ZDNet Editorial: Blu-ray is Dead

SorienOR said:
wow what elitism in this thread

Lots of: "if you don't think BR is the best thing since sliced bread there is something wrong with you".
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Well, those BR zealots spent a lot of money on video equipment and they narrowly escaped obsolescence during the HD/BR war. They sweated that one out and now their battling consumer indifference. It doesn't help when consumers aren't "blown away" by the spectacular image quality of BR either. BR has been out long enough for the GP to see the difference between Upconverted DVD's and BR on 50" screens. It's safe to assume that they don't care. Not for the price.
 
I don't know about people really caring all that much about audio fidelity in the vast majority of situations either.

Take your average Ipod user who is taking the bus or train to work. There is probably about 50 decibles of engine/ambient noise even after considering the earbuds are probably blocking out as much as they can.

In which case, an MP3 is pretty much going to sound like a DVD-audio unless you turn it up loud enough to make your ears bleed.

A home theatre is more likely to be a little more controlled... But I'm still much happier with a dishwasher that is 20 decibels quieter than any minute 3 decibel gain in audio quality from a specialized format. BTW: Been seriously thinking about getting triple pane glass to reduce road noise too...
 
The fact is, the HD bug will eventually bite all those people, even those who couldn't give a damn, the prices of BD players will creep closer and closer to the prices of up-converting DVD players... Unless the studios and BDA really screw themselves the transition will happen eventually, and there's a lot less obstacles in it's way than there are obstacles in the way of a real mass-market online distribution model.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong and people are content with DVD-quality downloads on their $2,000 HDTVs... The number of HDTVs out there that aren't even hooked up properly for HD content is amazing.
 
ICOM said:
BR has been out long enough for the GP to see the difference between Upconverted DVD's and BR on 50" screens. It's safe to assume that they don't care. Not for the price.
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Where exactly have they been able to appreciate that difference? Please don't say in-store displays...
 
Regarding upscaled dvd's:

DVD = 720x480 = 345,600 pixels
720P HD = 1,280x720 = 921,600 pixels 2.6x more displayed detail
1080p HD = 1,920x1,080 = 2,073,600 6x more display detail

Upscaled images do not auto-magically create new film data. Upscaling will soften the picture, introduce artifacts, and/or mess with the visual "flow" through de-interlacing. As long as the movie's master source is good and the BR is encoded properly it will always look better than its DVD counterpart. That is a fact.

BTW: Most people don't realize that you might not even need an upscaling dvd player when you have an HDTV. The HDTV already upscales everything to fit its resolution (or downscales in the case of 720p being fed 1080p data - another reason to never go 720p). So unless your upscaling DVD player has a better scaler than your TV, it is not needed. Some DVD players (like Oppo's) have great scalers while others have crap.

So the big question is: at what screen size and at what distance does the 6x increase in detail get lost by our limited eyes? Like many things that varies from person to person. Visual recognition is a complex combination of what we see, and how our brain interprets it. People who work with computers often are much more likely to lock onto the telltale signs of compression, aliasing, or zooming. Average folks won't notice so upscaling looks fine.

Upscaling DVD's is nothing but a bandaid until good quality, large HDTV's become commonplace enough for people to see the real potential of BR + HDTV's. I suspect that the majority of HDTV's are 42" or smaller, hence the lack of appreciation for real HD.
 
Impulse said:
Then again, maybe I'm wrong and people are content with DVD-quality downloads on their $2,000 HDTVs... The number of HDTVs out there that aren't even hooked up properly for HD content is amazing.
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I don't buy that "improper hookup" argument anymore. Not at this stage in the game.

The fact is that upscaled DVD's on a 50" screen looks great. Better than or equal to BR? Nope! I don't think anybody is suggesting that it is but there's no denying the fact that upscaled DVD's on a modern 50" wide screen looks fantastic. For the GP, "fantastic" is good enough. At least until the prices for BR players and discs come WAY down.

Like someone else suggested, the only way for BR to win over the GP is to simply eliminate the competition (standard DVD's). That ain't gonna happen.
 
Virtus said:
Upscaling DVD's is nothing but a bandaid until good quality, large HDTV's become commonplace enough for people to see the real potential of BR + HDTV's. I suspect that the majority of HDTV's are 42" or smaller, hence the lack of appreciation for real HD.
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Careful there, you might be labeled an elitist.
 
