Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Motion & Video => Topic started by: samirkharusi on January 08, 2009, 01:12:11 am
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Is it just my imagination or is Blu Ray Disc technology dying? Now that it has won over HD-DVD one would have expected a major take-off. I haven't noticed any. Players are still expensive, blank discs excessively so, recorded material does not seem to be lording it over normal DVDs, BD burners still expensive, people seem to be downloading movies more and more (mostly pirated? yet of remarkably good quality on screens under 40" at under 4GB for a 2-hour movie). Perhaps Michael is right, yet again? Electronic delivery is the near future, despite of quality that is quite lousy compared to BD quality, clearly so on a 50" or larger screen. After all, audio CDs also seem to be dying, as the masses seem quite happy with mediocre MP3. Saw an interview with the inventor of MP3. He was absolutely astounded that MP3 has gone so mass-market, given that he had designed the quality at a level that would be web friendly, not as something approaching HiFi. It also seems that currently there is more MP3 music in use than all other forms put together. Pity for those who are keen on the best quality that current technology can deliver, be it audio or video. Views?
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Is it just my imagination or is Blu Ray Disc technology dying? Now that it has won over HD-DVD one would have expected a major take-off. I haven't noticed any. Players are still expensive, blank discs excessively so, recorded material does not seem to be lording it over normal DVDs, BD burners still expensive, people seem to be downloading movies more and more (mostly pirated? yet of remarkably good quality on screens under 40" at under 4GB for a 2-hour movie). Perhaps Michael is right, yet again? Electronic delivery is the near future, despite of quality that is quite lousy compared to BD quality, clearly so on a 50" or larger screen. After all, audio CDs also seem to be dying, as the masses seem quite happy with mediocre MP3. Saw an interview with the inventor of MP3. He was absolutely astounded that MP3 has gone so mass-market, given that he had designed the quality at a level that would be web friendly, not as something approaching HiFi. It also seems that currently there is more MP3 music in use than all other forms put together. Pity for those who are keen on the best quality that current technology can deliver, be it audio or video. Views?
The hard drive has killed blue ray for data storage as surely as solid state memory will destroy the winchester disk within the next decade!
Get a few external SATA drives and stop worrying. I now send HD's to my clients if a job won't fit on a DVD. Dead easy and they even return them.
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I'm also disappointed in the speed of uptake of the Blu-ray format. One blank 25GB disc is still considerably more expensive than three 8.5GB dual layer DVD discs, which in turn are considerably more expensive than 6 single layer DVD blanks.
When I recently bought a 50" plasma HD display, I enquired about a Blu-ray player whilst I was in the store. I was amazed to discover that none of the blu-ray players on offer were region-free. That means, if they were not region-free for blu-ray discs, they were also not region-free for standard DVD movies.
Is someone crazy here? I have a stack of DVDs from many regions. The first DVDs I bought many years ago are all Region 1. I have many operas and ballets encoded as Region 2. The first operas on blu-ray are likely to be productions from the Metropolitan Opera Company, encoded in Region 1.
Which sane person thinks that region coding is a good idea? In Australia it was established long ago that this is an anti-competitive practice.
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The hard drive has killed blue ray for data storage as surely as solid state memory will destroy the winchester disk within the next decade!
Get a few external SATA drives and stop worrying. I now send HD's to my clients if a job won't fit on a DVD. Dead easy and they even return them.
I've been recording on CDs and DVDs for the past 10 years. I've not yet come across any that are unreadable that I also know were recorded properly in the first instance. I know that many people claim that they have had experiences of optical media failure, but I would question whether or not they are really sure that such images were once readable, and whether or not they really tried to read such images on other systems and DVD readers, or indeed whether or not such failed discs had been stored properly, away from harmful chemicals such as label adhesives, sudden changes in temperature and humidity, and strong sunlight.
However, apart from its archival use, blu-ray is also the medium for HD movies. I've been buying audio CDs and DVD movies for much longer than 10 years, yet have never come across one that used to play but now doesn't. However, I have come across faulty recordings which I returned to the store within a few days of purchase.
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I've been recording on CDs and DVDs for the past 10 years. I've not yet come across any that are unreadable that I also know were recorded properly in the first instance. I know that many people claim that they have had experiences of optical media failure, but I would question whether or not they are really sure that such images were once readable, and whether or not they really tried to read such images on other systems and DVD readers, or indeed whether or not such failed discs had been stored properly, away from harmful chemicals such as label adhesives, sudden changes in temperature and humidity, and strong sunlight.
You asked me this somewhere else and I forgot to answer.
The discs were recorded properly. Readable on both the original DVD drive and a second. (Although both were in the same machine.) In the case of the failures they were unreadable even in the original drive. I'm not sure I've ever had a DVD+-R die but I have had a lot of double layer discs give up the ghost. Storage and labeling should have been fine.
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This is just a personal opinion but apart from data storage and backup uses, from my amateur consumer point of view, upgrading movie-watching equipment is low on my priority list. I was a late adopter of DVDs and only did so when my local video rental place stopped stocking VHS tapes. By the time I bought a DVD player, they were selling for $50. The picture was much better than that of VHS tapes, of course, but to my mind not an important improvement. In contrast, I was an early adopter of VHS equipment because being able to record TV programs to later watch at my leisure was an important improvement to my life. Along that line of thinking, the improvement of HD over SD is real and obvious to the eye, but the picture quality on my 12-year old Panasonic GAOO when watching a rented DVD is still plenty good enough for me. And the move to 16:9 from 4:3 isn't something I was clamoring for either.
I suspect that wanting/needing large screens and the newest toys may be something that is losing its allure, or maybe it's just that it is NOT that important to as many people as it used to be. I don't claim to know or to represent the views of anyone else, I merely find myself questioning the necessity of upgrading more and more. For example. my D-SLRs are 8 and 10 mpix, respectively, and I have no urge (or need) to spend money for newer bodies.
I understand the need and (or) the desire to improve technology, but I also understand the feeling of consumer resentment at being forced to adopt yet another new generation of toys that I didn't really ask for, let alone need.
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You asked me this somewhere else and I forgot to answer.
The discs were recorded properly. Readable on both the original DVD drive and a second. (Although both were in the same machine.) In the case of the failures they were unreadable even in the original drive. I'm not sure I've ever had a DVD+-R die but I have had a lot of double layer discs give up the ghost. Storage and labeling should have been fine.
Very strange! If only I could be so lucky winning the lottery .
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I understand the need and (or) the desire to improve technology, but I also understand the feeling of consumer resentment at being forced to adopt yet another new generation of toys that I didn't really ask for, let alone need.
