Please forgive me for asking

[brian lawson]

I see a lot of hd-dvd bashing here and blu-ray promoting which is obviously to be expected. but what i am not sure of, and have spent some time trying to figure out is what exactly makes blu-ray better than hd-dvd from a purely technical standpoint. keeping the studio and hardware backing out of the argument, what exactly makes blu-ray a superior format from a purely technological standpoint.

i dont know much about the technologies compared to the average person here...all i know is the following: please tell me what i'm missing

both are capable of 1920x1080p
both have interactive features
both have the enough room to fit very long movies
hd-dvd has a higher yield rate and is cheaper to manufacture

what else is there that makes blu-ray superior? i own a ps3 and am very disappointed with the lack of game support and though i know everyone says more are coming, i am worried about the latest trends in the industry. i am not a bluray fanatic and really dont care about sony or toshiba enough to be a fanatic fan of either format. i would like to know what the superiority is that every one boasts about before dolling out more money on a format to me looks to be in legitimate jeopardy of at least not winning outright.

[Terjyn]

both have the enough room to fit very long movies

This is not enough. The picture quality on a Blu-Ray is higher because it has more space and faster streaming.

You could put 6 hours of data on a VHS tape too, but it looked like complete crap, even compared to a 2 hour VHS recording.

Same concept.

[Robmx]

If HD DVD is the exact same as BLU then wheres the lossless audio for Transformers, Harry Potter and others ? If they both are the exact same then why is BLU better quality time and time again.....

People don't mind paying more when they get quality.....

[Musashi]

Originally Posted by brian lawson

hd-dvd has a higher yield rate and is cheaper to manufacture

Not true.
Blu-ray's yield rates are definitely higher than anything Amir might've told you. While I don't know the exact yield rates on HDDVD30s or BD50s, I do know that BD50 has a much higher yield than (HD)DVD flipper discs, which has resulted in Blu-ray being on the average, cheaper to press and have lower street prices. Proof: Look for almost any Warner Bros hi-def film on amazon and compare; Blu-ray version will be less.

[Iceman_II]

Another thing no one has touched on is the bandwidth, BD has higher bandwidth than HD-DVD

[Anthony P]

both have the enough room to fit very long movies

DVD also has enough space for long movies. There is a reason the new HP with the same content will be 2 disks for HD DVD and one for BD. 30GB is enough if all you want is crap. Just look at the movies, why do you think the BDs have higher PQ, why do you think most BDs have lossles sound while HD DVDs have DD?

You also miss that BD has a much higher BW wich means they don't need to bitstarve the video and limit audio even more then the capacity issue

hd-dvd has a higher yield rate and is cheaper to manufacture

not at all. Obviously none of us have exact numbers, but if yioeld was an issue then why are BDs and HD DVD priced the same from replicators? As for cheaper to manufacture, how do you know? It is an illusion based on Toshiba willing to subsedize their player while BD manufacturers maintaining healthy margins.

[brian lawson]

thanks for the replies...as i figured, there's a lot i have yet to learn. what is lossless audio for example.

is there a link that somebody can provide that lists the undisputed technological differences between the 2. it's all a little overwhelming.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by brian lawson

both are capable of 1920x1080p
both have interactive features
both have the enough room to fit very long movies
hd-dvd has a higher yield rate and is cheaper to manufacture

- both are capable of 1920x1080p
Blu-ray can have that in much higher bit rate. Much higher.

- both have interactive features
Blu-ray have more and have potential for even more. And the space to store them.

- both have the enough room to fit very long movies
have you checked the official specs? Blu-ray stores significantly longer movies.

- hd-dvd has a higher yield rate and is cheaper to manufacture
Not true. Is far as i see its the same or opposite.


