Why are Blu-ray discs so darned big? (50GB!)

[Gameshow Host]

Why are Blu-ray discs are so huge - 50GB - over ten times the size of DVDs?

To me this seems like massive overkill. A standard 4.47GB DVD is more than enough room for a very high quality 1080p movie. Even compressed down to 1GB, they still look great to my eyes.

I accept that some Blu-rays contain an entire season of a TV show - as much as 1000+ hours in some cases. This could reasonably employ up to 20GB to store. However, most Blu-rays don't need to contain anywhere near that duration, and 1000+ hours of 1080p just feels like too much to go on a single disc anyway. It seems like common sense to split such a long season over two discs.

Therefore, in my opinion, the very largest a Blu-ray realistically needs to be is 10GB. It's a nice simple, round number, twice the size of a DVD, which seems like the natural evolution.

What were they thinking with 50GB?

[Hoser Rob]

Apparently you do not realize that the best codec available when DVDs came out was rubbish. The codecs today are much better. And if you think a 1080p 1Gb re encode of a BR (even HEVC) looks as good as the BR you need glasses. Silliest poll I've ever seen for a while.

[DB83]

And there's more silliness.


If you must compare, a single-sided BD is 25 gb not 50 gb.


And I really must have that 1000+ hour tv series on a single BD. Where can I get it ?

[lingyi]

Yeah! Everyone should appreciate the lack of quality the way you do!

And by using DVDs instead of Blu-Rays, the price will be 1/10th too!

[El Heggunte]

The BD specs include MPEG-2 video and VC-1, both of which are less efficient (compression-wise) than H.264.
Also you forgot the lossless audio formats, which require (much) more space than AC3 and DCA (lossy DTS).
Back to the video part:
!-- SNIP --
I was going to write a long text, but then I remembered Hoser Rob already said all that matters

And if you think a 1080p 1Gb re encode of a BR (even HEVC) looks as good as the BR you need glasses.

[lingyi]

When posters talk about 1GB Blu-Ray encodes, they almost always have a peg leg and a parrot on their shoulder. For those of us who actually BUY the discs, we don't squeeze our purchases to ridiculously small sizes just to save a couple of dollars of drive space after spending $30-40 for a quality product.

[Clockwork]

Silliest poll I've ever seen for a while.

It's certainly up there.

[johns0]

I remember when people said cd sizes were waaay to big compared to 1.44 mb of floppy space.

[aedipuss]

LOL you're a youngster. 8" single sided single density floppies were 80kb.

[Gameshow Host]

You people are so arrogant and rude! You attack me like a pack of wolves, merely because I have different tastes to you!

I'm not an owner or collector of movies, nor have I ever owned an HD screen, nor do I feel the need to. I occasionally watch old films on TV, and can enjoy them just fine in SD, as can the majority of people who aren't snobs.

To me, a 10Mbps 1080p movie seems like great quality, more than I would need. I can't see much more detail from across my living room, and I'm not in the habit of hitting pause and walking over to the screen to look at fine detail. I'm usually more interested in silly things like story, characters and script. But each to his own.

Frankly, I would have expected a more sympathetic response from a community based around the practise of squeezing movies onto 800MB CDs. Or do you disassociate with the very roots of this forum?

Years ago I found the community here to be friendly and helpful. I can see that things have changed. Such an unfriendly response to my post! I will beware in future of the grumpy people here.

[Gameshow Host]

And I really must have that 1000+ hour tv series on a single BD. Where can I get it ?

In case it wasn't obvious, I meant 1000+ minutes!

[Gameshow Host]

The BD specs include MPEG-2 video and VC-1, both of which are less efficient (compression-wise) than H.264.
Also you forgot the lossless audio formats, which require (much) more space than AC3 and DCA (lossy DTS).

Thanks for the actual answer!

