Will Warner support Blu-ray part 2 ?

[iknowall]

This thread is going nowhere.
It's just the same same arguments reformulated again and again, in a more passive-agressive form each time.
If there's new info about Blue-Ray or if someone want to discuss the interest of the format, with regards to video games, just start a new thread.

So i would like to open another thread to discuss about all the news and the new format, and relating to the video games, but in a more civil manner, because the argument is interesting and exiting .

In the other thread all the discussion degenerated in a general attack aganist me to demostrate that i was wrong.

So i would like to point out that the same discussion was made in the AVS forum with the user "amirm", a MS VC-1 creator and a trusted source.

And here is the part where amirm state that at an hig enough bitrate any compression give the same result so that using an hi bitrate you don't get any more quality using a more advanced codec versus mpeg2.

Grubert, what he says is a mix of true things and not. Ask him if MPEG-2 is
public domain, what is MPEGLA doing collecting fees for it:
http://www.mpegla.com/m2/? I believe the MPEG-2 patent pools are worth
hundreds of millions of dollars per year. If MPEG-2 is public domain, there
are a lot of stupid decision makers in this world!

At the same time, he is right about MPEG-4/AVC as the broadcast fees did
not exist in MPEG-2 and as such, has caused a lot of unhappiness out there
(EBU represents the broadcasters in Europe). US broadcasters cried the same
on our side of the ocean. The ITU interestingly enough, attempted to create
H.264/AVC in a royalty-free manner but failed (given the two patent pools
for AVC and the IP holders not in either). Indeed, there are far more
patents in AVC than ever was in MPEG-2. And companies would like to get
paid for their IP.

As to the last comment, it is true that if the bit rate is sufficient high,
then any compression technology works just as well as the other. However,
we can not afford sufficient bitrate for some of the things we want to do.
1080p has 6 times the resolution of SD Video. So all else being the same,
we need 30 to 36 Mbit/sec to encode with the same fidelity that a good DVD
is encoded at: 5 to 6 Mbit/sec (I am simplifying things a bit here – there
is more correlation in the pixels at 1080p so we probably can get away with
a bit less than this). Broadcasters are even in worse shape since they are
stuck with constant bitrate…

Amir

So i will not debate again this point, i will not waste time in debating this point since it was alredy debated at the AVS forum and you can found the thread here :

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=411600&page=556&pp=30&highlight=WM9+codec+at+hi+bitrare

So for me the case is closed.

If anyone fell that Amir Majidimehr is wrong , is free to contact him in the AVS forum and discuss with him about it


But to me the case is closed so i will not debate this point again, i will discuss only about the news concenring blu ray like the actual and the future support aganist hd-dvd, and about what are the advantage for the game developers with blue ray aganist the normal DvD.

I hope that this discussion don't degenerate also.

p.s. If the mods fell it is better they can merge this thread with the other or if they fell that this thread is not a good idea they are free to delete it.

 

[scooby_dooby]

So what's your point? If the image quality at higher bitrates is equal, and the image quality at lower bitrates is superior for VC1, then why would anyone want to use mpeg2?

Simply because the filesize is larger? That really seems to be the crux of your argument, and it's so completely boneheaded. Just because it's a bigger FILE doesn't mean it's better quality.

DemoCoder pointed this out very well with JPEG vs JPEG 2000, you go around touting JPEG2000 when it goes against your very theory the larger filesize = better quality(note that you ignored this and couldn't even be bothered to reply).

According to the study in the last thread 0.7% of people could tell the difference between the master, and VC1 @ 16mbps, and 12% noticed a difference with mpeg2 @ 24mbps. So why in the world would anyone want to use mpeg2? You can't argue with evidence like that, give it up. VC1 = better quality at lower bitrates.

As for you argument about the VP of MS and his statement about quality not improving much over 16mbps. Did you ever stop to think that maybe that's because only 0.7% of people can even notice a difference from the original master at that bit-rate? 0.7%!!!! So of course it's not going to improve much to the human eye, it's already so good most 99.3% of people can't even tell.

 

[Titanio]

So what's your point? If the image quality at higher bitrates is equal, and the image quality at lower bitrates is superior for VC1, then why would anyone want to use mpeg2?

Because you can fit what you want on the disc using Mpeg2? The biggest reason which you don't address in your post is the body of Mpeg2 encoding knowledge and experience that is out there. The quality of the final disc has as much to do with a good encode as with the codec that is used in the first place.

Bottom-line, judging by early previews and impressions, mpeg-2 at 1080p offers exceptional quality, and if you do not need to use a lower bitrate (where VC-1's advantages kick in, judging by your post), it may make all the sense in the world to use it.

