Bashing the format....

Why is everyone still bashing blu-ray?
Half the Message Board is filled with posts on "how up-converting looks great and will kill blu ray" or "Blu ray is so expensive...", "failed to reach sales target..."

Now, i don't know about you, but to me, a blu-ray title looks a lot better than an SD disc "umped" to 1080.
"Up conversion" was available even before "HDTV'S" were available. Back then it used to be your computer monitor, running windows on 1280x1024, playing a dvd title from a dirt-cheap drive on primitive software such as "Power DVD 4".

Ask anyone who is into imaging and they will tell you that re-sizing pictures, using any algorithm, will result into a bigger but SOFTER image. Because the detail is not there to begin with. What these new technologies do is simple. They apply "sharpening" filters on variable amounts depending on the signal coming through. Claiming that it "Looks great" and creating gimmicky hype around smt that is mathematically impossible (SD umped to HD, actually looking equal or better) is pointless. So what if a few UK magazine reviewers went and saw a demo involving i dunno how much rigged equipment? These "official" demonstrations are highly controlled and very often vary from the actual end-user product.
Same people who are "rooting" Up-conversion and how it's gonna be "the next best thing" now. were doing the same with the divxHD codec that could fill an entire hd move on a SD disc a few months ago.

The war is Over, Blu Ray won (Fortunately or not) and stores everywhere offer an HD solution for the home.
As for the price, sony released some figures something like a week ago, stating millions and millions of losses over PS3 due to lowering the price in an attempt to ensure household penetration for blu-ray during the war. PS3 is the no.1 selling blu-ray player out there.

And as for what is going to kill blu-ray eventually, i told this before, stop looking at physical media, online will eventually take over. Everybody is moving that way already, and high-bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper.

Still, i would prefer playing a movie from a high-bitrate source.

Only Deadmeat makes such ignorant posts. I asked him if he invested in HD-DVD like I did but he said No. So maybe he couldn't even afford HD-DVD. Most HD-DVD fanboys like myself have moved on, we realize that Blu-ray is the new standard and have accepted that. Deadmeat might have been an HD-DVD owner/liar or he is just very content with DVD and low resolution.

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't want true HD.

Why settle for upconversion/faux hd?

I don't have a problem with Blu-ray, HD DVD nor SUC. If SUC is a significant improvement over stand UC, and it makes me think twice about double-dipping on a BD, then that will be a good thing for me. All 3 formats will have a place in my home, and I'll be tickled pink if the ugliest (DVD) can get a boost from SUC, since I do have a rather large collection.

i agree blu ray does look better than up convert dvds. I wish blu ray would use hddvd title screens, much better looking to me. other than that i have no comlaints about blu.... oh i hate the cheap looking blu cases as well lol

those cheap blu-ray cases are a result of liberal minded enviromentalyists
plus you can have a larger collection in the same space that you would dvd or the older bulkier cases

Though it is obvious that Blu-Ray has won the battle, I'm not convinced that has it has won the war. The PS3 has not won me over, regardless of HD-DVD's demise. It's still a confused device that doesn't know what it's purpose is.

I don't believe that SUC will kill Blu-Ray, but it will certainly hamper it's success. There's a reason that there are so many cheap (both in quality and price) HDTVs are being sold, and that is because a lot of people don't want to spend a lot of money. For a lot of people a cheap set is good enough.

Many DVDs look great upscaled on my A20, while others (with poor compression) look like crap. Given that Blu-Ray is slowly expanding it's library, and the high cost of many titles, I think there's plenty of room for SUC, even if it doesn't match Blu-ray's specs. All it has to do is fall right between DVD quality and Blu-Ray quality. Upscaling a 16:9 480p DVD is certainly not like upscaling a 320x240 1200kb wmv file.

Blu-Ray supporters can gloat all they want, but if SUC proves to be good enough, it will have a big advantage over Blu-Ray - an enormous amount of movies that are not on Blu-Ray, and many that probably never will be on Blu-Ray.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of room for Blu-Ray, but SUC will make it very hard for Blu-Ray to ever fully replace DVD (or maybe even to simply surpass it).

