Next-Gen DVDs' Blurry Picture

[joepic]

You need to read the complete article to appreciate the short comings of the new products.

"The battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD was already tricky for consumers. But new content protection may mean buyers get even less than they might have hoped."

"IT'S CRAZY." Here's the problem: Both camps are shooting themselves in the foot before they get to the starting line. Consumers already were faced with the prospect of mass confusion, thanks to two next-generation DVD formats, whose disks do not work in each other's machines but look essentially the same. Remember Betamax versus VHS? At least then you could tell one tape from the other.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Turns out, most of the 20 million high-definition TVs sold over the past three years aren't capable of displaying the disks in their full resolution. Worse, at least one major studio (Sony) intends to downgrade the picture even more unless consumers hook their players up through a special, pricey cable aimed at preventing piracy.

"It's crazy," says chief analyst Richard Doherty of consumer-research firm Envisioneering. "The sticker on your new player promises the equivalent of a high-performance car, but the fine print says you may be buying an Edsel instead."

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2006/tc20060327_546762.htm?chan=tech...+entertainment

[InXess]

They are too busy figuring out how to scam the public to care about such detail like picture quality...

[whitejremiah]

i believe sony said that they wouldnt be doing the video downsizing thing on THIER dvd's at least...but the fact that the players will be capable of doing such an evil thing goes down in my book as a major no-no......that being said, i personally believe BOTH formats will fail, because of cross compatability (or lack thereof) and the fact that they are blatently trying to push the technology TOO FAST.....VHS was around for how long until it was replaced? i think the same is going to be true here too...dvd didn't even fully pick up until maybe 2 or 3 years ago, and even at that, there's still a few people who dont have dvd players....that being said, i don't think the general public as a whole is gonna be ready to jump to replace their players for say another....at least 10 years? i think it's gonna be like another SACD vs DVD-A scenario where noone wins at all..

[dphirschler]

Yep, I agree. I think the public is going to want a way to record hi-def though. But with the broadcast flag... shit... it just becomes useless.


Darryl

[rumplestiltskin]

My solution: I'm not buying either.

[Rich86]

As much as I enjoy music, videos and movies at home on our home theater system and very much care about improved quality, I also do not trust any of these so called "entertainment" companies any longer, as they are more concerned with what they prevent customers from doing to enjoy the products we buy, than enhancing our use, enjoyment and flexibility of the products we purchase. I have no intentions of getting involved with either of these new formats in the foreseeable future.

[InXess]

More news like that and there will hardly be anyone eager to jump into HD DVD market. The driving force here seems to be a uncompromising will to overshadow and eliminate good "old DVD" market and replace it ASAP with something more convenient even though still half-baked. DeCSS has spoiled the party and all companies are rushing to a new "better" standard to start reaping huge profits that they painfully miss. You will get what you were intended to: strong protection, no fair use as some understand it and to sweaten the whole deal they'll throw in HD. You feel you almost got away with it but not for long. Walk is over and it's back on the leash. So how many copies of the same movie will we end up having? a VHS (Beta?), LD (some of my friends), DVD and soon HD DVD, don't forget Video-on-Demand, internet streaming, downloads etc.
These are all early signals of problems to come that usualy multiply once the product is on the market. What we're getting is only a preview of issues that will make the whole experience rather bitter I think (at least initially).

[guns1inger]

A large proportion of so-called HD ready plasma and LCD television sold in Australia are capable of only showing resolutions to 480p without compromise. These are, for the most part, so-called budget models, however there is no indication, from the manufacturers or the sales people that the image is compromised. The sad part - they show current DVDs at lower quality than a good CRT television. While higher resolution sets are now becoming the norm, the image quality is still often very poor except in a few rare and expensive cases, and a good quality european CRT will still produce cleaner images. To date, the whole HiDef thing has been a fiasco. From HiDef TV broadcasts that are basically the same as progressive DVD resolution, through to the new format wars, none of it has been impressive.

But hey, I'm in no rush. I am happy with what I have. I would love a bigger screen, but I don't want to compromise image quality to do it. So I'll wait and see what comes after.

[Soopafresh]

They should have encoded h264 on DVD-9 media and sold their movies for $20 a pop.

[The Stinger]

I never had any idea of buying a HD player. No reason to. But since I plan on buying a PS3, I may have to buy a few movies on Blu-Ray. But won't replace my DVD collection all over again. So I don't think it will ever take off unless they get a hybrid of the two.

[akrako1]

They should have encoded h264 on DVD-9 media and sold their movies for $20 a pop.

I've been wondering for awhile why they never tried this. With h264's phenomenal compression ratio (think DivX or Xvid), I'd thought they should have been able to put a full movie with at least 720p on 1 DVD-9. I've asked here, and never really gotten a reason why this wouldn't work out...

A large proportion of so-called HD ready plasma and LCD television sold in Australia are capable of only showing resolutions to 480p without compromise....The sad part - they show current DVDs at lower quality than a good CRT television....From HiDef TV broadcasts that are basically the same as progressive DVD resolution, through to the new format wars, none of it has been impressive.

Hmm.. You should contact your version of the Better-Business-Bureau and file a complaint. A HDTV only showing 480P? Don't you have the same manufacturers as here in the states? Assuming that these tv's show 480p, how is that lower then a 'good CRT television'? Most DVD's are 480P. At the best, a 'good CRT tv' (assuming non-HD) will be 480i - which does not look as good. As for HiDef broadcasts, again you should complain. All the HD tv I receive (thru cable) is all 720p or 1080i. The 1080i broadcasts (typically nature shows or sports) look phenominal. Granted, I only have a 27" 3x4 TV, but you can still tell the difference. I'd imagine you would be able to tell the difference more the larger ty you have.

