Yes blink, I'm sure you're right, but as we've just been discussing .... if it did technically look twice as good - well, let's not mince words - it would be about five times the resolution - but would the viewer's life therefore be better?

One could even argue the opposite way - "I thought he looked really nice, but then when I saw it in high resolution, I realised how badly he'd shaved that day ..."

>>>>Without emotional sincerity, video can only remain a clever party trick.<<<<

That is a given. Excellent movies have been shot on mobile phones. But that wasn't the question. The issue appeared to be whether Blu-ray was noticeably technically superior to DVD. If asking whether 70mm provides an image superior to 16mm, a discussion about the benefits of a good screenplay is beside the point.

"it would be about five times the resolution - but would the viewer's life therefore be better?"

It sure as heck would!
Peter, I watch my old hdv-on-dvd videos and there is just no comparison at all. The color is worse. The noise is louder. The edges are smudged. Do I look a little older on Bd? Sure i do, but it's such a pleasure to watch the kids on tape playing ball outside for example. it's like I'm literally peering through a window instead of watching a screen. It's a whole new world.

But Blu Ray is also much bigger and therefore it gives you MUCH more flexibility in what you want to do. If the clarity of BD doesn't turn you on, then just think of the size restrictions on DVD and what you could do if those restrictions were lifted.

"BD is not dead, but if it makes you happy, go for it."

No Apit... BD isn't dead..... YET. But I fear it's well on its way and sadly I don't see that changing.

As I said before in another post, I think that if HD DVD won this war then market penetration would have been much deeper by now. Not because HD DVD is a better medium, but because the HD DVD forum clearly understood that any new business is a losing proposition for the first few years of existence, and it doesn't matter because "promotional pricing" in the early stages is priority number one. And they demonstrated over and over again that they were willing to swallow that pill. The BDA just doesn't understand this, and has demonstrated time and again that a certain profit margin is the higher priority. That ideology WILL kill it... particularly in today's economy.

You've swallowed the marketing hype and you think that resolution is all that determines image quality. Sorry but that's ever so wrong.

BD is VERY restricted in image quality, it's only improvement over SD DVD is resolution. At 25Mbps that's 2.5 times the data rate of SD to hold 4 times the pixels, image quality goes DOWN. It's easy to get blinded by the numbers when you don't understand the intricacies of image quality.

Bob.

"You've swallowed the marketing hype and you think that resolution is all that determines image quality. Sorry but that's ever so wrong."

Sorry Bob,
That's just not true in any way, shape, or form. Do I honestly strike you as the kind of person that gets swallowed by marketing hype??? I have to see the proof with my own eyes... I'm surprised you haven't seen that by now ;)

The increased image quality is CLEARLY there on the screen to see. What you're basically saying here is that everybody is getting swallowed up by the marketing hype of HDV (over dv) and that's why they're all buying into HDV..... which makes no sense at all. The difference between HDV and DV is quite evident... and HDV on tape is no different than HDV on BD. Plug your HDV cam directly into the tv and that's pretty much what BD looks like. But then compare that to the same thing on dvd at 720x480 @ 8000k

Now if you're saying BD is not efficient and could be better... then I agree... but now you're getting into codecs which has little to do with the BD medium. At present the shear size of BD simply allows us to use the existing codecs (mpeg2 for one) at much higher levels and thereby increasing quality. But then avchd is the new guy on the block... and we've just started with that game.

"at much higher levels and thereby increasing quality. "

What?
Reasonable quality HD starts at around 50Mbps, many of us looking to go to over 100Mbps.
50/60p is becoming common place, in fact there's plenty of evidence to show that 720p60 looks better than 1080p30, perceived resolution is a function of spatial and temporal resolution. BD doesn't support higher frame rates.

Of course your old SD video looked bad scaled up, it was shot with a cheap camera. Feed decent SD into a good upscaler and the results are vastly different. Plenty of tests out there to prove that.

Ever watched a movie in a cinema, what do you think the resolution is of the print? It's significantly less than BD, at 700 lines it's not much better than SD PAL actually. But it looks way, way better than what you'll get out of any HDV camera. Now work that out, you'll learn a lot.

Bob.

Ever watched a movie in a cinema, what do you think the resolution is of the print? It's significantly less than BD, at 700 lines it's not much better than SD PAL actually. But it looks way, way better than what you'll get out of any HDV camera. Now work that out, you'll learn a lot.

I follow you on the resolution and the perceived image. On the HDV image what is the major limitation? Resolution? Color space? Both or other?

