first hd-dvdplayer at amazon for 499$

[Shadowself]

Originally Posted by James Morrow

... it means, AVI, that the effective vertical resolution of 1080i has to be reduced to around 540 lines in order to avoid serious interlacing artefacts - i.e., 1080i has around half the vertical resolution of 1080p, equating to around 1920 by 540 pixel resolution, with non-square pixels. This is why 1080p is so much better than either 720p or 1080i, and why Blu-Ray at 1080p is capable of much higher quality than HD-DVD at 720p/1080i ...

So are you saying each individual 540 line field (two fields per frame) of the interlaced pair is exactly the same and just offset vertically by one pixel? Thus the 1080i actually has only 540 unique lines of information with them being effectively upper and lower half refreshed on an alternating 30 Hz basis?

I don't remember this being in the spec. I'm trying to find my copy, but I've misplaced it. ... Guess I'll have to download it and print it off again then read through it.

[James Morrow]

Roughly, SS. Don't forget that interlacing is an old technology from the analogue domain, and that the odd and even fields are normally generated alternately at different points in time (which is what causes one of the main motion artefacts of interlacing - compare the fluidity of motion capture at 720i60 with that at 720p60, for example). Interlacing doubles the temporal resolution at the expense of roughly halving the spatial resolution.

The primary spatio-temporal artefact produced by not reducing the spatial resolution significantly is something usually called "twittering." It is essentially a spatio-temporal form of aliasing in which temporal information is converted into spatial information. Imagine a small bright feature that features on two adjacent lines. As only one of these lines is displayed at a time, the visual effect will be of a smaller bright object jumping up and down at the field rate. Just as a flashing light is very noticeable (a function of how our visual system works), a jumping object such as this is also very visible - and very annoying. You can also see something of this effect with over-enthusiastic de-interlacers causing thin horizontal lines to "quiver." It certainly doesn't give that feeling a smoothness, solidity and realism that we want from high quality video.

The solution with interlaced material is to filter the image (essentially one is applying anti-aliasing filters) so that it doesn't change too much from line to line. Yes, it's all a bit of a compromise - but then that's interlacing for you. Hope this makes some sense ... ;^>

[Shadowself]

Originally Posted by James Morrow

Roughly, SS. ... Hope this makes some sense ... ;^>

This mostly makes some sense. I cut my teeth on NTSC SIT (silicon intensified targets) cameras in the early 70s and even worked with analog systems with scan rates as high as 1325 non-interlaced lines with aspect ratios ranging from 1:1 to 2:1.

True, for scenes scanned using a camera which utilizes 1080i (or any interlaced format, even 480i) as the capture mode, odd lines will capture not only spacially different information but also temporaly different information than even lines. (The old NTSC standard even had a couple of half lines thrown in. ) This can indeed cause anomalies with very high spatial resolution scenes or very high temporal resolution scenes (or even worse: both spatially and temporaly high rate scenes).

However, your explanation seems more geared toward what an upconverting system might do (such as a system upconverting from 1080i to 1080p/60) rather than the information in the transmitted 1080i signal itself. You seem to imply this is a way for upconverted displays to eliminate any propagated anomalies. If so then the original 1080i would still have the combination of temporally and spatially different lines -- all 1080 of them. This is then just spatially filtered before, or in the process of, upconverting to 1080p.

Is this what you initially intended?

[James Morrow]

... Making Progress ...

Not quite, SS.

As an extreme example, if you think of the maximum vertical frequency that can be displayed as alternating black and white lines, with a progressive display of sufficient bandwidth to display it you get, surprise, surprise, black and white lines. Contrast this with what happens when using an interlaced display. With full bandwidth you get an entirely black field alternating with an entirely white one - hardly a faithful representation of what you put in! However, if you reduce the verticle resolution by around half before displaying the signal (or before even storing or transmitting it) you get an all grey image - which is a fair representation of how the original black and white signal would appear on a progressive display of the same number of pixels if the vertical resolution was half that required to fuly exploit all the pixels.

Similarly, a bright object which is only one line (one pixel) tall and which appears in only the odd or the even field will appear and disappear at the frame rate (typically 24, 25 or 30Hz for 1080i) as each field pair goes by - flashing on and off like a beacon. Roughly halving the vertical resolution solves this problem.

Of course, advanced processing techniques can be used to generate a progressive signal from an interlaced one, interpolating, reconstructing, estimating, maximising detail, etc. - but it's much better to start with a progressive signal in the first place - and judiciously apply processing to maximise the quality of this inherently relatively artefact-free source instead. There's plenty that can be done with true 1080p material to improve the viewing experience if someone wants to go to town on the electronics ... :^>

[James Morrow]

In practice, probably the easiest way to limit the signal bandwidth in an optical or similar system is to reduce the resolution of the optics before the image gets anywhere near the sensor - using a nice fat point-spread-function. An elliptical PSF - with the major axis vertically aligned - would do the trick, but a simpler circular PSF would achieve the same result - except that both the horizontal and the vertical resolution would be severely reduced - 1920 by 1080i would end up with an effective resolution of around 960 by 540 pixels - more a case of bye definition ...

