Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by ZIPPO

http://cnettv.cnet.com/8301-13489_53...l?tag=mncol;2n

This guy is just the tech worlds equivalent of a troll. Takes a video of himself with his iPhone, posts it online and waits for the responses. Sad thing is after almost a month online he only has nine of them. So he even failed at that.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Teazle

Re: the convenience issue, I reckon one day DLs will offer better convenience than disc but due to file sizes that day is a long way off (for HD movie sales for the mass market). Though I'm digressing.

unless something happens to physical media, I don't see it. Don't get me wrong. Obviously sitting on your chair DL the movie you want to watch and having it stream that second is more convenient then leaving home to go to the B&M rental to get it and, unlike mail rental, you are not limited to the ones that are at your place. But digital rentals have the same issues as physical rentals. For example, something that popped up in a different thread, if you go to Vudu to watch Avatar again it is now gone so the choice of renting and watching it is gone. On the other hand if someone bought it on BD (or DL) they can just watch it again. Buying will always be more convenient then renting because you have full control. And if someone is a collector then Digital is not convenient. I have over 700 BDs some of which are box sets and others TV seasons. How many TB do you think I would need? I buy 2-4 BDs a week except when there sales when I have already bought 20 BDs. How convenient is it to need to add a new 1 TB or 2TB drives every few weeks? How convenient is it for me to bring a movie or two (or 10 or 30) on BD to a friends house or on vacation? how convenient will it be with a movie legally DL to my HDD?

[krazeyeyez]

@anthony - that statement about reviewers was in regards to the previous poster who could not believe that a member here could say that not every blu-ray has that wow factor or stacks up to dvd, shocking! even though those exact phrases have appeared in a number of official reviews here.

you have obviously been around the site long enough to remember the push to include a section in reviews comparing it directly to dvd, and the many threads of is this "worth" the upgrade. Now if a fan of blu-ray 100 movies in still asks this what do you think j6p's reaction to a lot of stuff out there is gonna be, regardless of whether you think there dumb for enjoying film as an entertainment medium without caring about film stocks, grain etc... and thats on good transfers, and there has been plenty of sub par ones released.

As for bookmarks lol, yeah real convenience that you have to mark where you left off rather then just putting in the disc three days later and going right back to the spot. Thanks to discs that use Java we took a big step back in convenience on something you think is a benefit so this i don't follow at all.

[lforigno]

I love blu ray and really appreciate the upgrade over DVD's. I have even been a member here since the very beginning. With that said I cannot wait for everything to be digital and no more physical media. I think blu ray will be around for a while, but it will not be around forever. Once there is an online cloud storage space that allows to to rent/purchase movies that have the full HD audio and video available as well as all special features that would be included with a physical media purchase I will gladly make the jump to digital media. Plus it will make a set up look nicer without a huge case with movies. I love my shelf but I would much rather everything be digital.

[Flatnate]

Maybe I didn't catch this buried in the older posts but did we ever define "survive"? I mean Laserdisc survived for years without mainstream consumer acceptance. They still press vinyl into LP's for whats considered a niche market.

So what kind of market share or overall usage are we talking about here?

[jpthomas27]

Originally Posted by Sponge-worthy

Gotta disagree. BD over DVD is not nearly the upgrade that DVD over VHS was:

1) PQ and AQ aside, ...

You can not discuss the significance of upgrading from DVD to Blu and then immidiately put PQ and AQ aside. You just can't!! The PQ and AQ of Blu-ray is at the heart of it's apeal

I certainly understand your points made about convinience, but you have to consider the entire package as a whole, not in piece.

So let me pose this situation: The average person that likes sports cars would love to drive a Corvette or equivilent sports car. But given the choice to drive a Ferrari they would absolutely consider that to be an upgrade despite the fact that a Ferrari would be much less convenient when you consider insurance, storage, repair and maintenance etc... My point is you have to consider the entire package. You can't say that owning a Ferrari over a Corvette isn't a significant upgrade simply becasue there are SOME downsides to it.

[Blu-Runner]

Will blu-ray survive? Yeah, I think so. The question should probably be "will 3-D blu-ray survive?"

