I've been thinking about that as well. I wouldnt mind black hawk down either.
360 HD-DVD Commercial
- Thread starter scooby_dooby
- Start date
Funny, the first DVD I bought was Gladiator by Ridley Scott, and my first DVD player was PS2.
The first Blu-ray disc I'll probably buy will be Kingdom Of Heaven, by Ridley Scott, and my first HD player will be the PS3.
I see a patter forming here...
I haven't yet seen the HD-DVD commercial.
Edit: Black Hawk Down is a Ridley Scott movie too! Amazingly that's my no.2 choice of BD movie
The first Blu-ray disc I'll probably buy will be Kingdom Of Heaven, by Ridley Scott, and my first HD player will be the PS3.
I see a patter forming here...
I haven't yet seen the HD-DVD commercial.
Edit: Black Hawk Down is a Ridley Scott movie too! Amazingly that's my no.2 choice of BD movie
How far are they gonna take this 'hip' & 'cool' image? E3's, MTV, now an HD-DVD commercial...and they still haven't convinced me they're 'authentic'! It still comes off as "want to be cool" to me, like Allard back in the day! I know they're gunning for the American males, but what about the rest of the 'screw hip-hop, give me *insert preferred image*' world?
Sorry, commercial was lame IMHO! An the HD-DVD B-Boys were pretty lame too! No moves!
Sorry, commercial was lame IMHO! An the HD-DVD B-Boys were pretty lame too! No
moves!Just because its a larger disc doesnt mean they used better coding/compression.
That ad was almost as embarassing as the Nokia N-Gage "show" at some exhibition when it was launched, where the "hip" skater grrls did some moves on stage and finally revealed their bellies with n-gage written on them!! OMG that was soooo cool dude!
Almost, not quite.
Almost, not quite.
I don't think the average consumer cares what compression is used, and how "efficiently" the disc space is used, as long as the movie looks truly HD.
The "Click" one of the first 50GB discs, has got very good reviews for it's image quality. The 50GB discs might not look miles better than HD-DVD features, but now they look at least as good.
The 50 GB discs that have more empty space because of different, more space saving codecs are coming anyway (already there by Warner?).
At least the studios have one more choice of codecs in form of MPEG-2 if for some reason they don't want/need to use the more space efficient ones
The "Click" one of the first 50GB discs, has got very good reviews for it's image quality. The 50GB discs might not look miles better than HD-DVD features, but now they look at least as good.
The 50 GB discs that have more empty space because of different, more space saving codecs are coming anyway (already there by Warner?).
At least the studios have one more choice of codecs in form of MPEG-2 if for some reason they don't want/need to use the more space efficient ones
Oninotsume
Newcomer
So, are Blue Ray movies using any other codec besides Mpeg-2? Why are they using Mpeg-2 anyway. Wouldn't it be possible to fit more stuff at an even higher quality using an advaced codec on a 50G BR disc, or am I missing something really important here?
I don't think the average consumer cares what compression is used, and how "efficiently" the disc space is used, as long as the movie looks truly HD.
The "Click" one of the first 50GB discs, has got very good reviews for it's image quality. The 50GB discs might not look miles better than HD-DVD features, but now they look at least as good.
The 50 GB discs that have more empty space because of different, more space saving codecs are coming anyway (already there by Warner?).
At least the studios have one more choice of codecs in form of MPEG-2 if for some reason they don't want/need to use the more space efficient ones
The avg consumer doesn't care about BD50 either. Instead they care more about "2 Disc Special!"
Mpeg2 is a part of the HD DVD specs also but thankfully the studios have proven to be smarter than that, so far.....
Other studios are. Neutral ones such as Warner (and Paramount). Sony's baby is Mpeg2. BR was initially designed to be a Mpeg2 only format thus the extra space of DL media was needed to run at high bit rates. Then VC1 and AVC HP came along.
Funny enough, Matsushita (Panasonic) were so convinced that Blu Ray specs would leave out VC1 that they designed their first player to exclude it. Ofcourse they had to go back and redesign their player to include VC1 since that was a requirment of, at that time, HD DVD only studios (warner and paramount) to go neutral.
Oninotsume
Newcomer
I see. So, it's a mixed bag between Mpeg2 and VC1 being used on different BR discs depending on the studio.
From the other posts I have gathered that 50G BR Mpeg2 movies look just as good as their VC1 HD DVD counterparts, but would it be possilbe to fit a dual layer BR Mpeg2 movie onto a single layer VC1 BR and maintain the same quality? If so, it would seem (at least to me) to be the cheaper of the two options.
Do you see the type of codec taking on some type of standard in the future?
From the other posts I have gathered that 50G BR Mpeg2 movies look just as good as their VC1 HD DVD counterparts, but would it be possilbe to fit a dual layer BR Mpeg2 movie onto a single layer VC1 BR and maintain the same quality? If so, it would seem (at least to me) to be the cheaper of the two options.
Do you see the type of codec taking on some type of standard in the future?
Not so sure about that 2 disc special attractivity.
For DVD's it's a selling point, but for higher capacity HD-DVD and BD, I'm not so sure.
It's about the extra features anyway. If there's the same or even more features on a single 50GB BD than on two HD DVD dics.
If it were how you believe it'll be, the single layer DVD's with four disc special editions would be more marketable and preferred by consumers than dual layer DVD's.
