RUMOR: Xbox 360 20GB SKU to be replaced by 60GB SKU

[one]

Kind of ironic given that the HD DVD mandated Film Grain Technology as part of the spec in order to make the, potentially, very crisp and digitally encoded images look more "theater" like.

I'm not sure who's ironic, Film Grain Technology is a technology originally developed for H.264 and if you believe a comment like this VC-1 didn't use it.
http://www.hometheatershack.com/for...hnology-specification-approved-dvd-forum.html

Actually it's doubly ironic as VC-1 is also specifically designed to attempt to maintain film grain even at the expense of compression efficiency. Maybe this guy doesn't get out to the movies much and doesn't know what actual film looks like?

Which part of VC-1 is that?

Another point to mention is, it takes bitrate to maintain film grain. So "30Mbps is enough" and "I want film grain preserved" contradict each other.

 

[mrcorbo]

I'm not sure who's ironic, Film Grain Technology is a technology originally developed for H.264 and if you believe a comment like this VC-1 didn't use it.
http://www.hometheatershack.com/for...hnology-specification-approved-dvd-forum.html

Which part of VC-1 is that?

Another point to mention is, it takes bitrate to maintain film grain. So "30Mbps is enough" and "I want film grain preserved" contradict each other.

OK, first off, film grain in the sense I mentioned it isn't a technology. It's a physical property of film that you see when actual film is projected on screen at a movie theater. It also gets picked up by the scanners used to convert film stock into digital masters and is therefore present in the source material to do an HD encode.

As part of the encoding process you would normally do noise removal to try to improve the "compressibility" of the source material. Film grain is regarded as noise and is removed. In contrast VC-1 explicitly tries to retain this film grain all the way through into the final product.

The technology you referenced is a way to create fake film grain to replace the actual film grain that got filtered out during the encoding process. The reason VC-1 doesn't support it is because the real grain was never removed.

Secondly, I never addressed quality or what I preferred. I (like Dave) just pointed out how strange attributing "more film-like" to the BR/AVC combo over others was given what we know about the technical qualities of some of those other pairings. I'm not even sure I prefer "more film-like" encodes!

And thirdly, your comment about 30Mbps, without proper testing to back it up is purely an abritrary one. The problem I really have with all of this is that there is so much opinion being presented as fact and so many of those opinions are at odds with what I know to be technically correct.

The supreme irony here is that I am personally happy that BR won. I really do think it is a better format, overall. I just don't like to see misinformation.

 

[RobertR1]

Kind of ironic given that the HD DVD mandated Film Grain Technology as part of the spec in order to make the, potentially, very crisp and digitally encoded images look more "theater" like.

The Thompson tech you're talking about doesn't apply to VC-1. It's for AVC.

AVC has a nice little loop filter that likes to remove film grain. Ofcourse it gives a clean pretty picture which the public tends to prefer over the natural film grain.

 

[-tkf-]

Anyone who makes the claim that Bluray movies, by virtue of the spec, are visually/aurally superior to HD DVD is simply being affected by their own biases.

By virtue of spec Blu-Ray has the potential to look better.

And i would take his word over yours if it´s ok

lack of extra's hasn't hurt bluray compared to its competition .

The point is that some of the same guys that worshipped the extras and features on HD-DVD are now hailing plain downloads as the "best thing".

Actually it's doubly ironic as VC-1 is also specifically designed to attempt to maintain film grain even at the expense of compression efficiency. Maybe this guy doesn't get out to the movies much and doesn't know what actual film looks like?

Maybe it takes up to many bits to use this "technology" ?
The screenshots from the anal quality analysers on AVS shows that when HD-DVD is "on the limit" the picture turns soft.

I want grain, not watered down encodes like what happend on Pan's Labyrinth.

 

[zed]

speaking as a layman but surely its the easiest thing in the world to check which format/codec whatever gives the best quality.
just compare each pixel in a encoded frame from the master film, measure the % difference add up the total for the frame + move onto the next one, until the whole films done.
sure it will take heaps of computing power but at the end u will have an objective measure thats removed the human element.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Nice idea, but I don't think that'd work well due to the nature of human perception. One degree of variation will be more noticeable than another. For example, some low-level noise across an image will probably have a bigger numerical divergence than some areas of blocked colour in dark regions, but the blocking will be more of a detraction to the viewing pleasure.

Simple blind-test studies should suffice. Once you get a quality people can't differentiate from the original, it doesn't matter how much better quality you manage above that. eg. If...96kHz 24 bit audio is indiscernibly different from real sounds, a 300 kHz 64 bit audio recording would be numerically the better format, but at no gains to the end listener. The only problem with blind studies is the test groups, as if they're a far too low a common denominator, what's good enough for them can look poor for others!

 

[AlphaWolf]

speaking as a layman but surely its the easiest thing in the world to check which format/codec whatever gives the best quality.
just compare each pixel in a encoded frame from the master film, measure the % difference add up the total for the frame + move onto the next one, until the whole films done.
sure it will take heaps of computing power but at the end u will have an objective measure thats removed the human element.

Wouldn't work, more different from original doesn't necessarily equate to worse.

 

[Dave Baumann]

The Thompson tech you're talking about doesn't apply to VC-1. It's for AVC.