I am not rich by any means and so I will only buy the best quality Blu Ray's, other wise standard DVD for me.

If they were smart they would expand their market share and then when they are pretty much the only choice they would earn some money. They are not giving people much incentive to buy it.

If they would raise the base quality standards that people use when compressing down to the Blu Ray from their source that might help a little as well.
 
I cannot believe people are saying Blu ray looks similar to DVD. I want to slap them.
 
You know what I think one of the huge problems is, is that Joe Idiot goes out and buys an HDTV expecting everything to be in HD on it. he doesn't need no fancy Blu-Watchamacallit, he's got an HDTV.:rolleyes:
 
Slightly OT, economy stimulated yesterday:

60" Pioneer Elite Kuro Plasma
Marantz AV8003 pre-amp with Marantz MM8003 amplifier
B&W CM Series 5.1 speakers

Replacing my current circa HT setup (Yamaha receiver, Velodyne 5.1 speakers, 40" Sony HD CRT), delivered and installed mid-November when I'm back from a business trip, can't wait.

Otherwise, all I can say is OW my bank account. At least I can write all this crap off. :)
 
Adionik said:
I cannot believe people are saying Blu ray looks similar to DVD. I want to slap them.
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Seriously. If you can't afford Blu Ray or whatever, that's totally cool, but to say that an upconverted DVD looks as good as or close to what BR or HD-DVD offers is crazy.
 
All I am saying is this...if I had a new format (compared to DVD, VHS, cave paintings) in danger of dying on the vine....I would undersell everyone.

Yeah, I'd lose money at first

BUT

...when I became the only standard in town (like DVD has been, VHS before it)...I will have all your monies!!!

...Oh yeah...if you can't see my point you are stupid, retarded, need your eyes checked, crazy, inbred, uncultured swine. :rolleyes:
 
I really shoudlnt have to pay more to see the movie in HD. Seriously. I'm paying to see the movie, the way it is presented shouldn't affect the price. I should be able to get maximum quiality for minimum price.
 
Serpico said:
Funny, I thought this was an enthusiast forum. I suppose accepting mediocrity is better than something really excellent if you're saving a few bucks. :p :rolleyes:
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Man, you're completely missing the point.

BR is dead/dying (pick a term...) not because computer enthusiasts like us aren't taking the bait. BR is failing because standard DVD's provide an exceptional product for the money. Accept it! Standard DVD's are still EXCELLENT. Yes, BR is better but those BR fuktards haven't figured out that their completion is formidable and they'd better start pricing their BR crap to compete.

It's got nothing to do with what format enthusiasts like best. Until the GP gets on board, enthusiasts will have to pay through the nose for what the GP sees as a marginally improved product.
 
Steve - DVD media and players (both set-top and optical drives) were more expensive for a much longer period than any of these HD formats have been in the same amount of time. Blu Ray is going into its second year and the players are already much cheaper than DVD players were after two years. DVD went on the market in 1996 and by 1998 they still cost well over $250 for a player (and for DVD players and burners for the PC, forget it, prices were insane in 98). Finding a Blu Ray player for $250 (or even $200!) is really easy and BR PC drives are extremely affordable now.

Again, convenience is the issue, not quality. Most people don't care about image quality or storage space, all they care about is durable media with chapter skipping, everything else is gravy to them. Its good enough and that's fine for them. As it stands, I pick up most of my Blu Ray movies for roughly the same price as a new DVD. Again, I don't think its enough for people to switch over from DVD. HD downloads are the future for the mass market.

That is a different issue from quality, which again, there is no contest as to which formats look the best. High bitrate media that is too large to be streamed but fits just fine on a Blu Ray or HD-DVD disc will beat the download every time, period.

Also, your idea of making it a loss leader across the board, well, its a good thing you're just a guy that posts news stories and isn't in charge of actually running a business. ;)
 
ICOM said:
Man, you're completely missing the point.

BR is dead/dying (pick a term...) not because computer enthusiasts like us aren't taking the bait. BR is failing because standard DVD's provide an exceptional product for the money. Accept it! Standard DVD's are still EXCELLENT. Yes, BR is better but those BR fuktards haven't figured out that their completion is formidable and they'd better start pricing their BR crap to compete.

