Shades of Blu - October 2006

[GoldenRedux]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

I think so.

Here's one recent article:

http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback145.html

Thanks. That's what I thought.

[PeterTHX]

DTS-MA is overkill.

Dolby TrueHD should be the format of choice. Better compatibility, more industry support, more efficient, and more encoding options.

[GoldenRedux]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

DTS-MA is overkill.

Dolby TrueHD should be the format of choice. Better compatibility, more industry support, more efficient, and more encoding options.

I don't agree with this at all. How do you come up with more industry support and more encoding options for TrueHD? The way I see it, there are no A/V receivers capable of decoding either codec today. On Blu-ray, at least, they both allow for the 'core' or legacy codecs to be encoded right into the lossless track for extraction. DTS-HD MA allows for scalability from low bit-rate lossy all the way up to lossless, which TrueHD doesn't, AFAIK. So one could presumably use less space using DTS-HD MA and encoding the dts core right into it. At least, this is my understanding of it. Perhaps someone else has a better understanding?

[CHGwin]

Since launch, many Blu-Ray titles have been criticized for poor video performance; most of the blame being placed on the MPEG-2 video codec Sony decided to support instead of the more advanced AVC and VC-1 codecs. With the release of Tears of the Sun, this point of blame was effectively dismissed as false (which D-Theater owners knew all along). The disc presented a deep and sharp picture, well beyond previous Blu-Ray releases.

While Sony has proved that MPEG-2 can still shine, Disney and Warner decided advanced codecs were the way to go, releasing titles this month in AVC and VC-1, respectively. Disney’s Eight Below was released in MPEG-4 H.264 (more commonly know as AVC) and was one of the most stunning titles of the month. Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is yet another beautiful VC-1 encode from Warner providing the realistic 3D effect that people have come to expect from high definition releases. Blu-Ray has delivered on all three fronts, showing consumers that it is here to stay.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by GoldenRedux

I don't agree with this at all. How do you come up with more industry support and more encoding options for TrueHD? The way I see it, there are no A/V receivers capable of decoding either codec today. On Blu-ray, at least, they both allow for the 'core' or legacy codecs to be encoded right into the lossless track for extraction. DTS-HD MA allows for scalability from low bit-rate lossy all the way up to lossless, which TrueHD doesn't, AFAIK. So one could presumably use less space using DTS-HD MA and encoding the dts core right into it. At least, this is my understanding of it. Perhaps someone else has a better understanding?

You are absolutely right - TrueHD does not have a core for passing through Dolby Digital, whereas DTS-HD MA has the ability to pass through not only the lossless audio but the full bit rate (1.5Mbps) of DTS as well.
It looks to me like more studios will support DTS-HD MA in Blu Ray than they will Dolby TrueHD, so I'm not sure how the latter can have more studio support.

Originally Posted by GoldenRedux

Doesn't DTS-HD MA do all the way up to 192/24 in 7.1?

DTS-HD MA does 192/24 at 5.1 and 96/24 at 7.1
Currently most dialogue and sound effects are recorded at 48/24 in the studio houses and in the field, so the next step will more than likely be 96/24.
The music business is far ahead of the film business in terms of lossless audio, recording at up to 384/32 digitally.
Therefore the DTS-HD MA at 96/24 in 7.1 will be completely lossless for sometime to come.
http://www.dtsonline.com/dts-hd/dts-...-and-hddvd.php

DTS-HD Master Audio is capable of delivering audio that is a bit-for-bit identical to the studio master. DTS-HD Master Audio delivers audio at super high variable bit rates -24.5 mega-bits per second (Mbps) on Blu-ray discs and 18.0 Mbps on HD-DVD - that are significantly higher than standard DVDs . This bit stream is so "fast" and the transfer rate is so "high" that it can deliver the Holy Grail of audio: 7.1 audio channels at 96k sampling frequency/24 bit depths that are identical to the original. With DTS-HD Master Audio, you will be able to experience movies and music, exactly as the artist intended: clear, pure, and uncompromised.

