BR/HD-DVD Thread

[one]

Re: "Sony Eyes 200GB Blu-ray Discs"

"Sony Eyes 200GB Blu-ray Discs"

Old news: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=347096&highlight=200gb#347096

 

[Inane_Dork]

20th Century Fox to adopt the Blu-ray Disc format

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/10616

In the absence of immediate and strong support for HD-DVD, BD just won.

IMO, of course.

 

[DemoCoder]

Europe has had higher definition TV than NTSC regions for decades. If Europe is now a few years behind the US and Japan in adopting new HDTV standards this is possibly a reflection of Europe not needing it as much rather lacking the ability to 'get off its ass'...

Umm, please don't tell me you're talking about PAL TVs, or crappy DTV. Hi-Definition requires more than just digital signal, we get that too on Satellite, Cable, etc. It requires better display technology: significantly more pixels on the screen and higher refresh rates.

PAL is a marginal verticle resolution improvement to NTSC, but a step back in refresh rate. It's not HDTV by any stretch of the imagination, interlaced, and still suffers from all the limitations of NTSC. That's a really poor excuse for not adopting HDTV. Europeans think PAL looks "higher def enough?"

 

[snacky]

Actually, PAL should be able to achieve better color fidelity than NTSC. This is because the conversion from black&white to color was basically a dirty hack.

Otherwise, I agree that PAL isn't especially better than NTSC, and in particular its framerate is way at the low end of the "acceptable" range. Some individuals find PAL to be too flickery for their tastes, but it's all a matter of perception. Both formats have essentially the same bandwidth usage so they're really on even footing.

I can't take seriously any claim that either format is "ahead" in the move to HDTV. Both formats are actually pretty stupid, and they're unfortunate relics of a long-dead past.

 

[function]

Europe has had higher definition TV than NTSC regions for decades. If Europe is now a few years behind the US and Japan in adopting new HDTV standards this is possibly a reflection of Europe not needing it as much rather lacking the ability to 'get off its ass'...

Umm, please don't tell me you're talking about PAL TVs, or crappy DTV. Hi-Definition requires more than just digital signal, we get that too on Satellite, Cable, etc. It requires better display technology: significantly more pixels on the screen and higher refresh rates.

PAL is a marginal verticle resolution improvement to NTSC, but a step back in refresh rate. It's not HDTV by any stretch of the imagination, interlaced, and still suffers from all the limitations of NTSC. That's a really poor excuse for not adopting HDTV. Europeans think PAL looks "higher def enough?"

I never said that PAL was HDTV, or that Europeans think PAL looks "higher def enough." I wasn't referring to digital TV either, which hasn't impressed me terribly in terms of image quality (you can see compression artifacts on both satellite and terrestrially boadcast TV). All I said was that "Europe has had higher definition TV than NTSC regions for decades," which is undeniable.

I hope PAL dies it's death and we get HDTV (with sufficient bandwidth per channel) as soon as possible, but I know that if I were in an NTSC region I'd want it even more.

In terms of flicker, flat pannel TVs are likely to increasingly fix the problem that 100hz TVs were too expensive to solve (for the mass market at any rate). It doesn't look like Europe will be ditching it's 50hz legacy even when new standards are finally adopted.

http://www.ses-astra.com/press-info/news/press-releases/04/20040621.shtml

Turns out "Europe" has had a HDTV channel since the start of this year. News to me. So, 720p or 1080i, which do you prefer?

 

[function]

Hooray for Google.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds15637.html

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has released a position paper on High Definition Television in Europe recommending that any HD Format that is agreed should be “progressiveâ€￾ scanned. As a result they will be suggesting 720p50 with the option of 1080p50 when technology permits (in relation to bandwidth limitations).

With Sky’s HD offering coming in early 2006 - their decision on what format they will support is probably being made in the next month or so - this EBU technical paper could push them towards 720p as a broadcast standard

(Sky is the UK's big satellite tv broadcater.)

Edit: that site links to this recent EBU pdf: http://www.ebu.ch/trev_300-wood.pdf

Worth reading IMO.

 

[cybamerc]

What the EBU recommends is largely irrelevant (except that the recommendations are usually followed). DTV in Europe (as well as other regions) will be using the DVB standard. DVB supports a vast range of resolution up to 1080p and framerates from 24 fps to 60 fps. It's the most advanced DTV standard in existance.

If someone wants to support 1080p@60 fps they probably can.

However it is important to make the distinction between terrestrial broadcasts and cable or satellite. There will be no terrestrial HD broadcasts in Europe anytime soon. Of all the DVB regions only Australia has commited to terrestrial HD broadcasts. The reason why Europe hasn't done so (and incidentally individual countries could if they wanted to) is because according to the DVB standard they are forced to keep analog broadcasts going for a transitional period which means putting up new antennas in addition to the other investments that would have to be made. All stuff that costs money. Instead they have decided to offer SD content which allows for many more channels and thus more money for the governments.

But with cable and satellite providers being interested in HD and upcoming HD formats such as BRD and HD-DVD there will be plenty of HD content to chose from in Europe a couple of years from now.

 

[Teasy]

I'm sure anyone who would be at all interested in HDTV will already have satellite or cable.

To be honest I'm sure anyone who would even be mildly interested in HDTV would already have satellite or cable TV anyway.

I'll be interested to see HDTV in action when Sky start doing it in 2006. I can't really imagine how HDTV can look so much better as to really increase my enjoyment of watching TV. Not saying I don't believe it will, I just can't imagine it. Hopefully I will be able to afford an HDTV in 2006

 

[Ty]

I can't really imagine how HDTV can look so much better as to really increase my enjoyment of watching TV. Not saying I don't believe it will, I just can't imagine it.

