HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray: Will this 'war' ever end?

[mcscajun]

I'm fed up. I want a single format. I don't much care which one; let's get ON with it!

Paramount, Dreamworks back HD DVD, drop Blu-ray
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG will offer next-generation DVDs in the HD DVD format and drop support for Blu-ray, further complicating the race between the competing technologies.

-snip-

Movies directed by Steven Spielberg, however, will continue to be released in both formats.

-snip-

Until recently, many consumers were able to defer the choice because players have been so expensive. But prices have been slashed by about half — Sony's Blu-ray player now sells for $499, and Toshiba's cheapest HD DVD player sells for $299, with both likely to include as many as five free movies as an incentive.

-snip-

Rob Moore, president of Paramount Worldwide Distribution, said market data shows that people who own gaming consoles buy fewer movies than those who invest in a movie-only player.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-08-20-paramount-dreamworks-blu-ray_N.htm

I know I'm not the first to say this is VHS vs. Betamax all over again, but it certainly is, plus shades of the old browser wars between IE and Netscape, with the percentages shifting from one year to the next. We all know how that worked out, but for the record, I use Firefox.
:evilgrin:

When the big boys were all lined up on Blu-Ray with little firepower behind HD DVD, the choice seemed a no-brainer, but most were still wary and many consumers have been waiting on the sidelines, not wanting to wind up holding the 21st Century's Betamax. There was even an article earlier this month blaming consumers(!) for the failure of one format to win out over the other. We're supposed to decide, and bear the cost if we wind up making the wrong choice and get stuck with the wrong equipment and/or have to buy DVDs all over again.

So, here we have the latest lineup: Paramount and DreamWorks join Universal, which is totally behind HD DVD and will only release in that format, while Sony, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney and MGM will only release in Blu-Ray. There was a point early on when Sony was the only Blu-Ray backer, and it seemed an easy choice to go HD DVD. Time Warners' Warner Bros. is now the only studio left committed to releasing movies in both formats. Fun, huh? It gets better (or worse, depending on how you look at it). Blockbuster plans to only stock Blu-Ray, and Target plans to sell only Blu-Ray players. Dual-format players are still prohibitively expensive, the HD DVD seems like the better deal for movie loving consumers; where does that leave us?

I just want a DVD player that will work with my HD TV. I got one as a gift last year, and while I have an HD cable box, I can't play my DVDs or VHS tapes right now. I have a combo unit and this older model doesn't cut it, at least, not for me; I get black and white picture and no sound, or sound but no picture. Yes, I'm running separate cables for the audio and video, but I can't for the life of me get it to work, and I'm frankly, fed up. As my patience has worn thin (*and my pocketbook, buying cables only to find out they're not what I need*) I want a player with an HDMI connector, so everything, color picture and sound is carried on the one wire. Do I buy a non-HD player that upconverts to 1080i now, wait until this seemingly endless war comes to a resolution, or jump in with both feet on HD DVD and hope it wins?

[Deja Q]

1. Upconverting is a joke

Remember, the LCD TV automatically upconverts 480i signals.

If the DVD player's upconvert circuitry is of poor quality and your TV set also is a low- or mid-end variant, the defects will show themselves quite nicely.

[mcscajun]

2. Well, that's one vote for Not Upconverting.

:hi:

[Deja Q]

14. Having gone to Best Buy and Circuit City 8 times to test every player out there,

andh aving read numerous technical documents, I do have a rudimentary understanding and I know it is a waste.

I kept the Samsung model solely because it can play R2 discs. And plays them far more smoothly than the Philips model, which for R2 discs was also a strong contender.

[Xithras]

4. Disagree strongly

I own an older (two years) Toshiba DR5 DVD Recorder that does 480P, 720P, and 1080i upsampling and the image quality is awesome. Is it HD-DVD quality? Not quite, but it's FAR better than standard DVD, and the difference isn't worth the $500+ that a good quality HD movie player will set you back. Did I mention that it has HDMI out? And that the last time I saw one on sale, it was only $120 at Sears?

I'm in no hurry to upgrade my DVD player to HD. The upsampled quality looks great (on my 42" Panasonic plasma), and I have no interest in buying this generations Betamax. I'll worry about moving to HD movie disks when the format war is settled, or when movies start appearing ONLY in one format or another and my choices become limited.

By the way, there IS a middle road here if you don't want to waste money on a temporary solution. A lot of decent receivers nowadays have high quality upconverting chipsets in them which can take an incoming component video connection and output an upsampled HDMI signal. If your DVD player supports progressive scan and you have any need for a receiver, this may be a good solution since the receiver can remain in use when you DO decide to buy an HDDVD or Blu Ray player.