DTS know what they are doing, they are the only team so far that has been able to encode a 96/24 signal (limited to 5.1) onto a DVD-Video, like Peter Gabriel's "Play : The Videos"
They understand what higher end audio is about and through DVD introduced many people to how much better a DTS track can sound. They have the jump on audio through their DTS Entertainment record label and their mixing house and I have no doubt that when the first DTS-HD MA Blu-ray discs come out we'll hear nothing but praise.

[CHGwin]

If Don Eklund views posted in the forum of www.highdefdigest.com still represents Sony official position on MPEG-2, we - the fanboys of Blu-Ray - still have a way to go before Sony fully embraces AVC MPEG-4 ( and VC-1 ).

Despite his rethoric, facts are clear :
- there are major technological improvements in the latest codecs which were simply not available when MPEG-2 was conceived more than 10 years ago ( see www.ebu.ch/en/technical/trev/trev_home.html ). At equal bit rates, AVC and VC-1 will overall deliver a superior perceived image than MPEG-2
- to deliver same perceived image quality, MPEG-2 will required encoding rates of around 25 Mbps which is hardly possible on 25GB disks when using uncompressed PCM for audio.

This is as simple as that. All the other arguments put forward by Mr Eklund are just to confuse the issue, such as :

- MPEG-2 is a proven, old tenchology while the others are new. So what ? With this kind of reasoning, Sony would not have developed Blu-Ray but would have supported HD DVD instead !

- there are flaws with both VC-1 and AVC MPEG-4 because they are still new and were developed for low bit rates. Of course, the new codecs are not still perfect, but they will improve over time and if they can work well at low bit rates, they will work even better at high bit rates ! From all the feedback I have read in this Forum and in reviewers sites ( such highdefdigest.com ), the glorious Blu-Ray releases have been encoded either in VC-1 ( Warner ) or AVC-MPEG4 ( Buena Vista, Fox ). The only exception is Paramout M:III Mission Impossible encoded in MPEG-2... but all extras are on a second disk and audio is DD+. This seems to indicate that most of space was devoted to significantly higher bit rates than in previous BD / MPEG-2 releases.

- lower encoding efficiency of AVC MPEG-4 or VC-1 is a problem because it can take up to two weeks to complete encoding. Sorry, but then plan for it and start encoding a week earlier !!! More serioulsly, we - end users - are paying a premium price over HD DVD to get best quality out of BD disks and players. This production efficiency issue is an internal Sony issue not relevant to us.

The " gem " of the article was ithe statement regarding the poor master used for the " Fifth Element ". Everybody, I mean everybody, knew that the Fifth Element would be THE reference movie which would be used to judge Blu-Ray. And oops, Don Eklund candidly admits that there were dirt and scratches on the print... Where was he ? What was Sony QC doing ? It is then quite hard to be lectured on how A/B comparison between the codecs should be done... When you think of the hundreds of millions spent behind the technology and behind its promotion, that Sony was not able to use a perfect master of this reference movie is just an admission of...incompetence in my opinion. I think Sony fanstastic products and technology track record certainly deserves better.

[CHGwin]

If Don Eklund views posted in the forum of www.highdefdigest.com still represents Sony official position on MPEG-2, we - the fanboys of Blu-Ray - still have a way to go before Sony fully embraces AVC MPEG-4 ( and VC-1 ).

Despite his rethoric, facts are clear :
- there are major technological improvements in the latest codecs which were simply not available when MPEG-2 was conceived more than 10 years ago ( see www.ebu.ch/en/technical/trev/trev_home.html ). At equal bit rates, AVC and VC-1 will overall deliver a superior perceived image than MPEG-2
- to deliver same perceived image quality, MPEG-2 will require encoding rates of around 25 Mbps which is hardly possible on 25GB disks when using uncompressed PCM for audio.

This is as simple as that. All the other arguments put forward by Mr Eklund are just to confuse the issue, such as :

- MPEG-2 is a proven, old technology while the others are new. So what ? With this kind of reasoning, Sony would not have developed Blu-Ray but would have supported HD DVD instead !