[linkgx1]

Originally Posted by jpthomas27

You can not discuss the significance of upgrading from DVD to Blu and then immidiately put PQ and AQ aside. You just can't!! The PQ and AQ of Blu-ray is at the heart of it's apeal

I certainly understand your points made about convinience, but you have to consider the entire package as a whole, not in piece.

So let me pose this situation: The average person that likes sports cars would love to drive a Corvette or equivilent sports car. But given the choice to drive a Ferrari they would absolutely consider that to be an upgrade despite the fact that a Ferrari would be much less convenient when you consider insurance, storage, repair and maintenance etc... My point is you have to consider the entire package. You can't say that owning a Ferrari over a Corvette isn't a significant upgrade simply becasue there are SOME downsides to it.

I agree, but I still think VHS was a bigger jump becaue it didn't require you to change TVs. Don't get me wrong, Blurays look better, but DVD is a VERY high quality source.

[Blu-ray Neo]

Originally Posted by Blu-Runner

Will blu-ray survive? Yeah, I think so. The question should probably be "will 3-D blu-ray survive?"

Nope....IMHO.

3D is a fad and always will be. I'm 34 years old and they have been trying to sell 3D since I was a kid.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by krazeyeyez

you have obviously been around the site long enough to remember the push to include a section in reviews comparing it directly to dvd, and the many threads of is this "worth" the upgrade.

I don't remember if there was such a discussion. I don't care about reviews or reviewers so if it did happen I never paid attention to such discussions. Like I said before I consider reviews completely useless (no offence meant to the people that write them)

Now if a fan of blu-ray 100 movies in still asks this what do you think j6p's reaction to a lot of stuff out there is gonna be, regardless of whether you think there dumb for enjoying film as an entertainment medium without caring about film stocks, grain etc... and thats on good transfers, and there has been plenty of sub par ones released.

But if someone realy does not care about PQ and AQ then it would not have been an upgrade from VHS to DVD either. The simple fact is that unless there is something wrong with the tape there is realy verry little difference between a full frame DVD and VHS, they are botyh SD of roughly the same quality with DVD having a small advantage due to the fact that even perfect tape has flaws and that will degrade the image a bit. On the other hand BD brings it from 480 to 1080 and that is a whopping 6x+ the resolution.

Objectively speaking BD has a much better picture then DVD and VHS has a slightly better then VHS.

On the flip side this is about formats, and formats are a container. Let me ask you this simple question, let's say I have a home movie on VHS, I take it and put it on a DVD recorder (either a combo DVD/VHS or by connecting a VHS to a DVD) digitize it and put it on a DVD, will the DVD be better then the VHS? no, the VHS quality was the starting point it cannot be better. Now let's say I take those DVDs (assume there is more then one disk) and decide, hey a BD can hold 50GB I will take those 10 DVDs and burn my whole life on one BD, will that BD look better then the 10 DVDs I had before? no, it will be the same files, they will look exactly the same. You can't judge a format by the turds, it is an empty box anything can be put in it. That being said I agree with the other poster, I have yet to watch one BD that does not have a wow factor over the DVD. Maybe it is because I care to watch something good and not here to make excuses why the upgrade is not worth it, maybe it is because I am more anal when I sit to watch a movie and when I see problems it is hard to ignore them, maybe it is because I spent $$$ building an HT, getting decent equipment and have a big screen that I calibrate every few days and that I get professionally calibrated every year (since I don't have all the necessary equipment for a professional job) so I can see the differences that others miss, maybe it is because I don't have serious eye problems (like the Simpson’s joke when grandpa looks at something and replies something like " looks blurry just like a cataract)., I don't know why but every BD I have is a marked improvement over the DVD I had and that makes me say wow every time (though admittedly still asking fro a bigger wow)

As for bookmarks lol, yeah real convenience that you have to mark where you left off rather then just putting in the disc three days later and going right back to the spot. Thanks to discs that use Java we took a big step back in convenience on something you think is a benefit so this i don't follow at all.

