Archived: Insiders Thread

[Slapper]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

It's nice that WB wants to take care of their HD DVD brethren, but what about Blu?

WB still has a lot of titles exclusively on HD DVD so there not keeping parity with HD DVD too well in this respect.

Agreed. But, if they say they are trying to keep parity between the formats then why are they giving us (Blu-ray) lossless audio?

Now, about the encodes... Paidgeek, is this doable: If WB were to make a high bitrate VC-1 encode specifically for Blu-ray, couldn't they pull a lower bandwidth encode from the BD encode specifically for HD-DVD without having to go back to the master? It would seem that if this was possible then the expense would be minimal.



I'm not completely up-to-speed on the whole process of the actual encoding and if my idea is way off base could someone point me in the right direction.

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Anyway the above is all old news, I can’t believe those people are dredging it up all over again nearly one month after the fact.

Well some of "them", over "there", still think it's June 2006..

[Papi4baby]

Originally Posted by Slapper

Agreed. But, if they say they are trying to keep parity between the formats then why are they giving us (Blu-ray) lossless audio?

Now, about the encodes... Is this doable: If WB were to make a high bitrate VC-1 encode specifically for Blu-ray, couldn't they pull a lower bandwidth encode from the BD encode specifically for HD-DVD without having to go back to the master? It would seem that if this was possible then the expense would be minimal.



I'm not completely up-to-speed on the whole process of the actual encoding and if my idea is way off base could someone point me in the right direction.

That would make sense, make a high bit one for Blu ray, and send it for pressing ,then make a waterdown version to fit on the HDDVD.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by pepar

Even at "neutral" I am to Blu to post on either the AVS insiders thread or their tracking thread. You are correct in the outing charge, but what outraged me was the way Amir picked up the ball and ran with it the way he did. I've read enough to think he saw some partisan advantage in doing so, which is extra appalling.

He felt compelled to – given his online egotism.
He couldn’t let it go.

Come on, let’s not kid ourselves here. The reason why the A-man jumped on my post with a lengthy critique of the differences (responsibilities, ORG chart personnel, etc.) between V.P.’s at Micro$oft and V.P.’s at SPE (or other places as well) was because he didn’t want all his fans on AVM$ to think that there actually was a Blu-ray insider on that forum who held a higher executive status than he did without some sort of *explanation* to reaffirm to all AVM$ members his *supreme* insider status. His reply that you refer to was quite childish and insecure.

Paidgeek personally doesn’t give a flying f*** what his executive level is compared to the A-man. Nor do I for that matter.
I’m interested in the content of people’s posts, insider or not, not their credentials.

Fact is, the A-man broke the rules on the AVM$ Insider’s Thread by deliberating trying to disclose the confidential identity of another Insider. If that doesn’t constitute disrespect to another member….then I don’t know what the hell does. It pissed me off when he did it with talkst8t by continually referring to him as “Bill”, and he was starting to pull the same crap with paidgeek over on AVM$.....by referring to him also by first name.

I never forgot about it because I thought it appalling that the mods over there would allow the A-man to do that without at least deleting the post(s) or issuing the A-man a public warning as to his behavior on their “flagship” thread.

So, I took the opportunity in my welcome to you coming onto our forum as a chance for some much needed payback……as you know all the red ants spend as much time lurking here as they do posting on AVM$.

I guess you guys can tell my knee is killing me today after my ride on Friday.
Anyway, let’s not pursue this anymore on this thread, I just wanted to make perfectly clear to all readers, the whole history of this matter. Rather than pulling one post out of mid-air and pronouncing judgment like Vaughn did.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

While transfering for video from the negative or IP etc, can bring out a totally different image if you transfer it straight or if you play with it. The negative to print duplicating process can emphasize or de-emphasize certain colors (that's why negatives and intermediate elements have orangeish/brown dye masks, to minimize these color distortions), at the same time, a colorist can drain a color or push it on a video transfer. I've seen 2 versions of Costner's Robin Hood on video, one brown and murky, one looking more technicolory with the greens much more saturated. One looked better (more pleasing to me), one looked more accurate to the theatrical. Which was the reference then?

Deci and Dave Mack
This topic has so many branching possibilities such as the differences between “traditional” colorists and digital colorists etc.

Boy, and don’t get me started on how the cinematographer’s union threw away DP’s right to profit participation during the Digitial Intermediate process with the colorists.

[MrVorhees]

To any SPHE insider.

Are there any chances we will get Bad Boys & Bad Boys II soon on Blu-ray?

Thank you for reading.

[PaulGo]

On the subject of Amir - I don't want to turn this into a bashing Amir sport but I thought this column was interesting:

Microsoft’s Amir Majidimehr said something stupid at an Informa Telecoms & Media Digital Rights Management conference today...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ratcliffe/?p=58

[WickyWoo]

Are there any chances we will get Bad Boys & Bad Boys II soon on Blu-ray?

They have specifically asked that if it's not already announced, don't ask about it

[MatrixS2000]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

We have asked WB about this, but thier response has been that they intentionally want to keep parity with HD-DVD. I hope this policy changes soon.

Interesting paid.

I also find it interesting that WB has decided to leave BR out when HD DVD releases have the "advantage". For example, The Matrix. I know this is not your question to answer, but why would they not follow the same policy and release the Matrix at parity (ie forget the IME and PiP) on both formats?

Considering that approx 2/3 of their sales are BR, they are artificially holding HD DVD numbers up.

[WickyWoo]

I also find it interesting that WB has decided to leave BR out when HD DVD releases have the "advantage". For example, The Matrix. I know this is not your question to answer, but why would they not follow the same policy and release the Matrix at parity (ie forget the IME and PiP) on both formats?

