content back with a software player.
For a typical 2.25 hour feature, that would allow 8 Mbps video, with in 2-pass VBR looks quite good at 1080p24 with modern codecs. Not much for extras, but they could go on an extra disc.
Basic story - you could get about the same runtime in HD with modern codecs on today's media as you can get out of DVD. So LOTR: ROTK: EE would still need two discs for the feature. But in HD you could play today!
On what axis do you consider Blu-ray to have superior performance?
Bear in mind that, at launch, HD-DVD will have higher capacity, since HD-DVD dual-layer is much farther along. So for at least as year, HD DVD will be at 30 GB while Blu-ray will be at 25 GB.
Also, for the case of movies, both formats are easily big enough for Return of the King: EE in full 1080p with multiple high bitrate audio tracks, etcetera.
Now, there might be reasons to like Blu-ray the physical format for other reasons, but they're both well beyond "good enough" for movies.
How DRM works is that content will be released that requires DRM hardware for playback. No one in the computer industry is proposing technologies that would prevent non-DRM'ed media files from playing back! And if that was going to happen, it wouldn't be using Intel's DRM technology.
A DRM-free system will keep on working like today's systems - it just won't be able to play future DRM'ed content. While DRM can be very frustrating, a system lacking it will be perceived by end users as having a bug, not a feature.
Now, a computer with CRACKED DRM support, so that it would play DRM'ed content would be interesting. Basically like an unlocked DVD player. But that's a different thing entirely.
The companies to get PO'ed at over DRM aren't the computer vendors, but the media companies. They'll need constant consumer pressure to keep the DRM rules they implement consumer friendly.
My gut is that the influence of porn has be quite wildly overstated. Sure it's had an effect on some markets, but what percentage of VHS tapes or DVDs have been porn so far? I imagine it's well less than 10% of the market.
I'd say that science fiction fans have been a bigger driver of new media technologies than porn fans. Look at the top-flight DVD genre DVD titles out there. And my nerdy friends certainly spend a LOT more time watching SF shows than porn. And they're not buying HD to watch HD porn (which is likely to be a bad idea...).
I've been a digital media technology consultant for nearly a decade now, working on lots of high profile technologies and projects, since before the DVD era. And even though I've not had a policy against working on adult stuff, I've NEVER had an adult project. I've had a few companies inquire, but they freaked when they heard the rates - much, MUCH more cost-sensitive than the mainstream video companies.
Slashdot has a lot of, er, anecdotal evidence of folks who spend a lot of time on porn (although I haven't heard much about those spending a lot of money on it). But don't we collectively spend a lot more time playing WoW and watching Battlestar Galactica?
Really, you can play a great game for eight hours straight, but spending more than 30 minutes in a row on porn sounds like doing it wrong:).
Ah, but over the next couple of years, your next machine can be an Intel-based Mac. It'll come with OS X, but you'll be able to run Windows on it if you need to.
I've got two custom-built Wintel workstations in my office, next to my Macs, and I hope to replace them with Mactels, so I can use all my machines as Mac OR Win.
People talk about "MS DRM" like it's the problem. But they've provided a very flexible system for implementing MANY different DRM business models. It's really the content creators who are responsible for how annoying it is.
I think one of the big reasons Apple has done well with iTunes is that the DRM is very transparent - few honest users run up into its limitations very often (as long as they aren't using a Squeezebox...).
Maybe something more like they aren't offering the hooks in the OS to disable debuggers and such?
It's amazing the stuff that Windows Media Player does to keep files from getting cracked. Randomly moving around code while it's running, and the OS locking out the ability to even look at those parts of memory. It'd be hard to do for a company that didn't offer a complete closed-source stack.
It's really quite impressive. I think the battle isn't so much between weak and strong DRM, as between good and bad DRM (where bad DRM is one that annoys the user so much that they're motivated to crack it). I like what Microsoft has done with portable licenses, for example, so you can take content you've "purchased" between multiple devices you own.
I've always felt the most secure DRM is the one that least pisses off the geeks:).
Listen, my point is that the fact I can make the disc image is an advantage to HD DVD, since it gives me a quite meaningful sense of compression efficiency today. I can't make a Blu-ray disc today for testing, which is a disadvantage to its format.
#1: What data rate is required for "good enough" HD with VC-1 or H.264 for a movie like RotK. I think it's lower than you're asserting, and I think this based on my own experience encoding very similar content.