Never had the opportunity to see HDTV in person? I don't know how widespread the adoptance of it is over there so I don't know if a B&M AV store even shows a demo broadcast of them.

Edit - fixed quote

 

[DemoCoder]

Umm, it looks *much* better. First, even 480p content looks better at 16:9 and on better displays, but 720p is just no comparison. For example, people's skin is much sharper, you can even see pores in scenes were you can't with SDTV.

In US, we get HDTV via terrestial, via digital cable, and via 3 satellite networks: Dish, which is DVB based, DirectTV which is proprietary, and moving towards MPEG-4, and VOOM which is all-HDTV. Where I live, I can choose any combination thereof. I also don't watch TV without using a PVR (got a new HD Tivo recently), on DirectTV with a oval dish.

I'm glad Europe is pushing 1080p. ATSC has begrudgingly added it, and I hope that HDDVD/BluRay will require content in 1080p, or atleast support it.

 

[MfA]

Turns out "Europe" has had a HDTV channel since the start of this year. News to me. So, 720p or 1080i, which do you prefer?

At moderate bitrate I doubt 1080i can hold a candle to 720p, coding interlaced material is a bitch ...

1080i has higher horizontal resolution, that is about the only advantage (due to how interlaced video is handled you cant resolve detail to the extent the vertical resolution would lead you to believe, there is some vertical blur added 99% of the time ... and of course with worst case motion the vertical resolution is already 540 lines, add in the blur and you get even less than that perceptually). I doubt it is a good tradeoff against not having to deal with deinterlacing artifacts even at high bitrates (assuming you use a progressive display).

I personally think Sony likes 1080i because putting motion compensated deinterlacing in display devices is good for their bottom line.

I dont want a format anymore for which the vertical resolution depends on how close the vertical motion is to an integer number of pixels ... interlacing was a fine compression method for it's time, and that time has gone. 1080p at 25/30 Hz is nice for film, but for gaming 720p at 50/60 Hz should be the goal IMO instead of icky 1080i (of course 1080p at 50/60 Hz would be even better, but that isnt on the cards).

 

[Ty]

I think he just meant that he simply has trouble imagining it (because he may have never seen it in person perhaps) - not that he disbelieves that it's possible to look better. Without exposure to it in the first place, it's often times difficult to visualize how much better it really can be.

 

[DemoCoder]

1080p @ 60hz would be idea, but I doubt there is bandwidth for it. Displays should still support it tho. Hopefully, most displays will have a native 16:9 1080p resolution, and users can use 1080p for film @24/30, and upconvert from 720p @60hz to 1080p@60Hz for gaming.

 

[-tkf-]

At moderate bitrate I doubt 1080i can hold a candle to 720p, coding interlaced material is a bitch ...

But the experience is vast

In my opinion 720p vs 1080i is Religion

It won't be long before we will have 1080p in projectors and we will have the players to support it. Anyone that have seen a DVD in progressive vs interlaced knows the difference.

720p can be in anything from 24 to 60 hz so a 60hz 720p picture will look (looks) very smooth if the source is 720p 60hz, for example video. But a movie will not benefit. 1080i on the other hand can look really impressive the sheer number of details is just awesome.

 

[Teasy]

I think he just meant that he simply has trouble imagining it (because he may have never seen it in person perhaps) - not that he disbelieves that it's possible to look better. Without exposure to it in the first place, it's often times difficult to visualize how much better it really can be.

Yeah I've never seen HDTV before. So even though I know it must look much better its very hard to imagine how it could. I mean I can imagine a bit of a clearer picture. I can also try to imagine more detail, but as you say its not easy if you've never seen it.

Surely a monitor could show me a little of what's so good about HDTV with the right content?.. since it has the resolution to do so. Or am I missing some important difference between a PC monitor and a HDTV?

 

[wco81]

From what I'm hearing at AVS, Blu Ray at least is targeting 1080p24 or 1080p30. Total bitrate available would be 36 Mbps, although 54 or even 72 may be possible. But dual layer BD-ROMs could be add enough cost that most content producers may try to fit their releases in the 25 GB single layer.

Right now, there are few 1080p displays. More are coming out but they are high-end and even those high end models are apparently unlikely to support 1080p60 bandwidth.

 

[-tkf-]

I can also try to imagine more detail, but as you say its not easy if you've never seen it.

Imagine 640x480 vs 1920x1080

Download a big picture, resize and compare.

 

[-tkf-]

From what I'm hearing at AVS, Blu Ray at least is targeting 1080p24 or 1080p30. Total bitrate available would be 36 Mbps, although 54 or even 72 may be possible. But dual layer BD-ROMs could be add enough cost that most content producers may try to fit their releases in the 25 GB single layer.

Right now, there are few 1080p displays. More are coming out but they are high-end and even those high end models are apparently unlikely to support 1080p60 bandwidth.

Read all about it:

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/assets/downloadablefile/2b_bdrom_audiovisualapplication-12841.pdf

 

[Inane_Dork]

Considering beefy PCs can do 1080p24 via WM9, it really shouldn't be too much to ask from BD.

 

[Teasy]

-tkf-

Yeah there is that, but I'd really like to see it moving. I'm downloading a couple of movie samples from alt.binaries.hdtv, so I assume this is hi definition content (they're pretty big for samples so...). Hopefully they will give me a good idea of what HDTV looks like.