I understand what you mean, but Blu-ray is part of a major transition from very low 'standard definition' (640x480) to much better 'high definition' (1920x1080). Large screen, full HD plasma sets sell like hot cakes in Australia. The prices are very competitive and the retailers' profit margins are very low, but they still make decent profits because of the huge volume of sales.
It therefore might be puzzling why blu-ray recorders and players, both stand-alone and for the computer, are not more popular. I don't think it's because the consumer resents being forced to adopt yet another generation of toys. I think it's because the manufacturers and promoters of this new technology are not doing their job well. They are throwing too many hurdles, doubts and difficulties in the path of the consumer.
The blank BD-R discs are far too expensive compared with DVD-R. The first blu-ray recorders for the computer were not able to play blu-ray movies. The software had to catch up. Currently in Australia there's only one make of Blu-ray player that claims to be region free (marketed by Kogan). It's new on the market and at this stage it's not clear whether it automatically plays any disc from any region, or whether one has to enter secret codes through the remote.
It's already been established in Australia (by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in accordance with the Trade practices Act) that region coding is an anti-competitive measure which can not lawfully be upheld. For this reason, major electronics companies such as Pioneer have been selling DVD players that don't even have to be modified to play a disc from any region. Nor do they require a secret code to be entered to change the region. They automatically play a disc from any region. This is what I'm used to. Do you think I would be interested in going backwards and buying new technology which is incapable of playing half my existing collection of DVD movies and musicals?
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C'mon Ray admit it. You're defending Blue Ray just because its your namesake.
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C'mon Ray admit it. You're defending Blue Ray just because its your namesake.
You mean because it's a technology I developed in my backyard in my spare time when I was feeling a bit blue?
I find it a bit paradoxical that the increasing pixel count of all digital cameras, including the popular P&S, seems to be much appreciated by the public at large and especially by most readers of this forum, yet increases in video resolution and quality seem to be moving as slow as molasses.
I once bought a standard resolution videocam, but after the initial novelty had worn off I stopped using it because the technical quality was pretty awful compared with a still camera and awful even compared with a good quality 'standard definition' broadcast. I find it difficult to ignore the technical quality of video whilst simultaneously obsessing about the technical quality of still images.
I wondered years ago why Canon did not produce a DSLR with video capability since most P&S cameras have always had this feature. Now that Canon have at last got around to providing a video capability in the 5D2 (and Nikon too) it's disappointing that both companies have not provided full manual control in video mode, including choice of ISO and aperture.
I'm genuinely impressed with the quality of Blu-ray on a large plasma screen. I've recently been watching some of the "Planet Earth" wildlife series from the BBC (narrated by David Attenborough). The footage recorded with professional HD videocams is stunning. Unfortunately, not all of it was recorded in high definition, but it's all on Blu-ray, a 5-disc set that cost only US$12 per disc. Amazing value!
Perhaps part of the problem is, you do need a large screen to fully appreciate high definition video. I would say 50" diagonal is a minimum.
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Perhaps part of the problem is, you do need a large screen to fully appreciate high definition video. I would say 50" diagonal is a minimum.
That is one of my problems. The room in which we watch TV is not large enough for a 50" screen. Having to buy a larger house to accomodate it would seriously increase the cost of HD for me.
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That is one of my problems. The room in which we watch TV is not large enough for a 50" screen. Having to buy a larger house to accomodate it would seriously increase the cost of HD for me.
Your room is not big enough to hang a 50" picture? These plasma screens can be fixed to the wall. They are only 2 or 3 inches thick. My 50" plasma replaced a bulky 33" CRT TV. The room now looks bigger.
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Your room is not big enough to hang a 50" picture? These plasma screens can be fixed to the wall. They are only 2 or 3 inches thick. My 50" plasma replaced a bulky 33" CRT TV. The room now looks bigger.
With 1080 HD I find that a "correct" viewing distance is around 2x the screen size. The numbers also agree if you consider human vision as good for one arc-minute (to use per pixel). So you can easily fit a 50" screen in a common-sized room and still sit 100" away. Of course, this will be too close for SD. With BD it's very pleasant and sharp, a nice cinema experience.
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With 1080 HD I find that a "correct" viewing distance is around 2x the screen size. The numbers also agree if you consider human vision as good for one arc-minute (to use per pixel). So you can easily fit a 50" screen in a common-sized room and still sit 100" away. Of course, this will be too close for SD. With BD it's very pleasant and sharp, a nice cinema experience.
Thanks, that's interesting. Having never really watched one for any length of time, it never occurred to me that the higher quality HD image would be easier to "get close to", relative to what I can tolerate with SD. It's a shame that hanging around shopping centres is so annoying or I'd go to a store and watch one for a while.
Our room is large enough to contain the thin screen, but the layout does not currently permit being 3 yards away (roughly 100 inches) to watch. If anything, we've been considering getting a smaller TV because of our viewing distance. Since I seem to be turning into a late adopter, by the time I will seriously contemplate spending money on this stuff, it will be so inexpensive that the decision will make itself.
My apologies for the digression, I am not addressing the original question.
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Our room is large enough to contain the thin screen, but the layout does not currently permit being 3 yards away (roughly 100 inches) to watch. If anything, we've been considering getting a smaller TV because of our viewing distance. Since I seem to be turning into a late adopter, by the time I will seriously contemplate spending money on this stuff, it will be so inexpensive that the decision will make itself.
Such recommended sizes are not inflexible. A viewing distance of about double the diagonal seems reasonable and might apply also to any print you have on the wall.
Since your room seems rather small, a 42" plasma screen might be more appropriate, in which case a viewing distance of just 7ft would be about right. Don't tell me your room is so small you can't get as far away as 7ft from a wall. So you really have no excuse, Robert .
If you do consider a 42" screen, make sure it's full HD (1920x1080). Many smaller screens are sometimes described as being HD but in fact are not full HD.
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This is just a personal opinion but apart from data storage and backup uses, from my amateur consumer point of view, upgrading movie-watching equipment is low on my priority list....
...I understand the need and (or) the desire to improve technology, but I also understand the feeling of consumer resentment at being forced to adopt yet another new generation of toys that I didn't really ask for, let alone need.
Bingo. For anyone who wonders why Blu Ray isn't hot (and IMO isn't going to be), multiply the above by 100 million, and you have your answer.
Or take me -- a lifelong video/audiophile with shelves of Beta tapes, Beta Hi-Fi tapes, hundreds of LaserDiscs and hundreds of DVD's. After closely watching the corporate greedmongering during the Blu Ray/HD wars, I'm utterly ambivalent to Blu Ray. Not that I no longer lust after higher res, but the marketing macho has killed my enthusiasm to upgrade.
*shrug*
Eh.