Maybe my questions are obvious to most of the group, but I'm sure some besides me would like to hear your answer.

Opinion follows:

Personally DVD quality looks good enough to me. Maybe not if I was sharing it on a big screen. I gather HD recorded to DVD looks better. Haven't tried it yet.

I do agree that content is much more important than image quality. Lots of times, image quality is deliberately degraded in some way as an artistic choice. As Spot has pointed out, in any kind of edited presentation the audio background is probably more important than the image. Ok, this has all been said before.

"Reasonable quality HD starts at around 50Mbps, many of us looking to go to over 100Mbps."

And you expect me to argue with that statement? That's just further proof that higher bitrates produce better quality, and the 50gig disk brings us closer to that goal. Of course higher bitrate is just a small part of increasing quality... but it is a part.

Look... you and I are saying pretty much the same thing here. The only difference being that I'm saying that the Blu Ray disk is a great start at breaking away from dvd. You're saying that it doesn't go far enough so it should be discounted. I disagree. These things aren't born overnight.... they evolve... and just because they have yet to evolve to the point that you would like doesn't mean the evolution to this point is useless.

"Of course your old SD video looked bad scaled up, it was shot with a cheap camera. Feed decent SD into a good upscaler and the results are vastly different. Plenty of tests out there to prove that."

The difference being of course that any consumer can now afford a HDV cam. But can they afford an sd cam that comes close to the same? No.

That's a BIG difference.

"Reasonable quality HD starts at around 50Mbps, many of us looking to go to over 100Mbps. " Not really in today's compression tech. But If you are using 4:4:4 to 4:2:2 or maybe 4:2:0 then 50 to 100Mbps or 10bit color, yes you need high numbers, especially for capture, But display compression technology has a lot of "room" to squeeze which you do not want to use on capture or editing.

A mix of compression and upscaling technologies are creating a new wave of tools. ;-) Very soon, you'll see amazingly sharp 1080p60 action scenes at 18-20Mbps. 4Kp24 resolution is here now at ~25Mbps, but rapid changing scenes still have "issues". This is why Toshiba, Sony and others are putting the "cell" into future TV displays.

Blink, my comments about BD was in general, not specifically towards you. ;-) but today is the U.S. national holiday "Kick a Canadian", so since I can't find my Cowboy boots, I'll just give you the land deed to Detroit and call it even..... ;-) oh, yea, you can't give it back either... '-)

"I can't find my Cowboy boots..."

Well you see... that's just a vicious rumor. We don't wear cowboy boots.... we wear muck-lucks

"On the HDV image what is the major limitation?"

To be honest HDV is capable of more than most of the cameras it's used in are capable of and as Adam Wilt said it does look better than it deserves to. The low bitrate means the mpeg-2 encoder can run out of bits and certain scenes can turn to mush, heat haze and smoke are good examples. The chroma sampling is only 4:2:0, the same as DV. Of course depending on the camera there's more to a heck of a lot more chroma samples ( another good example of how you have to understand the numbers) in each frame than DV but then again if you were chroma keying for HD you'd want there to be.
Also HDV is 8bit. That's not that bad however the industry standard for SD broadcast is 10bit 4:2:2. Even HDCAM doesn't match that, you need to step up to HDCAM SR to match it.
That's not to put a downer on HDV, my HC5 capures incredible images for what I paid for it and it's a lot easier to use than my EX1. However HDV and AVCHD cameras are not a benchmark one would use to judge image quality by and the cost of much better cameras is coming down. The EX1 and a Flash XDR recorder should deliver staggering images and at a price probably an order of magnitude below what that would have cost a few years ago.
The thing that's still expensive and not getting cheaper is good HD lenses.

Bob.

The difference between Bluray and DVD does not show up at all when viewed by older people ( and others) with diminished vision skills. They "really" can't tell the difference, and this affects a huge segment of the population. They also cannot differentiate between 4 x 3 stretched and 4 x 3 normal. Some cheapo channels broadcast at 544 x 480 and everybody looks skinny. How can the HD channels on cable claim HD when they use high grain film or shoot simple widescreen when it's so obvious? They quickly found out that people with diminished vision skills can't tell the difference, even with 3000% linearity distortion.
JJK

"The difference between Bluray and DVD does not show up at all when viewed by older people ( and others) with diminished vision skills."

