Warner ditch HD DVD - Blu-Ray to be next disc format?

[handyman]

Space is not too much of an issue nowadays, 1Tb hard drives are fairly cheap and you can run several via sata.
My projector also handles 1080 (i though) and it looks awesome especially with hd downloads from the states. I've not run HD movies through it yet but I'm in the process of converting all of my media to digital files and have a server pc in the living room to play it from coupled to a 5.1 surround.

Originally Posted by gc10360

is your projector HD? I have a HD projector and a 1080p LCD TV. trust me if all you have seen in HD is HD downloads you're missing out, nothing beats A good encoded High bitrate BLU Ray or HD DVD for Picture Quality, and probably wont for a long while, I have owned DVD since 1999 and have about 700 movies now I've switched to HDM and currently have about 70 HDDVD and Blu Ray movies and can't envisige having enough HDD space for storing 700 movies in HD format at the Quality I have on either HDM format. maybe digitial dowloads are the future but its going to be a while before serious HD HT enthusiasts take that route. after all its the early adopters such as myself that help make a format mass market.

Im not interested in a HD tv till VM transmit enough content to make it worth my while buying one. 1080 .mkv wrapped files look pretty bloody good on a screen thats nearly twice the size of a HD tv and its only a 1280:1024 res projector (software keeps aspect ratio correct for movies) so even not on a HD projector im happy with what I have and am also more than happy for you early adopters to pay all those developement costs. I can not see enough content being transmited this side of 2010 for me to worry about it

---------- Post added at 12:04 ---------- Previous post was at 12:03 ----------

Originally Posted by handyman

Space is not too much of an issue nowadays, 1Tb hard drives are fairly cheap and you can run several via sata.
My projector also handles 1080 (i though) and it looks awesome especially with hd downloads from the states. I've not run HD movies through it yet but I'm in the process of converting all of my media to digital files and have a server pc in the living room to play it from coupled to a 5.1 surround.

mines 7.1 lol

[Tezcatlipoca]

As expected, New Line & HBO have announced they're dropping HD DVD for Blu-ray:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=32000

[peanut]

Looks like the PS3 might get more popular now than ever. At least there might be an end in sight in this crazy (but expensive) competition.

[SOSAGES]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

Im not interested in a HD tv till VM transmit enough content to make it worth my while buying one. 1080 .mkv wrapped files look pretty bloody good on a screen thats nearly twice the size of a HD tv

---------- Post added at 12:04 ---------- Previous post was at 12:03 ----------

9/10 1080.mkv wrapped files in my experience are crap.
you cant always trust the source it says in the nfo ive seen so many hd rips that are just upscalled
also any HD ripping is not a simple matter of click and wait - to get the best possible results you need to play around with the settings and filters so far i havnt seen a lot of real quality rips to justify the 8 or so GB download.

Originally Posted by Matt D

As expected, New Line & HBO have announced they're dropping HD DVD for Blu-ray:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=32000

Lord of the Rings in HD

HBO, Nothing that would really benefit from HD IMO. HBO are all about the quality of direction and writing. Not so much about visual stuff

Originally Posted by Jefferson T

I so nearly got a HD-DVD player a couple of weeks ago, glad I waited now.

Guess I'll keep on waiting 'till it's all sorted, eventually.

Which begs the question: How will we know when the "war" is over?

Will the HD DVD camp come out and say "we lost - Blu-Ray won"...

Or in 6 months time when it looks like Blu-Ray has won, will we have to keep guessing for another year?

So - when will Joe Public know what to go and buy??

---------- Post added at 13:21 ---------- Previous post was at 13:20 ----------

Originally Posted by Damien

Lord of the Rings in HD

I don't think it was ever filmed in HD.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by LSainsbury

I don't think it was ever filmed in HD.

I'd be suprised if it wasn't filmed at the standard Digital Cinema resolution, which is higher than HD..

[Uncle Peter]

The way things are going and the speed at which things are changing it seems more than ever that using a PC as your home entertainment hub would save a constantly revolving cycle of different silver boxes appearing and disappearing under your telly.

[SOSAGES]

i think all movies filmed have the ability to go HD, the film its self is a higher res than HD so it just takes a while to go back and remaster it... How do you think we get HD versions of terminator etc of course this then shows up all the imperfections so someone somewhere spends ages making abused negatives look pretty again - Some HD discs are disapointing, depends how much time/money they put into making it look nice again

im not sure if frame rate maters or the size of the film reel i will have to look into it.
im ignoring the whole HD thing until i can buy a cheap writer to store 50gb of data on

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by SOSAGES

i think all movies filmed have the ability to go HD, the film its self is a higher res than HD so it just takes a while to go back and remaster it... How do you think we get HD versions of terminator etc of course this then shows up all the imperfections so someone somewhere spends ages making abused negatives look pretty again - Some HD discs are disapointing, depends how much time/money they put into making it look nice again

im not sure if frame rate maters or the size of the film reel i will have to look into it.
im ignoring the whole HD thing until i can buy a cheap writer to store 50gb of data on

Film is shot at 24 frames per second.

Originally Posted by Stuart C

I'd be suprised if it wasn't filmed at the standard Digital Cinema resolution, which is higher than HD..

Ahh - never knew that... Learn something new every day...

[SOSAGES]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Film is shot at 24 frames per second.

not all film (directors choice im sure)

we use 24fps as a standard for HD frame rates as it works well with 35mm film (something most people use these days) im not fully sure what this has to do with the HD quality but i expect its only a google away, its a complicated world.

[Stephen]

The reason we get old films in Hi Def is due to the film they were shot on.

For example films are made to be shown on a huge cinema screen so have to be of a decent resolution to be blown up to that scale, there for it is easy to take the film reels and in put t hem to a computer and made a Hi Def version of the film. They obviously might not look as great as a film thats actually shot using a HD camera.

I do have Blu-Ray and also HD DVD and personally I think that the HD DVDs look a lot better picture wise and interactivity of the bonus features is better. although with BLu-Ray 1.1 this should improve the interactive features.

[popper]

OC all this picture quality also depends on the Codec used and indeed which Encoder , as i understand it , many HD DVD and BR masters are still using the old Mpeg2 Codec, and VC-1.

whats the score for current HD using the AVC/H.264 Codec now as thats the only one thats got a professional lossless Encode/Decode mode, but i suspect the End users might need an even larger disk format in the future before we see 1080p+ full length features and extra's in lossless mode.

anyone done the maths for a lossless 1080p at current bitrates for a standard feature , thats got to be a rather large binary file

Snow has a lossless mode too, but thats not an industry adopted standard codec, and still needs work from the open source devs old and new, to get its speeds up at higher screen sizes really.