AJLynn Posted December 7, 2006 Share Posted December 7, 2006 I still think this guy's jumped the gun. -The Xbox 360 is not an HD DVD player, it's a regular DVD player. HD-DVD for it is an addon box at extra cost - this is stupid, and evidence of Microsoft's lack of marketing skill/coordination. It will go the way of the Sega CD. -There is a very low market penetration for either of these formats, and the PS3 is the only device that is not specifically a video player that plays one of these formats. The PS3 will eventually become the second most popular console of the new generation, behind the Wii but beating out the Xbox 360 because the PS3 is much sexier looking, and it will put more Blu-Ray players in homes than HD DVD. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I'd guess this will happen in 2007. Based on that alone, I'm ready to call this race in Blu-Ray's favor. The only thing that could swing it the other direction is if Apple starts selling HD DVD products (which would change everything), but I don't think Apple will pick a fight with Sony when it wouldn't really do anything for them. I'm not going to buy any of this stuff any time soon, but if I were, I would not automatically buy HD DVD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted December 7, 2006 Share Posted December 7, 2006 What Andrew is doing is making a strong justification for a PS3 business purchase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted December 7, 2006 Share Posted December 7, 2006 Log it as a high-def video playback device. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutaj Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 xbox 360 was already out over a year before the HD-DVD was agreed upon as a standard. and from what I see the drives are a lot cheaper then the blue-ray. I still wouldn't go for a PS3 since they are still having issues with the drives and software for them.. I know 2 people who are ready to chuck them out the window while they wait for a sp for it. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 HD-DVD has been around since at least 2003, but anyway, nobody's going to buy the Xbox addon and bugs won't stop PS3 - they'll have them worked out by the time they ship enough units to move beyond the crazy customer market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutaj Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 We shall see. The next few months should point us where the clear direction of the industry will be heading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 Andrew makes good points but I would never use my xbox as a dvd player. My dvd player broke this summer and I tried and I thought it sucked. Didn't have a remote and the sound wasn't hooked up at the stereo so it just came in through the tv. A dvd player is a multi-media machine and I didn't have the same experiance with the xbox so I bought a real dvd player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutaj Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 I would use a dvd player at a presentation way before I would ever use a gaming system. I was just answering the question that metioned why didn't xbox have the hd-dvd drive standard instead off a add-on, but the finalization of the standard didn't happen till a few months ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 I would use a dvd player at a presentation way before I would ever use a gaming system. That's a good point. About 4 years ago I did a big animation for a competition entry that was going to be presented in Spain. My client was terrified of having NTSC-PAL, codec or computer issues so we created a DVD disc and they bought a European portable DVD player to take with them (in New York you can buy just about anything). You wouldn't take a Playstation to present a project, and you probably don't want your client coming to your studio and seeing game platforms. It doesn't quite say "professional". No thoughts on producing 'hi-def' audio? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutaj Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 I've messed around with producing 5.1 audio. It's pretty cool, for example, as you move the camera thru the scene, and pass a fountain. or cars driving by. I tried it out for some internal tests, but have yet to do it for a full blown presentation, might have the chance here for the next big one, since it will be presented in their huge home theatre, just have to figure out how all their gear is set-up and then produce the 5.1 version and the back-up version. That is the biggest problem that I see, is that presentations are sort of like the game industry, you have to produce your product for where it is going to be used and on the format that would be acceptable for that product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martin walker Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 yep....3 times the rendering time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils Norgren Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 Nils, the 24fps doesn't cause problems? Is that only for clients who have purchased 3:2 pulldown players, or will it be as good as 30fps for anyone? The VHS scheme for 24>30 is to run 5 frames then repeat one (if my memory is working correctly). I'm wondering how a generic DVD players does that? Ernest, DVD players will display the frame rate of the encoded disk, the file is compressed to a 23.976 fps .m2v file that is recognized within the DVD authoring environment and the DVD players internally use 3:2 pulldown to convert it to NTSC, as far as I know