HD DVD sales not good

Kevin Briggs said:
Why is that? I know it must be a simple answer, but does SD footage look worse on an HDTV vs SD on an SDTV?
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SD footage is not so hot on an HD tv, its like zooming a JPEG in really close, the expanded size can reveal flaws in compression and the source of it. But it depends on the channel and what not, right now im watching conan in HD, but the commercials are in SD, (not stretched to fit screen since on HD specific channels, the SD content is in 4 x 3) and it looks decent.

But when you go to a channel that doesnt have an HD stream sending the Sd signals, just the regular digital cable tier, it stretches to fit and doesnt look that great. But on my box , a motorola HD DVR Dual box, i managed to get it to look a little bit better by going into the setup menu and telling it to upconvert all of the 480i signals that are used on the SD channels, and to upgrade and stretch them to 720p. It helped with the quality.
 
It depends on the TV, and on the signal.

DVDs -- SD, mind you -- look fantastic on my TV. Whether or not SD TV signals look good varies from channel to channel, and program to program.
 
FlintMI said:
So I wonder about Blu-Ray. but the name is great and they have all those movie titles (Sony, MGM, Columbia, Tri-Star)
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And HD-DVD has Paramount, Universal (exclusively), Warner (which owns the MGM library), HBO, and New Line. I think it's a tough argument to say that BD alone has the better titles.
 
Sounds like the HDV consortium. Everyone kinda does their own thing. It's nice to know that your motorola box and others do a 720 uprez. Do they use an algorithm of sorts like illistrator?
 
Kevin Briggs said:
I heard that in order to stream HD over the existing cable lines they have to massively compress it. Is this true?
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Oh, of course. And sometimes it looks terrible -- especially in basketball. For most drama and such it looks fine except for when they cut from a closeup to a long shot or something like that, then you'll have a GOP's worth of corruption.

Long-GOP is simply horrible in all its incarnations, but it appears to be a necessary evil. We couldn't get anywhere close to HD broadcasts without it.

Part of the problem is the ATSC settled on MPEG-2. Europe waited long enough that they're going to implement H.264 and will get twice as efficient compression. Should look much, much better than what we get here. The ATSC is looking at adding H.264 to its standards; DirecTV and DISH already use H.264 for their satellite transmissions.
 
Anyone else notice the announcement about Apple iTV today?

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/tag/apple-itv-200138.php
The new product: a box to connect to your TV to play all these iTunes Movies and iTunes TV shows on it.

This box supports wireless—no stringing cables—and is the missing piece.
iTV looks like a small Mac Mini. It's just an internal codename, and will be renamed later.

There's a power supply inside, USB, 802.11 wireless, Ethernet, HDMI, component, stereo audio, and optical audio out to your TV.
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Very very interesting...
 
Isaac_Brody said:
Anyone else notice the announcement about Apple iTV today?

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/tag/apple-itv-200138.php


Very very interesting...
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And that's just Apple. Amazon is launching a download service too. Reportedly Amazon has all the major studios except Disney. Apple has Disney but none of the other majors.

Tell me again why we need any kind of disc distribution at all? :evil:

Download services are going to do to movie distribution what itunes did to music distribution.

Apple says they'll download a full movie in about a half an hour, but that you can start the download and then start watching in as little as a minute.

Why do we need a new form of disc distribution again?

And that iTV box type of thing seems to solve the big hitch -- people don't really want to watch movies on their computers, they want to sit down on the couch and watch 'em on their TVs, and that's what the iTV box does.

So we need a new form of disc distribution -- why?

(and yes, obviously blu-ray or HD-DVD can deliver higher quality than a downloaded movie can, but that's for TODAY. Give the IT industry a couple of years and we'll see where things stand. Of course, in a couple of years blu-ray players will probably have penetrated about 0.3% of American households, so I don't know if downloading will be able to overcome that massive head start...) :grin:
 
Critics hated Pirates of the Carribean Dead Man's Chest. But the public loved it so much that it just passed the 1 billion mark. :evil:
 
But the movie atleast works and plays through. Whether it sucks or not, you got to the theatre or buy the DVD , it will play to completion. THe Amazon unbox just plain didnt work for many people.

The BD and HD-DVD will run at full rez in the component cables.
 
I was in a staples today waiting in line to buy some supplies. Two girls were ahead of me. Next to them were CD/DVD cases. I wish I'd recorded their conversation. They both talked about the days when they carried around cd cases full of cds and how much of a hassle it was. One of the girls talked about how her mom hated how she kept asking her to switch the CD's in the car CD player and how her Ipod was so much easier.