[InXess]

I've been wondering for awhile why they never tried this. With h264's phenomenal compression ratio (think DivX or Xvid), I'd thought they should have been able to put a full movie with at least 720p on 1 DVD-9. I've asked here, and never really gotten a reason why this wouldn't work out...

They don't want to quick-fix the engine, they're after your car.

[guns1inger]

HD broadcast 'standards' vary from location to location. In Australia, SD is 576i, HD is 576p - 1080i. As for HD marketing, any TV that can take component, DVI or HDMI from a HD settop box can be sold as HD ready, even if the native resolution of the set is only 864 x 480. Many plasma screens have been sold (and continue to be sold) with this resolution under the banner HD ready. I have yet to see a plasma screen, and have seen very few (none good) LCD screens that can display 1080i without compromise. The most common resolution for HD LCD screens over here is 1024 x 768 or 1366 x 768.

HD TV/DVD/Blu Ray seems so far to be the solution to a problem the consumer didn't have, rolled out prematurely by a money-hungry entertainment industry. The standards and formats are incomplete, and the technology can't deliver.

[edDV]

This is a world consumer issue and we should reverse the "divide and conquer" PAL vs NTSC issues. The world is converging on square pixel 1280x720p (59.94 or 50fps), or 1920x1080i (29.97 or 25fps) and 1920x1080p (23.976 or 25fps). The latter is high def DVD for film source.

In the past the "powers that be" consumer companies or politicos could choose and force a format on the local masses. Now the masses are smarter than they and can choose their own solution.

HD broadcast 'standards' vary from location to location. In Australia, SD is 576i, HD is 576p - 1080i. As for HD marketing, any TV that can take component, DVI or HDMI from a HD settop box can be sold as HD ready, even if the native resolution of the set is only 864 x 480. Many plasma screens have been sold (and continue to be sold) with this resolution under the banner HD ready. I have yet to see a plasma screen, and have seen very few (none good) LCD screens that can display 1080i without compromise. The most common resolution for HD LCD screens over here is 1024 x 768 or 1366 x 768.

Here in the USA we have 1280x720p (always 59.94 even if the source isn't) or 1920x1080i (29.97 fps) as HDTV or 704x480i/480p (equiv. DVD) for SD digital television. Cable and Sat-DBS digital MPeg2 SD ranges from 480-560x480i.

Current analog PAL has potential for SD conversion to ~704x576i. This can be extended to progressive 720x576p DVD quality but this is NOT HDTV and is not the future. It is just digital versions of PAL resolution.

[guns1inger]

The introduction of digital television to Australia has been nothing short of abysmal. To date is has been marred by

1. Standards that fall short of best practice
2. A ban on multi-casting/multi-channeling for 10 years for existing broadcasters
3. Roll out of digital broadcasting before set top boxes were available. When the first boxes came out they were AUS$800+ for a basic model
4. Only 20 hours a week of guaranteed HD broadcasting for the first few years
5. No TVs or DVD recorders with integrated digital tuners. This has changed, but only over the last 12 months.
6. The EPG for all channels is the current programme and the next program. That's it. As the broadcasters always start their programming 5 - 8 minutes after the advertised time, the EPG is worthless anyway (just like g-codes).

This is for free to air digital. Free to air analogue was scheduled to be shutdown in 2008. This has now been extended to 2010 because the take up of digital recievers has been so slow.

Digital cable is even worse. AUS$100+ a month to recieve reruns of TV shows I didn't watch when they were new, movies that are 2 years old or older, and more advertising than on free to air. At a resolution that would sit comfortably on a cheap and nasty low res plasma.

[Dubber]

Now if only China doesn't even start producing HD DVD and Blue Ray and makes only EVD players and buys a couple of major movie studios...

[joepic]

I was wrong on the studio that plans to down sample their movies from the get go, it WARNER BROTHERS.

Read the complete article at:

www.cdfreaks.com

"Just over a week of Sony making the announcement that they will not use the Image Constraint Token (ICT) flag in their Blu-ray movies, Universal, Paramount, Disney and Twentieth Century Fox have all decided to opt against the flag also, at least until further notice. This flag is part of the AACS functionality, which forces the picture to downscale to a maximum of 1/4 Full HD (960 x 540). While this resolution is more than that of entry level Plasma TVs (usually a native res. of 848 x 480), this is much less than that of even native 720p displays which have a native resolution of at least 1280 x 720.

While this ICT flag is aimed at forcing the use of HDCP enabled connections to prevent piracy, unfortunately it affects honest paying customers who bought a HDTV sets lacking a HDMI or HDCP compliant interface, especially the early buyers. As a result, while this flag may be designed to fight piracy, it effectively punishes those who bought a non compliant HD display or one before HDCP support started becoming standard on most high definition displays.

So far, Warner Brothers is the only major studio that plan on using the flag, at least on some of their first titles. With so many studios backing off from ICT, this could mean one of two things: Either the ICT flag is dead on arrival or they are backing away from it as a temporary measure to give the next generation of DVD players a boost before they start putting the ICT flag into their releases.

In my opinion, dropping ICT is mainly just a way of encouraging consumers to take on the players. There is a very good chance that several years later when the majority of consumers have got hooked on HD movies (assuming this happens), they will start putting the ICT into new releases to get those with incompliant TVs to think of buying a new set if they want to get their full picture quality back."

[dphirschler]

If it makes it that far, the shit will hit the fan when/if they do that. Consumers hate restrictions, but especially hate when things that used to be okay get taken away.


Darryl

[edDV]

They figured out ...Duh... that the people that bought the early HDTV sets are likely to be the same ones looking to buy early, expensive HD/BD players.