I know. I wasn't talking about VC-1!

 

[RobertR1]

I know. I wasn't talking about VC-1!

oh

 

[zed]

The only problem with blind studies is the test groups, as if they're a far too low a common denominator, what's good enough for them can look poor for others!

true thats why ild trust an algorithm anyday, take out the human variable, even expert wine connoisseurs make dud choices.

heres a photo

for the human (apart from the banding with the green wall) even 4444bit color looks practically as good as the others, dx1/5 are indistinguishable, but with the computer measuring the differences

from the original its easy to see that dx1 is worse than dx5

 

[-tkf-]

Once you get a quality people can't differentiate from the original, it doesn't matter how much better quality you manage above that.

With HD this is a bit harder, HD (as many have mentioned) really comes into it´s own when the Screen Size and the Display Technology is what is´s supposed to be.

When i see SD from a SDI source at my work on a nice Barco screen i know just how bad DVD´s actually look compared to the original

 

[Rangers]

Back to the OT of this post, I've been wondering how ms would do this 60GB transition now. It seems the channel would be run a bit dry, and right now it seems at least a lot more full than it was a few weeks ago.

And if they are planning a price cut before GTA4, that further complicates things. Basically right now they need to be ensuring plenty of supply with only a month until GTA4. This doesn't seem like any time to be meddling with sku's. And this transition is supposed to happen before June 31? One would assume you'd want to keep 360's in hefty stock for at least a month or two after GTA4 release as well, so you've got no real window there.

Unless they can pull the transition off seamlessly. Perhaps it was just a false rumor, or will come true a few months on.

 

[Squilliam]

Back to the OT of this post, I've been wondering how ms would do this 60GB transition now. It seems the channel would be run a bit dry, and right now it seems at least a lot more full than it was a few weeks ago.

And if they are planning a price cut before GTA4, that further complicates things. Basically right now they need to be ensuring plenty of supply with only a month until GTA4. This doesn't seem like any time to be meddling with sku's. And this transition is supposed to happen before June 31? One would assume you'd want to keep 360's in hefty stock for at least a month or two after GTA4 release as well, so you've got no real window there.

Unless they can pull the transition off seamlessly. Perhaps it was just a false rumor, or will come true a few months on.

The best time to make adjustments would be when the 65nm GPU model comes out. Then they can advertise that RROD is over and that they have increased the specs and hopefully, finally included wifi N! No point making two adjustments in the year when one will do!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The best time to make adjustments would be when the 65nm GPU model comes out. Then they can advertise that RROD is over.

How would you advertise that exactly? "Buy XB360 - it no longer crashes"? "The new XB360 - this time we've built it right"?

How can you positively advertise a reliability upgrade without the negative image of producing defective hardware?

 

[Squilliam]

How would you advertise that exactly? "Buy XB360 - it no longer crashes"? "The new XB360 - this time we've built it right"?

How can you positively advertise a reliability upgrade without the negative image of producing defective hardware?

Advertise it as cooler/more efficient? Everyone thinks it overheats, so saying it's cooler would do it without the negative conotations.

But I get your point, now I think about it. You're right, im wrong (you obviously aren't staying up past 4am because you can't sleep you old dog). I hope I don't get the ban!

 

[silhouette]

Change the form factor?

 

[Cheezdoodles]

How would you advertise that exactly? "Buy XB360 - it no longer crashes"? "The new XB360 - this time we've built it right"?

How can you positively advertise a reliability upgrade without the negative image of producing defective hardware?

All you have to do is make some press release that they their new model has a much higher reliability rate. The people that care about console reliability will get that message, and the others dont care anyway.

Its obvious that a lot of people do not care about console reliabilty or that most people are illinformed (and aren't aware of X360 failure rates), because i have never seen a product with such a high failurate (like a gazillion more likely to die than a PS3) do so well compared to its competition. Of course, one might speculate what the X360 demand would have been without the failure rates...


Speaking of RRoD, if you get 3 of them, Microsoft gives you the option to get your cash back instead of the console (dunno how their policy is in other countries outside of norway (as this is a consumer right here))

 

[Zassk]

Its obvious that a lot of people do not care about console reliabilty or that most people are illinformed (and aren't aware of X360 failure rates), because i have never seen a product with such a high failurate (like a gazillion more likely to die than a PS3) do so well compared to its competition.

I would say that customers care more about the improved warranty than about the failure rate, since sales picked up noticeably in the month following the RROD announcement (and have never fallen to pre-announcement levels since then).

 

[rekator]

I would say that customers care more about the improved warranty than about the failure rate, since sales picked up noticeably in the month following the RROD announcement (and have never fallen to pre-announcement levels since then).

Improved warranty is a better argument than improved reliability…
Why? In people mind actuals "High Tech" mass products don't be high reliability products…
So have one year more warranty is a good thing.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Why? In people mind actuals "High Tech" mass products don't be high reliability products…

What part of the globe are you referring to? In NA, we certainly expect high tech mass produced products to have high reliability.

Now, high tech products that are in limited production might be perceived as more specialized and complex and have a higher allowable failure rate.

But certainly, most expect mass produced products of a median or high price point to be very reliable.