720p DVD vs. 720p HD-DVD

C

c.g._eads

Veteran
So I have a Toshiba 720p HD-DVD player and I got to thinking. DVDs are supposedly capable of displaying 720 lines of resolution (if not all of them, then at least some, right?). So when you buy an HD-DVD player and you have a 720p HD television, you now unleash the true 720 lines of resoution that the DVD has to offer. HOWEVER, since I have a 720p HD-DVD player and a 720p television, how does an HD-DVD movie look any better than its DVD counterpart? They both have a ceiling of 720 lines of resolution.
 
DVDs limitations are not resolution based, but rather capacity based. I've heard it's possible to do an HD-DVD encoding of a DVD. You'd only get like 15 min, but it'd be enough for indie purposes!
 
DVD, authored to play on a set-top box or standalone DVD player, is a standard-def medium.

DVD-R is a data medium. You could make a DVD-R and put HD media on there (or recipes or photos or word documents or whatever); HD-DVD players (and a few other DVD players) would then be able to play back those particular high-def files. But that would not be something you could just plug into any old DVD player.
 
I've authored 720 and 1080 HD DVD's onto standard 4.7 GB DVD-R's that actually playback on the Toshiba player--not as data files like QT movies, but as a true HD DVD video with menus too.

FCP and DVDSP4 make this possible. I'm not exactly sure what affordable authoring solutions exist for the PC however.
 
shawneous said:
DVDs limitations are not resolution based, but rather capacity based. I've heard it's possible to do an HD-DVD encoding of a DVD. You'd only get like 15 min, but it'd be enough for indie purposes!
Click to expand...

DVD SP4 will give you roughly an hour at 720 60p h.264 encoded at 10.4 mbs. This is to a standard 4.7 GB DVD-R. Double that for a dual-layer DVD. 1080i MPEG 2 HD DVD is roughly 25-30 minutes for a standard DVD.

One nice little bonus I've discovered with 1080 HDV editing and FCS 2/DVD SP4: HDV edits can be exported as self-contained QT movies that can be imported into DVD SP4 and simply burned as HD DVD MPEG 2 1080i. The program only needs to mux the file but doesn't recompress the HDV. It simply burns it as a native 25 mbs MPEG2 TS.

HD-DVD is cool because you can author HD to a cheap disc that's actually playable in a $250 consumer Toshiba player.
 
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