theatrical release DVDs are all encoded at 24fps. Another key to this look is motion blur, but that is a whole other story. As for audio, we are in the process of building our first 5.1 project, which we haven't yet done as we have no way of playing it here at the office. We will know more when some of these current projects are over. As for audio we typically have most of it done out of house, we use composers, audio voicing studios, foley artists for natural sounds and at the end an audio sweetener. This step is crucial to make sure that all the levels are dialed in and that things like voice over and music live in happy acoustical spaces. I am no Audio expert but there is an excellent book call "Audio Postproduction for Digital Video " which is good enough to read cover to cover. http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Postproduction-Digital-Video-Rose/dp/1578201160/sr=1-7/qid=1165583191/ref=sr_1_7/102-4652480-6969752?ie=UTF8&s=books As for the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray argument, I believe that it is different than Beta vs VHS, first of all, both players will play regular DVDs, HD-DVDs are cheaper because they are essentially the same disk type as DVDs. This means that they are much more highly compressed than Blu-Ray (which holds 4 times the data). It doesn't make sense that studios only master in one format yet. Back in the VHS/Beta days master costs, player costs, costs for rental houses to have two formats made no sense. Now with Netflix and the like and mastering costs being so low, it wont make much sense for any studio to only master in one format, but even if/when there are only HD-DVD theatrical releases, people will still be using Blu-Ray for all sorts of other things (data back-up etc.) with the players available, industries like ours could choose to master in which ever format provided the highest quality picture (Blu-ray) and have clients get that player for their marketing center. Even if the players remain at 1k they will still be a drop in the bucket for these developers that buy multiple 60" plasma screens for their marketing center. There are still uses for Mini-disks (there is now an HD mini disc) which was another Sony consumer flop but they are still available for specific purposes. My 2¢ -Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted December 8, 2006 Author Share Posted December 8, 2006 ...industries like ours could choose to master in which ever format provided the highest quality picture (Blu-ray) and have clients get that player for their marketing center. Nils, I'm curious. We're you implying with this statement that Blu-ray displays a superior picture quality? Up to now HD-DVD has been superior (albeit only because of a superior codec) but even with the same codec they should both provide identical quality (now that HD-DVD is supporting progressive). A movie studio's ability to convert is the only remaining factor that can make one movie superior to another. I just think that Blu-ray's fate was sealed when Microsoft chose to only support HD-DVD (and I don't mean by giving the Xbox an external drive). It would be interesting to have a poll of this. Maybe two. 1) Who will win the HD war? 2) Do you already or do you plan to animate in high def in the next year? More interesting insight. http://www.homemediaretailing.com/news/html/breaking_article.cfm?article_id=10013 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutaj Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 HD-DVD will come out ahead, too many big players supporting it. We already render our stills at HD, Working on Animations currently and are to include 5.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 Is the 4x factor from the computer RW drives? For the movie discs, HD-DVD is 15/30GB (1/2 layers) and Blu-Ray is 25/50. Oh, and I found something else interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association The Blu-Ray consortium includes the most important PC makers (Apple, Dell and HP), the most important Korean (Samsung and LG) and Japanese (Sony, Matsushita/Panasonic, Mitsubishi) electronics companies, and Fox, Warner and Disney. HP, Warner and Universal seem to be backing both, which is probably smart. Toshiba's on the HD-DVD side, which is saying something, and so is Microsoft, but this isn't an area where Microsoft makes the decisions. To answer the questions- 1) I think it will take a long time for the format war to end, if it does at all, but Blu-Ray will gain and keep an edge. 2) No, but I don't animate very much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutaj Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 here is the link to the DVD forum which sets the standards for DVD's http://www.dvdforum.org/forum.shtml Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 The standard for DVDs - doesn't let them decide what the new formats will be, only the market can do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils Norgren Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Nils, I'm curious. We're you implying with this statement that Blu-ray displays a superior picture quality? Up to now HD-DVD has been superior (albeit only because of a superior codec) but even with the same codec they should both provide identical quality (now that HD-DVD is supporting progressive). A movie studio's ability to convert is the only remaining factor that can make one movie superior to another. I just think that Blu-ray's fate was sealed when Microsoft chose to only support HD-DVD (and I don't mean by giving the Xbox an external drive). It would be