Because Toshiba paid them not to, just like with all the other missing titles.
Now that Nickerson aka "Captain HD DVD" is gone, things are going to be a lot better

[LynxFX]

Originally Posted by PaulGo

Microsoft’s Amir Majidimehr said something stupid at an Informa Telecoms & Media Digital Rights Management conference today...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ratcliffe/?p=58

I heard that exact statement before I think at least a year ago. Surprised me then, and even moreso now considering that they stuck with it.

It's people like Amir that have completely turned me off of ever owning a 360 or an HD DVD player. And this is coming from someone that used to be a very vocal MS supporter and a big part of the Xbox community. Hell MS flew me out to NYC to test out the 360 personally a couple months before it came out to get my opinion on it. I gave them my honest opinion and never heard back. I jumped into the PS3 fanclub shortly after.

[dobyblue]

Warner has no plans to do two encodes. They've done several days worth of testing using several sources and see no viable quality or financial reasoning behind doing 2 encodes. They've looked at the Paramount stuff on BD and HD DVD and even their differences were extremely minor. They used some PQ analysis tools as well as subjective viewing in a mastering environment on a 2k projector. The BD material was typically encoded with 10-12Mbps higher ABR's.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

They've looked at the Paramount stuff on BD and HD DVD and even their differences were extremely minor.

In this instance, I wouldn't say the differences are minor.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...1#post11344141

[WickyWoo]

Let's put it this way

"At this stage in the game, will spending tens of thousands on a seperate encode generate tens of thousands of dollars in ADDITIONAL sales"

The answer is no

They'll tweak for Blu after the death of HD and not before.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Let's put it this way

"At this stage in the game, will spending tens of thousands on a seperate encode generate tens of thousands of dollars in ADDITIONAL sales"

The answer is no

They'll tweak for Blu after the death of HD and not before.

That's about 5000 unit sales that would need to be lost? For some big titles, that could already be happen. And it will start happening more in the future.

Do they really need to do a separate encode? I would think the issue is always getting things to fit within the HD DVD constraints. Couldn't they always pass through a phase where they've got a good encoding that fits in BD specs but has to be worked on more for HD DVD?

EDIT: Anyone know what New Line is going to be doing given the big gap between releases? Seems a two phase approach would make a lot of sense for them.

[Neo65]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

That's about 5000 unit sales that would need to be lost? For some big titles, that could already be happen. And it will start happening more in the future.

Do they really need to do a separate encode? I would think the issue is always getting things to fit within the HD DVD constraints. Couldn't they always pass through a phase where they've got a good encoding that fits in BD specs but has to be worked on more for HD DVD?

EDIT: Anyone know what New Line is going to be doing given the big gap between releases? Seems a two phase approach would make a lot of sense for them.

The NEWLINE releases would be eagerly anticipated if they indeed went the high bitrate approach first for their BD releases.

Trying to keep the HD DVD cap so as to reuse same encode on both disks I can understand, but I'm seeing streams that are further bitrate reduced to the point where it is significantly much lower than what is needed to fit on HD DVD. Even if the end goal was for an optimal HD DVD encode of cap at 28Mbps, the streams generated in some cases are much lower than that. If we had the original YUV, the difference in an A/B comparison should be very obvious when you choose to go this low in your encoding quality, even if the inloop filtering and overlap smoothing is doing a great job of hiding artifacts. At this point, without the original, you no longer know if the frames have details that are smudged in a soft filter or if they are slightly out of focus from focal length chosen in camera. Unless you have the original frames.

The good thing about the NEWLINE releases being higher bitrate is that next year if the HD DVD releases are done, we now have better comparisons than Flags of Our Fathers on the issue of which is more accurate to the master (which has more distinct detail or is filtered less).

Does anyone know (or is in a position to say) if this is going to happen?

[Neo65]

Just returned from Tokyo. Through a colleague in Japan, I was introduced to someone who actively sells chips to the japanese CE companies, especially the video recording and HDM ones, so the subject of Toshiba and the format war came out.

My question was to him was why Toshiba would still launch a player when all of Japan CE was going to do BD, and his reply was two fold. 1. Toshiba felt they could launch first and enjoy one year's advantage. 2. Microsoft was offering a rebate to Toshiba on every player sold and the amount was enough to make Toshiba decide to proceed and ignore Sony's & BDA's offer to unify on a single format. 3. The offer to Viacom/Paramount came from Toshiba HQ, not just Toshiba US as some have claimed.

Now, not knowing how much truth there is in this, I would suppose this belongs in the realm of rumors, but he seemed pretty convinced about his information.

Any comments, insiders?

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by Neo65

The offer to Viacom/Paramount came from Toshiba HQ, not just Toshiba US as some have claimed.

I am not an insider and do not wish to break the status quo by intruding here (the insiders will have to comment on this bit) yet I believe that this makes much sense. It is a perfect excuse to whistle MS's tune via Japan de facto granting MS the right to deny direct involvement in the payoff.

Quite a smart move!

What comes around goes around!

Ciao,
Pro-B

[frank_t]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Because Toshiba paid them not to, just like with all the other missing titles.
Now that Nickerson aka "Captain HD DVD" is gone, things are going to be a lot better

one can only hope. frankly if tosh throwing money at warner to delay blu releases were true, then they should have picked titles more likely to have an impact, such as the harry potter series.

who knows?

[Neftoon]

Hello I have a question for paidgeek, Legends of the Fallhas just been announced for release in Australia in November on Blu-ray, I was wondering if you had seen the master or the encode for this? And if you have any comments on the quality?