[lingyi]

I was here under a different name back when this was VCDHelp and like you, thought VCDs and highly compressed, artifact filled, over compressed, poorly re-encoded videos were fine on my 20" CRT. However, unlike you, I AM an owner (BTW, you've just admitted you have a pegleg and parrot) and collector of movies and appreciate the quality difference of viewing on my 55" plasma, tweaked for viewing in a properly darkened room.

If you had added the info about your limited viewing preferences and appreciation of quality in your first post, maybe we (or at least I) would have been less critical and harsh. As it is you presented a question and IMO pointless poll to a forum that to my knowledge was never and is not currently about producing mediocre quality, but the best possible quality under the user's preferences.

Or, what another poster said is true, "You're all purists!" which I take as a high compliment!

Edit: To answer your topic question. Blu-Ray and UHD discs are "so big" because the mass market appreciates the quality and has the hardware to appreciate the difference. I've spoken about his before, I've viewed Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" on everything from a fuzzy broadcast on a 19" CRT to a remastered version in the theater and now in Blu-Ray quality on my 55" plasma and hope that before I die, I'll be able to afford and watch a full 2TB+ master on my 110" flat screen! For me, superb filmmaking deserves to be viewed and appreciated in the highest quality possible, regardless of file size!

[DB83]

And I really must have that 1000+ hour tv series on a single BD. Where can I get it ?

In case it wasn't obvious, I meant 1000+ minutes!

Nothing is 'obvious'


When you write, you either re-read what you write before you publish or review/edit after.


Yet even 1000+ minutes is a crazy number. Just do the maths yourself.


Or, as I asked, point me to that tv series.

[usually_quiet]

You people are so arrogant and rude! You attack me like a pack of wolves, merely because I have different tastes to you!

I'm not an owner or collector of movies, nor have I ever owned an HD screen, nor do I feel the need to. I occasionally watch old films on TV, and can enjoy them just fine in SD, as can the majority of people who aren't snobs.

To me, a 10Mbps 1080p movie seems like great quality, more than I would need. I can't see much more detail from across my living room, and I'm not in the habit of hitting pause and walking over to the screen to look at fine detail. I'm usually more interested in silly things like story, characters and script. But each to his own.

Frankly, I would have expected a more sympathetic response from a community based around the practise of squeezing movies onto 800MB CDs. Or do you disassociate with the very roots of this forum?

Years ago I found the community here to be friendly and helpful. I can see that things have changed. Such an unfriendly response to my post! I will beware in future of the grumpy people here.

If you don't have an HDTV or an HD projection system then DVD resolution is more than good enough for what you have to view it on since you won't be able to see the additional details that are visible at higher resolutions.

I'm not sure why it did not occur to you that Blu-ray was invented mainly for the purpose of storing high-quality HD video with the intention of viewing it on an HD display and the fact that that Blu-ray also offers more storage space and greater compression to allow more hours of SD video to fit on a disc was of secondary importance

[_Al_]

To me, a 10Mbps 1080p movie seems like great quality, more than I would need.

Rips, that you judge that are enough for you, perhaps came from a high bitrate source - BD.
How would those rips stand if they were ripped from your rip?

Anyway, Blu-Ray was not established for you, but for corporations that sell movies. It was made for them. I we should be glad that one can make a rip that is acceptable for us or watch high quality movie, that's about it. because otherwise there is no reason to work with BD. Unless you are videographer sort of. In that case , more the better. Your thinking kind of makes no sense really.

[Mr_khyron]

LOL you're a youngster. 8" single sided single density floppies were 80kb.

But those damn things are so fast why don't you relax and use cassette tape..

[Anonymous5394]

People must have money to burn amassing hundreds of these studio driven coasters! All subjective of course as a commercially mastered DVD(bad codec and all!) played back on a good TV will give you just as much enjoyment as a bloated blu ray dnr'd to death. Reminds me of bigger is better e.g 4k is better than 2k and now 8k- our eyes must be wonderful like a hawk. Yes, if you sit closer to the TV.

That said blu rays do justify their sizes in cases of a TV show which ran for many years and many episodes, so need the space. Most of the time all that size for just one film is questionable, but not for ardent fans who want extras, commentaries, so the size goes up. Your choice!

