PS3 Buyers : What are your film buying intentions?

We don't care.

But it's the studios who care and it's their movies.

Plus who knows, if they buy new equipment, they pass on the costs.

 

Sounds like a piss poor excuse not to upgrade 10 year old technology to me... to be completely honest, with a little side of fearmongering tossed in. I highly doubt that the cost of BD movies would go up if the studios were forced to use something other than MPEG2.

 

Its a no-brainer that I will be getting BR movies. But I will be royally pissed with Sony if I have to fork over hundreds of dollars for an HD-DVD player because the format does not improve from what we've been hearing.

 

Probably.

But it's their money and nobody is making you buy those movies.

I know I'm going to wait for the first wave of players and software to shake out before jumping on.

Nor am I going to make a judgement on which format is better just based on a few months and a few titles and so far, just two players.

But that may be moot in the end. Which format lasts may not have much to do with which format delivers better picture quality. And if that happens, it won't be the first time.

 

That would largely depend on IF there is a significant price difference between producing a movie on a single layer disk vs. a multi-layer disk.

 

The other thing to consider is whether there are per-disc codec royalties in addition to the per-player royalties.

The costs to encode and master -- a lot of studios farm out this work -- are fixed but there may be a premium for the newer codecs, because of newer capital investments in equipment, not to mention training personnel.

 

its a very bad move by sony only supporting mpeg2.
ive speculated about this before
[fact] cell is a beast at decoding stuff, thus with it its possible to have a better realtime compression scheme than any existing mainstream encoding [/fact]
[speculation] a new codec arrives? [/speculation]
counterpoints against it all blu-ray devices will need to have cell in them, do the existing players? (u prolly dont need all 7 spe cores so it'll be a good use for all the ps3 cell castoffs)

 

If there's a cost difference that only reinforces my argument. Any cost associated with MPG4 encoding would be offset by the fact they could use SL disc as opposed to DL. With MPG2 they are forced to use DL discs to get acceptable quality.

If there is no cost difference, I still think that any additional costs for encoding to a different format must be so negligible that they would never affect the end consumers, and if it did, we're probably talking pennies.

 

Are you asking if the existing standalone Blu-ray player, from Samsung, use Cell? Because the answer to that is no. I believe they use the Sigma decoder chips, the same as the HD-DVD player from Toshiba.

 

Standalone player will use a hardware decoders to process the codecs. The PS3 and the 360 will use software/cpu for the most part.

H.264 for the 360 will make use of Xenos. VC-1 and Mpeg2 will be handled by the CPU.

Haven't heard about the RSX being used as info is very limited on the PS3.

In terms of CPU power needed for the codecs: lowest > highest = Mpeg2, VC-1, AVC/H.264. This is just a collective of the info scattered throughout avsforum. If I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me.

 

I´m waiting untill blockbuster carries Blu Ray discs.

I o the same with DVDs, I rarely buy movies, whatever format they are.

 

yes seems you are correct, strange that theyre using mpeg2

 

I voted "Own an HDTV, will buy BRD movies ". We got a HDTV in the living room and i´m planning to buy one for my room in the holidays. I am only going to buy BRD movies since the ps3 will be able to play it, if that werent the case, i wouldnt support either format. I wont be shelling 1000 for a stand alone BRD player or 400-700 for a HD-DVD player, i would only buy a standalone player if a they were in mass market prices, say 100-200 range.

 

Voted Own/Will Buy

I own a 1080p display, so I'm eager to get more content for it. I will be getting a PS3 if only for the games, so it's a no brainer to use it for film as well. I have to agree with the sentiments expressed here regarding the current quality of Bluray releases, however, Sony and the studios need to get their act together and use modern codecs and/or dual-layer discs.

I'm not a DVD 'collector', but I don't like repurchasing, so I don't want to see important releases I'm interested in relegated to substandard encoding and poor quality. This has already happened with Underworld Evolution, and I'm on the fence as to whether or not I'll buy that when the PS3 is released.

 

I will say that while I have not spent a lot of time looking at it, Sony's Bluray player demo seems noticably better than the Samsung player. Still not earth-shattering, but it is managable. Of course, I've only viewed them both in stores, so it's more of an anecdote than anything else.

 

The MPEG-2 choice is on the studio side. The BD format itself supports other schemes, but it seems that the studios have gone the MPEG-2 route so far (some would say perhaps unwisely) to reduce costs. When dual-layer and/or VC-1 BD discs come out, you'll find the present players able to support them.

 

As them to player a real BR movie in the Sony player. Should get an interesting response from the sales associate

 

This makes no sense, if it's all up to the studios, why have all the HD-DVD studios chosen to use VC1 when they have more space than the studios publishing on BR?

That's totally counterintuitive. If it was about saving money, the studios using HD-DVD should be using MPEG2 as well since they have 30gb to play with as opposd to 25gb that BR offers. In other words, they have less incentive to use VC1, yet have all chosen to do so.

To me this seems based more on corporate politics than any potential cost saving.

 

Scooby I'm just calling it like it is. What would the politics even be?

The BR format supports VC-1 and H.264, so it just goes back to the original plan the BD group had of 50GB of MPEG2 beating out 30GB of VC-1 as to why it's prevalent right now. Remember that 25GB discs at the moment is a ramping issue and *not* what they originally intended. And that's not a discussion I want to start now - but I'm just saying that MPEG2 was not only 'the plan' for BD, but Sony themselves (with a lot of studios) has wanted to avoid the costs of re-encoding all their master material.

I'll say this... if the use of VC-1 was free, I would full well expect everyone to be using it, so I'm not sure how deeply 'politics' can play in to something as yes/no as using a codec.

 

Maybe I'm mistaken, but would they not have to pay royalty fees to MS??

I'm just calling it like I see it as well, I know mpg2 is the plan, but the question is WHY is mpeg2 the plan when it's clearly inadequate? Are we to believe they are just that dumb?

To me the excuse that they wanted to save costs by not re-encoding their mpeg2 just rings completely hollow. How much can the costs really be? Obviously not enough to affect the decision of the HD-DVD studios, and not enough to affect the end price of HD-DVD's.