Well, I think you're kind of missing the point. This shows that if the original movie quality is there, then high bitrates that you can use on a larger disk, are not so important. What seems to stick out more in terms of lighting up the detail is RESOLUTION.

The quality in these 2 shots come pretty close to identical.... meanwhile a DL dvd blank is about $2 while the HD DVD/Blu ray blanks are 4 or 5 times that.

On a side note.... if I place a normal dvd movie in my Tosh A1 (upscaled) i'm hard pressed to tell the difference for a lot of the movies they have put out so far.

" i'm hard pressed to tell the difference for a lot of the movies they have put out so far.

Then you're sitting too far away from your HDTV. Just out of curiousity, what HDTV do you have?

Then you're sitting too far away from your HDTV. Just out of curiousity, what HDTV do you have?

60" Pioneer plasma and no... I'm not sitting too far away.

Well, I think you're kind of missing the point. This shows that if the original movie quality is there, then high bitrates that you can use on a larger disk, are not so important. What seems to stick out more in terms of lighting up the detail is RESOLUTION.

Exactly: w/o the res there's not as much detail, no matter how you look at it. It may look good, but you get more @ the higher res. Down-scale the high-res material & it still looks good, but if you up-scale a low res it doesn't look as good. but resolution & bitrate go hand & hand. You can have a low-res with a 8mbs bitrate & it looks great. Have 1080p & the same bitrate & it doesn't look as good.

TheHappyFriar, actually u r mistaken. It always put a smile on my face when all those articles that tried to show how superior HD was to SD they would show a 720x480 image simply resized to an HD size... Meanwhile which TV actually simply does that? IF you were going to compare it would be more appropriate to use a fractal resizing plug in to Photoshop or something similar a this is what those HD TV do when up converting.

backing up HD to DVD5 and DVD9 is old news dude... the MKV format is taking a hold and now with remuxing tools, these can be "reshelled" for BD.. so were now seeing HD DVD exclusive titles on BD..

backing up HD to DVD5 and DVD9 is ls news dude... the MKV format is taking a hold and now with remuxing tols, these can be "reshelled" for BD.. so were now seeing HD DVD exlcusive titles on BD..

Let's not go off on a tangent here.... this isn't about HD/BD. It's about getting a hi def movie squeezed onto a DVD9 with virtually the same quality.

It kind of makes you wonder why we're paying all that extra money for extra disk space on the hi def formats...

No, it kind of makes you wonder why people paid all that extra money for HD-DVD, The HD-DVD encode was only 17gb, whereas the DVD was 7.45. Blu-Ray can be 50gb, and therefore require much less compression. The difference between a bit rate that yields a 50gb file and one that yields a 7gb file will be much more noticeable. Maybe not on a very static image like that, but certainly on an action scene. Still, even comparing the HD-DVD to a DL-DVD I think a scene with a lot of motion would show much different results. It's as if the person who did this test went out of his way to find the shot that *most* hides the difference.

let's see...
i can see the film/show on dvd just perfectly. No need to buy some overpriced HD players. No need to re-purchase the films. I can rip my dvd movies to put on my new phone or portable media device for travel/etc.

Hmmm...this one's easy. No need for the BD/HDDVD.

It's kind of like CD's now, most people get a cd (or now, buy the dig tracks for less) and boom...off it goes into the i-younameit.

And you don't see this coming with video?

Personally, I understood right away the point of the comparison, Ithink it made perfect sense.

JFJ, no one is saying that downloads aren't the future. But the time when downloads will supplant discs is at least 10 years away. Please not that I said "supplant," not "be available for cutting-edge computer geeks." DVD has been around for about 10 years and I expect BR to be around for about that long too. No one is saying it will be the dominant format forever.

As for the quality of HD, as people get used to seeing HD now that they're buying HD televisions, they'll start to appreciate the better quality of HD movies compared to DVD.

Lastly, sure, that image from Beowulf looked nice and the file it came from was only 7.45gb. 7 or 8gb isn't necessarily too much for today's broadband users, so it seems like a good thing. However, now imagine the movie comes with a couple of hours of extras. That's another 7gb. And what about buying a nice box set? I have the DVD box "Ford At Fox," which is about 24 films. Granted it's only SD, but imagine the time it would take to download 24 HD movies. And even then, that's a lot of disc space it'll take up. I currently have about 800 DVDs. If I had them as HD downloads I'd need an awful lot of hard drive space, and it's going to be way longer than 10 years from now till broadband is fast enough to do away with the need to store films locally.