It's got nothing to do with what format enthusiasts like best. Until the GP gets on board, enthusiasts will have to pay through the nose for what the GP sees as a marginally improved product.
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I was complaining about DVDs back in 2000/2001. Compression artifacts like blockiness in blacks and deep reds, banding, dithering, motion artifacts, all that stuff drives me absolutely nuts. I hated it even more after I started encoding my own DVDs back in 2002. I make my own demo reels at home off of a DigiBeta or DVCAM source, and the amount of compression necessary to get that uncompressed digital signal onto a DVD is ridiculous, 10x. Also note that DVD uses the ancient MPEG2 codec, so it is hardly efficient.

I see a before and after of the source material and what is the best possible compression (using as many tricks as possible) onto a DVD, and the difference really really sucks.

To say that DVD is "EXCELLENT" is completely in the wrong. It is cheap, it is ubiquitous, and it is convenient, all of that I can buy. To say that its image quality is "excellent" is asinine.

And FWIW, I accepted back when HD-DVD and Blu Ray launched that they would be basically Laserdiscs for the 21st century, a mainly enthusiast format. I paid the premium to have that format over VHS and I will pay the comparatively marginal premium to have Blu Ray over DVD.

Like I have said here before, I believe that HD downloads are the future for the mainstream. What is popular and what is good are two different things though.
 
highdefdigest.com is a good place to find quality blue-ray movies. Someone on amazon suggested not to buy a bd that has a video/sound quality rating lower than 4 stars.

More lines (higher res) = better screen size. No brainer. Encoding is a different story, but that is why I posted the link.
 
Steve said:
All I am saying is this...if I had a new format (compared to DVD, VHS, cave paintings) in danger of dying on the vine....I would undersell everyone.

Yeah, I'd lose money at first

BUT

...when I became the only standard in town (like DVD has been, VHS before it)...I will have all your monies!!!

...Oh yeah...if you can't see my point you are stupid, retarded, need your eyes checked, crazy, inbred, uncultured swine. :rolleyes:
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Agreed...

So lets have at it like the console wars. Subsidize the cost of the blu player to make it comparable/cheaper than a standard DVD player. Yes, the blu DVDs cost a touch more, but it sure looks pretty and all my crap is backwards compatible on my shiny new blu player.
 
//[T.0.P]//;1033239690 said:
highdefdigest.com is a good place to find quality blue-ray movies. Someone on amazon suggested not to buy a bd that has a video/sound quality rating lower than 4 stars.

More lines (higher res) = better screen size. No brainer. Encoding is a different story, but that is why I posted the link.
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Good link. And yeah, encoding is the big thing people miss. There can be some bad transfers out there but they are pretty small compared to the good ones out there. Either way, all that extra space buys you a lot more than just more pixels. No encoding artifacts like mpeg blocks, no motion artifacts, better color accuracy, no dithering, no banding, the list goes on. Yeah, its a lot more than just "you get more lines".
 
For me the biggest strike against blu-ray is that HDTV is everywhere and quite common, watching that than going to see something on blu-ray is just meh... not much of an improvement, so why should I pay a premium to see something that's the same as what I have as "standard"
 
OH yeah, and I may be a purist, but I want to see a fucking movie, I didn't by the limited collectors edition with outtakes and commentary of (insert movie here) either because I don't want to pay an addition $10 (50% markup) just to see that crap. I'm sure some people love that stuff, and not going to badmouth them but to me it's bullshit fluff that is unnecessary.
 
Serpico said:
To say that DVD is "EXCELLENT" is completely in the wrong. It is cheap, it is ubiquitous, and it is convenient, all of that I can buy. To say that its image quality is "excellent" is asinine.
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The only thing more asinine would be for BR to FAIL because they can't compete with standard DVD because BR has priced themselves out of the market!

You keep steering off the subject.

This has nothing to do with image quality crap that spews here like the Exorcist movie. Standard DVD's are burying BR because it IS an excellent product AND because standard DVD's and Players are cheap. BR is NOT competing with it's competition.
 
Nobody has answered my Q's.

Do tv's correctly decode closed captioning off of bluerays? I am hearing impaired, wear two hearing aides & "read" my movies most of the time. I can't find ANY tv that can correctly decode CC from a progressive upscan of my dvd player, so I either have to watch it with subtitles put on by the dvd manufacturer or play it in 480i.