#2: Whether or not high quality lossy compressed audio is acceptable. I argue that 1 Mbps compressed audio is more than good enough for even very high end home theater installations with very picky listeners.
If I'm wrong on 1 & 2, than yes, your math is correct. But if I'm correct, than disc capacity isn't a significant restraint in this case. So, care to make a more specific stab at arguing those?
Now, certainly, one can define an edge case where Blu-ray needs only 1 disc and HD DVD needs two. But in the case of the longest film out there with significant Slashdot cred, I don't feel this is the limitation. For this particular movie, one can put the whole title on one dual-layer side of HD-DVD with a reasonable number of high quality audio tracks (certainly as many and better than what's on the DVD).
Now, yes, it might be possible that the Blu-ray version could use extra capacity to put the standard def features on the same disc. But if the extra stuff is also HD, both formats will probably require two discs.
Which would you rather have? A disc image of a good DVD, or a DVD-ROM of a bad AVI?
Data trumps the physical layer. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of early HD titles wind up on DVD-9 medium, since it'll be a little cheaper, and will also be playable in lots of computers as well as new players.
I can make a 2 hour movie on a disc that'll play in HD-DVD players in HD. I can do it on DVD-9 today, and on a blue laser format before long. This is a good thing.
Went out of town for the weekend with the wife and kids. I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but if they are...
Ah, some numbers we can work with. Thanks.
Based on the encoders I've worked with (mainly Inlet Fathom for VC-1 and Apple's for HD H.264), you hit visually lossless with typical movie content around 12 Mbps for VBR encodes. It's certainly better at 10 Mbps than ANY ATSC D-VHS or other consumer HD you've likely seem to date. The 1080p24 MPEG-2 samples on the disc image I'm distributing are more like 17 Mbps, and they look pretty darn good, and that's just with Apple's middle of the road encoder.
Bear in mind that the WMV HD DVD-ROM titles are using Microsoft's weaker encoders, with CBR encoding around 8-10 Mbps. So we can already do about 50% more efficient with Fathom 2-pass VBR VC-1.
As for lossless being a waste, lossless audio is like lossless video. Anyone clamoring for the latter? No? Because we reach the "good enough" point for media well before we reach mathematically lossless. Now good content, good ears, and good systems mean more bits are required to hit the "good enough" point. And that's fine. But given a modern audio codec, 768 Kbps is clearly enough for great sounding 96 KHz 24-bit 7.1. But mathematically lossless with that some content would come out to the ballpark of 8 Mbps. Yes, a higher data rate than the VIDEO on today's DVD. And I'll say right now, with movie content NO ONE is going to be able to tell the difference between that 8 Mbps and, a 1 Mbps VBR encodes WMA9 Professional stream. Now, I've only got a $10K or so audio system, so i can't say that it would NEVER matter between 768 CBR and 1000 VBR. But I sure can't hear it today.
So, back to your assertion, we should be able to do the movie just fine, and that's the longest movie that anyone is likely to care about - obviously 99% of features are going to be just fine even if your assertions are correct. Personally, I don't care if the extras are on a second disc. I just don't want to have to flip it in the middle of a presentation.
Well, you asserted a different opinion than I did, but as you're wrong, I don't consider it a correction:).
Why don't you back up and explain why you think it will be impossible. I think I've explained why I think it would be.
And again, bear in mind I've actually personally put a two hour feature on a HD DVD format disc as a test, so I'm basing my assertion on some practical experience here.
So it's high definition media and all, but with a capacity of only what DVD-9 can do.
That said, I'll expect a lot of early HD DVD titles to be done that way, since for shorter content without much extras, and using H.264 or VC-1, DVD-9 is easily enough space.
Bear in mind that the 2-hour test I did was with MPEG-2. It would have been perfect quality if the tool supported 1080p24 H.264, which it doesn't yet for some reason.
Mathematically lossless doesn't matter for end users - what they care about is perceptually lossless.
The compressed audio codecs available on the HD disc formats should make perceptually lossless trivial, even for high-end audio systems. There's no point in doing better than that. If you take someone with good ears and a home theater, and do an A/B comparison, and they can't say which is better, we can just pick the lower data rate option, right?