I don't mind that resume is added since I know some feel strongly about it (and if all I have to do is say yes or no, I can live with that) but personaly given the choice I would rather have a film start at the beginning every time, it is a story and meant to be watched in a shot, you lose the experience if you watch it in bits and pieces. If this was the discussion then DVD would not have had an advantage over VHS since where you press stop on a tape it remains, and VHS would have an advantage since if you take that tape and put it in a different player it would continue exactly where you left off while the DVD would start at the beginning.

But the OP did not talk about resume, he talked about chapter selection, to go directly on DVD to a scene you want without FF or rew, and for that bookmarks are much better since it can really be the scene you want (if you want to show something to friends that happens 1/2 way through the film and 5 minutes after the scene starts, with VHS you need to FF from where you left off, and so possibly 1/2 the movie, with DVD you can go to the beginning of the scene and ff 5 minutes until you get to the point and with BD you can bookmark it and get there immediately)

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by linkgx1

I agree, but I still think VHS was a bigger jump becaue it didn't require you to change TVs.

not true, in the beginning of 98 when I bought my first DVD player it did require me to buy a new TV, the TV I had which I bought in 1991 (as a poor student going off to University) did not have any inputs other then RF (antenna in), it was either a new TV or a modulator, since, unlike every (?) VCR, no (?) DVD player had a modulator (i.e. be able to output on ch 3-4).

Don't get me wrong, Blurays look better, but DVD is a VERY high quality source.

lol

[KarstenSch]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

But if someone realy does not care about PQ and AQ then it would not have been an upgrade from VHS to DVD either. The simple fact is that unless there is something wrong with the tape there is realy verry little difference between a full frame DVD and VHS, they are botyh SD of roughly the same quality with DVD having a small advantage due to the fact that even perfect tape has flaws and that will degrade the image a bit. On the other hand BD brings it from 480 to 1080 and that is a whopping 6x+ the resolution.

Excuse me but this is totally wrong. The real useable resolution of VHS was in fact significantly below the real SD resolution (take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS . Especially the chroma resolution is a totally different kind of beast). In PAL countries the difference was even bigger. In Europe there was an even bigger difference since most bigger TVs had an Euro-AV (Scart) Connector that offered a direct RGB input, that allowed the TV to simply shut down most of its input decoders and most of its electronics.The difference to the primitive and very limited Composite input from a VCR was VERY noticeable on nearly every TV.
VCRs with an RGB output occured several years later and even their output is significantly inferior. I had to copy several VHS Tapes to DVD just today. If this would have been commercial films we wouldn't have bothered and simply bought the DVDs but the claim that VHS had the same quality as DVD... Sorry this is laughable.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by KarstenSch

Excuse me but this is totally wrong. The real useable resolution of VHS was in fact significantly below the real SD resolution. In PAL countries the difference was even bigger. In Europe there was an even bigger difference since most bigger TVs had an Euro-AV (Scart) Connector that offered a direct RGB input, that allowed the TV to simply shut down most of its input decoders and most of its electronics.The difference to the primitive and very limited Composite input from a VCR was VERY noticeable on nearly every TV.
VCRs with an RGB output occured several years later and even their output is significantly inferior. I had to copy several VHS Tapes to DVD just today. If this would have been commercial films we wouldn't have bothered and simply bought the DVDs

No it is not. VHS had NTSC resolution in NTSC countries which has 480 lines and PAL in Pal countries that is 576 lines. DVD in Pal countries had PAL Resolution 576 rows of pixels and NTSC in NTSC places 480 rows of pixels.

If any of that is wrong, then please point me to an authoritative place that shows where it is wrong

but the claim that VHS had the same quality as DVD... Sorry this is laughable.

fully agree, now what laughable person said that? Like I said before DVD is a bit better, VHS has the same vertical resolution as DVD and that is because both of them where built to work with the lines of resolution of the CRT TVs on the market at the time in their respective market. DVD had a bit more horizontal resolution due to the nature of the tape and since neither NTSC or PAL had any horizontal requirements. Also since by the time DVD came out there was wide screen, DVD had that in its specs which did not exist in VHS


The issue is (using NTSC but the same is more or less true for PAL but change 480 to 576) that a change from 480 lines to 480x720 is no where near 6x as much information and the difference between 480x720 to 1080x1920 is 6x as much information.