Anyway, this thread should have been called "The Official Blu-ray Thread" It is nice to have somewhere to post news. Maybe codec discussion should be banned, I don't know.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Sorry but you must see how ridiculous that argument is. We should use larger, more expensive discs so that we can fit on an antiquated compression technology, rather than simply using the most advanced comrpession technology and allowing for cheaper disc manufacturing?

If you can gain quality, and gain space, why in the world would you not do it? Just as a justification for a more expensive/larger disc format?

12% of people see a drop in quality with mpeg2 at 24mbps, that mean you have to use even higher bitrate than that, just to match 16mbps vc-1. So on any disc, bluray included, you would want to sue VC1, wouldn't you prefer to fit twice as much content on a single disc?

With a 50GB BR disc, at 16mbps you could fit 7 hours of HD video on a single disc.

With MP2 with lower image quality (which 12% of people can notice) at 24mpbs you can only fit 4.6 hours per disc. If you upped the bitrate to actually be comparable with the VC1 image quality, it would probably be around 3.5-4 hours/disc on a dual layer disc!

So why in the world would we use mpeg2? With VC1 you could simply use a single layer BR disc and get a solid 3.5hours of HD video.

I have the feeling the root of this mpeg 2 argument is the fact that they really want HD-DVD to be rendered in-adequate, but the truth of the matter is a dual layer HD-DVD disc at 30GB is absolutely fine for movie delivery at around 4hours of HD content with the VC1 codec. Only when using mpeg2, would HD-DVD be inadequate.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Bottom-line, judging by early previews and impressions, mpeg-2 at 1080p offers exceptional quality, and if you do not need to use a lower bitrate (where VC-1's advantages kick in, judging by your post), it may make all the sense in the world to use it.
.

SO what bit-rate are we talking about here? 32mbps? the BR max 54mbps? Liek I said, at 32mbps we have to wait until 2layer BR discs can be mas produced to get any decent amount of playtime. If we start talking 54mbps, then you're looking at like 24GB/hour. So now we have to wait until 4 layer BR discs are manufactured?

Why? Look how long DVD's have been around, and look how expensive 2layer DVD's still are. Man I don't want to go through all the crap with bluray, when they could just encode stuff in VC1 and save everyone alot of trouble.

 

[Titanio]

Sorry but you must see how ridiculous that argument is. We should use larger, more expensive discs so that we can fit on an antiquated compression technology, rather than simply using the most advanced comrpession technology and allowing for cheaper disc manufacturing?

These companies have made their decision to support blu-ray, subsequent choice of codec has nothing to do with that! Frankly that's the nonsensical argument here. Next you'll be saying they're putting too much content on discs just to make HD-DVD look inadequate!

The choice of codec here is likely just down to the experience they can leverage. You can be sure they've looked at and continue to look at the other codecs, but if mpeg2 provides them with the same or better quality for now, so be it. They're the ones in the labs comparing these things, there's no reason for them to choose mpeg2 if it isn't offering them the right result for now. If it's not costing them anything in terms of content they can put on the disc, why should they be concerned about space requirements? Why do you care how much space the content takes? It's not like you can use the excess for anything. Regardless, something tells me you're not going to give a damn when you're sitting down to watch a blu-ray movie - they should look stunning fullstop.

BTW, won't every Blu-ray player be able to read 2-layer discs? PS3 will be, Sony has gone on about having up to 50GB of space, so I assume all will be..

 

[Mmmkay]

According to the study in the last thread 0.7% of people could tell the difference between the master, and VC1 @ 16mbps, and 12% noticed a difference with mpeg2 @ 24mbps. So why in the world would anyone want to use mpeg2? You can't argue with evidence like that, give it up. VC1 = better quality at lower bitrates.

Firstly, you're seriously misinterpreting that study. Secondly, when you interpret it correctly, it doesn't actually offer us any substantial conclusions which we can draw from.

On average there was a 0.7% difference in quality noticed between the original and 16mbps H.264 (not 0.7% of people). This in itself is meaningless when we look at how the content was rated; 5 = Same as original, 4 = Good, 3 = Acceptable for HD, etc.. Those are highly qualitative and subjective categories of choice. It is impossible to draw such quantitative conclusions like you have done. The survey also does not indicate the population size, and most critically we see that people voted a 20mbps stream lower than 16mbps. Finally the DVHS 'emulation' would have been CBR so drawing conclusions to MPEG-2 bitrates on Blu-Ray is also flawed.

 

[scooby_dooby]

These companies have made their decision to support blu-ray, subsequent choice of codec has nothing to do with that! Frankly that's the nonsensical argument here. Next you'll be saying they're putting too much content on discs just to make HD-DVD look inadequate!

Well I wasn't referring to the companies I was referring to the people in these threads. However, at if Sony accepts the VC1 codec as being the future standard, they lose a HUGE competetive advantage over HD-DVD because suddenly 25GB-30GB is all that is needed, and suddenly the benefits of BR become less important. When you can fit 4 hours on a 30GB disc, there's not much reason to want more, especially when movie companies tend to prefer to package stuff on multiple discs so they can charge more.