Also, remember that home theater audio has been WAY better than video forever. Laserdiscs were doing 384 Kbps 5.1 AC-3 a decade ago. The real story of HD is bringing the video up to the audio standard we've had the potential for quite a while.
I often find myself irritated by the quality of digital video, but how often to people complain abut the AUDIO quality of digital video compared to the source? When a DVD doesn't sound good, it's due to limitations in the source material, not the compression.
Trust me, your fingers can handle a lot more latency than 250 Mbps of video data.
FireWire 400 does a lot better job of sustaining high bitrates of streaming data than USB2 does. Which is why non-real time tasks like copying files off a digital camera use USB, while real-time video transfer uses FireWire.
I'm 100% confident I can do a perfect quality LoTR: RotK: EE on a dual-layer single side of HD-DVD.
As I said in another post, I was able to get adequate quality of 123 min on a DVD-9 with HD MPEG-2. With a better codec like H.264 or VC-1 (about a 2x improvement in compression efficiency) and bigger capacity (about 3x for dual-layer HD-DVD), we're done. Multiple channels of audio, etcetera.
Now, it won't necessarily be LOSSLESS audio, but who cares. It'll be audibly perfect, even if now a bit-for-bit copy of PCM. Really, even DTS is arguably overkill for 99% of home theaters. 448 Kbps AC-3 exceeds the acuity of most of our ears already. Bear in mind that's what the you're hearing in the cinema already.
I've got a whole rant about the pointlessness of Superbit and DTS as well.
And yes, if both formats are successful, prices will converge over several years. But HD-DVD WILL be cheaper at the outset, which could make a significant difference.
I also posted this as a reply, but I figured some non-nested browsers might want to see this as well.
If I could break with Slashdot tradition and post an actual example instead of half-understood innuendo, here's an actual HD-DVD for your edification
I made a HD-DVD a few weeks ago with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. Here's a torrent to a.dmg file of it. The only player I've tested this with is DVD Studio Pro 4.6 on a Mac G5, but I think there is a beta Moonlight player that could do this as well. I'd be curious to hear about anyone not on a G5 Mac that can get this to play.
It's nothing fancy, but I say a big advantage of HD DVD is that I CAN ALREADY MAKE THEM!
Slashdot Mirror
Folks,
m g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90
I've posted this at Slashdot before, but it seems germane.
I made a HD-DVD format disc with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4 a few months ago. It's a complaint disc, and should work fine in any HD DVD hardware player when those are released. It plays today in Apple's DVD Player 4.6 on a G5. I've heard folks have been able to get media to play back in Windows and Linux with other software, but not with menus.
Here's a Torrent for it. It's an Apple format DMG file, but there are mounters for it that'll work on other OSs.
http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.d
Again, I did this MONTHS ago. And I can't do this even today with Blu-ray. Format isn't far enough along, no tools (there are two for HD DVD already), etcetera.
Ah, but what if HD DVD players and media come on the market a lot sooner, and are a lot cheaper.
The Chinese CE companies are already working on making HD DVD players. Making the discs is much cheaper.
And the launch should be much sooner - probably a 6-12 month lead for worldwide release of players and titles. And it isn't clearer that the PS3 will be able to play Blu-ray movies out of the box either - there have been rumors of a firmware upgrade later on. Bear in mind the spec isn't finished yet.
You've got a strange view of economics. A company won't switch their production line if there is a huge one-time cost unless they're confident of fully recouping those costs. If HD DVD is cheaper to retool for, then a lot more companies will do the switch early on, driving down HD DVD costs faster than Blu-ray. Hence making HD DVD cheaper to buy in bulk. Even if the incremental cost is similar.
Also, for the PS3 market in particular, I think Sony does PS2 replication internally, and presumably will for PS3 as well. So that's not much of an incentive for 3rd parties.
Also, dual-layer HD DVD is pretty much ready to go, while dual-layer Blu-ray is much further behind. So, at least at launch, HD DVD would have 30 GB and Blu-ray 25 GB.
Speaking of EVD, I was recently handed an interesting pile of EVD discs. Are there any software players (XP, Linux, or Mac OS X) for these discs? Any US-available players for them?
:).