[lordsmurf]

A standard 4.47GB DVD is more than enough room for a very high quality 1080p movie.

No.

I accept that some Blu-rays contain an entire season of a TV show - as much as 1000+ hours in some cases.

Uh ... no.

twice the size of a DVD, which seems like the natural evolution.

No.

What were they thinking with 50GB?

HD-DVD was better, sandwiched construction.

Apparently you do not realize that the best codec available when DVDs came out was rubbish.

Nonsense. Nor was it a "codec", but a format. MPEG-2 has many options, and is still quality. DVD-Video spec average bitrate was really compressed, but that's it.

The codecs today are much better.

No. Different, not better. Sure, size is better, but you don't see size.

And if you think a 1080p 1Gb re encode of a BR (even HEVC) looks as good as the BR you need glasses.

Or you do? Blu-ray can just waste bits without benefit. And then the compression is (as you said) better, so you can leave the BD spec to do all sorts of visual and encoding tricks to compress video more. Assuming you're average TV viewing distance, you may not notice a big difference, or any difference.

When posters talk about 1GB Blu-Ray encodes, they almost always have a peg leg and a parrot on their shoulder.

Yep
It's
For
You

For those of us who actually BUY the discs, we don't squeeze our purchases to ridiculously small sizes just to save a couple of dollars of drive space

DVD and BD are the same physical size, so ... yeah.

nor have I ever owned an HD screen

Still using a CRT? Wow. You can't easily get those anymore. HD isn't a choice, it's the only option most times.

and I'm not in the habit of hitting pause and walking over to the screen to look at fine detail.

Agreed.

Frankly, I would have expected a more sympathetic response from a community based around the practise of squeezing movies onto 800MB CDs. Or do you disassociate with the very roots of this forum?

I went straight from S-VHS to DVD, because VCD was crap. Then and now.

Years ago I found the community here to be friendly and helpful.

Still is.

grumpy people here.

Age = more grump.

[butterw]

A standard 4.47GB DVD is more than enough room for a very high quality 1080p movie.

No.

Bluray Disk is a premium product. To survive it has to provide the ultimate viewing experience vs streaming.

The more relevant question is whether 5Mbps @1080p (4.5GB/2 hour movie) can be good enough for the general public.

[lingyi]

People must have money to burn amassing hundreds of these studio driven coasters! All subjective of course as a commercially mastered DVD(bad codec and all!) played back on a good TV will give you just as much enjoyment as a bloated blu ray dnr'd to death. Reminds me of bigger is better e.g 4k is better than 2k and now 8k- our eyes must be wonderful like a hawk. Yes, if you sit closer to the TV.

That said blu rays do justify their sizes in cases of a TV show which ran for many years and many episodes, so need the space. Most of the time all that size for just one film is questionable, but not for ardent fans who want extras, commentaries, so the size goes up. Your choice!

I don't have money to burn, but I [do] have an appreciation and desire to watch videos in the best quality possible, and am willing to pay for quality. I've spent hundreds on 4-5 different versions of a Japanese series, now owning it on Blu-Ray. I[s] it worth the money. Definitely yes. My only regret is buying multiple cheaper versions (a common issue with Asian releases from outer countries). To say that my DVD versions are qualitatively the same as the Blu-Ray is ridiculous.

An additional plus to Blu-Ray releases is that they're often remastered, as in the case of my series and Seven Samurai as I talked about above. The argument that DVD quality is good enough considering the source is the same misguided advice that you should capture VHS at 320x240 because that's "all the quality VHS has". I recently bought a Blu-Ray release of a movie that I've only owned on VCD for decades. There was a VHS and Laserdisc release, but I've never been able to find and afford them. Given it was a Hong Kong release, I didn't expect much more than Laserdisc quality, but was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the Blu-Ray. I paid nearly double over the cost of the DVD version, but have no regrets.