So it's in Sony's best interest to push MPEG2, it makes BR the only viable choice, along with that they'll push plenty of FUD about why mpg2 is the better solution.

 

[Titanio]

Well I wasn't referring to the companies I was referring to the people in these threads. However, at if Sony accepts the VC1 codec as being the future standard, they lose a HUGE competetive advantage over HD-DVD because suddenly 25GB-30GB is all that is needed, and suddenly the benefits of BR become less important. When you can fit 4 hours on a 30GB disc, there's not much reason to want more, especially when movie companies tend to prefer to package stuff on multiple discs so they can charge more.

So it's in Sony's best interest to push MPEG2, it makes BR the only viable choice, along with that they'll push plenty of FUD about why mpg2 is the better solution.

I haven't seen them say it's a better solution. I think they'd probably tell you it depends on what you're encoding, and what your requirements are - and to be honest I think that's true.

We're well past the point where this matters. You're argument could be extended to any media you like, you could argue that if VC-1 let DVDs hold x hours or minutes of data and the extra capacity isn't needed, if you wanted. Who's to say 4 hours is "enough", either, or that should be the cutoff point? People also pay for content, not discs. If New Line, for example, put the Lord of the Rings movies on one Blu-ray disc, they could still charge more for it, simply because of the breadth of content there - that it was on one disc would not be a handicap to its pricing (if anything it'd be a further selling point). Mpeg2 usage is hardly the only justification for greater capacity, even with just movie/video content - and beyond that, there's obvious advantages to greater capacity in other arenas.

Capacity is but one of Blu-ray's advantages. Its current strong position is a product of much more than simply that - they don't need to rely on a "fat" codec to justify greater capacity, or its advantages generally as a format. Its biggest advantages now have little to do with technical details.

 

[Edge]

I have the feeling the root of this mpeg 2 argument is the fact that they really want HD-DVD to be rendered in-adequate, but the truth of the matter is a dual layer HD-DVD disc at 30GB is absolutely fine for movie delivery at around 4hours of HD content with the VC1 codec. Only when using mpeg2, would HD-DVD be inadequate.

It does not matter, as HD-DVD with so little CE support (Sony + Philips + Panasonic + Samsung, etc., manufacturing and marketing might are going to crush HD-DVD into the ground), and minority Hollywood support is going to fail big-time. It's not a technical decision that will doom HD-DVD.

Blu-ray supports multiple codecs, and so no one is forced to use MPEG2. In the end the consumer won't even know which codec is being used, so what does it matter?

 

[ninelven]

It is impossible to draw such quantitative conclusions like you have done.

Not really, assuming the people were being honest and not intentionally giving out random low scores, one could say that it is highly likely less than 2 in 100 noticed a difference.

 

[Mmmkay]

Not really, assuming the people were being honest and not intentionally giving out random low scores, one could say that it is highly likely less than 2 in 100 noticed a difference.

You could say the experiment found no statistically significant difference between the original and 16Mbps H.264 stream. The data presented in the chart is not there to be used for drawing conclusions from, it is simply there to facilitate a rough understanding of the data. Claiming something like a 0.7% difference is not correctly using the data thats all I'm saying. The value 4.03 has no meaning when there were 5 discrete categories to choose from.

They should have either provided the modal/bi-modal score, or all of the raw data tallied for each rating per stream if we wanted to say something ourselves about the data. Considering they were asked to rate the quality of each stream without knowledge of which the master was, I would also question the integrity of the experiment. Participants would have the previous clip as a point of reference which could have biased their scores. A better test might have been to provide a reference master played along side or prior to each clip and ask the participant to rate in relation to the master.

Oh and ignore that junk I said about qualitative and quantitative earlier, I didn't mean qualitative, I was getting myself confused. This is more a discrete/continuous issue.

 

[DemoCoder]

Vysez, lock this thread. This guy restarts the thread, and says its about news, and then proceeded to reopen the same argument.

You wanna reopen an argument? This is the same guy who claimed that DCT performs compression, when it does nothing of the sort. In fact, the output of DCT is bigger than the input, for example, taking an 8x8 input of 8-bit values, and producing an 8x8 output of 12-bit values.


"iknowall" knows absolutely nothing about how compression works. He's a search engine fisher, who plugs keywords into Google trying to find sentences supporting his argument, but in many cases, he is not even aware of the author's original point.

He quotes Amir who says there isn't much difference at high end bitrates, but ignores the fact that Amir has been the biggest pooh-pooher of Sony's decision to use MPEG-2 on BluRay. Amir most definately, does not advocate MPEG-2 for either HD-DVD or BR. Amir has pointed out time and time again, the problems with multilayer BR discs, as well as the added expense needed to make MPEG-2 look as good as VC-1.