interesting to have a poll of this. Maybe two. 1) Who will win the HD war? 2) Do you already or do you plan to animate in high def in the next year? More interesting insight. http://www.homemediaretailing.com/news/html/breaking_article.cfm?article_id=10013 Brian, I think that I misspoke about the image quality, I am not an expert in codecs or standards but from my understanding, there are multiple codecs that both formats support, this being said, Blu-ray holds more data, so theoretically there needs to be less compression on an image to fit it within the footprint of the disc. This is all academic to our discussion because none of us (as far as I know) are making 2 hour features. Today, dell announced that they are including Blu-ray as a laptop option: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=hardware&articleId=9005872&taxonomyId=149&intsrc=kc_top I still think that the whole discussion is not as black and white as VHS vs Beta. It will be intresting to see if I am wrong and there is a clear winner, but I think that would be really cool is if some innovative company builds a Blu-Ray player that could read hd-dvds. I guess we all wait and see, I am always shocked at the compression artifacts on HD tv, it definetly looks much better than SD but it is still only 19 Mbs which is a far cry from uncompressed HD which is around 250 Mbs. Progress is never easy, but necessary. -Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dollus Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Microsoft didn't so much choose to support HD DVD as you suggest. They have long standing technology agreements with Toshiba so it would have been contractually costly to go with Blu Ray. Blu Ray has more security features so the movie studios are more apt to prefer that format as well. The two formats actually use the same codecs so that isn't an issue. Any difference in picture or sound quality would have to do with the DAC's in the players instead. I'm not really too worried about it right now since the standard DVD format is still moving along at a strong pace even if you combine both BluRay and HD-DVD sales together. Instead of wagering on which format will win, I will wager that 90% of people will be watching them on screens 42" or smaller and won't be able to tell the difference anyway when watching a movie or a 10 minute animation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F J Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 i feel there is still a huge border between our current actual needs VersuS what HD-DVD/Blu-Ray has to offer.. when we say that we can use HD-DVD/Blu-Ray's full storage capacity by not compressing the content as much i think about that point beyond which compression just wont do any more good (beyond which it will all look seamless, unless u got cybernetic-microscope-eyeballs), like if we think divx/xvid provides the ability to turn say a 4.7GB DVD movie into a 700MB CD (or in some cases 2 CD's for slightly/somewhat better definition) almost making one not able to tell the difference (at a distance at least), i mean this is a pretty lengthy animation already.. so put it all on ur standard DVD.. or u really wanna blow it all out of porportion, get ur standard Dual-Layer DVD (8.5GB).. notice im talkin' about using this standard storage combined with ur standard available compression method nowadays (which i find it to be pretty awesome).. isnt this enough? i mean who has the time/resources to fill such a lenghty storage capacity like Blu-Ray? (besides the film-making industry lol) know what i mean about the border? its just like sound compression, u can compress it all u like but only canines n such will be able to tell the difference, cuz for us there's still a certain kHz frequency beyond which its all seamless regardless of compression.. my 2cents anyways.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 whats being talked about here is using HD resolution not capacity, at least that's what I thought... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F J Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 ok.. check-mate! lol but still, also in resolution will be a border beyond which will be useless to keep increasing.. from this point on its all about the animation length we'r talkin' about, i think.. or maybe im just totally off.. i can see how doubling the resolution n increasing the FPS can with ease deplete the HD media capacity.. my bad.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 its just like sound compression, u can compress it all u like but only canines n such will be able to tell the difference, cuz for us there's still a certain kHz frequency beyond which its all seamless regardless of compression.. I don't know if this extents into video, but with audio the frequencies beyond 20khz and to a lesser extent those below 20hz are important to harmonics and DO affect the quality of music. Anyway, what we may want to produce is going to be driven by what clients are willing to accept, pay extra for and buy playback equipment for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dollus Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 Very true, Ernest. So, Brian, How is that reseller application with Toshiba coming along...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted December 12, 2006 Author Share Posted December 12, 2006 Very true, Ernest. So, Brian, How is that reseller application with Toshiba coming along...? Are you talking to me? If so, what do you mean? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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