Blu-Ray vs DVD

[videokim]

We convert our DVD/HD/VHS films to mpeg4/HD mpeg4 & watch them through a MKV player connected by HDMI to our HD TV. It saves playing different medias on various players & you can take it on holiday with you as it is so small.
Formats in HD will keep changing every few years, Japan, China & Sweden are already using HD formats that leave ours standing, in years to come 1080p will be like VCD is to us now.

John

[Twingo]

[quote]A lot of titles rushed to take advantage of the new gold rush merely transferred existing masters on to Blu Ray from the original mastered format it was on meaning the quality would be exactly the same as it was on DVD. ie any movie title before the last 3 years will only look exactly the sameas it was mastered. Hence not much better than the dvd you got already
[/quote]

That's not really true.

A lot of the older films were originally still mastered at 2k resolution even when outputted to DVD, so there would still be a significant difference between the blu-ray and DVD editions, the biggest being spatial resolution which would increase the clarity and overall appearance, the second being a more advanced codec and higher bit rates, which would remove the blocking/loss of sharpness typically associated with MPEG2/DVD.

A nice comparison is "Hot Fuzz" which used the same master as the DVD but shows a big difference in quality.

DVD - http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/1069/dvdo.png

HD DVD (The Bluray is ever so slightly Higher Quality) - http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/7936/hddvd.png

[rgb]

one eyed jack wrote:

>
> As for 3D movies in the cinema? Dont bother. A movie shot in 2D
> processed into 3D isnt worth spending the extra bucks . A movie
> shot on a 3D process platform is worth the extra bucks and the
> only film I know to date that has been shot in that format is
> Avatar.
>
> Pixar movies look great in 3D because it is all processed on
> computer and can be manipulated more effectively than a 2D live
> action feature.
>
!idontbelieveit!

[muswell]

One of the problems re HD v SD is that quite a lot of HD content, on TV and Blu Ray, is SD material up sampled. Normal DVD players connected to HD displays via hdmi do this sort of upscaling automatically. So watching "Poirot" on a HD broadcast will look much like a DVD source. Many Blu Ray discs of titles previously issued on DVD use the same source material upsampled so there will be little or no difference watching the two versions as the equipment will do the same job on the DVD.
New titles should be mastered in HD and should be superior to SD DVD's. You could try hiring the same title in both formats to make a comparison.
The analogue broadcasts which are to end next year provide much better pictures than those available on the digital channels probably better than HD such is the nature of progress.

[rgb]

muswell wrote:

> The analogue broadcasts which are to end next year provide much
> better pictures than those available on the digital channels
> probably better than HD such is the nature of progress.

I agree. The idea that digital is "better" is one of the great marketing inventions. Sampling an analogue waveform at any rate close to the Nyquist necessarily means most of the data is missing, therefore most of the quality is gone. I was involved in this debate in the early 80s when the seismic exploration industry (always a leader in data acquisition and processing) moved to digital.

[Meatus]

Very valid points all of you have made, but i just want to simplify it and take it to the basics.

Quite simply, is it really worth it? Yes i agree the picture is better, but in my mind only ever so slightly. And it wouldn't have bothered me one bit if they had never brought out anything in HD!

[one eyed jack]

I think (simly put) youve answered your own question Meatus and thanks for the additional info RGB and Twingo !happy!

[alicia_fan_uk]

With porn, I have both DVD and blu-ray. I'm not overly techie, but I note some of the blu-rays are excellent picture quality (a real cut above anything I've ever seen on DVD) but some you almost have to double check it's really a blu-ray and not just a high end DVD made with by a studio who focus on top production value. I guess that's where the input/source quality comes in to play (as mentioned above). Or perhaps it's just crap blu-ray production to increase margin?

Still, nice boobs are nice boobs, no matter the clarity...

alicia_fan_uk