On edit: Almost forgot. I don't know who told you that "the LCD TV automatically upconverts 480i signals", but AFAIK that isn't true in most cases. There are some LCD's out there that will upconvert digital SD signals to 480P internally, and a handful that will try to upconvert a native 480P signal (from a progressive scan DVD player or other EDTV digital source) to 720P or 1080i, but they are a minority. Most LCD and Plasma TV's will simply display whatever the incoming signal is, irregardless of its resolution.

Most HDTV's do include noise reduction and color correction circuits to improve the picture quality of interlaced SD signals, but that's not the same thing as upconverting and doesn't approach the quality of a good upconverted signal.

[sir_captain]

12. Not totally accurate

LCD and Plasma displays always scale. They only display at their native resolutions, whether this be 720p or 1080p. If the display tried to display something at a non-native resolution, it would actually be scaling the image to whatever resolution that is (try setting a computer lcd display to a non-native resolution and you'll see why the tv manufacturers do not allow this.)

As for the value of upsampled images--while this is certainly partially subjective--what you say is not really accurate. You've got a DVD--it's got a 540p image. That's a specific number of pixels, and hence, a specific level of detail. When upsampled well, this can reduce the number of visual artifacts introduced in the scaling process, but it is inherently impossible to improve the quality of the image because it is impossible to add any picture information to the image. This is in contrast to 1080p hi-def source material which has many times the number of pixels and consequently, has a much more detailed image. It's really a pretty simple concept, and I dare say that if you saw, for instance, the new BBC documentary Planet Earth displayed via an upscaled DVD or one of the HD formats, it'd be really obvious which one was which.

[Xithras]

15. Scaling and upconverting aren't the same thing. You're a little off.

You might be right if you're referring to some of the first gen upconverters, but a device with a Faroudja or a competing quality upconverter will do more than simply stretch to the screen res. Upscalers cannot match HD quality because they can't invent information that isn't there, but they can extrapolate new lines based on data in the surrounding lines and surrounding frames. A 480i or 540p TV signal DOES contain all of the visual information found in a 1080P signal, it's just not rendered in a single frame. Think about it...if you pan an SD camera past a stationary object, all of the details in the object will be captured on at least one of the lines in one of the frames. HD is superior because it can display full resolution in each frame, but a quality upconverter can calculate motion and pull together information from multiple lines and frames to build an image that IS higher quality than the source SD or ED signal. It's still not HD, but it looks very good.

And, FWIW, I happen to own Planet Earth on DVD, and I watched the original broadcast in HD. There was a perceptible quality loss to me since I'd seen the HD version first, but people who watch the upconverted version in my home are still blown away by the quality of the picture. It's not as good as true HD, but it's still an incredible image and it's visually superior to standard DVD.

Of course, the TV has a lot to do with it too. If you're sitting 6 feet from a 60" 1080P plasma, anything that isn't Blu-Ray is gonna look like shite. I have a 42" 720P plasma (which according to the numbers is the most commonly sold plasma size and resolution), so the increased fidelity of a 1080P signal is lost in my set anyway. When I compare, I'm comparing the original 480/540 picture to an upsampled 720P picture, and the difference is huge. At 1080P with a larger screen, I can see how it might not look so pretty.

Then again, if you can afford a 60" 1080P plasma, you can afford to waste the money on a low end HD-DVD and Blu-Ray player.

[sir_captain]

20. Some fair points

and my Panny DVD player with a Faroudja DCDI video processor does certainly do a noticeably better job than nearly any other player I've seen.

As for Planet Earth, you should check it out on HD-DVD or preferably Blu-Ray on a 1080p display if you get a chance. The difference between the compression the studios use and the ridiculous rate-shaping used by cable and satellite companies is amazing. I watched Planet Earth on Discovery HD originally and besides getting to hear David Attenborough now instead of Sigourney Weaver, the visual difference is pretty stunning.

Also, tv prices have really dropped dramatically. One can find a 46" 1080p Sharp model for under $2000 pretty easily now, and I'd dare say by the holidays, they'll drop down into the $1500 range--certainly not cheap by any means, but pretty amazing when you think what this tech would have cost 5 years ago (if it had even been available!)

I'm a blu-ray man myself, but Toshiba is selling their entry level HD-DVD player for about $200 on Amazon right now, and their even cheaper 3rd generation players are about to hit, so I'd think again by the holidays, we're looking at $150 or so which is really not much more than a decent regular DVD player, and considering that it's backwards compatible and upscales...

I think we'll have to disagree on the fidelity of HD images, though. All DVDs and HD format discs are based on HD masters nowadays. When a dvd is made, some of that digital information is lost because there simply aren't as many pixels available. A quality scaler can do wonders in terms of anistropic filtering, etc, but it cannot put information that wasn't there to begin with back. That is simply impossible, any way you cut it. It certainly looks better if it's a good processor though--I'll agree with you about that.

You're also right about tv size. Personally, I think 42" is about the size where one can begin to see the difference between 720p and 1080p; maybe 37", but certainly not 32", which is the most commonly sized LCD (and which are way outselling plasmas now anyway.)

