Ask questions to Blu-ray BD-J insider "Talkstr8t"

[DaViD Boulet]

For ATSC: 1920 x 1080/59.94/P would require double the bandwidth or double the compression ratio (or a mix of the two) of 1920 x 1080/59.94/I.

No it wouldnt.

As as been said (again and again), doubling refresh/frame/field-rate does not also double the bandwidth needed for a *compressed* signal.

This is because compression efficiency improves as frame rate increases because of the greater temporal redundancy (ie, as frames or fields get closer to each other in real time, they are more and more similar and so compress more efficiently). Also, progressive frames are much more efficient to compress than interlaced fields. For both of these reasons, you don't need twice the bandwidth for a comrpessed 1080p60 stream as you needed for a 1080i60.

Linear digital video... yes, you need twice the bandwidth. But not for the transmission of a compressed video signal.

Another problem, most plants (even today) are still predominately NTSC (440 X 480/59.94/I) and requires they move between (splicer [commercial breaks, news, etc.]) 440 X 480/59.94 and 1920 x 1080/59.94

True.

Bad "edits" were often a problem even with SD DVD in generating a clean 480p output from MPEG decoders.

So far so good with clean 1080p24 streams from film-based BDs. But it will be interesting to see over time if we get poorly edited "1080p" video as well (T3 mastered in 1080i60 isn't a good sign).

[RUR]

Talk,

Manufacturing rep for Denon, DenonJeff, has today posted the following over on AVS in response to a query, asking when Denon will make a BD-Live player:

Regarding Profile 2.0, it is currently a 'paper specification' and is not expected to be 'final' til later this year, with that said it would be premature for us to release a player based on a spec that can evolve further.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...9#post12977349

Ideally, you could respond to clarify. Thanks!

[frank_t]

Talk,

I think this may have been addressed, but I can't find it.

Is it possible with BD-J titles have a bookmark persist after hitting "stop" during movie playback? For example, I shut down my PS3 for the night, come back the next evening to finish up the movie, but I can't resume from where I left off.

I find this highly annoying and am wondering why it's not possible - certainly given the PS3s persistent storage abilities, shouldn't it be possible to keep track of these things?

Thanks in advance

[Talkstr8t]

Originally Posted by frank_t

Is it possible with BD-J titles have a bookmark persist after hitting "stop" during movie playback? For example, I shut down my PS3 for the night, come back the next evening to finish up the movie, but I can't resume from where I left off.

It would be difficult for a player to architect this feature to work on all titles, but it would be fairly trivial for a title to be authored to auto-resume itself (on any player). Weeds 2 (and perhaps others) do this automatically, remembering what episodes you've watched.

- Talk

[Uxi]

Have studios just not given priority to auto-resume? I am amazed that both sides in the format war seem to have largely ignored what so many of us took for granted with DVD.

[Rob Zuber]

My parents have difficulty with DVD players and the internet because every freaking DVD and web site has its own unique user interface. I'd love to see a player option that defaulted every single Blu-ray disk to the same exact default simple user interface. This interface would allow the user to start the movie and select which scene to start at. Nothing more. Pipe dream?

[blindcat87]

An interface like that along with my long dreamed of prioritization of audio tracks setting would go a long way to making players much more visually impaired accessible. I would love to have this available if it is workable.

Chris

Originally Posted by Rob Zuber

My parents have difficulty with DVD players and the internet because every freaking DVD and web site has its own unique user interface. I'd love to see a player option that defaulted every single Blu-ray disk to the same exact default simple user interface. This interface would allow the user to start the movie and select which scene to start at. Nothing more. Pipe dream?

[Ian_S]

Hi Talk,

There's some 'discussion' going on elsewhere about the possibility of a 'Profile 2.1' on Blu-ray that would include HDi...

On a scale of 0 to 100 for probability, would such a move score a definite 0?

I'm guessing Sun would be rather upset were such a scenario on the cards?

[DaViD Boulet]

could HDi even be introduced at this point with so much non HDi hardware out in the field? How would an HDi-driven BD play in those legacy players?

[WickyWoo]

Talk, building on the menu quesiton

Could a "simple menu" option be built in that would essentially act like a basic HTML file for fast loading? Could this be implemented in java without a huge load, or would it require specialized hardware to be made standard?

For blindcat situation, would it be practical to build in a text to speech program to read that kind of menu? Make it something very easy and fast to implement so it's done on all discs? This would also satisfy the "just want to watch the movie" crowd

[frank_t]

Originally Posted by blindcat87

An interface like that along with my long dreamed of prioritization of audio tracks setting would go a long way to making players much more visually impaired accessible. I would love to have this available if it is workable.

Chris

Prioritization of audio tracks would be so choice!