Yes, the studios do make money from releasing their assets on higher quality media, but if they do it correctly and actually spend the money to upgrade the transfer, there definitively can be a qualitative difference between a DVD and Blu-Ray. And for some like me, the cost of the Blu-Ray is definitely worth it!

[lingyi]

I always get a chuckle when someone scoffs at my purchase of Blu-Rays and hard drives to store them while sipping their daily $5 coffee and puffing away on multiple $2 cigarettes. Value is so subjective.

[Anonymous5394]

People must have money to burn amassing hundreds of these studio driven coasters! All subjective of course as a commercially mastered DVD(bad codec and all!) played back on a good TV will give you just as much enjoyment as a bloated blu ray dnr'd to death. Reminds me of bigger is better e.g 4k is better than 2k and now 8k- our eyes must be wonderful like a hawk. Yes, if you sit closer to the TV.

That said blu rays do justify their sizes in cases of a TV show which ran for many years and many episodes, so need the space. Most of the time all that size for just one film is questionable, but not for ardent fans who want extras, commentaries, so the size goes up. Your choice!

I don't have money to burn, but I [do] have an appreciation and desire to watch videos in the best quality possible, and am willing to pay for quality. I've spent hundreds on 4-5 different versions of a Japanese series, now owning it on Blu-Ray. I[s] it worth the money. Definitely yes. My only regret is buying multiple cheaper versions (a common issue with Asian releases from outer countries). To say that my DVD versions are qualitatively the same as the Blu-Ray is ridiculous.

An additional plus to Blu-Ray releases is that they're often remastered, as in the case of my series and Seven Samurai as I talked about above. The argument that DVD quality is good enough considering the source is the same misguided advice that you should capture VHS at 320x240 because that's "all the quality VHS has". I recently bought a Blu-Ray release of a movie that I've only owned on VCD for decades. There was a VHS and Laserdisc release, but I've never been able to find and afford them. Given it was a Hong Kong release, I didn't expect much more than Laserdisc quality, but was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the Blu-Ray. I paid nearly double over the cost of the DVD version, but have no regrets.

Yes, the studios do make money from releasing their assets on higher quality media, but if they do it correctly and actually spend the money to upgrade the transfer, there definitively can be a qualitative difference between a DVD and Blu-Ray. And for some like me, the cost of the Blu-Ray is definitely worth it!

Seeing you are quoting me, let me correct you. Who said DVD's are " qualitatively same as as blu ray..?" Not me and I don't think anyone here! I wrote ' enjoyment', in terms of subjective playback on a tv and no mention of quality as you infer. MPEG2 perse as a codec is not better nor worse than others, just different in what it does. How I love how some just love to pick up on things and nitpick to the point of creating a new imaginary narrative. Dvd is not better than blu ray, just different.

[dvd3500]

We've had Amazon Prime for over a year and I find it utterly annoying that movies fade in and out of being part of Prime.
We wanted to watch E.T. and it was Prime on Monday. By Friday it was not Prime (for streaming)

So I bought the Blu-Ray for less than it would have cost to "buy" it on Prime for streaming and had it arrive within 2-days.

I like a lot of obscure TV shows as well and getting them in legal way can be difficult so having them on physical media is a must because the rights seem to shift in the wind like donkey fart on top Mont Blanc...

The main Internet provider was struggling with bandwidth at the start of the pandemic and the kids also learned the fun of not needing the Internet...

[sophisticles]

And I really must have that 1000+ hour tv series on a single BD. Where can I get it ?

In case it wasn't obvious, I meant 1000+ minutes!

1000+ minutes is still 1000 min / 60 min per hour = close to 17 hours of 1080p content on a single BD, which would require about 3.3 Mbps for a 25 Gb disk, certainly something that many people on this forum have repeatedly advocated for, hell there's people in this forum that think they should only use 4 Mbps for 4k because they use that "magical" x264 encoder, so I guess your stance is not that totally out there.

Be that as it may, I strongly disagree with you.