PS and in this discussion I did not include that DVD is compressed, so calling it 480 x 720 is a bit of a stretch since compression kills some of the information of some of the pixels turning them into mega pixels called blocks that are 8x8

PPS and with VHS we are talking the original VHS, if we include S-VHS, W-VHS and D-VHS then most of this is not even true, D-VHS had 1080i and so was much closer to BD quality and much better then DVD quality

[Jeff Kleist]

pquote]No it is not. VHS had NTSC resolution in NTSC countries which has 480 lines and PAL in Pal countries that is 576 lines. DVD in Pal countries had PAL Resolution 576 rows of pixels and NTSC in NTSC places 480 rows of pixels.

If any of that is wrong, then please point me to an authoritative place that shows where it is wrong[/quote]

While I can't give you an authoritative source on it right now, VHS was 240 lines of useable resolution. SuperVHS had 420, and LD came in a hair above at 425. DVD was the first format to actually be able to use all 480 lines (PAL was obviously higher for all) So while the output signal was 480 lines, the input was not

VCD was designed to have equivalent performance to VHS, but be cheaper to make, and to survive longer in tropical climates (like most of asia), where the thin tape had a tendency to rot quickly. Its resolution was 352x240 (if that helps)

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by KarstenSch

take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS . Especially the chroma resolution is a totally different kind of beast

You added this after I read your post.

You can't look at Chroma and then compare it to DVD. Our eyes are much better at determining luminance then chrominance, so NTSC, PAL where created with more luminance resolution then chrominance. That is also why DVD and BD use a 4:2:0 colour space and not 4:4:4, if you limited yourself to chroma you would end up with 1/4 resolutions on DVD and BD as well since that is what 4:2:0 means (i.e. for every 2x2 block of pixel it can only have one chroma value but 4 luminance values)

Either you really have no idea of what you are talking about or you know you are trying to make an invalid point so grasping at anything no matter how ridiculous

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

While I can't give you an authoritative source on it right now, VHS was 240 lines of useable resolution. SuperVHS had 420, and LD came in a hair above at 425. DVD was the first format to actually be able to use all 480 lines (PAL was obviously higher for all) So while the output signal was 480 lines, the input was not

Jeff, I think you are mistaking vertical with horizontal, lines with how much info can exist per line. VHS and S-VHS where the same vertical resolution but S-VHS had more horizontal detail. Your numbers also look to be in tune with the more conservative ones I saw for DVD (i.e. place it between 220 and 360 depending on tape and other stuff).

[KarstenSch]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

PS and in this discussion I did not include that DVD is compressed, so calling it 480 x 720 is a bit of a stretch since compression kills some of the information of some of the pixels turning them into mega pixels called blocks that are 8x8

And exactly here your big mistake lies. Obviously you really think that VHS was not compressed. In fact VHS was compressed but not digitally but in Bandwidth.
While VHS generated in theory 480 or 576 lines this bandwidh limits the information to 240 lines ( http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/videodis...-VHS-Lase.html ).
With PAL VHS the difference was even bigger. Why?
Well the speed of a normal PAL VHS was equivalent to NTSC SP! The quality was only good enough to handle the normal terrestial TV-Programm at that time. In fact this was one of the biggest roadblocks for movie companies of that time. They always tried to claim that Germany was simply a country with a big piracy background, bu8t in reality there was no significant difference between a movie that you bought and one that you recorded from TV! Even more important: at that time there were none to very few commercial breaks in a movie!

The difference between a NTSC VHS and NTSC DVD is FAR below the difference of PAL VHS and PAL DVD. Add to this the Macrovision Copy Protection and you got to real resolutions that were FAR below the theoretical limits of VHS. In fact one of the biggest restrictions in consumer grade TVs were the filters that had to differentiate between luminance and color informations. They often restricted the useful information to 180 lines or even below! You totally miss the real problems of that time.

The normal information that you find for VHS is only useful for converting VHS to DVD or another digital standard. You can be certain that conversion does not loose ANY useful information with these settings!

The DVD on the other hand really used the theoretical limits of the TV standards.