[Deja Q]

13. The Samsung 1080p7 player

Via HDMI, it did a fab job at upconverting... for film media.

It couldn't handle video media (TV shows) at all. The comb effect from the second-rate deinterlacing was obvious and horrible to see. Having also bought a Philips, Sony, Yamaha (uses the same hardware AS Philips), and Panasonic, they ALL had various defects with HDMI upsampling; the Panasonic being the worst.

So I hooked the Samsung back via Component to my TV (set to 480i; progressive disabled) and noted MUCH better deinterlacing of video, except for having to manually turning down saturation (the additional A/D conversion being the culprit). The LCD TV has its own upconverter (naturally; it has to upsample 480i to 720p or whatever its native resolution is) - it is documented that, depending on the TV set used, using the DVD player's upconverter will produce worse results.

Actually, HDMI is essentially audio+component video rolled into one, with a bit of 'broadcast flag' technology to make copying even more difficult. If you care to copy; I don't.

On edit: Forgot to add 'Sony'.

[high density]

3. I've pretty much stopped buying DVDs, etc since the "war" started

The current HD discs are too expensive, dual format players have an outrageous price on them, and I don't feel like buying everything I have on DVD a second time in a few years when it's all released in HD. I also have little interest at the moment about buying an HDTV set so I'm just sitting back and waiting. I'm also wondering if I should ditch the cable TV subscription. I'm spending way too much time in front of the TV set, and the constantly annoying bugs, pop-in ads, and product placement is driving down the value of cable very fast.

[mcscajun]

8. One thing mentioned in some of the articles: Pick a format, and RENT until things settle

Netflix or whoever (anyone but Blockbuster).

[MysticalChicken]

5. Will someone please explain to me...

... what the hell blu-ray even is?

I buy regular, plain, old, run-of-the-mill DVDs.

[mcscajun]

7. Here ya' go.

Basic info:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1982533,00.asp

More technical:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/415

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

6. And since all the porn is on the internet now, there's no deciding factor.

VHS had the porn while beta supposedly did not.

[Kutjara]

9. I have the power to end the "war" whenever I want.

Based on my almost psychic ability to pick losing technologies, all I have to do is purchase either a blu-ray or HD-DVD player and I guarantee that format will become obsolete overnight.

Incidentally, a lesser version of the same effect happens whenever I buy goods or services. I can't count the number of well-established restaurants that have gone out of business soon after I started frequenting them. Even the local gas station, which had been on the same site for over 40 years, closed and was torn down within two months of my decision to use it as my principal supplier. The same thing happened to three different coffeehouses. I'm the retail version of Typhoid Mary.

FEAR ME!

[Rabrrrrrr]

17. Please join the GOP.

Thank you.

:rofl:

[sir_captain]

10. upconversion depends on a number of different factors

basically, either the tv or the dvd player is going to scale the 540p image on the dvd to the resolution of your tv. 1080p tvs, while they are higher resolution than 720p models and can consequently show more of the defect in the image, can sometimes still be better scalers since 1080 is a perfect multiple of the original resolution.

Basically, if you have a high end tv manufacturer (generally considered to be Sony, Samsung and Sharp), you're probably not going to see an enormous difference from an upscaled image because the scaler in the tv is already pretty good. If you've got a cheaper tv, the scaler in the dvd player might be better, so there could be an increase in picture quality.

In any case, you can buy an upscaling dvd player with a HDMI output for $50-$60 now, so there's not really any reason not to get one if you need a new player.

In terms of the "war" this new business is a complete joke--Microsoft paid off Paramount and Dreamworks upwards of $150 million to go HD-DVD exclusive, and this is terrible for consumers. Blu-ray has been way outselling HD-DVD, until now had way more studio support, and is clearly the technically superior format. The very fact that HD-DVD has had to resort to paying studios off demonstrates where it was headed previous to this announcement. Unfortunately, this new studio split will probably lead to a quagmire, and in the end, that's bad for consumers since we'd all be better off if either of the formats (though preferably blu-ray, I'd say) won and could start replacing DVD.

[BlooInBloo]

11. Yup. As soon as porn chooses one or the other, the war is over.

[cynatnite]

16. Not buying either...

We decided not to go that route. We have an HDTV and I got an HDMI compatable DVD player and using that is as close to HD as it gets. The cable cost almost 30 bucks. Well worth the money.

[Rabrrrrrr]

18. As with all technology, the war continues until the porn industry chooses, and ends it.

And people say porn is bad for society.

Bullshit - next to the military, porn is the primary driver of technological innovation.

And I'm not kidding.

[Deja Q]

19. So whichever format has more silicone will be the deciding factor?

Uh-oh. Both are about equal in that department...

:hide:

[MilesColtrane]

21. I don't know, but I'm pulling for Blu-Ray.

I'm against whatever Microsoft is for...just on principle.