[DB83]

And while we are 'at it' why are HDDs so big ?


Back in the day I did wonders with my 32mb HardCard

[butterw]

bluray was also developed by Sony for data (Ex Playstation game console). Current games are frequently larger than 50GB (Latest Call of Duty is 200GB).

[lingyi]

Blu-Ray was always intended to be used for both data and video as a successor to DVD. Which is why the Blu-Ray Association added so many restrictions on its licensing and created AACS which they thought was unbeatable.

Edit: I stand corrected. I thought the Blu-Ray Association existed from the start, but it was formed a year after Sony introduced Blu-Ray technology so it may be been planned for data only as stated.

[butterw]

From what I can remember, many pc video enthusiasts would have preferred an updated DVD spec with higher resolutions/updated codecs rather than Bluray.
Adoption would have much been faster, as DVD drives were already in every PC.

[lingyi]

People must have money to burn amassing hundreds of these studio driven coasters! All subjective of course as a commercially mastered DVD(bad codec and all!) played back on a good TV will give you just as much enjoyment as a bloated blu ray dnr'd to death. Reminds me of bigger is better e.g 4k is better than 2k and now 8k- our eyes must be wonderful like a hawk. Yes, if you sit closer to the TV.

That said blu rays do justify their sizes in cases of a TV show which ran for many years and many episodes, so need the space. Most of the time all that size for just one film is questionable, but not for ardent fans who want extras, commentaries, so the size goes up. Your choice!

I don't have money to burn, but I [do] have an appreciation and desire to watch videos in the best quality possible, and am willing to pay for quality. I've spent hundreds on 4-5 different versions of a Japanese series, now owning it on Blu-Ray. I[s] it worth the money. Definitely yes. My only regret is buying multiple cheaper versions (a common issue with Asian releases from outer countries). To say that my DVD versions are qualitatively the same as the Blu-Ray is ridiculous.

An additional plus to Blu-Ray releases is that they're often remastered, as in the case of my series and Seven Samurai as I talked about above. The argument that DVD quality is good enough considering the source is the same misguided advice that you should capture VHS at 320x240 because that's "all the quality VHS has". I recently bought a Blu-Ray release of a movie that I've only owned on VCD for decades. There was a VHS and Laserdisc release, but I've never been able to find and afford them. Given it was a Hong Kong release, I didn't expect much more than Laserdisc quality, but was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the Blu-Ray. I paid nearly double over the cost of the DVD version, but have no regrets.

Yes, the studios do make money from releasing their assets on higher quality media, but if they do it correctly and actually spend the money to upgrade the transfer, there definitively can be a qualitative difference between a DVD and Blu-Ray. And for some like me, the cost of the Blu-Ray is definitely worth it!

Seeing you are quoting me, let me correct you. Who said DVD's are " qualitatively same as as blu ray..?" Not me and I don't think anyone here! I wrote ' enjoyment', in terms of subjective playback on a tv and no mention of quality as you infer. MPEG2 perse as a codec is not better nor worse than others, just different in what it does. How I love how some just love to pick up on things and nitpick to the point of creating a new imaginary narrative. Dvd is not better than blu ray, just different.

I may be in the minority, even here, but while I agree that a well mastered DVD may be better than a poorly mastered Blu-Ray, in general my enjoyment of videos is directly correlated to the quality of of that video. Higher quality, less artifacts = less unconscious eye and brain strain trying to resolve the image = more enjoyment.

I've given this example before. I was watching a DVD release of a Korean movie mostly set in a dark morgue. The climax had the main character hiding in the shadows of a doorway or closet and you could barely see her. I was enjoying the scene and it suddenly dawned on me. If I was watching a re-encoded copy with crushed blacks, I wouldn't have been able to see her properly in the dark! My "enjoyment" of the scene would have been greatly diminished as I would have missed the drama of the scene.

Hopefully, someday the movie will be remastered on UHD or beyond so I can "enjoy" more scenes that I'm sure I missed due to the limitations of DVD.