I can't imagine it'd have particularly invasive DRM
If you want to see some samples of what we're talking about,
m g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90
o ding+Tests_m2v.torrent?ABE9BEFF514525B8B0B4EE4FEEF 5681178B14F50
S C.ts.torrent?7C824F8B9AF6D35B4EE0B78F5B208EBD5F55A A30
Here's a test HD DVD I made with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. It plays back in Apple's DVD Player 4.6 on G5. I've heard folks have been able to get the video to play back as well on Windows, although there isn't an available player with UI yet.
http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.d
Also, here's a test looking at what quality could look like with a hybrid HD-DVD/DVD, using MPEG-2 (obviously the HD quality would be better in a real title, using H.264 or VC-1, but it's not bad at all hear with a 10 year old codec). These use bitrates appropriate for a 2.5 hour movie with 448 Kbps audio.
http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HDDVD-DVD_Enc
And lastly, here's a file I made of "The Island" trailer indicating the video and audio the HD disc formats could provide. It's ATSC compatible, and plays great in VLC on a reasonably high end machine.
http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/The+Island+AT
Actually, the audio is AC-3, aka Dolby Digital, in some souped up variants compared to what's on DVD. There are also lossless audio modes, which I personally think are a waste.
All the HD disc formats support H.264 (which has contributions from Apple, but is far from MAINLY developed by them), VC-1 (WMV9 Advanced Profile) and MPEG-2. As for VC-1 being underperforming, it does quite nicely compared to H.264 Main (they're neck in neck in compression efficiency in most implementations) and is more lightweight to decode. So VC-1 has the advantage of easier software player implementation for HTPC, for example.
However, I agree with your overall point that neither HD DVD or Blu-ray is truly a closed format. They're fully documented, but patent encumbered.
One solution for this I've been thinking a lot about is using the Blu-ray and HD-DVD binary formats on a red-laser DVD-9 media. That would let high-end computers with today's hardware play the content back with a software player.
For a typical 2.25 hour feature, that would allow 8 Mbps video, with in 2-pass VBR looks quite good at 1080p24 with modern codecs. Not much for extras, but they could go on an extra disc.
Basic story - you could get about the same runtime in HD with modern codecs on today's media as you can get out of DVD. So LOTR: ROTK: EE would still need two discs for the feature. But in HD you could play today!
On what axis do you consider Blu-ray to have superior performance?
Bear in mind that, at launch, HD-DVD will have higher capacity, since HD-DVD dual-layer is much farther along. So for at least as year, HD DVD will be at 30 GB while Blu-ray will be at 25 GB.
Also, for the case of movies, both formats are easily big enough for Return of the King: EE in full 1080p with multiple high bitrate audio tracks, etcetera.
Now, there might be reasons to like Blu-ray the physical format for other reasons, but they're both well beyond "good enough" for movies.
You've got the wrong take on DRM.
How DRM works is that content will be released that requires DRM hardware for playback. No one in the computer industry is proposing technologies that would prevent non-DRM'ed media files from playing back! And if that was going to happen, it wouldn't be using Intel's DRM technology.
A DRM-free system will keep on working like today's systems - it just won't be able to play future DRM'ed content. While DRM can be very frustrating, a system lacking it will be perceived by end users as having a bug, not a feature.
Now, a computer with CRACKED DRM support, so that it would play DRM'ed content would be interesting. Basically like an unlocked DVD player. But that's a different thing entirely.
The companies to get PO'ed at over DRM aren't the computer vendors, but the media companies. They'll need constant consumer pressure to keep the DRM rules they implement consumer friendly.
My gut is that the influence of porn has be quite wildly overstated. Sure it's had an effect on some markets, but what percentage of VHS tapes or DVDs have been porn so far? I imagine it's well less than 10% of the market.
:).
I'd say that science fiction fans have been a bigger driver of new media technologies than porn fans. Look at the top-flight DVD genre DVD titles out there. And my nerdy friends certainly spend a LOT more time watching SF shows than porn. And they're not buying HD to watch HD porn (which is likely to be a bad idea...).
I've been a digital media technology consultant for nearly a decade now, working on lots of high profile technologies and projects, since before the DVD era. And even though I've not had a policy against working on adult stuff, I've NEVER had an adult project. I've had a few companies inquire, but they freaked when they heard the rates - much, MUCH more cost-sensitive than the mainstream video companies.
Slashdot has a lot of, er, anecdotal evidence of folks who spend a lot of time on porn (although I haven't heard much about those spending a lot of money on it). But don't we collectively spend a lot more time playing WoW and watching Battlestar Galactica?