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I've been recording on CDs and DVDs for the past 10 years. I've not yet come across any that are unreadable that I also know were recorded properly in the first instance. I know that many people claim that they have had experiences of optical media failure, but I would question whether or not they are really sure that such images were once readable, and whether or not they really tried to read such images on other systems and DVD readers, or indeed whether or not such failed discs had been stored properly, away from harmful chemicals such as label adhesives, sudden changes in temperature and humidity, and strong sunlight.
However, apart from its archival use, blu-ray is also the medium for HD movies. I've been buying audio CDs and DVD movies for much longer than 10 years, yet have never come across one that used to play but now doesn't. However, I have come across faulty recordings which I returned to the store within a few days of purchase.
The longevity and fragility of CDs/DVDs you write yourself is quite different from those mass produced from a master method, which is way more permanent.
I only buy good media and have had it fail on me and yes it did work and then it didn't. No labels, in good CD folders, avoid sunlight etc and I always treat CDs as carefully as I would vinyl. I've heard others complain, that even after folowing best practive guidelines, they too had optical media fail.
They do fail, even if it hasn't hapened to you. Yet.
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Perhaps part of the problem is, you do need a large screen to fully appreciate high definition video. I would say 50" diagonal is a minimum.
Shame that nearly all broadcast TV [SD] will look dreadful on such a large screen.
I've yet to see a flat screen as good as my CRT in how the image looks [for normal viewing], so I'm not too fussed about buying one for the main TV.
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The longevity and fragility of CDs/DVDs you write yourself is quite different from those mass produced from a master method, which is way more permanent.
I only buy good media and have had it fail on me and yes it did work and then it didn't. No labels, in good CD folders, avoid sunlight etc and I always treat CDs as carefully as I would vinyl. I've heard others complain, that even after folowing best practive guidelines, they too had optical media fail.
They do fail, even if it hasn't hapened to you. Yet.
I accept that that may be the case. I just find it very odd that despite my being a sucker for a bargain and buying all sorts of good value unfamiliar brands of both CD-R and DVD-R, I just don't have any that I've found to be unreadable after many years of storage.
However, initially I accumulated a lot of failed discs. I once had a pile of over 100 failed recordings sitting on a shelf, before I threw them out. I still occasionally get failed recordings, usually it seems, because I attempted to record at the maximum speed, which I think is not advisable.
The only reasons I can think of for my extraordinary luck, is that I've never bought recordable CDs or DVDs over the internet, but only from local 'bricks & mortar' retailers who presumably have a reputation to protect. I get the impression that on the internet there are a lot of 'fly by night' operators who are out to make a quick buck from batches of recordable media that they acquired very cheaply because the discs did not pass the QC tests in the factory.
Another consideration might be air quality. I live in a non-polluted environment with clean air. I've not seen any research on the effects of industrial pollution on optical media longevity, but it seems reasonable that the more sulphurous, acidic air and fog that often hangs over many cities could affect DVD longevity (as well as your own health, of course, which is surely even more important).
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Shame that nearly all broadcast TV [SD] will look dreadful on such a large screen.
I've yet to see a flat screen as good as my CRT in how the image looks [for normal viewing], so I'm not too fussed about buying one for the main TV.
Ideally, you should adjust your viewing distance according to the quality of the source, and the same applies to a print on the wall. Broadcast quality in SD varies enormously. If you were able to adjust your viewing distance beforehand, in accordance with the quality of the broadcast, you would presumably not be aware that the quality had changed, just as you wouldn't see any image quality difference between an enlargement from a 35mm film and MF film from a sufficiently great distance.
I also had a very good quality CRT until recently (a Loewe Calida). I was concerned that even the best LCD TVs would not match the quality of a good CRT, especially with regard to contrast ratio. I thought that I might be satisfied with only the most expensive plasma set, such as one of the 9th generation Pioneer Kuro models. But the 11th generation Panasonic plasma sets have been getting very good reviews. They are considered to be very close to the Pioneer Kuros yet much less expensive. Since I'm not a perfectionist, I opted for the very slightly inferior product at the much better price .
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Bingo. For anyone who wonders why Blu Ray isn't hot (and IMO isn't going to be), multiply the above by 100 million, and you have your answer.
Or take me -- a lifelong video/audiophile with shelves of Beta tapes, Beta Hi-Fi tapes, hundreds of LaserDiscs and hundreds of DVD's. After closely watching the corporate greedmongering during the Blu Ray/HD wars, I'm utterly ambivalent to Blu Ray. Not that I no longer lust after higher res, but the marketing macho has killed my enthusiasm to upgrade.
*shrug*
Eh.
It's possible that a new technology, cheaper and better, could supercede Blu-ray before its fully developed and before prices get a chance to come down. Are you aware of any such technology?
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The only reasons I can think of for my extraordinary luck, is that I've never bought recordable CDs or DVDs over the internet, but only from local 'bricks & mortar' retailers who presumably have a reputation to protect. I get the impression that on the internet there are a lot of 'fly by night' operators who are out to make a quick buck from batches of recordable media that they acquired very cheaply because the discs did not pass the QC tests in the factory.
I've never bought online, still had failures.
Writing at slowest speed is recommended, but then you'd simply never do it as it takes so long. Which defeats the purpose.
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Ideally, you should adjust your viewing distance according to the quality of the source, and the same applies to a print on the wall. Broadcast quality in SD varies enormously.
Which is a completely different issue. Image quality and resolution are separate variables. Badly shot crap on HD is still badly shot crap.
If you were able to adjust your viewing distance beforehand, in accordance with the quality of the broadcast, you would presumably not be aware that the quality had changed, just as you wouldn't see any image quality difference between an enlargement from a 35mm film and MF film from a sufficiently great distance.
Sorry, but that is a very dumb suggestion. I'm to move several sofas back and fore depending on which channel, media source I'm watching!? Not to mention this daft idea may not even be physically possible. I'm well aware of viewing distances/resolution stuff, but TV is broadcast is many different resolutions and will be unless then stop showing nonHD content - which is not likely for a very long time yet. So where do you sit? A long way away to make your big TV look small enough to not see the badly upscaled SD or position yourself to have a big image and only watch BluRay? Hey if I want to watch a film on a big screen, I go to the cinema.
I also had a very good quality CRT until recently (a Loewe Calida). I was concerned that even the best LCD TVs would not match the quality of a good CRT, especially with regard to contrast ratio. I thought that I might be satisfied with only the most expensive plasma set, such as one of the 9th generation Pioneer Kuro models.
I was looking at some very expensive kit the other day and the colours and gradation were not as good as my CRT.
In fact quite recently I was in a good high end hifi shop and asked about good tvs and they said nothing they sold was as nice as a CRT.
But the 11th generation Panasonic plasma sets have been getting very good reviews.
Says the man who doesn't believe anything anyone else says!?! I find that very odd that you believe TV reviews and manufacturers claims of tv kit, yet poo poo everyone and everything regarding pixel peeping in cameras.
