Archived: Insiders Thread

[SuprSlow]

Originally Posted by Rob Tomlin

This is awesome.

Someone please take Paidgeek up on this offer and start this poll!

Once again, Sony shows a willingness to listen to the enthusiasts/customers. Let's take advantage of it!

No kidding. This would be fantastic. I would volunteer, but I'm afraid I'm not enough of a film aficionado to do such a thing. I'll be glad to vote though.

[Logan00]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

I like this idea, but what about dubbed audio tracks? Would this work on SM3 for instance?

Sorry, but I am not sure what you mean by dubbed audio tracks.

[Chris Beveridge]

Originally Posted by Logan00

Sorry, but I am not sure what you mean by dubbed audio tracks.

Multiple audio tracks of the same format.

PG,

I think this can be solved with a basic logic chart that any player should be able to follow. I work exclusively with bilingual releases and with DVDs I rely heavily (and critique in reviews) whether discs utilize player presets properly.

If a disc has

English Lossless A
English Lossless B
English Lossy C
Japanese Lossless A
Japanese Lossless B

The thinking in my mind is that if I have my player set to pick up Japanese and Lossless (PCM, DTS-HD MA, TrueHD priority selectable), it'd grab the right language first and the discern the proper mix. Paprika might be a good example to think about.

On the English side of this scenario, let's say Lossless A is PCM and Lossless B is TrueHD. On my player I would set my presets as:

English Language
TrueHD

So it would grab the English language tagged track first and then flag for the TrueHD one. I don't know the scenario of how everything is actually flagged on the disc, but there should be some workable solution in there.

For what it's worth, on DVD for the anime I watch from about half a dozen studios, only one gets the player presets right consistently while others are haphazard. Hell, most studios don't even label their audio/subtitle tracks which makes it completely useless.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by doctorD

Penton..Good word!!! Things like this is why I really like this site.

And I admire this site because, unlike the membership of other forums (like AVM$) that have a strong U.S. based presence, this forum does not demonstrate any sort of arrogant provincial attitude towards things like the availability and advantage of multiple language audio tracks of high quality for our other international members and friends.

I don’t believe we are that self-centered here.
Sorry, for the above, but somebody just PM'ed me some comments from *that other place* made by members concerning the benefit of lossless audio in other languages other than their native tongue.

[VernR]

Originally Posted by akbungle

Bill Hunt at the digital bits has the in context transcript of the Stringer interview here:
http://thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents

Sorry but that doesn't make me feel any better. Yes there was some bending of quotes for the headline (and he said disc drive not hard drive), but from the link above this is from a direct Stringer quote

"....But it's not a battle about the digital future. That's what's so strange about it. If it doesn't work out, that doesn't say very much about where we're all going. It's just... it's a scorecard: one-nothing or something. But it doesn't mean as much as all that. PlayStation 3 will still go on playing games. It would have to have a different disk drive. And that's about it really."

So I'm sitting here with a PS3, 22 BR movies on the shelf (6 more on the way) and 12 PS3 games with plans to buy several more before Christmas. So the Sony Chairman has just told me no big deal if we lose the format war - we'll just swap the drive in the PS3. Great so now I have to buy a new PS3 with the new drive for any new PS3 games? Is Sony going to have a one up swap for all my BR based games discs I've already bought? Are you going to swap the disc drives on the new Sony Hi-Def camcorders that record straight to BR discs? If this interview still doesn't bother you - you are way too complacent. Nothing the HD-DVD side has come up with has given me any pause as to the choice I made, but I sure didn't expect the Sony Chairman to be the one to make me stop and rethink my investment.

Paid, I would hope there is stll some clarification coming. These comments make it sound if the format battle is lost then Sony is going to fold on BR entirely.

[WickyWoo]

I would prefer OAR, but just for my own curiousity, would it be possible to author the show open matte 16x9 and use bd-j to turn on/off the black pillars (via an overlay)?

Paid, what he means is that he's assuming that Seinfeld was shot like other shows are today, that they take a Super35 negative and do a 16:9 common-height extraction, and then take the center for the 4:3 version

Seinfeld was shot 4:3 OAR. It used the whole frame of the film, there is no "open matte". You have to tilt and scan it to 16:9

[milou6]

Originally Posted by VernR

... so now I have to buy a new PS3 with the new drive for any new PS3 games? Is Sony going to have a one up swap for all my BR based games discs I've already bought?...