Really, you can play a great game for eight hours straight, but spending more than 30 minutes in a row on porn sounds like doing it wrong
Ah, but over the next couple of years, your next machine can be an Intel-based Mac. It'll come with OS X, but you'll be able to run Windows on it if you need to.
I've got two custom-built Wintel workstations in my office, next to my Macs, and I hope to replace them with Mactels, so I can use all my machines as Mac OR Win.
Yeah, absolutely.
People talk about "MS DRM" like it's the problem. But they've provided a very flexible system for implementing MANY different DRM business models. It's really the content creators who are responsible for how annoying it is.
I think one of the big reasons Apple has done well with iTunes is that the DRM is very transparent - few honest users run up into its limitations very often (as long as they aren't using a Squeezebox...).
Of course, I have Squeezebox...
Er? How would that manifest itself?
:).
Maybe something more like they aren't offering the hooks in the OS to disable debuggers and such?
It's amazing the stuff that Windows Media Player does to keep files from getting cracked. Randomly moving around code while it's running, and the OS locking out the ability to even look at those parts of memory. It'd be hard to do for a company that didn't offer a complete closed-source stack.
It's really quite impressive. I think the battle isn't so much between weak and strong DRM, as between good and bad DRM (where bad DRM is one that annoys the user so much that they're motivated to crack it). I like what Microsoft has done with portable licenses, for example, so you can take content you've "purchased" between multiple devices you own.
I've always felt the most secure DRM is the one that least pisses off the geeks
Listen, my point is that the fact I can make the disc image is an advantage to HD DVD, since it gives me a quite meaningful sense of compression efficiency today. I can't make a Blu-ray disc today for testing, which is a disadvantage to its format.
Make sense?
Our fundamental disagreement is on two points.
#1: What data rate is required for "good enough" HD with VC-1 or H.264 for a movie like RotK. I think it's lower than you're asserting, and I think this based on my own experience encoding very similar content.
#2: Whether or not high quality lossy compressed audio is acceptable. I argue that 1 Mbps compressed audio is more than good enough for even very high end home theater installations with very picky listeners.
If I'm wrong on 1 & 2, than yes, your math is correct. But if I'm correct, than disc capacity isn't a significant restraint in this case. So, care to make a more specific stab at arguing those?
Now, certainly, one can define an edge case where Blu-ray needs only 1 disc and HD DVD needs two. But in the case of the longest film out there with significant Slashdot cred, I don't feel this is the limitation. For this particular movie, one can put the whole title on one dual-layer side of HD-DVD with a reasonable number of high quality audio tracks (certainly as many and better than what's on the DVD).
Now, yes, it might be possible that the Blu-ray version could use extra capacity to put the standard def features on the same disc. But if the extra stuff is also HD, both formats will probably require two discs.
Er, isn't the image the more interesting thing?
Which would you rather have? A disc image of a good DVD, or a DVD-ROM of a bad AVI?
Data trumps the physical layer. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of early HD titles wind up on DVD-9 medium, since it'll be a little cheaper, and will also be playable in lots of computers as well as new players.
I can make a 2 hour movie on a disc that'll play in HD-DVD players in HD. I can do it on DVD-9 today, and on a blue laser format before long. This is a good thing.
Went out of town for the weekend with the wife and kids. I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but if they are...
Ah, some numbers we can work with. Thanks.
Based on the encoders I've worked with (mainly Inlet Fathom for VC-1 and Apple's for HD H.264), you hit visually lossless with typical movie content around 12 Mbps for VBR encodes. It's certainly better at 10 Mbps than ANY ATSC D-VHS or other consumer HD you've likely seem to date. The 1080p24 MPEG-2 samples on the disc image I'm distributing are more like 17 Mbps, and they look pretty darn good, and that's just with Apple's middle of the road encoder.
Bear in mind that the WMV HD DVD-ROM titles are using Microsoft's weaker encoders, with CBR encoding around 8-10 Mbps. So we can already do about 50% more efficient with Fathom 2-pass VBR VC-1.