ALSO:
Blu-ray is cheaper per GB
Blu-ray have way better transfer rate
Blu-ray have more compatibility for computer storage. Thats proven already - higher speeds and free blank space in less layers
Blu-ray have more secure data storage capabilities

.. and many more i cant think of now

[sohjonn]

Originally Posted by brian lawson

I see a lot of hd-dvd bashing here and blu-ray promoting which is obviously to be expected. but what i am not sure of, and have spent some time trying to figure out is what exactly makes blu-ray better than hd-dvd from a purely technical standpoint. keeping the studio and hardware backing out of the argument, what exactly makes blu-ray a superior format from a purely technological standpoint.

i dont know much about the technologies compared to the average person here...all i know is the following: please tell me what i'm missing

both are capable of 1920x1080p
both have interactive features
both have the enough room to fit very long movies
hd-dvd has a higher yield rate and is cheaper to manufacture

what else is there that makes blu-ray superior? i own a ps3 and am very disappointed with the lack of game support and though i know everyone says more are coming, i am worried about the latest trends in the industry. i am not a bluray fanatic and really dont care about sony or toshiba enough to be a fanatic fan of either format. i would like to know what the superiority is that every one boasts about before dolling out more money on a format to me looks to be in legitimate jeopardy of at least not winning outright.

For sure, the capacity of BD disks plays a role. You have to think long term, you may think 30gb dl hd-dvd discs are enough, but they may not be 1-2 years down the road. Also, when it comes to data storage, you can never get enough space. One day we'll go beyond the dl 50gb discs of today, but with BD we can prolong that better than the 30gb HDdvd discs. If you've already got a PS3 use it enjoy the movies while you wait.

BD is here to stay, because of the PS3; and i don't see the ps3 die-ing in terms of sales, it will continue to sell as well as, if not better than, the PS2.

another point about BD-players and HD-DVD players, they're only beneficial to those that have Hi-Def television sets. Those with regular CRT tv's won't notice much of a difference. However, the PS3 markets to everyone who has a TV set, whether they're standard def, or hi-def, so you can see that the PS3 is independent on those factors. Hope i've helped answering your question, have a nice day.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by brian lawson

both are capable of 1920x1080p
both have interactive features
both have the enough room to fit very long movies
hd-dvd has a higher yield rate and is cheaper to manufacture

See what happens when you turn on PiP. You probably won't see 1080p from HD DVD then (the PiP is 480i/60).

BD-J should prove to be able to offer more varied features over time. Full applications, and not simple IME.

With TL51 now HD DVD has enough. But, it sure took enough time, and we don't know whether it will actually get used.

The yield for BD50 is considerable better than for HD DVD combos. Since the combo is the form many new releases come on, and new release are key, what does that do to the equation?

As for HD DVD bashing: This is a Blu-ray support site. There are plenty of sites to go extoll the virtues of HD DVD. This is not one of them.


Gary

[lch]

Originally Posted by brian lawson

what is lossless audio for example.

lossless audio is just like wav file, raw not processed, where lossy audio is like mp3 when you take away most of the information which result in some song sounding monotonous.

[lch]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

With TL51 now HD DVD has enough. But, it sure took enough time, and we don't know whether it will actually get used.

using their words, TL51 is 'science fiction'

[ClaytonMG]

Originally Posted by brian lawson

thanks for the replies...as i figured, there's a lot i have yet to learn. what is lossless audio for example.

Lossless audio is basically where you will get sound identical to the studio master. Up until now, we have been seeing compressed audio tracks. But with Blu-Ray, there's enough storage space to include PCM audio tracks. There's also (obviously) room for variable bitrate lossless tracks like DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD. The difference is (and this is why you'll never see PCM on HD-DVD) with PCM you get a constant extremely high bitrate that takes up a lot of space on the disc but is worth it. With DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD, they have programs to look over the soundtrack to find parts that don't need the constant bitrate. Here's a little comparison for you:
DVD -
DTS: 1.5mbps for full bitrate and 768kbps for the norm

Dolby: For Digital, 448kbps for full bitrate and 384kbps for the lower rates. For 2.0 it's 192kbps or 128kbps

PCM - 6.9mbps on your average 24-bit tracks, 4.6mbps on your 16-bit tracks.

Dolby TrueHD: Ussually around 2.0mbps to 1mbps. Kind of like the variable bitrate MP3's.

So you can see, the bitrate on these uncompressed tracks are WAY higher than anything on DVD. Hopefully I got this right and someone will fill in the holes for what I missed.

[Beta-guy]

Originally Posted by brian lawson

thanks for the replies...as i figured, there's a lot i have yet to learn. what is lossless audio for example.

is there a link that somebody can provide that lists the undisputed technological differences between the 2. it's all a little overwhelming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...hnical_Details

is that what your looking for?