- there are flaws with both VC-1 and AVC MPEG-4 because they are still new and were developed for low bit rates. Of course, the new codecs are not still perfect, but they will improve over time and if they can work well at low bit rates, they will work even better at high bit rates ! From all the feedback I have read in this Forum and in reviewers sites ( such highdefdigest.com ), the glorious Blu-Ray releases have been encoded either in VC-1 ( Warner ) or AVC-MPEG4 ( Buena Vista, Fox ). The only exception is Paramout M:III Mission Impossible encoded in MPEG-2... but all extras are on a second disk and audio is DD+. This seems to indicate that most of space was devoted to significantly higher bit rates than in previous BD / MPEG-2 releases.

- lower encoding efficiency of AVC MPEG-4 or VC-1 is a problem because it can take up to two weeks to complete encoding. Sorry, but then plan for it and start encoding a week earlier !!! More serioulsly, we - end users - are paying a premium price over HD DVD to get best quality out of BD disks and players. This production efficiency issue is an internal Sony issue not relevant to us.

The " gem " of the article was in the statement regarding the poor master used for the " Fifth Element ". Everybody, I mean everybody, knew that the Fifth Element would be THE first reference movie which would be used to judge Blu-Ray. And oops, Don Eklund candidly admits that there were dirt and scratches on the print... Where was he ? What was Sony QC doing ? It is then quite hard to be lectured on how A/B comparison between the codecs should be done... When you think of the hundreds of millions spent behind the technology and behind its promotion, that some people at Sony were not able to select and use a perfect master of this reference movie is just an admission of...incompetence in my opinion. I think Sony fanstastic products and technology track record certainly deserves better.

[Ascended_Saiyan]

The main reason people are complaining is because the masters are not in the best of shape and it's apparent. Sony should just release a couple titles, in VC-1 and AVC, where the master is in equal shape. This would prove their point. The Warner Bros. VC-1 releases on both formats are not mostly perfect, so why aren't these people complaining about that?

MPEG-2 is a proven, old technology while the others are new. So what ? With this kind of reasoning, Sony would not have developed Blu-Ray but would have supported HD DVD instead !

That's a good point, but Blu-ray uses all available codecs. I am happy with that. I don't even know why HD-DVD has the other codec listed in their format if they're not going to use them.

The only exception is Paramout M:III Mission Impossible encoded in MPEG-2... but all extras are on a second disk and audio is DD+. This seems to indicate that most of space was devoted to significantly higher bit rates than in previous BD / MPEG-2 releases.

It could suggest that they just wanted to put out a 2-disc set on both formats, because 2-disc set have been favored, on DVD, by consumers. It could be that the encoding could not fit on one HD-DVD disc so they wanted to keep things even by making the Blu-ray version a 2-disc set. BTW, MI:III, on Blu-ray, got an amazing review (PQ and AQ).

- lower encoding efficiency of AVC MPEG-4 or VC-1 is a problem because it can take up to two weeks to complete encoding. Sorry, but then plan for it and start encoding a week earlier !!!

Once a schedule has started it is not so easy to change them with large companies (it generally requires too many resources).

More serioulsly, we - end users - are paying a premium price over HD DVD to get best quality out of BD disks and players.

This is true for the standalone players, but not really for the movies. We pay extra for certain studio's titles (i.e. Disney and Fox). Disney has always charged more for their titles and Fox will be adding more BD-J functionality (which is better than iHD) and/or DTS-HD MA for the increase in price (still slightly under HD-DVD dual format discs). The other titles are comparable in price.

The " gem " of the article was in the statement regarding the poor master used for the " Fifth Element ". Everybody, I mean everybody, knew that the Fifth Element would be THE first reference movie which would be used to judge Blu-Ray. And oops, Don Eklund candidly admits that there were dirt and scratches on the print...

What does this have to do with the MPEG-2 codec?

When you think of the hundreds of millions spent behind the technology and behind its promotion, that some people at Sony were not able to select and use a perfect master of this reference movie is just an admission of...incompetence in my opinion.