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I think BD could very well die out in the near future as a STORAGE MEDIUM. Hard discs are simply so much more convenient for storing HD home videos and data back-ups. Until very recently it was difficult to get something that would play a wide variety of video codecs up to and including 1080 HD without a PC. Apple TV is still not advertised as fully capable of playing 1080 HD(?), but I have just acquired a Western Digital device (called WD TV) that does an excellent job, including 1080 HD. Previously I used a PS3 to stream from my PC. The WD TV streams directly from a tera-byte hard disc, no link to a PC. Yes, you can also have all your LLVJ on-line. I store everything on 2 hard discs and hopefully I'll never have simultaneous failures, though perhaps in theory possible (power failure during a back-up?). At this moment I am still backing up photos on DVDs until my supply finishes, and thereafter I'll just buy another tera-byte drive to achieve double back-ups. More than a year back I already stopped backing up home videos on DVDs. Just way too cumbersome at 12GB per hour for the highest quality HD.
It is also likely that BD could also soon be bypassed for MOVIE SALES. The public seems incredibly tolerant of mediocre video (and audio) quality. It appears that even some posters on this thread. I find it a bit absurd that people on this forum, many lapping up any write-up on 30+MP backs for stills, somehow try to justify sticking to SD! Satellite delivery of movies can also be excellent, though to date the quality is still considerably below BD. If broadband on our PCs gets to, say, 50Mb and above, apparently quite likely soon in many regions, then delivering a 10+GB (close to or equal to BD quality) per movie becomes feasible. Perhaps Apple TV will be the first to sell movies in 1080 HD soon?
Frankly, I feel that even if Sony now drops prices down to DVD levels (blanks, burners, movies) BD would still be eclipsed into nothingness within 2 to 3 years; too expensive for too long. Pity, because it really does deliver on its promises for HiFi in both audio and video.
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Which is a completely different issue. Image quality and resolution are separate variables. Badly shot crap on HD is still badly shot crap.
Sorry, but that is a very dumb suggestion. I'm to move several sofas back and fore depending on which channel, media source I'm watching!? Not to mention this daft idea may not even be physically possible. I'm well aware of viewing distances/resolution stuff, but TV is broadcast is many different resolutions and will be unless then stop showing nonHD content - which is not likely for a very long time yet. So where do you sit? A long way away to make your big TV look small enough to not see the badly upscaled SD or position yourself to have a big image and only watch BluRay?
Have you been drinking too much today, jjj? You're not making much sense. If you make the following statement, "Shame that nearly all broadcast TV [SD] will look dreadful on such a large screen", which is the statement I was addressing, it is reasonable to assume that you are referring to the resolution of the broadcast and not the accuracy of the color, the interest of the drama or the lighting techniques of the camera man.
Where do you sit? You sit at a distance sufficiently far from the set so that SD material does not look dreadful, yet close enough so that the higher quality of HD broadcasts can be appreciated. With a 50" screen, I would say about 12ft is a good compromise. Also, it seems to be the case that good HD sets do an excellent job of interpolating SD material. No jaggies, no motion blur, no ghosting, no flicker.
I was looking at some very expensive kit the other day and the colours and gradation were not as good as my CRT.
In fact quite recently I was in a good high end hifi shop and asked about good tvs and they said nothing they sold was as nice as a CRT.
The phosphors in plasma sets are very similar to the phosphors in CRTs. Were you looking at LCD TVs? I believe they can sometimes be more expensive than plasma sets of the same size. I still use a Sony Triniton CRT monitor to process my images for printing. I believe old-fashioned CRT monitors can still be as good or better than much more expensive LCD monitors, but not regarding resolution. I'm not aware of any full HD CRT TVs. Do they exist?
Says the man who doesn't believe anything anyone else says!?! I find that very odd that you believe TV reviews and manufacturers claims of tv kit, yet poo poo everyone and everything regarding pixel peeping in cameras.
What makes you think I believed them? I actually bought this Panasonic plasma set as a Christmas present for my partner who lives in her own house and whom I visit frequently. I wanted to check out the quality and try a few Blu-ray discs from my laptop. I knew if there were any slight deficiencies in image quality which disturbed me, my partner probably wouldn't notice them and would continue to be happy with the set.
It so happens that I'm very impressed with the image quality. The blacks are gorgeous and detailed, the colors vibrant yet subtle, and the resolution a huge step up from my old CRT TV. At its best, with material from a Blu-ray disc which delivers 1080p, the difference is equivalent to upgrading from a 3mp DSLR to an 18mp DSLR. My only disappointment with the set is that it doesn't lend itself to normal calibration procedures with my X-rite colorimeters and software.
Hey if I want to watch a film on a big screen, I go to the cinema.
That's because you don't have a 50" plasma .
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I store everything on 2 hard discs and hopefully I'll never have simultaneous failures, though perhaps in theory possible (power failure during a back-up?). At this moment I am still backing up photos on DVDs until my supply finishes, and thereafter I'll just buy another tera-byte drive to achieve double back-ups. More than a year back I already stopped backing up home videos on DVDs. Just way too cumbersome at 12GB per hour for the highest quality HD.
Samir,
Just a few days ago I got an Australia Post junk mail brochure in my letter box advertising a WD 1TB My Book Essential Edition external hard drive for A$219. At current conversion rates that's US$153. I feel perhaps I should buy a couple, but I did once have the terrible experience of losing 300GB of data on a La Cie Big Disk. Fortunately all the data was still on DVD disks that I'd recorded on my laptop during photographic trips.
Frankly, I feel that even if Sony now drops prices down to DVD levels (blanks, burners, movies) BD would still be eclipsed into nothingness within 2 to 3 years; too expensive for too long. Pity, because it really does deliver on its promises for HiFi in both audio and video.
The potential of the Blu-ray format is 200GB. 5 double-sided, quadruple layer blu-ray discs are a lot lighter and less bulky than a 1TB hard drive. On the other hand, by the time such 200GB discs become available and affordable, we'll probably have 1TB pocket drives running off the power supply of the USB socket.
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The simple fact is, for watching movies, standard DVD's are good enough. Given good source material, a progressive-scan DVD player and an upscaling display, the movie-viewing experience of standard DVDs is excellent. Not perfect. Not as good as HD, but excellent.
It's good enough that very seldom while watching DVD movies at home do I say "I really need more screen resolution". I have a $100 upscaling DVD player, a 55 inch Sony SXRD rear projector and over 30 years experience shooting movies.
As others have noted, archiving digital images on optical formats is inconvenient and inefficient compared to using hard drives or solid state memory.
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The public seems incredibly tolerant of mediocre video (and audio) quality.
Always have been.