I don't what you're classifying "older" but my father is 74 and my mother is 70 with developing catteracs (sorry for the spelling) and they were both just blown away when witchung "the Planet Earth" on Blu Ray

"he EX1 and a Flash XDR recorder "

Again, the EX1 in terms of price and operations is simply beyond the average consumer.

"the Planet Earth" on Blu Ray ----------- gets my vote for the best mass produced HD BD.

Here is my take on Blu-ray vs SD:

For a lot of film shot 24p stuff, it really doesn't make as much difference, especially when you compare uprezzed 24p to real HD Blu-ray. It is noticeably better, but the uprezzing of the progressive image from SD is at least half way there.

HD video to Blu-ray like you see in the excellent "Planet Earth" series is a whole different world though. The quality with this sort of footage is just astounding. There is simply no comparison between the SD and HD versions. The HD version is like looking through a window.

Stuff shot with pro and prosumer HDV or HD cameras like the ones that many of us in this forum use looks a whole lot better in HD too: worlds better.

IMHO, just because the difference between an uprezzed blockbuster movie and and a true HD Blu-ray one is subtle is no reason for HD video people to stay away. On the contrary, the HD stuff we shoot is improved orders of magnitude by going HD and Blu-ray.

You were looking at a demo so there is no fear that what you saw will be what you will see consistently at home.
1/4/2008 7:37:04 AM
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=569044[/link
I have to disagree as well. I would really like to get an EX1, but if I spend that kind of money how do I get a return on investment? I will still be delivering in SD. The only real advantage to the customer maybe is that the SD will be 16:9 instead of 4:3 for their newly mandated requirement by the US government to switch to all digital by Feb 2009 thus pretty much requiring a new television. Is it worth spending that much money on a new camera so that it shoots in 16:9? Right now none of my customers who have widescreen TVs complain about playing my works in a 4:3 window. The war is over and in my opinion the winner was clear all along - SD won. Money talks.....
2/21/2008 6:05:50 AM
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=579186[/link

The consumer voted
2/20/2008 7:17:01 PM
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=579181[/link

So why do I point this out?

Instead of thinking logically and practically like the average consumer does, too many on this forum chose to argue specs, climb onto bandwagons, and worst of all bait and flame other posters with arguments that have since been proven false. I didn't take the brunt of it as much as others including the original poster did.
The point of this post isn't to say I told you so, it is to tell some of you to think before you engage in flaming other posters when you may end up being the one who looks like a creep for doing it.

I won't post the quotes or list the people who spewed the obnoxious venom because anyone who has been on this forum for over a year knows who they are and remembers what they said.

Please think ahead next time you decide whether to engage in that type of attack over something so stupid in the overall scheme of things that are important in life. Treating others decently is far more important IMO.

John

>>>"a discussion about the benefits of a good screenplay is beside the point."<<< I aint talking about screenplays? Was I?

>>>"The popularity of DV always demonstrated to me that people didn't care about image quality, and especially DV on VHS." <<< and what they see as being emoted is the point I was making.

Kinda realised it wasn't about screenplays. At some point it's really is the content NOT the format that swings it for many of us.

But please do carrying on talking about the amount of pixies that make a picture. I'll still read it!

Grazie

"For the price of a BD, the wife and I can go to a real theater and have some money left over for popcorn"

I wish! I took my wife, son and son's friend to a movie a few months ago. $46 to get in the door, $28 for drinks and popcorn.

$75 for a recent movie leaving me with memories.

We usually go to the end-of-run theatre downtown, $3 adult, $2 child. $5 pizzas/subs, $5 pitchers of beer, sitting in captains chairs at tables. That is a cool experience.

I'd rather spend $28 on BD than go to a first run movie.

"HD video to Blu-ray like you see in the excellent "Planet Earth" series is a whole different world though. The quality with this sort of footage is just astounding. There is simply no comparison between the SD and HD versions. The HD version is like looking through a window."

I quite agree. I can take or leave the Hollywood movies. I have no problems at all with watching up-rezzed dvd. But the HD on blu ray is nothing less than amazing. It would be a dire shame to see that fade.
=========================================================

"Instead of thinking logically and practically like the average consumer does, too many on this forum chose to argue specs, climb onto bandwagons, and worst of all bait and flame other posters with arguments that have since been proven false. I didn't take the brunt of it as much as others including the original poster did.'

LOL.
Yes... i did take quite the punishment.... but I dished some out as well. What I find interesting is that people like Fred are no where to be seen now!?

None the less i have no reason to gloat or feel happy right now. Blu Ray is GOOD for us HD people and if it fades it will be a definite loss for all in this field.