Didn't we send something to Paid about this, at least for PS3 users?

[upnorthsox]

How about a viewer profile that would contain your preferences, it would be fairly simple to implement as long as you had a standardized framework from which to work from.

[Mr_Bester]

Originally Posted by Ian_S

Hi Talk,

There's some 'discussion' going on elsewhere about the possibility of a 'Profile 2.1' on Blu-ray that would include HDi...

On a scale of 0 to 100 for probability, would such a move score a definite 0?

I'm guessing Sun would be rather upset were such a scenario on the cards?

Here is Talks answer from a few days ago.

Originally Posted by Talkstr8t

I see no practical possibility of HDi becoming part of the Blu-ray spec. It's very feasible to take the best concepts from HDi and support them as BD-J libraries, which would require no modifications of existing players and could be used by those studios who might want to.

[blindcat87]

You know, I hadn't thought about how much easier implementing text to speech in that sort of scheme might be. Because full, on the fly PC TTS is so extremely resource intensive, I tend to forget that there are easier forms for simpler situations. The alternate open source iPod firmware RockBox has added speech, users have to use a separate application to prerecord sound files so that song titles and such will be read, but all of the menu and settings info including volume level and such are read by the firmware's speech package.

Something like that with access to the basics would be amazing if it is implementable.

Chris

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Talk, building on the menu quesiton

Could a "simple menu" option be built in that would essentially act like a basic HTML file for fast loading? Could this be implemented in java without a huge load, or would it require specialized hardware to be made standard?

For blindcat situation, would it be practical to build in a text to speech program to read that kind of menu? Make it something very easy and fast to implement so it's done on all discs? This would also satisfy the "just want to watch the movie" crowd

[WickyWoo]

Doctor Sbaitso wasn't pretty back in the day but it was only a hundred KB or so. I'm sure anything may be better than the guesswork they're doing now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Sbaitso

[blindcat87]

Yeah, even the rudimentary stuff in small gadgets for the blind sound better than that now. There are PDAs for the blind now with better and smoother on the fly speech than I had on the first computer I installed speech on back around 1998 or 99 before I really needed it. The speech on Rock Box is better than that package actually.

I wish that more speech packages would use the L&H Realspeak voices. I like their Jennifer voice, very realistic, but it will crash my PC with 1 Gb of RAM if I try to make Window Eyes use it. Combination of the resource intensiveness and that Window Eyes is not optimized to use the voice package.

Honestly, though I don't care how realistic the voice is as long as it works and is understandable. After a couple of years of using speech, a blind user can understand it at a rate that sounds like gibberish to most people.

You are right, any added functionality would be an improvement over guesswork and trying to memorize menus. I have hundreds of DVDs and am getting closer to 100 BDs now, even I can't really keep that many different menu patterns in my head along with memorizing all of the separate remotes for my equipment.

Chris

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Doctor Sbaitso wasn't pretty back in the day but it was only a hundred KB or so. I'm sure anything may be better than the guesswork they're doing now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Sbaitso

[Talkstr8t]

Originally Posted by blindcat87

An interface like that along with my long dreamed of prioritization of audio tracks setting would go a long way to making players much more visually impaired accessible. I would love to have this available if it is workable.

These are some great ideas, but only the studios have the ability to make them happen - I'd suggest posting these in Paidgeek's and Fox Insider's threads...

- Talk

[Talkstr8t]

Originally Posted by Ian_S

There's some 'discussion' going on elsewhere about the possibility of a 'Profile 2.1' on Blu-ray that would include HDi...

Where's the discussion? I'm happy to debunk.

On a scale of 0 to 100 for probability, would such a move score a definite 0?

Or less!

[Talkstr8t]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Could a "simple menu" option be built in that would essentially act like a basic HTML file for fast loading? Could this be implemented in java without a huge load, or would it require specialized hardware to be made standard?

Some titles are authored with HDMV menus but support BD-J content for particular features, which prevents startup delays while still allowing more compelling content. It does mean the menues themselves may be less interesting, however. In time startup delays will be minimized due to player and authoring improvements, at which point the choice between HDMV and BD-J will be less obvious at start time.

[WickyWoo]

Some titles are authored with HDMV menus but support BD-J content for particular features, which prevents startup delays while still allowing more compelling content. It does mean the menues themselves may be less interesting, however. In time startup delays will be minimized due to player and authoring improvements, at which point the choice between HDMV and BD-J will be less obvious at start time.

Sorry you were answering a fragment there I think I was asking specifically for use with a hypothetical text-to-speech module

better phrasing

Could a text to speech program be written in java, that could read this hypothetical HDMV simple menu (basically the player is generating the menu from an actual text type file it's reading), and runsmoothly on the average blu deck or would something that complex have to be done in a hardware device?