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Topic: HD DVD or BLU RAY
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Jan Bister
Darth 8mm
Posts: 2629
From: Ohio, USA
Registered: Jan 2005
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posted June 28, 2006 09:22 PM
Ohh, impatient, are we
Well, all I can say is that maybe (just maybe) you haven't seen a good MPEG4 - that is, DivX or XviD - movie file... perhaps you watched badly decoded video, for when it comes to MPEG4, a good decoder is almost as important as a good encoder. Deblocking algorithms are particularly effective in eliminating the macro blocking you mention. I've done a few of my own encodes from DVDs and they came out mighty good. Also... I dare say that my monitor, which was a $2,000 high-end display in its day (1996-1997) and currently runs 1280x1024 at an 85Hz refresh rate with 32-bit color depth, is a pretty decent tool for judging the quality of both MPEG2 (DVD) and MPEG4 (.avi file) video streams. Therefore I stand by what I've said.
That wasn't too tenacious, was it?
-------------------- Call me Phoenix. *dusts off the ashes*
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John Cook
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 183
From: Papillion, NE
Registered: Apr 2004
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posted June 28, 2006 09:43 PM
Bill over at the digital bits had this to say about the new Blu-Ray hardware just hitting the market...
quote: Those of you who are interested in how Blu-ray displays VC1 material will be pleased to know that it looks absolutely spectacular. Unfortunately, I can't talk about the specific clips we saw, but it wouldn't be fair to compare Blu-ray's VC1 quality to that of HD-DVD at this point anyway, especially not from a single short clip. I will tell you, however, that one specific piece of test footage we looked at (in MPEG-2) was hands-down the single most stunning high-def video I've ever seen. I've seen a lot of HD video in my day, but NOTHING this good in terms of detail, color, contrast and lack of compression artifacting. I have no doubt that both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc are capable of delivering video quality of this level eventually, but I'm betting full-length movie discs this good won't start hitting store shelves until mid-to-late next year... when the authoring and compression folks have had enough time to really hone their wizardry with these formats.
There's plenty more of this article to read on his site thedigitalbits.com, after reading this latest update to his ongoing Blu-ray review my interest has been raised a notch. I'm hoping his PS3 review will have a similar outcome.
John
-------------------- Come visit The Pit http://members.cox.net/home-theater
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John Cook
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 183
From: Papillion, NE
Registered: Apr 2004
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posted June 30, 2006 12:34 AM
Kevin
I agree with your comment about name recognition of "DVD" in HD-DVD is a trump card in Toshiba's hand.
Jan,
You're right, HD-DVD and Bluray are not NTSC. They are in fact a subrate of a totally new format called ATSC. NTSC was a 525 line field (480 line field viewable,) interlaced at a vertical refresh rate of 60fields or 30frames/second. The ATSC standard is much more than that, 24/30/60f/s as well as 480i/480p/720p/1080i/1080p and not to mention all the combinations of each of the previous with either a 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio. NTSC was a single format standard, ATSC which includes HDTV is comprised of 18 different video frame rate standards. Only the 720P, 1080i and 1080P (1080P is becoming more prevalent here in the US) qualify as HDTV formats (exceeds of 1 Megapixel.) You can't compare old apples to fresh oranges. ATSC is primarily an MPEG2 format, the newer MPEG4 codecs used in HD-DVD and Bluray are not ATSC specific but the new disc formats do conform to the ATSC refresh rates, display aspect ratios and pixel counts. New encoding scheme, same underlying ATSC frame format. HDTV capable, 1080p capable, oh hell yes. No other consumer format on the planet (including PAL) comes close!
With regards to VHS vs Beta wars the prominent deciding factor in the US was the long play speed (4 hour) introduced by JVC and the eventual straw that broke the camels back extended long play (6 hour recoding time) introduced by Matsushita (Panasonic.)
The 2/4/6 hour VHS recording times vs the 1.5/3/4.5 Beta recording time per tape, at a time when video tape was quite expensive, was the deciding factor here in the US.
This time around, all other criteria being reasonably equal between the two formats, it appears that Sony has the longer recording time albeit at a higher cost.
Current score looks to be a tie! Could the Sony Play Station 3 w/integrated Bluray be the tie breaker? I'm anxiously waiting Bill Hunts review over on the bits.
John
-------------------- Come visit The Pit http://members.cox.net/home-theater
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