I'm certainly not PAID or an insider (mods feel free to delete or move me) but 1 quick point of order: he's talking about changing the drive, not replacing it with an HD-DVD drive -- i.e. a multi-format drive to play the next gen movies if they don't end up being on BD.

[Kris Deering]

Paidgeek

Warner did something similar to the poll you're suggesting some years ago for their catalog classic titles being released on DVD. The problem is, most people are going to just ask for obscure titles and such and it is hard to know the entire Sony library to chose from.

A suggestion would be to maybe create a poll with a handful of catalog titles that Sony is on the fence about in regards to release and have the membership vote on them for release. I'm sure you guys have some ideas on how well a title might sell. With some catalog titles not selling well at all for MGM and Warner (including such classics as Casablanca) I imagine you wouldn't want to just release some niche title this early on with sales as low as they are now. Just a thought.

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

And I admire this site because, unlike the membership of other forums (like AVM$) that have a strong U.S. based presence, this forum does not demonstrate any sort of arrogant provincial attitude towards things like the availability and advantage of multiple language audio tracks of high quality for our other international members and friends.

I don’t believe we are that self-centered here.
Sorry, for the above, but somebody just PM'ed me some comments from *that other place* made by members concerning the benefit of lossless audio in other languages other than their native tongue.

We have to bear in mind that HD DVD has virtually no bitrate allocated for audio, so every additional audio track and PiP track on HD DVD takes bandwidth away from the video, whereas Blu-Ray has almost enough dedicated audio bandwidth (8.0mbps) to put two lossless tracks or half a dozen lossy ones without impacting the video encode at all.

As such, I don't think it's so very surprising that people in the red camp tend to align against multilingual language tracks. If they did, they'd run smack dab into one of the biggest pro-Blu-ray talking points - bandwidth. Thus, they have to prefer fewer language tracks by default because saying otherwise undermines their position.

[Frode]

Vern - what he meant was replace the drive on the PS3 with one that can read HD DVDs in addition. Even if HD DVD won, they wouldn't stop making games on BDs, simply because they want to maintain backwards compatibility with earlier versions of the console. Mind you I'm thinking he's making light of the whole format war, and it really isn't as simple as he suggests. There's just way too much money invested in it, and it's not all about face.

[akbungle]

Originally Posted by Frode

Vern - what he meant was replace the drive on the PS3 with one that can read HD DVDs in addition. Even if HD DVD won, they wouldn't stop making games on BDs, simply because they want to maintain backwards compatibility with earlier versions of the console. Mind you I'm thinking he's making light of the whole format war, and it really isn't as simple as he suggests. There's just way too much money invested in it, and it's not all about face.

+1 Absolutely what I thought as well

[VernR]

Originally Posted by Frode

Vern - what he meant was replace the drive on the PS3 with one that can read HD DVDs in addition. Even if HD DVD won, they wouldn't stop making games on BDs, simply because they want to maintain backwards compatibility with earlier versions of the console. Mind you I'm thinking he's making light of the whole format war, and it really isn't as simple as he suggests. There's just way too much money invested in it, and it's not all about face.

OK thanks, I guess I'll take a deep breath now. Still not sure how you are reading that into his statement. I would hope that is what he meant, but I still think someone from Sony needs to clarify. The DUDs are having a field day with this and to be honest they aren't having to spin much. To be honest it seems like Disney is working harder to push the format than Sony (maybe that's part of the BDA plan). I had always assumed that Sony would support BR on the PS3 no matter what happened in the format war. This was a large factor influencing me going PS3/Blu vs. the "other" guys. With the Christmas shopping season just getting started, I'm sure there are others contemplating buying a PS3 that may not have your insight into what he really meant.

[gand41f]

Originally Posted by VernR

OK thanks, I guess I'll take a deep breath now. Still not sure how you are reading that into his statement. I would hope that is what he meant, but I still think someone from Sony needs to clarify. The DUDs are having a field day with this and to be honest they aren't having to spin much. To be honest it seems like Disney is working harder to push the format than Sony (maybe that's part of the BDA plan). I had always assumed that Sony would support BR on the PS3 no matter what happened in the format war. This was a large factor influencing me going PS3/Blu vs. the "other" guys. With the Christmas shopping season just getting started, I'm sure there are others contemplating buying a PS3 that may not have your insight into what he really meant.

