kaching said:
You're seriously reaching here. Very few are going to care about exactly what codec is being used on the disc as long as its compatible in their BD player (and as long as the manufacturer of the player is following BD-ROM specs, it will be). And its not as if settling on one codec guarantees anything specifically about the quality of the video on the disc, as Milhouse's Dune example eloquently illustrates.
You're probably right about people not caring about the codec on the disc. But if the HD content on digital cable is any indication, I do agree with you hinting at the qualities of the various releases being all over the place. The same with various 720p WM9 movies I've got my hands on. Some are jaw dropping in difference over DVDs upscaled to 720p while others you can't hardly tell a difference.
Not true, and even a cursory examination of BD specs would tell you otherwise. The expanded storage on disc means that more SD quality material could be fit on one disc and there's plenty of pre-existing, non-HD video content that could benefit from that, compressing some multi-disc sets into fewer discs, Out-of-mux reading allowing video playback to continue while the player is asked to access some other content on disc, such as the menu system, which can then be overlayed on top of the video still playing, a JRE with network connectivity for more advanced applications than DVD can provide (eg. pull up an up-to-date bio/filmography of an actor or actress in the movie you're watching, where the films on the list may then be selectable so that you can stream the trailer )...etc.
No one in their right mind will invest in a BR player and a HDTV to watch SD content, especially when they probably have the SD version of that same content on DVD already (probably several times over). And with 25GB SL BR barely being able to do 3 hours of MPEG2 at high enough bitrates to make us go WOW on our HDTVs, a BR disc @ 1080p won't give you more content than a DVD disc @ 480i/p.
Said another way, a simple math tells me that even the DL BR @ 50GB (which most don't think will be available for the initial 12+ months) is only about 5.5 times the capacity over the DL DVD 9s, but 1080p which is over 2 million pixels per frame is over 6.5 times what 480p at around 300,000 pixels gives you. I personally believe that HD-DVD and BR are owefully inedequate in capacity to properly replace the DVD as the HD sucessor. The 100GB that HVD is promising seems much more adaquate and worth waiting the extra few years for.
h, #5 is your most compelling concern. The others are fluff.
I think #5 is fluff and the real meat is with #2 and others.
You've got to do better.
#1 & #3 really go together - these two are really about whether people can get the maximum video quality out of the disc with their TV setup and whether they really care, as long as its plug and play. In both DVD's and BD's case there are many people who likely have TVs which just aren't equipped to show them the best quality available on that disc. BD doesn't suddenly introduce a "compatability problem" that DVD didn't have because people can still plug the player into the back of their set and still get playback of what's on the disc. Getting the most out of DVD playback has been just as dependent on higher level TV specs for its time (i.e. widescreen aspect ratio, component inputs, support for proscan) and BD is no different.
The point is that majority of the affordable TVs that folks already had gave you 90% of the picture quality that DVD media provides. The high end folks have spent big bucks for that last 10%, which is always the case with such folks (like you and to a slightly lesser extent, myself). This is not the case with BR in that even if you've spent $5000 on an excellent HDTV with component and VGA input 3~5 years ago, it will A). only give you 720p or 1080i, and without a digital HDCP input, will be artificially limited to either 480p or 540p by the BR player. Even if got 720p from an analog HDTV through BR (which is looking quite unlikely), that's still less than 50% of pixels that BR media is suppose to provide.
#4 is revisionist in its attempt to somehow suggest that the dawn of the DVD era didn't have early adopters contending with expensive hardware and very limited libraries in comparison to what the de facto standard of the time, VHS, was able to offer.
Not at all. I remember those early days and it was definitely slim pickins compared to the wealth of content available today. But you'd have to agree that you'll see far less adult BR content in the beginning then adult DVDs titles we saw available back in 1998. And after all, it's the pr0n support that truly signifies the legitimate arrival of a format.
I don't think I ever saw a pr0n LD! :lol
As for the players, the cost were high the first few months, but I saw $300 players shortly into X-mas season of 1998, which is within the first year of the launch. I don't expect that for BR players in the first or even second year.