As for lossless being a waste, lossless audio is like lossless video. Anyone clamoring for the latter? No? Because we reach the "good enough" point for media well before we reach mathematically lossless. Now good content, good ears, and good systems mean more bits are required to hit the "good enough" point. And that's fine. But given a modern audio codec, 768 Kbps is clearly enough for great sounding 96 KHz 24-bit 7.1. But mathematically lossless with that some content would come out to the ballpark of 8 Mbps. Yes, a higher data rate than the VIDEO on today's DVD. And I'll say right now, with movie content NO ONE is going to be able to tell the difference between that 8 Mbps and, a 1 Mbps VBR encodes WMA9 Professional stream. Now, I've only got a $10K or so audio system, so i can't say that it would NEVER matter between 768 CBR and 1000 VBR. But I sure can't hear it today.
So, back to your assertion, we should be able to do the movie just fine, and that's the longest movie that anyone is likely to care about - obviously 99% of features are going to be just fine even if your assertions are correct. Personally, I don't care if the extras are on a second disc. I just don't want to have to flip it in the middle of a presentation.
Well, you asserted a different opinion than I did, but as you're wrong, I don't consider it a correction :).
Why don't you back up and explain why you think it will be impossible. I think I've explained why I think it would be.
And again, bear in mind I've actually personally put a two hour feature on a HD DVD format disc as a test, so I'm basing my assertion on some practical experience here.
I made a HD DVD format disc, on red laser media.
So it's high definition media and all, but with a capacity of only what DVD-9 can do.
That said, I'll expect a lot of early HD DVD titles to be done that way, since for shorter content without much extras, and using H.264 or VC-1, DVD-9 is easily enough space.
Bear in mind that the 2-hour test I did was with MPEG-2. It would have been perfect quality if the tool supported 1080p24 H.264, which it doesn't yet for some reason.
Mathematically lossless doesn't matter for end users - what they care about is perceptually lossless.
The compressed audio codecs available on the HD disc formats should make perceptually lossless trivial, even for high-end audio systems. There's no point in doing better than that. If you take someone with good ears and a home theater, and do an A/B comparison, and they can't say which is better, we can just pick the lower data rate option, right?
Also, remember that home theater audio has been WAY better than video forever. Laserdiscs were doing 384 Kbps 5.1 AC-3 a decade ago. The real story of HD is bringing the video up to the audio standard we've had the potential for quite a while.
I often find myself irritated by the quality of digital video, but how often to people complain abut the AUDIO quality of digital video compared to the source? When a DVD doesn't sound good, it's due to limitations in the source material, not the compression.
Trust me, your fingers can handle a lot more latency than 250 Mbps of video data.
FireWire 400 does a lot better job of sustaining high bitrates of streaming data than USB2 does. Which is why non-real time tasks like copying files off a digital camera use USB, while real-time video transfer uses FireWire.
I'm 100% confident I can do a perfect quality LoTR: RotK: EE on a dual-layer single side of HD-DVD.
As I said in another post, I was able to get adequate quality of 123 min on a DVD-9 with HD MPEG-2. With a better codec like H.264 or VC-1 (about a 2x improvement in compression efficiency) and bigger capacity (about 3x for dual-layer HD-DVD), we're done. Multiple channels of audio, etcetera.
Now, it won't necessarily be LOSSLESS audio, but who cares. It'll be audibly perfect, even if now a bit-for-bit copy of PCM. Really, even DTS is arguably overkill for 99% of home theaters. 448 Kbps AC-3 exceeds the acuity of most of our ears already. Bear in mind that's what the you're hearing in the cinema already.
I've got a whole rant about the pointlessness of Superbit and DTS as well.
And yes, if both formats are successful, prices will converge over several years. But HD-DVD WILL be cheaper at the outset, which could make a significant difference.
DV certainly doesn't feel like a niche to me!
And it's not just for consumer SD stuff. FireWire is also used for DVCPRO-HD, HDV, the AJA Io uncompressed systems, etcetera.
Folks,
.dmg file of it. The only player I've tested this with is DVD Studio Pro 4.6 on a Mac G5, but I think there is a beta Moonlight player that could do this as well. I'd be curious to hear about anyone not on a G5 Mac that can get this to play.
m g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90
I also posted this as a reply, but I figured some non-nested browsers might want to see this as well.
If I could break with Slashdot tradition and post an actual example instead of half-understood innuendo, here's an actual HD-DVD for your edification
I made a HD-DVD a few weeks ago with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. Here's a torrent to a
It's nothing fancy, but I say a big advantage of HD DVD is that I CAN ALREADY MAKE THEM!
http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.d