To summarise, whilst p is largely artefact-free, i provides free artefacts - in fact, with i it's a case of buy one, get one free in the artefact shop. Where 1080p can be considered to be progress, 1080i is also progress - just in the wrong direction ...

[iceman]

Take a look at our CES 2006 report preview thread for a few comments about Blu-ray vs HD-DVD pricing and some other comments: http://forums.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=1203

[thunderhawk]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

No you're trying to play the 1080p card. Save that for a rookie. There are plenty of scalers that'll take a 1080i signal and bump it to 1080p. Do you really think peope give a rip about the extra bug ridden stuff in the Pioneer?

Very true. However consider that this time, the content makes consumers decide.

• Blu-ray Disc got the most studios -> broadest choice conserning pre-recorded discs
• Blu-ray Disc got the most companies -> broadest choice conserning players, recorders and media.

Besides what happend with the computer business, I've got another example too. Why didn't Nintendo win the console war with their GameCube? It was cheaper.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by thunderhawk

Very true. However consider that this time, the content makes consumers decide.

• Blu-ray Disc got the most studios -> broadest choice conserning pre-recorded discs
• Blu-ray Disc got the most companies -> broadest choice conserning players, recorders and media.

Besides what happend with the computer business, I've got another example too. Why didn't Nintendo win the console war with their GameCube? It was cheaper.

Content helps but it's the penultimate choice. Consumers respond content only after finding the desired product meets their pricing needs.

Despite having a "bit" more media and a few more players Blu Ray is still more expensive than HD DVD

Macintosh is more expensive than your garden variety PC and surprise they don't have a commanding lead.

Consoles don't follow the same trend because gaming is a niche.

simply give me three areas in which a the more expensive product won out and got critical mass of the average consumer.

Everyone here knows the truth. Unless Blu Ray comes way down in price they've just opened the door for HD DVD to survive and thrive.

[Shadowself]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Content helps but it's the penultimate choice. Consumers respond content only after finding the desired product meets their pricing needs.

I radically disagree. I'm sure you've heard of certain actors making outrageous sums of money because the studios new they were "bankable", i.e., people would pay to see them in just about anything.

I'm sure you've heard of how much Howard Stern is getting to be on Sirius satellite radio. The backers are certain content is everything. People are clearly not buying Sirius radio systems because they are less expensive than the standard radios and paying a Sirius subscription is obvously more expensive than the free land based radio stations. Content must the the reason.

I'm sure you've never heard of the study about doppler radar and local TV stations. The providers of doppler radar sets to local TV stations went into each local market and offered an exclusive to the TV stations. While they offered it to all they made it clear that only one station/bidder would get it for a finite period of time.

What happened was quite dramatic. Which ever station won the bidding and got the exclusive doppler radar became the #1 local news (and weather) broadcast. It did not matter if they were #1, #2, #3 or even #4 before they got the doppler system. Once they started showing it (content again!) their news/weather program became the #1 broadcast in viewership. And to top it off... each and every one of them maintained that #1 ranking for several years after their exclusive deals ran out and the competing stations got their own doppler sets.

Why do all the online music stores go out of their way to claim they have XX million songs? Why don't they go with a very small selection of "hit" songs? Clearly a broad range of content is important.

Absolutely. Content does matter. Very often it is the most important issue.

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Despite having a "bit" more media and a few more players Blu Ray is still more expensive than HD DVD

A "bit" more media? Last time I counted the ratio was about three to one in favor of Blu-ray. (Though at any given moment with every announcement by the competing sides this ratio changes.)

The first few systems announced for Blu-ray are more expensive than some of the first few systems announced for HD-DVD. This is true. However, there are many more manufacturers for Blu-ray which have not announced. It is much too soon to tell what they will say their pricing will be. It is very possible one or more of them will decide to take on this $500 loss leader.

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Macintosh is more expensive than your garden variety PC and surprise they don't have a commanding lead.

This has been debunked so many times in the past five or six years as to be ludicrous. I can go to Apple's web site and Dell's web site and configure systems with virtually identical capabilities and have an Apple box which costs less than the Dell box. I can also configure boxes to get the opposite result.

The reasons most people go with the Windows based systems are primarily two: 1) They've use Windows boxes at work. 2) The software they want is not on Macs (or shows up later on Macs). [Oh, there's that pesky "content" thing again!] (((I know, Mac fanatics will say that you really don't need 50 different word processors, you only need two or three great ones. However, when people hear there are over 100,000 applications for Windows and only about 20,000 applications for Mac, they choose Windows.)))