As you can see, CDs aren't a perfect point of comparison. Music is small.

. It's as if the person who did this test went out of his way to find the shot that *most* hides the difference.

Yes, I agree FW... this is a huge conspiracy against HD...

Come on... let's not take this thread into the dirt shall we? It's an interesting comparison and it is NOT about HD DVD vs blu ray so stop trying to take it in that direction.

I have posted this before. With fifteen regular guests to my home theater we evaluate movies all the time and take a consensus. That eliminates imaginary things that aren't actually there visually. I have the HD DVD player and one of the guests brings his PS3 to play the Blu-Ray movies. None of us are fanboys. We just like movies.

Fifteen person Consensus:

1. There is no visual difference between the exact same title in the HD DVD format and the exact same title in the Blu-Ray format.

2. Many Blu-Ray titles and many HD DVD titles weren't worth the money they cost because they don't look that great. We discussed it and decided that there was maybe a 10% improvement at best. We think it is just laziness on the part of the manufacturers.

3. Many SD DVD titles look GREAT upconverted. The better ones look as good as what seems to be the average HD title in either format these days. The HD titles appear to be getting worse not better overall.

4. The ability to upconvert SD DVDs by the PS3 and the HD-A1 seems identical. There is a slight majority that gives the edge to the HD DVD player, but I wouldn't draw a big conclusion from it. The titles themselves make the biggest difference for both SD upconverted and HD discs.

5. The animations and heavy CGI movies tend to look good whether upconverted SD DVD or HD. We call them the "cartoons". Most of us don't like when producers opt for CGI people instead of paying the "extras" who only get around six dollars an hour anyway. "Beowulf" is an example as is "300" and many others of the "mindless gladiator" category of film.

6. Despite the overwhelming technical background of the guests we all agreed never to discuss specs when it comes to HD DVD, Blu-Ray, or SD DVD movies.
The technical evaluation goes as follows:
"That movie looks like S**T"

John

"DVD has been around for about 10 years and I expect BR to be around for about that long too"
-------------------------------------------

Oh, i don't. Too little too late I'm afraid.

I do understand the "desire" for those in the field to hope it will be, I just see it moving (rather quickly) towards the ease factor more than definition. It's very much like the ease of dig audio over cd, barring any back and forth about fidelity differences.

It's called a movie, as in MOVING pictures.

Using stills for comparison is absurd.

JFJ,
I don't see anything on the horizon that will make downloads universally accepted in anything less than 10 years. After all, look how long it took VHS to die. Look at how many people still use Windows ME or 2000. Insanely high speed broadband will not be common enough fast enough for it to eat into BR's 10 year potential.

And here's a very important thing to consider too: Downloads will succeed only when the studios allow them to (legal downloads, I mean). And since right now they're behind BR, downloads aren't something they'll push.

Well, we'll see. "I" just don't feel 10 years is realistic.

Comparing VHS's lengthy run isn't an example at all. The move from DVD (more than acceptable quality and price/perf) to HD/bd isn't even in the same ballpark as the switch from a VHS to DVD.
VHS to Tivo/dvr's is another of the more recent in terms of interest and use.

So the comparison even here with a simple screencap, as much as it might bother any 'philes" here, is quite realistic. The necessity, gains in quality and ease of use, and plain old 'wow factor" of all things HD isn't there. Not sure it ever was (and as for all these "new features' HD offers (makes a fart noise with mouth).

Of course, there's always "forcing" new customers into all the HD hype (it usually doesn't last however. I believe the reality of ease of use will come into play sooner than 10yrs).

"Let's not go off on a tangent here.... this isn't about HD/BD. It's about getting a hi def movie squeezed onto a DVD9 with virtually the same quality."

err... again you miss my point as per previous posts regarding formats and reverse engineering...

These "rips" wouldnt exist if the studios provided the content to all formats.
They didnt, so the material was ripped and recoded to formats which can be read by BD or PC without much fuss.
Most of these rips easily fit within a DVD5 or DVD9 disc.
Most people WANTING this stuff on DISC (ANY disc) would be playign the HD material back on a BD player, hence my reference to BD

Dont turn this into a HD DVD / BD thing like you always do mate.
Its getting rather boring.