Don't want to clutter the insiders thread with non-inside chatter, but I have to agree with others here. Sir Howard was probably a little careless in his wording (you would think a Chairman of a company like Sony would think twice before using a word like "stalemate" regardless of the context ), but his comment about the different drive is really presented as just a worst case scenario, not something likely.

Also, I noticed he's mentioned "face" a couple of times during the interview. I believe he's referring to Toshiba. Being a Japanese company, I assume there's a lot of internal turmoil going on in Toshiba at the moment, and one of the reasons why they haven't dropped HD-DVD yet is that they would lose too much "face" and the president or someone important would have to resign. (Fujii-san didn't help matters with his infamous "dogeza" quote -- it refers to apologizing by kneeling and rubbing one's forehead on the ground, the ultimate embarrassment for a Japanese.)

So some execs might be prolonging this war for the sake of holding on to their own position for a few more months. It's not a stretch of imagination that the CEO of Sony could be trying to extend an olive branch so they can end the war quickly.

enjoy
gandalf

[sj001]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

Does anyone have a question to an insider?

Yeah, I think this thread is overflowing with non-insider related topics.

I have a question for Paid though, is there anyway to find out, maybe someone you can contact at SCEA to get some more scoop on what is going on with DTS-MA?

I know you have probably been asked that before, but if there is, that would be awesome, if not, please ignore.

thanks!

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Icemage

We have to bear in mind that HD DVD has virtually no bitrate allocated for audio, so every additional audio track and PiP track on HD DVD takes bandwidth away from the video, whereas Blu-Ray has almost enough dedicated audio bandwidth (8.0mbps) to put two lossless tracks or half a dozen lossy ones without impacting the video encode at all.

As such, I don't think it's so very surprising that people in the red camp tend to align against multilingual language tracks. If they did, they'd run smack dab into one of the biggest pro-Blu-ray talking points - bandwidth. Thus, they have to prefer fewer language tracks by default because saying otherwise undermines their position.

Well, I guess it’s good to know that the prejudice expressed by others on that forum is not based upon an arrogant attitude that the 1st language of everyone in the U.S. and the rest of the world is English.

But rather, it is based upon making excuses for a technical deficiency of the HD DVD format compared to the Blu-ray format.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Frode

Mind you I'm thinking he's making light of the whole format war, and it really isn't as simple as he suggests.

Correct and regarding that.
Does everyone here actually appreciate the venue at which Sir Howard was speaking ?
It is a lighthearted affair where the guest can be asked, and usually is, just about anything under the sun…….even things having nothing to do with his business.

I would describe it as a rather informal setting where the interviewee takes questions from Adler and the audience (usually submitted on cards collected by ushers, and then read by the moderator).

Don't stress this stuff.

[Penton-Man]

Well, two days in a row, the hottest section on our forum is this……….
https://forum.blu-ray.com/forumdisplay.php?f=49

What’s a man to say ?

[khainne]

insiders,

who handles the encoding for movies on cable? (i.e. HBO) Saw the original star wars a few months back and it looked good, but was wondering who handles this and how.

[Azumi]

Originally Posted by VernR

Sorry but that doesn't make me feel any better.
(...)
So I'm sitting here with a PS3, 22 BR movies on the shelf (6 more on the way) and 12 PS3 games with plans to buy several more before Christmas. So the Sony Chairman has just told me no big deal if we lose the format war - we'll just swap the drive in the PS3.

I'm not an Insider, but I believe that Howard Stringer is talking in a specific context.

What he means, is that Sony has a fallback option. In the unlikely event Blu-ray failed, Sony still has a platform (the PS3) and a packaged media that works with that platform.

This doesn't mean that Blu-ray may flounder. It does mean that they can afford to keep developing Blu-ray, because it serves two separate businesses -- movies and games. The same cannot be said for Toshiba, that only works in one business (and besides, they don't own film studios).

If you think about it, this comment comes on the heels on statements from Microsoft, where they deny that they want to integrate an HD DVD inside the X360, because that would be a devaluation of their installed base. And guess what, Stringer says that BD has two businesses, and even if they lose one, they still have the other.

So, IMO, you really have to read between the lines.

[NoQuestion]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

It is an independent company that is handling this program. I'll see what details I can find.

i know its only been a day paid, but have you dug up anything on this? just send me a message when/if you find out anything. Thanks!!