Damn it Tim, how about this?

Or this?(dual minidisc recorder, sweet!)

Or this last one I love!

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[Post edited by ReaggieP on Jul 4, 2008]

Reaggie,

The first picture is, of course, a second-generation Betamax tape player. I know because I used to own the exact model, and it gave me many years of service. And I wish I owned the disc player in the final picture.

John

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[Post edited by John J. Puccio on Jul 4, 2008]

all fine pictures of sony bricks.

Eddie,

Last I heard, people were still playing CDs. They're just doing it on DVD players now and various flimsy plastic players.

John

john,

actually, my sister and i are the last people i know our age who still buy CDs. i buy CDs only because of the "kicking the tires" nostalgia (i.e. the pretty packaging, booklets, photos, etc.), but that's only for soundtracks every so often and gigi leung. my sister buys CDs only when she can't get it in electronic form from the internet.

where the music industry is, the movie industry will follow eventually. the only thing keeping movies "safe" now is bandwidth, but as has been seen with college servers, sometimes up to 60% of network activity is taken up by peer-to-peer downloads/transfers of movies.

eddie

Music media has changed quite a lot for me since I purchased a Zune. However, I'm with Eddie, I still enjoy buying a CD because of all the packaging and the audio quality is much better. I've downloaded several artists, but the ones I find I like a lot, I'll still go get them on CD. Then again, if an artist is not playing along with the DMC then they are not available for download -- therefore you have to buy the CD.

I just bought the new Cold Play CD. I agree that CD's will not be replaced. I buy more CD's than I do Movies.

BTW, I forgot how small these were.


Or this!

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[Post edited by ReaggieP on Jul 4, 2008]

Quote:
all fine pictures of sony bricks.

Lol so true, and there is many more!

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where the music industry is, the movie industry will follow eventually. the only thing keeping movies "safe" now is bandwidth, but as has been seen with college servers, sometimes up to 60% of network activity is taken up by peer-to-peer downloads/transfers of movies.

eddie

Bandwidth is not the only thing preventing DVDs from going the same way as CDs. Movies are not the same as music. I prefer downloading music because I can get only the tracks I want, and I only ever listen to them on my ipod through earphones or connected to my car's sound system. DVDs have a lot more factors to consider. You need to consider audio quality, and what sound options will be best for your system or language of preference. You need to consider picture quality and what will look best on your system, because, despite the push on those stupid "Digital Copies", people watch movies primarlity at home. If you like knowing about the production of movies through featurettes, audio commentaries, etc., you have to consider that you won't get all of these through a download. On top of all that, if you are a real movie fan, who loves to watch movies at their best, and watch them more than once, you need to be able to store them, and being able to store a large collection of movies with all of those options mentioned is a long, LONG way off. Downloading will certainly destroy the rental market at some point, but that's it.

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[Post edited by interplanetaryspy on Jul 5, 2008]

interplanetaryspy:

i'm sure that your reasoning was used by audiophiles who can't fathom why anyone would listen to music encoded in the lossy MP3 format on headphones, but the fact of the matter is that many people out there like the "digital copies" that studios regularly include with their dvd and blu-ray releases. we're in a forum filled with cinema buffs, but the fact of the matter is that most people still watch movies with sound from their TVs (which are usually 30-inches or smaller). i used to think that it was ridiculous to watch TV shows and movies on 2-inch iPod monitors, but now that my sister does that with her Zune, i'm convinced that portability matters much more to people in general than high-quality presentations requiring sitting down in front of decent equipment.

eddie

Quote:
And I wish I owned the disc player in the final picture.

I agree. That thing is AWESOME!!! I love large electronics. Those were the days.....sigh.

Blu Ray software is still too expensive.

eddie,
don't know how old you are, but i'm 36 and i still buy cd's too. i dont own an ipod, and i don't want one either. LONG LIVE CD!!!! (since we cannot have vinyl..or dvd audio..or sacd).

-blade (thinking compressed audio sucks!)

-and ripping^^^jason off again.

Are those Ipod head phones in that walkman?

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Are those Ipod head phones in that walkman?

Yes, they are