I also sit about 8-10' from my tv. According to most hdtv calculators I'd need something 60"+ to tell the difference between blu-ray & dvd. That immediately puts me in the "$2G+" tv category.

if I'm going to spend that much, I'd rather, honestly grab a 250cc motorcycle.
 
Robstar said:
Nobody has answered my Q's.

Do tv's correctly decode closed captioning off of bluerays? I am hearing impaired, wear two hearing aides & "read" my movies most of the time. I can't find ANY tv that can correctly decode CC from a progressive upscan of my dvd player, so I either have to watch it with subtitles put on by the dvd manufacturer or play it in 480i.

I also sit about 8-10' from my tv. According to most hdtv calculators I'd need something 60"+ to tell the difference between blu-ray & dvd. That immediately puts me in the "$2G+" tv category.

if I'm going to spend that much, I'd rather, honestly grab a 250cc motorcycle.
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I'm hearing impaired too and also suffer from the lack of consideration with CC. The problem has to do with captioning not being able to go through component and HDMI cables for some reason. I'm not sure what the story is, but I think it has something to do with captioning made in analog and it's not being converted into digital when you use high definition cables.

For this reason alone, I'm stuck having to watch cable in SD on my 46" HDTV so I can have the captioning on ALL channels rather than selective channels with captioning created digitally.
 
Interest for it will peter out for two reasons:
1) Lack of any TV to support it to it's full potential: Most people can't tell a difference.
2) Cost

I think something better will come along.

VHS to DVD, even though the advantages were VASTLY better than DVD to BlueRay, took something like 8 years to happen.
 
the problem is you can't wipe out DVD. DVD costs much less to produce, ergo if you're selling your product for a profit you can't sell a bluray DVD for less. Then theres the cost of the player, unless you're giving them away not everyone will get one. And bluray players play DVD too, so everyone still has a DVD player.
 
ICOM said:
The only thing more asinine would be for BR to FAIL because they can't compete with standard DVD because BR has priced themselves out of the market!

You keep steering off the subject.

This has nothing to do with image quality crap that spews here like the Exorcist movie. Standard DVD's are burying BR because it IS an excellent product AND because standard DVD's and Players are cheap. BR is NOT competing with it's competition.
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DVD is winning because it is cheap, not because it is good. "Good enough", but not "good". Certainly not "excellent" unless your standards are incredibly low.

Otherwise I have already stated everything you repeated above. Again, BR will continue as an enthusiast format, like Laserdisc but much much cheaper ($30-$120 was the norm for those back in the day). I will be shocked if it takes over as the dominant format in the next few years.
 
Robstar said:
Do tv's correctly decode closed captioning off of bluerays?
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The short anwser is no. I've had a few hard of hearing customers and have had to do some research on this. The problem is with the hi-def connections. HDMI (and maybe component, never did the research) don't pass the closed captioning information to your TV. For BD or any HD service you have to enable the captioning in the box. Most of the time this means using the english subtitles that are encoded on the disk. Check out www.alldeaf.com for more info. There's a lot there.

FWIW the thing I find really impressive about a good Blu-ray is the audio (apologies Robstar). DTS-HD and Master Audio tracks are so much more detailed than standard DTS it's a pretty big benefit to the format.
 
ICOM said:
I don't buy that "improper hookup" argument anymore. Not at this stage in the game.
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The scenarios I had in mind when I said that are actually much more worse than what I think you imagined, heh... The number of people I know with $1,000-$2,000 HDTVs that are not watching any HD content on them is astonishing. Most of the time you'd be lucky to find that they have a progressive scan DVD player hooked up thru component cables...

They simply moved up to a newer TV when their old tube display died or acted up and didn't bother upgrading anything else, not even their cable/satellite boxes in many cases. They don't even realize there's free OTA HD. These are the same people that will watch all SD cable/satellite TV in stretched mode, and they're perfectly happy with it. :(

I still think BD will eventually replace DVD regardless, whether it takes a couple of years or half a decade is up to the powers that be. :eek: Even at that point I don't think the infrastructure for true downloadable HD content will be there...
 
Blu-Ray is just to damn expensive. Old re released movies for $25.99 are they NUTS!!! I miss HD-DVD & competition.
 
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