Concerning SVHS: Sorry this standard never really took of in Germany! While there were some SVHS recorders very few people ever used this standard. Some people even bought these recorders but all commercial tapes tapes were VHS and most of these recorders were only connected via Composite.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by KarstenSch

And exactly here your big mistake lies. Obviously you really think that VHS was not compressed. In fact VHS was compressed but not digitally but in Bandwidth.

even though compresssed is not the right word, I agree on that. But BW limited horizontal resolution and not vertical resolution.

While VHS generated in theory 480 or 576 lines this bandwidh limits the information to 240 lines ( http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/videodis...-VHS-Lase.html ).

I have no idea who that is but he is talking about CED not VHS. I have no idea how CED worked.

Add to this the Macrovision Copy Protection and you got to real resolutions that were FAR below the theoretical limits of VHS.

what does macro vision have to do with anything?

The normal information that you find for VHS is only useful for converting VHS to DVD or another digital standard. You can be certain that conversion does not loose ANY useful information with these settings!

I don't get this, I did not talk of transfers, but assuming this is right, if you lose information (useful or not) going lowewr then wasn't that information there to begin with?

[KarstenSch]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

what does macro vision have to do with anything?

The Macrovision at that time was an artificial burst in the color signal in the overscan sections of the image. In reality it reduced the signal to noise ratio in the filters. So Macrovision filters (which were legal in Germany) even improved the image of a VHS tape...

Originally Posted by Anthony P

I don't get this, I did not talk of transfers, but assuming this is right, if you lose information (useful or not) going lowewr then wasn't that information there to begin with?

Not really. the real problems of these TV sets were in the signal to noise ratio. It was impossible to clearly differentiate between signal and noise. To prevent the loss of any useful informations you have to convert a lot of noise. It is much more easy to recognize and correct the typical compression artifacts of a digital compression.

In fact that is one of the reasons why I described the difference between the composite signal and the RGB signal that we got from a DVD. A significant difference was: 50 Hz TVs simply deactivated most of their components, when they received RGB. So their noise ratio was reduced significantly.Everybody saw this difference at once on every TV!
Compare this to the current situation of the difference between an upscaled DVD and a BD.

Another difference that did not matter for older 50/60 Hz TVs, was a major concerns for in Europe pretty common 100 Hz CRTs:
You must not use 576 vertical lines for VHS. This information is wrong for VHS! It always expected an interlaced image, so you must not show more than 288 (for NTSC 240) vertical lines at the same time! Due to the pretty significant noise ratio it is hopeless to reconstruct the full resolution! A progressive DVD image is a totally different matter.
So if someone claims 480 lines vertical resolution for VHS it is a pure theoretical value! The diffence between an interlaced and a progressive signal is that the image might taken at a different time. While the original technology did handle this difference gracefully all progressive displays must differentiate!
If you use these things you see that the real resolution of VHS is in fact in the best case 240 * 288 pixel! And this difference is always visible in normal living rooms. On the other hand many people sit in such a big distance from their TVs that their eyes can't differentiate between FullHD and PAL Resolution (there are much moire people that need glasses than people that have a better than 20/20 eyesight).

[Anthony P]

KarstenSch: I was thinking of the 240 (from jeff and the place you linked to) and at first I thought that maybe the misunderstanding was i/p. (i.e. 480p means 240 lines per field but it takes two fields to make a frame). Now I think I get where the misunderstanding is happening http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_lines. and why you get nonesensical things like http://hometheater.about.com/cs/tele...ideoresa_2.htm. For NTSC the number of scan lines is 480 for VHS and the number of rows of pixels are 480 for DVD. But like I said before DVD has 720 pixels while VHS has a less horizontal resolution (220-360 depending on a few factors and tests) the issue is that some people call that measuring of horizontal data Television lines or Lines of Horizontal Resolution and some places strip it down to lines. And I am guessing that is what was happening in your link.

If we compare the two VHS has 480 scan lines and 240 HLoR (assuming that is what your link means by lines) on the other hand DVD has 480 rows and the equivalent of 405 HLoR (according to the definition you use a square equal to the height and not the full AR of the screen). It also explains some of the lower and higher numbers like 220-240 and 330-360 the first is for the square while the second for the full 4:3 AR