We know for a fact, that MPEG-2 at 24Mbps is worse than H.264 and VC-1 at 16Mbps. And we know that Sony has no plans for 54Mbps MPEG-2 discs, so that's frankly a Red Herring.

Lock the thread, and is he creates another one, I vote for a ban. The guy's worse than DeadMeatGA.

 

[nAo]

The guy's worse than DeadMeatGA.

Maybe he's Deadmeat

 

[randycat99]

That is unlikely. If he were, he would be backing whatever MS is pushing, and that would not be mpeg2.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I haven't seen them say it's a better solution. I think they'd probably tell you it depends on what you're encoding, and what your requirements are - and to be honest I think that's true.

We're well past the point where this matters. You're argument could be extended to any media you like, you could argue that if VC-1 let DVDs hold x hours or minutes of data and the extra capacity isn't needed, if you wanted. Who's to say 4 hours is "enough", either, or that should be the cutoff point? People also pay for content, not discs. If New Line, for example, put the Lord of the Rings movies on one Blu-ray disc, they could still charge more for it, simply because of the breadth of content there - that it was on one disc would not be a handicap to its pricing (if anything it'd be a further selling point). Mpeg2 usage is hardly the only justification for greater capacity, even with just movie/video content - and beyond that, there's obvious advantages to greater capacity in other arenas.

Capacity is but one of Blu-ray's advantages. Its current strong position is a product of much more than simply that - they don't need to rely on a "fat" codec to justify greater capacity, or its advantages generally as a format. Its biggest advantages now have little to do with technical details.

Capacity is BR's only real true advantage. It has many disadvantages such as higher costs that need to be justified, the main justifiaction for those disadvantages is higher disc size. However, if those disc size are seen as overkill, then there's little justification for spending all the money to overhaul the manufacturing process and pay more money for discs. With VC1 anything over 25-30GB, or 3.5-4 hours, is overkill.

People pay for the content, however the truth is it's much easier to get people to pay $99 for a nice box set, than it is to pay $99 for a single disc. And companies will continue to use this approach, it creates a higher percieved value. No matter what format is chosen, you will never see box-sets go away. You will never see the whole star wars trilogy on 1 disc for example, even if it was possible.

The reason 4 hours is the practical limit, is because historically taht's what we've had for recording formats. 4 hours is more than VHS provided, more than DVD, and is more than enough for the vast majority of movies, and as I've said above, there is no expressed need for 7 hour discs since the movie companies wouldn't use them anyways.

 

[AlphaWolf]

The reason 4 hours is the practical limit, is because historically taht's what we've had for recording formats. 4 hours is more than VHS provided, more than DVD, and is more than enough for the vast majority of movies, and as I've said above, there is no expressed need for 7 hour discs since the movie companies wouldn't use them anyways.

I'm sure they'd make use of it for television. Some season series are on 7+ dvd's atm and that's just a bit overboard, I think many people see that as more inconvienent than added value. I am sure that once those capacities are available they will make use of them, providing they are cost efficient.

 

[ninelven]

The value 4.03 has no meaning when there were 5 discrete categories to choose from.

Well, actually it does, but I digress...

 

[jonnyp]

Capacity is BR's only real true advantage. It has many disadvantages such as higher costs that need to be justified, the main justifiaction for those disadvantages is higher disc size. However, if those disc size are seen as overkill, then there's little justification for spending all the money to overhaul the manufacturing process and pay more money for discs. With VC1 anything over 25-30GB, or 3.5-4 hours, is overkill.

People pay for the content, however the truth is it's much easier to get people to pay $99 for a nice box set, than it is to pay $99 for a single disc. And companies will continue to use this approach, it creates a higher percieved value. No matter what format is chosen, you will never see box-sets go away. You will never see the whole star wars trilogy on 1 disc for example, even if it was possible.

The reason 4 hours is the practical limit, is because historically taht's what we've had for recording formats. 4 hours is more than VHS provided, more than DVD, and is more than enough for the vast majority of movies, and as I've said above, there is no expressed need for 7 hour discs since the movie companies wouldn't use them anyways.

I have a hard time seeing where a digital storage format ever can have an overkill of space to be honest.

 

[one]

The reason 4 hours is the practical limit, is because historically taht's what we've had for recording formats. 4 hours is more than VHS provided, more than DVD, and is more than enough for the vast majority of movies, and as I've said above, there is no expressed need for 7 hour discs since the movie companies wouldn't use them anyways.

And you're not kidding by a comment like "640K is enough"?
How about extra contents? You force users to download additional 10GB contents to the hard disc of a Blu-ray player?

Your argument all fail now that most of movie contents provider support Blu-ray. You have to consider where the priority is.