It appears that even some posters on this thread. I find it a bit absurd that people on this forum, many lapping up any write-up on 30+MP backs for stills, somehow try to justify sticking to SD!
Not a fair comment really as 95% of TV here is SD. So how would you suggest people not not watch SD?
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Have you been drinking too much today, jjj? You're not making much sense. If you make the following statement, "Shame that nearly all broadcast TV [SD] will look dreadful on such a large screen", which is the statement I was addressing, it is reasonable to assume that you are referring to the resolution of the broadcast and not the accuracy of the color, the interest of the drama or the lighting techniques of the camera man.
Don't drink at all thanks. Not impressed by upresing of SD, just like upresing a low res still does not make it a good high res still. Plus, the look of many dramas is most definitely affected by the cruddy LCD screens most people use. The best way I can describe it is that well lit filmed dramas look like flatly lit video productions from the 70s, like a cheap soap in fact.
A few days back a TV programme that I am very familiar with, was demonstrated for me on all of Sony's top TVs. Even the £5,500 TV was crap compared to my CRT. Shockingly so. Though as the signal was from Sky, that could be part of the problem, but even that wouldn't account for the poor rendering.
There is a reason why cartoon and animations are used to demonstrate flat screen TVs, they hide the flaws that skin tones and real world scenes show up.
Part of the problem could be that the TVs were set with extra contrast, lightness and sharpeness for the shop floor/wall, as quite often the shops set demo TVs on a mode that seems to maximize the flaws of flat screens and demo footage is carefully chosen to hide the problems with the TVs.
Where do you sit? You sit at a distance sufficiently far from the set so that SD material does not look dreadful, yet close enough so that the higher quality of HD broadcasts can be appreciated. With a 50" screen, I would say about 12ft is a good compromise. Also, it seems to be the case that good HD sets do an excellent job of interpolating SD material. No jaggies, no motion blur, no ghosting, no flicker.
You witter on about tiny differences of various cameras you don't own and you think HD sets do an excellent job of upscaling. Do they bollocks, They look pants and certainly not sharp.
The whole point of a big TV is one sense is to be, well...bigger, so if you place it further away to let SD look OK, then you may as well buy a smaller TV and sit closer. And save a lot of money in the process. Plus people are usually limited by house sizes as to where they sit, particularly in a crowded country like the UK.
I'll stick to a CRT in lounge for now and go to the cinema for a big screen experience.
Though a flat screen for wall in kitchen may happen simply as a CRT won't work in the space and it will not be a primary viewing spot.
The phosphors in plasma sets are very similar to the phosphors in CRTs. Were you looking at LCD TVs? I believe they can sometimes be more expensive than plasma sets of the same size.
Both - interestingly, the least worst [not for sharpness, but look/rendering] was the smallest LCD [32"]
I'm not aware of any full HD CRT TVs. Do they exist?
They did IIRC. Very briefly.
What makes you think I believed them?
Things you posted recently.
I actually bought this Panasonic plasma set ........<SNIP>
It so happens that I'm very impressed with the image quality.
A HD set showing BluRay, should look good. Showing normal SD TV is not quite the same however.
If I watched a lot of discs because I lived in the sticks away from cinema, then I might invest in one. Though I'd probably go for a projector and a cinema room instead.
That's because you don't have a 50" plasma .
No, I don't have a big TV as I go to the cinema. Way cheaper too as I have an unlimited pass!
BTW my local flea has the biggest screen in the country and all screens have good seats, lots of legroom and decent raking of seating. And I sit so that my field of view is nearly filled by the screen, which makes for a more immersive experience. You sit that close to even a HD TV and you can see the pixels.
Though at least you do not have to complain about shoddy focusing/projection with TVs.
Something I notice when visiting friends and relatives that when they had CRTs the picture was usually pretty good, with flat screens it's rarely bearable.
But they don't notice how awful the picture is. Heck, my girlfriend doesn't even notice when the aspect format is completely wrong, we have 6 modes on our TV and programmes are shown in about 4 of them. She sometimes uses Auto, which somehow manages to show all aspect ratios incorrectly.
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I have a Samsung Tantus 32" pure flat CRT television, and it looks pretty darn good, especially compared to all the newer "upgrade" stuff I see displayed in the local electronics emporium. When I got it x years ago (can't remember), it was an "HD TV", good for 800 lines, not interlaced. I guess that's not the real HD now, and the connectors changed. (So I am stuck with component video and optical audio.)
Plus, I have something like 200 DVDs here, so poo on Blu Ray.
By the way, I find the optimal distance is 1.5x the height of the screen. That means I can stick my foot out and touch the television, I'm that close. My kids' friends think it is weird we sit that close, but it works and there is no grain visible in the screen. (Although we don't watch any "TV" on it, so I don't know what cable TV is like.)
I think it is conceivable that Blu Ray will not catch on before the world of bits takes over as the delivery method.
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You witter on about tiny differences of various cameras you don't own and you think HD sets do an excellent job of upscaling. Do they bollocks, They look pants and certainly not sharp.
The whole point of a big TV is one sense is to be, well...bigger, so if you place it further away to let SD look OK, then you may as well buy a smaller TV and sit closer. And save a lot of money in the process. Plus people are usually limited by house sizes as to where they sit, particularly in a crowded country like the UK.
I'll stick to a CRT in lounge for now and go to the cinema for a big screen experience.
Though a flat screen for wall in kitchen may happen simply as a CRT won't work in the space and it will not be a primary viewing spot.
You are still not making any sense, jjj. Are you on some other self-medication then? I witter on about small differences in cameras that I don't own in order to find out if they are worth buying and to find out what the circumstances might be that such difference are of practical significance. You should have noticed that my emphasis is on low-noise performance at high ISO. Being able to use a particular camera at, say ISO 3200, and get the same image quality on print that my current camera provides at ISO 1600, would be reason enough to upgrade.
I witter on about the performance of cameras I don't own because I can get no reliable information about their performance (because they are new), or at best, get conflicting reports from so-called experts. The D3 is a case in point. Initial reports from around the world provided no thorough comparisons. It was claimed that the D3's low-noise performance was so good it was almost 2 stops better than any other camera on the market. The only comparison I could find with my own camera, the 5D, were jpegs from Ken Rockwell's site who claimed the D3 was now King of the Block regarding low noise. Yet the 5D images he showed on his website, although noisier, were clearly more detailed than the D3 images. When both images were treated to some noise reduction with Noise Ninja, they looked about the same.
A HD set showing BluRay, should look good. Showing normal SD TV is not quite the same however.
Of course SD isn't quite the same. HD is much better, whether from Blu-ray or a broadcast. That's the reason for buying a set that can display an HD signal. It's decidedly and clearly better.
No, I don't have a big TV as I go to the cinema. Way cheaper too as I have an unlimited pass!