[Blue]

The math is quite simple to prove the better format.
HD-DVD max bandwidth is 30Mb/s (video & audio)

That means allowing for nothing else including menu's, extras etc the max length film is 130min (assuming 30Mb/s constant which is most probably not going to the case, but add menu's and extras on and HD-DVD runs out of steam at the 110- 120 min mark, where as Blu is still going strong at over 200 minutes.

This means for movies over 2hrs (which there are plenty) picture quality has to be compromised. There are not many movies that go well over 3hrs.

Blu-ray can also handle much higher bandwidths 48Mb/s.
Basically the higher the bandwidth the better the picture quality.

The audio is much the same, the Blu-ray specs allow for much higher bandwidths = higher quality. The easiest experiment is get a CD and rip it to MP3.

Do this twice once at the lowest bandwidth (128Kb/s then at 320Kb/s for example), listen to the difference. Although much higher bit rates are used it provides a good example. Video suffers even more from limited bandwidth.

This is excluding all the other non quality related factors such as industry support

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray

[brian lawson]

Originally Posted by Beta-guy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...hnical_Details

is that what your looking for?

wow...cant believe how many quick replies...that sure says volume for the support.

this is exactly what i was looking for...thanks!

hopefully people will be able to see and hear this difference enough to want to pay more for it. unfortunately getting useful information from store clerks is impossible and the setups i see at my local circuit city and best buy doesnt help show this difference

[JTK]

Originally Posted by lch

using their words, TL51 is 'science fiction'

Yup, throw it right back in their face. That's what they were saying about BD50 a year ago.

[MacHaggis]

As far as the PS3 is concerned, keep in mind that it's been out for less than half the time that the XBOX 360 has. There are plenty of games slated to come out soon enough.

It just took a long time for the PS3 software industry to build momentum.

Now, if the games take full advantage of the 50GB storage per BD media, there should be a lot of potential for those games.

Too bad I can't stand most video games and anime...

[Mikeesracing]

Hey everyone nice posts. I even learned a couple of things.

[Anthony P]

thanks for the replies...as i figured, there's a lot i have yet to learn. what is lossless audio for example.

audio starts off analog the audio waves then get digitized. At this step the audio tech decides the word length and the sampling frequency

word length can be thought of as precision think of a ruler that is 1'=12" if all it has on it are the inches demarcation you would say something 3 or 4 inches but you can't say if it is 3.5 or 3.7 or 3.2. If you add more demarcations you could say it is 3 and 5/16. The larger the word length the more fine-tuned audio you get, but there is a cost because it needs more bits (if we thought of it as a pic, it would be the number of colours that can be shown)

sampling frequency: sound has a wave structure (like a continuous line) because it needs to be quantified and you can't just have continuity in essence what you are doing is taking a picture of the wave form at given moments. The more frequently you take these "pics" the richer and complete the sound starts. If we were to compare it to video this would be how often the frame of each film is taken.

So digital audio will tend to have two characteristics, for example 16 bit/48khz, where 16 is the word length and 48 is the sampling (you can go to how stuff works and look up CD to get more info). that means that for each second you need 48,000*16 bits per channel or a bit over 4mbps (and DVD had a total of around 10mbps, so imagine what would happen if you wanted 3 languages like many DVDs have today)


When you listen to a DVD today the digital stream is compressed because 16/48 takes too much BW uncompressed. That is why you have DD and DTS on DVD. The compression messes up the original digital values. So when your player decodes the DD and DTS you no longer have the original values. This is called lossy. Movies on BD and HD DVD have 3 formats that they can use that are lossless

PCM: this is the original uncompressed sound exactly as it was digitized
DTS-HD MA and DTHD: these are compressed but lossless which means in theory once decoded they should play back the same digital as in the studio before they were encoded.

The problem is that PCM takes up a lot of BW and DTS-HD MA and DTHD take up much less but still more then their lossy counterparts.

The reason it is an issue with HD DVD and not BD is that BD has a max BW of 48 and a max video BW of 40, that means a studio can use 8mbps without even flinching for audio and other stuff on BD while HD DVD has a max BW of 30 and 29 respectively. That means that except if the studio goes with two DD tracks and nothing else audio will take away BW from video.