And before you say you can build your own Windows/Linux box for less than any Mac... You would be killing your own argument. Why are not most people building their own computers? On average it would certainly cost them less. If price is the only important thing, why are they buying more expensive boxes from HP, Dell, IBM/Lenovo, Apple, etc? Seems like price is NOT the most important thing after all.

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Consoles don't follow the same trend because gaming is a niche.

Then why are all the pundits claiming the first real battle for the digital home is not really HD-DVD versus Blu-ray or Microsoft versus Apple or cable versus the telcos but rather Xbox 360 verus PS3? What brand new computer model sells, within the first week, the number of items that either Xbox 360 did or the PS3 is expected to? Why is it that people will buy gaming boxes rather than PCs (oh, there's that content thing yet again)?

Originally Posted by hmurchison

simply give me three areas in which a the more expensive product won out and got critical mass of the average consumer.

1. iPod versus many, many other MP3 players
2. Windows versus Linux
3. MS-Office versus virtually any other office suite
4. Ford/Chevroley/Honda/Toyota verus Fiat/Yugo
5. Starbucks versus the local coffee shop

I could go on, but then you only asked for three.

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Everyone here knows the truth. Unless Blu Ray comes way down in price they've just opened the door for HD DVD to survive and thrive.

Blu-ray does not have to come way down in price. Most of the vendors have not even announced systems. Thus, for most vendors, the prices are not even know. Therefore it makes no sense to say the price has to come down.

As I've said before IF the BDA systems are all twice the price of the HD-DVD systems then HD-DVD will have a significant opening. However, I don't see this happening.

[digital.view]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Funny how I'm the Doofus yet you cannot dispute that

1. $499 buys you a HD DVD player but doesn't get you close to Blu Ray


You all know what I know...the cheaper format usually prevails. If HD DVD is $499 now...ask yourself what happens when the Chinese start making them?

The "doofus" part is that is that you are exaggerating the point that "the cheaper format *usually* prevails." That's fine if all things were equal. But they are not. Thus, we have a different situation today.

1) Consumers are more knowledgeable today than they were in the past (thanks to the internet). Today, in your run-of-the-mill Best Buy...all a sales person has to tell a causal consumer is that Blu-Ray has more space and is HD capable video disc. Most consumers know about "disc space" and "HD."
2) Paying more is ok for consumers as long as they know they are getting something in return; pay a little more for what you get. I mean that in a general sense. We can quible about the price (percentages) all day long. Lets leave that to the marketers.
3) Just using a price point of $499 as the ONLY factor is narrow-minded. Why even pay $499 dollars when you can wait for the Blu-Ray player/recorders to come down in price and you get the best of *many* worlds: price, flexibility, industry support, content variety, higher capacity.

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Unless Blu Ray comes way down in price they've just opened the door for HD DVD to survive and thrive.

This is true. But that's *IF* Sony (and other manufactures) don't drop their prices eventually. Markets do best by targeting the lowest common denominator. They know this and it's in their best interest to get the price down. I mean, heck. Even the first DVD players were thousands of dollars. But they had to get the price down as more and more people became interested in the DVD format. Once the consumer saw with their own eyes what they were getting they were willing to be the first into the market. Thus, the price came down each and every month.

The goal for electronic manufactures is to get Blu-Ray players around the same price as current DVD players (eventually). Yep....in a 4-5 years...imagine....$120.00 for a Sony Blu-Ray player at Best Buy!!!

[Blue]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Content helps but it's the penultimate choice. Consumers respond content only after finding the desired product meets their pricing needs.

So that is why the El cassette failed along with numerous other ideas - like the min disk etc I'm certain consumers will be sucked in by slick talking salespeople, but I know a number of non technical all are aware there a different formats - although that is all they understand have no intention of going near it until they know which one will last

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Despite having a "bit" more media and a few more players Blu Ray is still more expensive than HD DVD

based on your bit can I have a bit of payrise! Columbia Tristar, Fox and Disney (I suspect MGM) exclusive BD and you refer to them as a bit - well guys you heard it here the understatement of 2006.
Diito for hardware

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Macintosh is more expensive than your garden variety PC and surprise they don't have a commanding lead.

Microsoft does and it's a BIG bit more expensive than LINUX (might have something to with the number apps (movies) available for it

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Consoles don't follow the same trend because gaming is a niche.

I agree they are a niche - just one mighty big niche - where the tail is almost wagging the dog

Originally Posted by hmurchison

simply give me three areas in which a the more expensive product won out and got critical mass of the average consumer.

Well a cheap car manufacturer left the car market in Aus and I think many other countries because their sales were low.
O/S already covered
CD players over LP (sure it's now the other way around)

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Everyone here knows the truth. Unless Blu Ray comes way down in price they've just opened the door for HD DVD to survive and thrive.

I agree the price must come down but we had better wait until we can buy them as that is the real price of what they cost us. A price of a virtual player announced on Amazon doesn't count. I suspect because of the manafacturing power of the blu ray camp prices wall dramatically - they may even start to float up a bit after the war is won.