BTW my local flea has the biggest screen in the country and all screens have good seats, lots of legroom and decent raking of seating. And I sit so that my field of view is nearly filled by the screen, which makes for a more immersive experience. You sit that close to even a HD TV and you can see the pixels.
Though at least you do not have to complain about shoddy focusing/projection with TVs.
So this is the true reason why you don't get yourself a decent HD display. You've got an unlimited cinema pass . The last time I saw a movie in the cinema was actually quite recently. A guest treated us to a viewing of the new Baz Luhrmann film, "Australia", followed by a meal at a restaurant. We considered the posh cinema (Gold Pass) where the seats recline like Business Class aircraft seats. There's a table between each pair of seats and one can order wine and snacks or even a full meal that is delivered to your table, as in a restaurant. Seats were $37 each. A bottle of wine that would cost $10 in a wine store was about $35 and light snacks were around $20. For the four of us, that would have amounted to $263, sharing just the one bottle of wine. We decided against it and bought the cheaper seats, which in total still amounted to more than the cost of a Blu-ray movie.
This was the first time I'd seen a movie in a cinema for a long time. I was expecting to be enthralled by the immensity of the screen and the tack-sharp realism of the photography. In fact I wasn't. I couldn't help making comparisons with recent experiences watching a 50" plasma. The picture was difinitely bigger, but the quality, on balance, didn't seem as good. Could be a matter of viewing distance, of course.
Something I notice when visiting friends and relatives that when they had CRTs the picture was usually pretty good, with flat screens it's rarely bearable.
But they don't notice how awful the picture is. Heck, my girlfriend doesn't even notice when the aspect format is completely wrong, we have 6 modes on our TV and programmes are shown in about 4 of them. She sometimes uses Auto, which somehow manages to show all aspect ratios incorrectly.
I've had similar experiences, except when I visit friends who are still using the old-fashioned CRT TV, their CRT set is out of adjustment just as it is with LCD or Plasma sets. The fact is, most people who are not obsessed with image quality, do not seem to even notice such things as oversaturated skin tones, blocked-up shadows and blown highlights. All displays require some sort of adjustment of contrast, brightness, color saturation, color temperature, hue etc, in order to produce good results. When I first switched on my very expensive Loewe CRT set, which was the best I could find many years ago, I remember being dismayed at the oversaturated skin tones and general image quality straight out of the box with controls set at their factory default. Fortunately, the Loewe set had a tint control which worked with PAL analogue broadcasts. This is a control which is usually found only on NTSC (Never The Same Color) sets. With PAL broadcasts it allowed for very fine tuning to get very accurate skin tones.
If you do decide to avail yourself of the joys of high definition TV, I would recommend a good plasma set. The 9th generation Pioneer Kuro are the best but also the most expensive and not necessarily the best value. I saw their 60" model in a store recently, priced at A$10,000. Too expensive for me, but hopefully the price will be lower by the time my new house is finished .
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You are still not making any sense, jjj. Are you on some other self-medication then? I witter on about small differences in cameras that I don't own in order to find out if they are worth buying and to find out what the circumstances might be that such difference are of practical significance. You should have noticed that my emphasis is on low-noise performance at high ISO. Being able to use a particular camera at, say ISO 3200, and get the same image quality on print that my current camera provides at ISO 1600, would be reason enough to upgrade.
I witter on about the performance of cameras I don't own because I can get no reliable information about their performance (because they are new), or at best, get conflicting reports from so-called experts. The D3 is a case in point. Initial reports from around the world provided no thorough comparisons. It was claimed that the D3's low-noise performance was so good it was almost 2 stops better than any other camera on the market. The only comparison I could find with my own camera, the 5D, were jpegs from Ken Rockwell's site who claimed the D3 was now King of the Block regarding low noise. Yet the 5D images he showed on his website, although noisier, were clearly more detailed than the D3 images. When both images were treated to some noise reduction with Noise Ninja, they looked about the same.
Missed point entirely - upscaling! I do know why you witter on.
Of course SD isn't quite the same. HD is much better, whether from Blu-ray or a broadcast. That's the reason for buying a set that can display an HD signal. It's decidedly and clearly better.
Shame the signal going in back of TV isn't rarely HD.
So this is the true reason why you don't get yourself a decent HD display. You've got an unlimited cinema pass .
Nope. I have an unlimited pass as it saves me money, due to the fact I like to go to the cinema.
This was the first time I'd seen a movie in a cinema for a long time. I was expecting to be enthralled by the immensity of the screen and the tack-sharp realism of the photography. In fact I wasn't. I couldn't help making comparisons with recent experiences watching a 50" plasma. The picture was difinitely bigger, but the quality, on balance, didn't seem as good. Could be a matter of viewing distance, of course.
Or the film wasn't that sharp. Films vary in quality/sharpness immensely as they are all shot differently, just like photographs made by professionals do. It's a stylistic thing a lot of the time. Assuming projectionist was competant.
Also my local has two screens with digital projectors. I'd like to see you compare your measely 50" to those screens!
I've had similar experiences, except when I visit friends who are still using the old-fashioned CRT TV, their CRT set is out of adjustment just as it is with LCD or Plasma sets.
I don't ever recall seeing CRTs as bad as many of the LCDs screens I've seen.
If you do decide to avail yourself of the joys of high definition TV, I would recommend a good plasma set.
The plasmas are indeed better, but seeing as most TV isn't HD, it's a waste of money for now. If my current CRT was any bigger, I'd start to see the pixels on SD.
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I don't ever recall seeing CRTs as bad as many of the LCDs screens I've seen.
That's probably because modern LCD and Plasma TVs usually have a greater range of controls than the old-fashioned CRT. It's so easy to get things spectacularly wrong; a bit like photomatix and tone mapping. The Panasonic set that I bought has an 'Eco' mode which attempts to compensate for different lighting conditions, such as fluorescent lighting in the showroom, bright daylight in one's living room etc. I admit the results can be pretty awful. I rarely use it. I would suspect that this feature is probably responsible for the awful image quality one sometimes sees in the showrooms.
The plasmas are indeed better, but seeing as most TV isn't HD, it's a waste of money for now. If my current CRT was any bigger, I'd start to see the pixels on SD.
Well that's a problem that you are more familiar with than I am. We've had HD broadcasts for several years in Australia; ever since the introduction of digital broadcast which were initially mostly SD but are now mostly HD.
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That's probably because modern LCD and Plasma TVs usually have a greater range of controls than the old-fashioned CRT. It's so easy to get things spectacularly wrong; a bit like photomatix and tone mapping. The Panasonic set that I bought has an 'Eco' mode which attempts to compensate for different lighting conditions, such as fluorescent lighting in the showroom, bright daylight in one's living room etc. I admit the results can be pretty awful. I rarely use it. I would suspect that this feature is probably responsible for the awful image quality one sometimes sees in the showrooms.