Its got nothing to do with that, because the SAME can be said for BD titles encoded to VC1 for HD DVD playback from disc

Most people WANTING this stuff on DISC (ANY disc) would be playign the HD material back on a BD player, hence my reference to BD

Maybe I don't understand your comment.... or you don't understand what has been done here.

The rip that we are refering to is hi def for a hi def player (ie: a HD DVD player). This has not been ripped to dvd 9 for standard dvd ply back. In other words, he didn't change the resolution... only the bit rate.

And as far as BD vs HD DVD is concerned... it's really a moot issue. The vast majority of people that own both formats will tell you first hand, of the movies they have seen in both formats, there is no quality difference between the 2.

It's called a movie, as in MOVING pictures. Using stills for comparison is absurd.

Really?
You put up a couple of captured stills... one from a DV cam and one from hi def cam and I'll bet you any amount of money that the difference will be easy to spot. Heck... I can even tell the difference in a screen shot captured from my HC3 and HV20 cams

Not withstanding, Camcorder.com as well as most other camcorder review sites use stills for testing

I find it quite interesting to see so many people trying so hard to disqualify what they see instead of trying to explain it.

"And as far as BD vs HD DVD is concerned... it's really a moot issue. The vast majority of people that own both formats will tell you first hand, of the movies they have seen in both formats, there is no quality difference between the 2."

I never said there was a difference dude... if theyre al running the same bitrate, with thw same codec through a HDMI connection, they should theoretically be identical.. Throgh compenent and you start to notice D/A conversion nuances, but thats another issue.

It baffled me in the first place regarding studio's tie ins with HD DVD and BD. Theyre the friggin same thing only on a different disc.
The only difference the studios would need to consider would be storage capacity which might affect an encode and the menu structure itself, which is a no brianer regardless of which format is used.

In any case, this same experiment can be done with any codec
Ive got T2 Judgement Day on WMV9 which which i bought from the states about 2 years ago, beore HD was realy common and HTPC's were starting to make an impact on teh marke.
.
Its only encoded at 8mbps, and its across 2 discs, but it looks absolutely crazy.

Admittadly, its only 720p, but when u see this bugger move, it looks absolutely crazy....
Fact however is that its running at 8mbps... now when you consider DVDs can go higher than this, it makes you wonder WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE WORLD WHEN THEY CHOSE MPG2.

I believe, in my humblest of opinions, that MPG2 is the bane of the video industry. Now i know im gonan piss afew people off, but I really dont care.
Aside from delivery issues, it is one of the most overblaoted codecs we have had the displeasure of dealing with.
Compare an 6mbps SD DVD to an SD DIvX @ 3mbps encode, and youll notice smoother motion, richer colour, sharper defintion within moving frames (ie no MPG ghosting due to long gop flake outs <encoder dependant> )
There are MANY other codecs out there, and im just thankful that VC1 and AVCHD are also included within this HD media spec coz im HOPING that eventually we'll move into these formats sooner rather than later.
AVCHD is also long gop, but its management is much more efficient.

Like i said, i might upset people by saying what i say, but frankly, there really ARE better codecs out there

it makes you wonder WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE WORLD WHEN THEY CHOSE MPG2.

Well, I would agree that this DOES have a lot to do with codec. I'm not absolutely sure if the codec being used is VC1 but it stands to reason that it is (that's what HD DVD uses mostly), and VC1 certainly beats up MPEG2 pretty good.

But having said that, I would disagree that mpeg is bad stuff. It certainly isn't the easiest in the world to edit with and it is lossy... but it's also one of the most versatile formats to come along. You can vary it's bitrate from about 2000 up to (and beyond) 50,000, you can change its GOP up, down and all over the place, you can "I frame only" edit if you wish. It can be used in the world of SD as well as HD..... the list goes on.

Yes.... the mpeg2 codec is getting on in age and it's time for a change, but for what we have needed it to do..... it has done well, and served us well. And BTW.... mpeg2 STILL has the jump on quality when it comes to avchd (maybe not much longer though....)

Craftech:

Great post. I'd agree with you that the theoretical superiority of the HD delivery formats is mostly wasted by the studios. Whether that's intentional, due to laziness, or due to some other weak link in the chain I don't know.

I do know from my time on the various HD committees back in the late '80's that resolution was only one of multiple factors defining "The HD Experience." I concluded long ago that a nicely-upsampled SD video image could be made to look very good on the big screen.