Hey, what a great forum. As tons of others in this forum, I love "backing up" movies. My questions are these 1 - Will BR (Blue Ray) (assuming it wins the war) make DVD's outdated (like the VHS)? If so, (aside from size) how? 2 - Are the stand alone players likely to be able to play BR and DVD disks? Similar to a DVD/AVI/DVIX player? The reason I ask is b/c 1 - Inevitably (just like most things) the backup of DVD's may be obsolete and outdated. I was just hoping that it would not come (for myself) so soon. 2 - Also lately the prices of some DVD media that work for myself (Memorex x16 dvd-r) has recently dropped!! Cheers h2oo
VHS is not obsolete. Movies are still made for it. Also, there were lots of movies made before 1994 or whatever that did not benefit in terms of quality to DVD. The same will be true for DVD. What will be bad about your movies??? Unless if they were originally filmed in 1080p/60 fps movies that have already been produced cannot benefit from the new formats. Also, do you own a Qualia TV or something with LCoS or SXRD??? There are not too many TVs that do native 1080i resolution and none I can think of that have native 1080p/60fps (which is what Blue Ray claims it can do). DLPs and LCDs will upconvert the signal from 720p to 1080i. If you do not own a TV that does native 1080i resolution, you will not get the full potential of either HD format. Also, I highly doubt they will use the full bitrates of the discs. They say the HD will be at 25mbps, but if they do that a 2 hour movie will take up almost the entire disc with 1 audio track. A video only at 25mbps will be about 22.5Gb (21.45Gb on PC). Now if you add audio at 5376kbps (assuming they use good quality audio) it will be another 4,83GB (4.61 on PC). Add them up and you get just over 25GB. Now, how many DVDs do you know of without special features extra audio and such??? I estimate that HD movies will be at 15mbps, which is not much more than DVDs can display. Now if they decide to use lossy audio, it will be possible, but what is the point of a $1000 player and $100 movies if you get lossy audio (I am estimating prices, but they will not be that far off at introduction). Now to answer your questions: 1 - No. It will not make DVDs obsolete. Blue Ray has a higher chance of going obsolete before DVD. I say this because the next technology was out for quite some time now (the one that is beyond Blue Ray), but there is no market for it. There is a chance that the success of Blue Ray or HD-DVD will open the HVD market which can store up to 1.5TB on 1 disc. That can easily hold full bitrate video with many uncompressed multi-channel tracks. Also, this has a chance of being cheaper than Blue Ray media. 2 - I have not read anyhing about it, but if they do not play back DVDs, then they will lose too much sales. How many people will want to completely dump DVD? If this is the case, than DVHS would have been more popular. Part two questions: 1 - As long as you have a DVD movie and a DVD player there will always be a need to back up your movies. There is no reason to stop making blank DVDs. Actually it will be better since DVDR DL media will drop in price. This means it will be easier to make 1:1 copies. Also, companies will spend less time on money on improving copy "protection" schemes so DVD Ripping software will not need constant updating, however this will take at least 3 years after the release of the new format. 2 - The drop in price is a good thing and does not reflect the new format since it is not out yet. I would not recommend Memorex though, since many people have had problems with them. Just an extra note... You probably never saw a DVD movie that uses the full bitrate of a DVD. A DVD can take 9800kbps total. For a 2 hour movie, this would be 8.82GB (8.411 on PC). However, you never see a movie that is 2 hours take more than 5GB. Stealth for example was just over 2 hours and the movie was about 3.5GB. The reason is as I stated in the beginning, there are too many extra features, previews and other crap in movies.
Wow, I never knew what Superbit was. I don't even think I own a single Superbit DVD. Guess it's time for me to start looking for some.
info on Superbit DVD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbit - Superbit DVDs don't contain any special features - All Superbit DVDs contain Dolby Digital and DTS sound tracks Some DVDs called "Ultimate DVD" contain the Collectors edition DVD and the Superbit version all in one box. The only Ultimate DVD I know about is "5th Element." I own "Spider Man 2" and "Black Hawk Down" superbit dvds. They look amazing.
@diabolos Thanks for the info!!! Do these contain the FBI Warnings and other things like that??? Also, I will definately pick up Spider-man 2!! Can't wait to see it on my new SXRD TV (BTW, this TV has the best Picture I have seen so far, even better than the Qualia for some reason)!!!
Yea, that tv is great. Its the best one on my shelf, but it shouldn't be better than the Qualia (they both use the SXRD chipset and the HD-Vega light engine). All movies contain FBI warnings but if your talking about the MPAA commercials and worthless previews the answer is no, superbit dvds don't. All the space is used to create better picture and sound (the DTS sound track). There is no room for any extra crap! If you really want to get a "preview" of what HD-DVD and BD will be like then I suggest buying one of the new Sony upconversion DVD players (you will also need to buy an HDMI cable). With that set up I can garranty that the Spider Man superbit will WoW you. It won't be true high-def but it will be amazing, Ced