Don't think that is the issue as most people won't even touch picture controls and my CRT has as much if not more than the LCDs I've tried to sort out. My sisters is beyond making acceptable look via the menus. It looks crap as it's an LCD, nothing more complex than that.
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Don't think that is the issue as most people won't even touch picture controls and my CRT has as much if not more than the LCDs I've tried to sort out. My sisters is beyond making acceptable look via the menus. It looks crap as it's an LCD, nothing more complex than that.
That may be the case. It's been know for years that LCDs do not match the quality of CRTs. It's why I still use a CRT for my image processing and why I have never considered getting an LCD TV to replace my CRT TV.
However, plasma displays are in another ball park. They seem to have all the advantages of the CRT in the sense that each pixel has its own illumination, but none of the disadvantages of CRT in respect of line scanning and flicker. I've never come across any description or explanation as to what image properties a CRT might have that are not equalled or surpassed by a modern, good quality plasma set. Have you?
Comparing sets that have not been adjusted to obtain the best possible picture quality serves little purpose. When I've asked salesmen in the TV showrooms why the shop didn't employ someone to at least make an attempt to adjust each display to the same standard. The answer is usually, there'd be little point because customers often want to play with the remote and try out their own adjustments before buying a set; or, the bright fluorescent lighting in the showroom is not an ideal environment for the best picture quality; or, different customers prefer different settings. What looks good to one customer may not look good to another.
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The simple fact is, for watching movies, standard DVD's are good enough. Given good source material, a progressive-scan DVD player and an upscaling display, the movie-viewing experience of standard DVDs is excellent. Not perfect. Not as good as HD, but excellent.
It's good enough that very seldom while watching DVD movies at home do I say "I really need more screen resolution". I have a $100 upscaling DVD player, a 55 inch Sony SXRD rear projector and over 30 years experience shooting movies.
Don't you think that's a very odd effect you are describing? I don't know what cameras you use, but I suspect that when making a print the size of your TV screen, you would probably want to use at least 16mp and preferrably 24mp. Yet when the picture is moving, you're quite satisfied with a resolution consisting of less than 1/2 a megapixel. If the half megapixel looks better than you would predict, that's probably because professional videocams employ 3 CCDs, so we have a quality similar to the Foveon type sensor. Let's call it a 1mp image (Bayer type).
As a photographer, how can you be satisfied with such low resolution?
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Don't you think that's a very odd effect you are describing? I don't know what cameras you use, but I suspect that when making a print the size of your TV screen, you would probably want to use at least 16mp and preferrably 24mp. Yet when the picture is moving, you're quite satisfied with a resolution consisting of less than 1/2 a megapixel. If the half megapixel looks better than you would predict, that's probably because professional videocams employ 3 CCDs, so we have a quality similar to the Foveon type sensor. Let's call it a 1mp image (Bayer type).
As a photographer, how can you be satisfied with such low resolution?
The very best resolution of an HD frame is about 2 mpix, isn't it? Not so hot, really, in the context of modern digicams. But we don't make A3-sized prints of video stills and examine the dots with a loop, so I don't see that it matters. There has always existed wildly different viewing standards, at least in terms of per frame resolution, for prints and films.
I agree with Peter. For watching TV shows and movies at home, current DVDs are perfectly fine. Sure we can do better, but so what. We can always do better but don't always need to. As an editorial aside, what's most memorable about movies and TV programs is their content, not their pixel resolution. I own a VHS copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and I don't think that a Blu-Ray version will improve the viewing experience much. But as I said in an earlier post, if I could have the improvement for little to no cost, sure why not, but if I have to spend money for something I don't think I need, then I balk. But everyone has their own criteria and I admit to becoming a late adopter. I still buy CDs, don't own an MP3 player, and have never downloaded music so there's not a entertainment company on earth that cares what I think.
What irritates me is that one medium will replace the other and people will be forced to upgrade, but I am getting used to it. My movie rental place has more kiddie computer games, soft drinks, popcorn and candy bars than it has movies to rent.
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The very best resolution of an HD frame is about 2 mpix, isn't it? Not so hot, really, in the context of modern digicams. But we don't make A3-sized prints of video stills and examine the dots with a loop, so I don't see that it matters. There has always existed wildly different viewing standards, at least in terms of per frame resolution, for prints and films.
I have always found this facet fascinating. Way back in the 1950s my Dad upgraded from 8mm to 16mm home movies. Anyway, even though I was still a kid, I used the movie stuff (and still camera) more than he did. I never could figure out exactly why the 16mm Kodachrome movies projected onto an 8ft wide screen (we did have a large house) looked more or less the same quality as 35mm slides projected onto the same screen. OK, recall that I was still a kid at grade school! But I concluded that a lot had to do with the fact that the movie was moving... Same effect applies to a 2MP HD video on a 70" screen. There is no way that stills taken by the SAME videocam at 5MP look anywhere as good as the HD video. The stills look rather gritty and with harsh tonality. Stills taken by a DSLR look as good, but not astoundingly better, than the HD video, primarily because we sit some 140" away. The tonality from a 1Ds is visibly better than that of a $1000 HD videocam. Two MP moving images do a very good job at that distance res-wise (limit of 6/6 human vision). In any case the screen is only 2MP anyway, so things do get levelled out by viewing distance and screen resolution, like looking at 4x6" prints from 35mm and from MF. But agreed, moving images definitely seem to require much fewer pixels than stills.
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Two MP moving images do a very good job at that distance res-wise (limit of 6/6 human vision). In any case the screen is only 2MP anyway, so things do get levelled out by viewing distance and screen resolution, like looking at 4x6" prints from 35mm and from MF. But agreed, moving images definitely seem to require much fewer pixels than stills.
Two MP still images also do a very good job at that distance. It so happens I have a 22"x35" print on the wall immediately above my 50" Plasma set. The image was taken with my 5D and interpolated to around 200MB for printing on my Epson 7600. I took the same file from which I made the print, downsampled it with bicubic sharper to around 5MB, converted it to sRGB, transferred the image to an SD card and displayed it on the plasma screen.
Guess what! The image on the plasma display looked better, viewing both images from approximately the same distance of 12-15ft. From that distance, neither appeared to be sharper or have greater subtlety of tonality than the other. The image on the plasma display looked better because of the transmissive nature of the screen. The contrast range was handled perfectly, and in fact the shadows seemed even more vibrant and natural than on the print.
Of course, you could argue that I must have done a lousy job making the print, but I don't believe so .
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for me there is just no advantage to Blu Ray worth the extra costs. I have a large TV, and an upsampling DVD player. I can buy $5-$15 DVDs that look great to my eyes or I can drop $40+ for a Blu Ray disk I think not.