I won't disagree with you that HD-DVD and Bluray are better quality, I just think that most people don't care. The two girls in line both had Ipods, and I know that mp3 isn't as good as CD audio or even DVD-Audio. How many people do you know have DVD-Audio? It's a superior audio format so why has it flopped miserably?

People don't need the best quality, they care more about convenience. It's convenient to connect your Ipod to your tv. And people don't know about component cables either. Sure the quality won't be as good with iTV, but it'll be a lot easier than for people to get off their couch, open up a DVD case, fiddle with it while trying to remove it, open the DVD player...

I got an Ipod a few months ago, I haven't touched a CD since I fired up my Ipod. The writing's on the wall...
 
Check this out.. I was at the Best Buy in Burbank last week ready to buy that stupid Samsung Blu-Ray player. So i go in , they have this big spectacle display with the samsung 1080p display and the player setup playing a spinning demo. the latest Blu Ray DVD's were surrounding the custom display ready to buy.

so what are they looping in the player?... the Best buy coming soon to DVD trailer... in SD. I pointed to the Dude in the blue shirt and asked him to put a Blu Ray disk in, and he said he didnt have any. I pointed to the new ones in the display and he said no.....

well to make a long story short, I left without buying the thing.

I hope HD-DVD kicks its ass.
 
I dont think , in my personal opinion, that audio quality difference and video quality differences can be compared that way.

but off topic relating to ignorant consumer style jargon:

i was at VSDA this year and made my way to "MY" camps Blu-Ray Cafe setup, and i had fun in there, free drinks (non alcoholic :( ) and this old lady who said shes some sort of DVD reviewer with her own site ( anyone can come to VSDA with only 500 bucks and a plane ticket) gets talking to the main blu-ray rep there and says why should she switch to Blu-Ray. He gave a great demo and speach to her, all opinions aside of what is better, he did his job very well and explained in laymens (sp?) terms to her. She went on to say nothing about the quality of any sort of video, and says she still hasnt switched to DVD , and hasnt even fully switched to VHS!!!! She is still on beta and Laser disc, along with the HI-8 format as well (im proud to say i own a Pet Cemetary HI-8, yay for me)

Anyways, she decided to go on about how DVD isnt worth it , and the HD war , well shell wait it out for 5 more years to see whats next. Idunno, it just urked me...i butted in and saved the guy by talking about really technical stuff, since my main goal besides software at my job in San Jose is authoring DVD's and leading our company into different formats to sell our content. She slowly walked away right after i asked about 1080p and the new un announced player at the time they were demoing.

After she left i said you owe me big time buddy for getting rid of her, how bout you send me some PS3's? He said that if he had them hed give me one on the spot. LOL. Anyways, ill be waiting for my PS3 :)
 
Jarred Land said:
Check this out.. I was at the Best Buy in Burbank last week ready to buy that stupid Samsung Blu-Ray player. So i go in , they have this big spectacle display with the samsung 1080p display and the player setup playing a spinning demo. the latest Blu Ray DVD's were surrounding the custom display ready to buy.

so what are they looping in the player?... the Best buy coming soon to DVD trailer... in SD. I pointed to the Dude in the blue shirt and asked him to put a Blu Ray disk in, and he said he didnt have any. I pointed to the new ones in the display and he said no.....

well to make a long story short, I left without buying the thing.

I hope HD-DVD kicks its ass.
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its funny at the Best Buy near my house, they are pushing HD like crack, but to be honest i dont know where they get their Hd programming from, i think its Cable DiscoveryHD, but its unwatchable, its so pixelated i just dont want it from the cable company. I asked the guy about the pixelation and why it looks like that, and he couldnt tell what i was talking bout. But like, cmon, my mom walked over and was like, "Why does the picture sometimes look like legos?"
 
I dont care whether its HD-DVD or Bluray or what nonsense. I just care that my player can play it. I don't want to decide between the two formats. I don't want to agonise that a really good title came out for Bluray but can't play on my HD-DVD player. Just like DVD drives. I dont want a drive for CD and a drive for DVD. I want em all in one. Better yet - if there was only one format to begin with. I know monopoly is bad usually, but in this case, gimme some market monopoly so i won't have to choose between the 2 formats and thus have to buy both.

It'll be funny if both companies signed a truce - HD-DVD will get half the titles while Bluray the other half: That way consumers will have to buy both players to be able to enjoy all the movies he/she wants.
 
Isaac_Brody said:
. . . How many people do you know have DVD-Audio? It's a superior audio format so why has it flopped miserably?
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Let's not forget SuperAudio CD and HDCD!

Kaplooey!! :grin:
 
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