First Blu-Ray reviews!!

RobertR1,
wow thanks for the info. Did not think there was that much of a different in the satisfaction of early adopters over there (as those folks being more thechincally in the know vrs your avg Joe, you would think would be more willing to cut some slack as they realize its new tech which always has speed bumps)....

 

yea wasn't BD and HDDVD both suppose to use the h.264 codec? Why is MPEG2 being used for BD playback?

 

i won't be getting into the blue ray stuff @ all...

 

"There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!"

The later it comes out, the later it will be until the price starts to fall, seems to me.

 

Because studios are using existing MPEG2 processing infrastructure and knowledge (from DVD authoring) to save some pennies, before they cut over.

 

Indeed, that was the big advantage. The BluRay standard supports all three formats, as they all have their different advantages.

Isn't this also the format that digital cinema has used up till now?

 

The problem, tho, is you're left buying a pig in a poke to some degree. Is there any guarantee that mpeg2 quality/performance of a given player is going to be the same as h.264 when they get to doing those? (and, btw, any statements from the industry on how far out that is?).

It'd suck to buy the "best" player now and have it turn out to be "meh" compared to the competition you passed over when the real deal discs start showing up.

 

There is no 'real' disk, or 'real' CODEC. And there's no guarantee at all that the H.264 decoder in any playback product is in any way as good as its H.262 (video part of MPEG2) one.

Buyer beware with new format introduction, as always.

 

The BD studios are using Mpeg2 because they believed that Mpeg2 was the best thing for BluRay and DL media wouldn't be an issue. Both turned out to be fasle and now they're working hard with AVC/Mpeg4 and VC1 authoring tools to get it going.

 

That sounds like you saw a piece somewhere on it. If so, linky?

 

Unfortunately the linky is the the HDDVD/BluRay sections at avsforums However, if/when I do come across the specific posts again, I'll happily report them.

 

This is one of the reasons why I have no problem waiting for the PS3. First of all, we'll be at least 5 months along, so a lot more will be clear, with the holidays approaching and so on.

Second, and more importantly, the PS3 is guaranteed to have a smooth way of upgrading the player software, codecs and so on. Look at how the PSP got AVC playback with FW 2.0, and features improve as the firmware goes up further, with additional scaling methods and so on.

 

Blue-ray by itself is working fine, for more than a year by now. It works, players and writers are available. And it doesn't matter one bit to them what data you put on the disks. The machinery to produce those disks is ready and tested for production. The only thing holding it back is the incredible amount of bickering over the many DRM options to use, and what things are "allowed".

I'll wager any amount of money those will be cracked in less time it took them to decide which ones to use.