What Is SD Blu-ray

[50strat54]

Originally Posted by Bluyoda

Diana Krall is my goddess.

I sat next to her piano bench as she was performing for music executives at Universal. Met her, picture and autograph.

Lunaria jazz club on Santa Monica Blvd. in West LA. I believe it was owned by Herb Alpert.

I was able to see her hands move across the piano keys. The reason I was sitting so close was I was sitting at the President's table and got that one seat totally by accident.

It was a very intimate performance and was fantastic.

[mdo7]

Originally Posted by davewhit

I know stupid question but just got my first Blu ray and says Sd i presume its not full quality and if so how does it compare to original dvds

Ah I see you randomly got your 1st SD-BD and given this post is from 2013. If any of you don't know what it is, well Wikipedia has explained that one here.

Originally Posted by jamespoo

i wish more stuff was just released in sd on blu-ray i hate when a blu-ray is released and its just upscaled to 1080p

would be nice to get some old tv shows on blu-ray i hated mpeg2

I would like to see some obscure and forgotten TV shows that don't have HD master source to get SD-BD release since having a bulky DVD cases can be burdensome (as in scratches, and disc rot) and take up space (have you ever seen a DVD case with 6+ DVDs in there, that can really sometime be annoying).

Anyway, I know the first post was done in 2013, and many years have passed since the first post, and in case you want to know how and what determine the show get a SD-BD release, here's ANN's Answerman (aka Justin Servakis) answer on SD-BD:

As DVD has declined and Blu-ray has stayed strong (if not gotten stronger, sales-wise), the publishers have slowly gotten less picky about what got upscale treatment and what didn't. For a long time, video nerds who wanted to keep Blu-ray releases as pristine as possible (myself included) tried to keep really old, analog masters away from getting the Blu-ray treatment altogether. We were hoping that shows that were shot on film would eventually get new, proper HD transfers from their original film elements. Sometimes that happened. Sometimes not. Some shows' film elements have been lost forever, or the shows are so niche that nobody can justify the expense of a proper remaster. Some series, especially OVAs, were only partially made on film, and all editing and post-production was done on video, so there never was a final, finished copy on film.

So, the third option is to keep the show in its native format: standard definition, 29.97 interlaced frames per second. By keeping the show in its native format, you can avoid all of the potentially destructive ways you'd have to process the video to upscale it. (You can make 24p SD-BDs too, of course.) You can use the better quality video encoding format used by Blu-ray. And you can squeeze a hell of a lot more on a single disc -- up to 24 hours of video! The consumer gets a good representation of the original master, and can process and display it however they see fit -- and most Blu-ray players do a pretty good job of blowing standard definition video up to HD. Blu-rays also have a hard coating that makes them more resistant to scratches than DVDs.

SD-BD has its disadvantages too. They're very difficult to produce, with as many moving parts as 8 or more regular discs. Quality checking takes forever. Some players do a better job upscaling than others, too: some look nearly as good as if I had upscaled the video before authoring, while others look a little jaggy. (Some of my early SD-BDs had compatibility issues with PlayStation 4s, but once I upgraded my authoring software that wasn't a problem anymore.)

For now, it seems that the format is best suited to long-running, niche shows. Ones that would fill a huge number of standard DVDs or upscaled Blu-rays, but might not sell a ton of copies, make a lot of sense on the format: a vastly lower disc count, lower manufacturing costs, and easy collectability are among the many upsides. The more volumes you split a series into, the lower the chance many fans will ever complete their collection. However, shorter shows don't save anywhere near as much space or money. Depending on the materials, it might make more sense just to upscale them and produce a "real" Blu-ray release.

Choosing which way to release a show is an inexact science. Every decision is made on a case-by-case basis, based on the quality of the masters, how well they upscale, how long the show is, how popular the show is with fans that will spend money, whether or not there's a dub, and any number of other factors. The Japanese licensor usually also gets a say in the matter. (For the record, the first SD-BD I know of was the Japanese release of God Mars.)

I hope this information help.