It would seem that you do not grasp how difficult this process is. It is incredibly hard to spot dirt specs on the master (especially during a 100+ part process). It is the incredible detail of 1080p that brings this to the surface. But, they do need to put some extra steps in their process to control this issue.

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by Ascended_Saiyan

It is incredibly hard to spot dirt specs on the master (especially during a 100+ part process). It is the incredible detail of 1080p that brings this to the surface. But, they do need to put some extra steps in their process to control this issue.

If the dirt is embedded in the film element itself, either they have to use digital retouching, or get another print (or a section of a print) to transfer. The Fifth Element is Luc Besson's. And according to Sony what they got and transfered was a print (4th generation) (And as I mentioned once, the black dirt indicates either a print or interpositive). But since the interpositive (2nd generation) is the next element after the original negative (1rst generation), and The Fifth Element had several Digital effects, the true master might be that 2nd generation interpositive, made up of live action scenes exposed from the original camera negative, and scenes digitally rendered directly to interpositive stock. So that compound interpositive could be the only existing earliest element and now perhaps over there at France they are holding it for now (and the next best thing, an internegative (3rd generation) made from the interpositive) for mastering their own French made and distributed release.


Anyway you know that a 6th element Superbit always comes a few years after the Fifth Element DVD or BD It's elementary, dear Watson

[PeterTHX]

You are absolutely right - TrueHD does not have a core for passing through Dolby Digital, whereas DTS-HD MA has the ability to pass through not only the lossless audio but the full bit rate (1.5Mbps) of DTS as well.
It looks to me like more studios will support DTS-HD MA in Blu Ray than they will Dolby TrueHD, so I'm not sure how the latter can have more studio support.

From Dolby literature:

If your A/V receiver or processor has neither multichannel analog or digital inputs, but is equipped with 5.1-channel Dolby® Digital decoding and playback, you will still be able to enjoy 5.1-channel performance from next-generation optical players. Included within 7.1-channel multichannel Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD streams is a core 5.1 mix prepared by the content maker that is used when the player is set for 5.1-channel mode. After playback audio signals have been mixed in the player, the PCM signal can be encoded to a Dolby Digital signal and output from the player via S/PDIF (optical or coaxial) to your connected Dolby Digital A/V receiver or processor.

Seeing as both Warner and Universal support Dolby TrueHD and only Fox supports DTS-MA, 2 beats one. Paramount has recently begun dropping DTS tracks from their BDs, so it looks as if adding THD would be the next logical step.

Sharp, Sony PS3, and all HD DVDs support THD. So far no player announced supports DTS-MA (other than the future Panasonic upgrade that also adds, you guessed it, Dolby TrueHD).

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

From Dolby literature:


Seeing as both Warner and Universal support Dolby TrueHD and only Fox supports DTS-MA, 2 beats one. Paramount has recently begun dropping DTS tracks from their BDs, so it looks as if adding THD would be the next logical step.

Sharp, Sony PS3, and all HD DVDs support THD. So far no player announced supports DTS-MA (other than the future Panasonic upgrade that also adds, you guessed it, Dolby TrueHD).

That's not true - the PS3 supports "DTS Digital Sound" which includes DTS, DTS:ES, DTS 96/24, DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master Audio.

EDIT - on further reading it appears that the Digital Surround goes up to the DTS 96/24. I'm going to e-mail DTS about that, but if that's correct then it means that you'll need an HDMI 1.3 receiver to get DTS-HD MA through the PS3.

Eagle Vision are also releasing DTS-HD MA on their live releases, four so far I think?

Sony and Disney, once the HDMI 1.3 specs are in place, will no doubt make the move to DTS-HD MA as well.

StudioCanal are releasing all of their titles in Europe with DTS-HD MA.

[dobyblue]

As a follow up here's an email from DTS' Scott Esterson.

The early units on the market do not reflect our new logos. DTS was not finished making them. We gave the first next generation players old logos to use.
They will switch over to new logos in time. You need to look at the manufacturer specifications.

[Deciazulado]

Will they sell DTS stick-on logos for when we upgrade the Panny?