The studios really don't have to be that smart to avoid MPEG-2 on the more limited capacity HD-DVD
VC1 could handle Click onto a HD30 or perhaps even a BD25 with high quality, atleast. Example: Batman Begins is a longer movie, based off film, has IME, True HD5.1, looks amazing and uses an average bit rate of only 13.xx. Batman is just one example of many. Certainly VC1 has proven it's worth and effeincy. Click is also a digital source and not film thus easier to encode. Click is by no means perfect but certainly in the right direction.
I'm really hoping that VC-1 becomes the standard. I certainly would not want to wait for BD50 titles to get some consistancy. So far, you have "tears of the sun" on BD25 using mpeg2 that looks great. Most others using mpeg2, not so much. That's very inconsistant in my book, especially when it's not necessary. Warner has clearly proven that VC1 on BD25 can produce consistantly fantastic results.
Fox is going with AVC HP, which so far has not proven upto par with VC1 in real world results. Sony, if at all, will goto AVC HP first, then perhaps goto VC1 but not anytime soon.
Luckily, Lions Gate is heavily rumoured to be switching to VC1 shortly. I want consistant high quality PQ. So far VC1 has delivered so I'm sticking with it. Thankfully, it's mandatory on both mediums. Politics are ofcourse another story.
Last edited by a moderator:
A bunch of random special features? Sure. Making SURE it takes up more than one disk? Not sure about that. They're used to needing it, certainly, but if they can get all the same "special feature text" on the back of the box and not have to disk-swap?
Consumers are mainly driven by convenience, and the less disk-swapping or disk-flipping they have to do, the better. If they can't recognize they're getting the same amount of features (or more), that's one thing. If they expect and think they deserve a lot more with a second disk, that's one thing. But "2 disks" in and of itself does not really convey value; it adds inconvenience.
It's an odd misconception that customers generally equate more physical articles with more actual content and value.
It's only if they know beforehand (like in case of DVD's, it's very very safe to say you get more to view with two discs than one disc, so it's not a "gamble" for the consumer) that by getting more of some concrete stuff they also get more of the non-physical stuff.
In the case of HD DVD and Blu-ray, the consumer needs to educate himself more before the buying decision, that's true, and if he owns both format players, he'll need to do more comparing when he wants to buy a movie that's out on both formats.
But a consumer who has yet to deside which format to back, do you think he'll make the choice rather on convenience than the quantity of discs?
People buying these stuff are not that thick they automatically think more discs is better, maybe some years down the road when the format is established and the true mainstream adopts it, it's easier to fool them, but the early adopters... I think a slim chance.
It's only if they know beforehand (like in case of DVD's, it's very very safe to say you get more to view with two discs than one disc, so it's not a "gamble" for the consumer) that by getting more of some concrete stuff they also get more of the non-physical stuff.
In the case of HD DVD and Blu-ray, the consumer needs to educate himself more before the buying decision, that's true, and if he owns both format players, he'll need to do more comparing when he wants to buy a movie that's out on both formats.
But a consumer who has yet to deside which format to back, do you think he'll make the choice rather on convenience than the quantity of discs?
People buying these stuff are not that thick they automatically think more discs is better, maybe some years down the road when the format is established and the true mainstream adopts it, it's easier to fool them, but the early adopters... I think a slim chance.
Heh. Same here!
I thought it was interesting that Click, apart from being on a BD DL 50Gb disc, also offered all the extras in HD too. There's nothing about HD DVD technically that convinces me this format is going to be better. The only thing we've seen is that they were to the market sooner with players. But they are behind on the burners, while the BD players and discs have now officially caught up. I think that they will overtake the HD DVD next, and with the PS3 coming out, the BD still (as it has been for a while) is the favorite.
What we've seen so far is that while BD was the favorite, there were lower expectations for HD DVD when they came to market, and higher expectations for BD. HD DVD probably surpassed some of these expectations, while the initial BD expectations were to high for the first systems. Even in most criticism then, though, BD wasn't discounted, just warned that they should get their act together. But they are, have, and with writers being out there and mature already, things are looking good.
Anyway, I'm going way off-topic, sorry.
In general, I agree that HD DVD add-on should primarily target people who already wanted a 360 in the first place, but I am not going to blame Microsoft from using HD DVD to get more attention from (currently) non-gamers on the 360 - which is, what I think, they are trying to do here.
I'm too lazy to find any linkies I'm afraid, but I've read comments from movie exec types saying that actually "people" do think they're getting something special with multi disk packs, to the point where publishers will sometimes put out on 2 DVDs content that could fit onto 1 DVD 9.
Most people have no idea about disk capcity, number of layers on the disk, codecs or any of that stuff. They naturally, however, appreciate that more disks = better even when maybe it doesn't.
DVD collectors/special editions are ace.
Person 1: "I gots me the 2 disk copy of [TOP TEN MOVIE XX]!!"
Person 2: "What's actually on the second disk?"
Person 1: "It's got ... I don't know."
if I am right, BR-R format has existed already quite long in Japan, and it again originally supported only MPEG2. BR-R is again subset of BR-ROM, but I am not sure if existing BR-R players are able to play these new MPEG2 based BR-ROM titles. If this is the case, Sony has quite userbase for older codec already in home market, which again helps acceptance of new format. This could be one of the reasons behind decision stay in MPEG2 for now.
Exactly. The studios have spent many many years conditioning the consumers about the "value" of a multi disc set. What you said is true and has been discussed at lenght and confirmed by insiders on avsforum many times. Ofcourse, people outside of the industry somehow know better
Similar threads