The jump from VHS to DVD was far more than just a better picture and sound. You also did not have to rewind and fast forward and DVDs were much smaller to store.
The only advantage for the average consumer with Blu Ray is that you can get a better picture but most of us just don't care.
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for me there is just no advantage to Blu Ray worth the extra costs. I have a large TV, and an upsampling DVD player. I can buy $5-$15 DVDs that look great to my eyes or I can drop $40+ for a Blu Ray disk I think not.
The jump from VHS to DVD was far more than just a better picture and sound. You also did not have to rewind and fast forward and DVDs were much smaller to store.
The only advantage for the average consumer with Blu Ray is that you can get a better picture but most of us just don't care.
That seems to be the general case. You're not alone with that view. Nevertheless, I still find it very curious that photographers will jump at the opportunity to double the pixel count of their DSLR yet show an almost total lack of interest in a 6x increase in pixel count simply because the image is moving.
I understand that many folks are not interested in image quality period, whether the image is still or moving. But that's not the situation on this site, is it?
I wonder, do photographers trying to make a living from selling still images feel threatened by the increasing quality of video?
I came across a recent article addressing the problems of the transition to HD, which you might find interesting, at http://www.screendigest.com/press/releases..._2008/view.html (http://www.screendigest.com/press/releases/pr_24_06_2008/view.html)
Here's an exctract:
London 25th June 2008.
According to the latest report from media analysts Screen Digest, HD technology has reached a tipping point in Europe, with take-up across the region accelerating rapidly. Despite the growing penetration of HD screens, the report identifies a significant content gap caused by a lack of HD content on free-to-air platforms across the region. By the end of 2007, 18 per cent of the 165 million European TV households were equipped with HD displays - but less than one per cent of these (approximately one million) were fully 'HD enabled' (i.e. equipped with an HD set-top box and an HD subscription enabling them to watch HD broadcasts).
The report forecasts that by 2012 the situation will have improved little – only 20 per cent of the 85 per cent of European households with HD displays will actually be watching in HD.
Screen Digest Senior Analyst and author of the report, Vincent Létang comments "In the next five years, HDTV will remain little more than a pay TV product in Europe – primarily on satellite. Analogue switch-off, which will happen between 2010 and 2012 will free-up bandwidth capacity on the digital terrestrial platform and will kick-start the next phase of growth in HD TV. HD TV will become the mainstream and ultimately the standard form of free television around the middle of the next decade. In ten years time, nobody will ever refer to 'high definition' because HD will be everywhere."
In Australia we have no TV license fees as they have in the U.K, and we have plenty of free-to-air HD broadcasts. I suppose that makes a difference.
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That seems to be the general case. You're not alone with that view. Nevertheless, I still find it very curious that photographers will jump at the opportunity to double the pixel count of their DSLR yet show an almost total lack of interest in a 6x increase in pixel count simply because the image is moving.
I think with digital cameras Mega Pixels are one easy way to measure what you are buying. For the average buyer looking at say P&S cameras they all look the same but one is 10mp and the other 6mp so they think the 10mp ones are better simply because they have a bigger number. I think with High Def TVs you don't need pixel counts as a measuring tool as people can just go into a store and see a nice big flat LCD or Plasma TV. The physical size of the unit is all they need. Then they take them home and watch a DVD on them and are quite happy.
I also think a lot of tech savy people (like me) also see any disc based format as a dead end. Currently (where I live in the USA) I can watch hundreds if not thousands of Movies and TV Shows on Demand through my Digital Cable, many of them for free, the rest for very minimal cost. On top of that I belong to service called Netflix where I get DVDs mailed to me at my home, I can keep and watch them as long as I like, and when I am done, I just mail them back and I get more the next day. Recently I got a box that plugs into my home network where I can stream movies and TV shows directly from Netflix right to my TV no computer required. The quality is somewhere between that of a VHS tape and a DVD but I know that it will only get better with time, and with time more and more titles will be available also. My guess is that 5-10 years from now between my Digital Cable and Netflix (or a similar service) I will be able to watch just about any movie or TV show ever made, whenever I want, in High Def, and I will never touch a disk of any sort.
On a personal level I shoot digital with a Canon 30D, I am very happy with the 8mp size and don't want anything bigger. The more MPs the bigger the files, and the more I have to commit to storage and backups
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I also think a lot of tech savy people (like me) also see any disc based format as a dead end. Currently (where I live in the USA) I can watch hundreds if not thousands of Movies and TV Shows on Demand through my Digital Cable, many of them for free, the rest for very minimal cost. On top of that I belong to service called Netflix where I get DVDs mailed to me at my home, I can keep and watch them as long as I like, and when I am done, I just mail them back and I get more the next day. Recently I got a box that plugs into my home network where I can stream movies and TV shows directly from Netflix right to my TV no computer required. The quality is somewhere between that of a VHS tape and a DVD but I know that it will only get better with time, and with time more and more titles will be available also. My guess is that 5-10 years from now between my Digital Cable and Netflix (or a similar service) I will be able to watch just about any movie or TV show ever made, whenever I want, in High Def, and I will never touch a disk of any sort.
On a personal level I shoot digital with a Canon 30D, I am very happy with the 8mp size and don't want anything bigger. The more MPs the bigger the files, and the more I have to commit to storage and backups
Indeed I suspect that is the view of many people, even the tech savy. BD seems destined to be a flash-in-the-pan, like Laser Discs turned out to be. Pity really, since it implies that we will not get the currently available BD movie quality going mainstream for many years yet. It took many years before FM sound became widely available on VHS tapes, even though the initial mono sound format was simply horrible. All these downloaded movies, cable, satellite or broadband, even when so-called HD, are simply not comparable to BD on a large enough screen (or small screen when viewed close-up, like on a PC monitor). I find that a well recorded commercial DVD (4GB? per movie) on an upgrading HD TV or DVD player, is invariably better than the more usual compressed downloads (1.5 -3GB?). It may take many years before 10+GB downloads per movie become routine and thus competitive with BD. It will come eventually. One suspicion I have regarding DVDs is that PAL DVDs (625 lines?) seem inherently to have an advantage over NTSC DVDs (525 lines?) hence line doubling seems to have picked up more in N. America than in Europe during the 1990s amongst the cognoscenti. Anyway these days many higher end HD TVs seem to do very good upgrading from DVD to 1080 internally anyway, so perhaps there is no longer a need for higher end DVD players.
A comment on Netfix and Apple TV. Good systems for downloads, but for whatever reason not available worldwide, unlike LLVJ. Presumably the copyright owners are scared of piracy? Duh! The rest of the world seems to be downloading as-good or better pirate copies routinely. Any yuppie outside N.America probably has already 100+ pirated movies on those millions of 500GB and terabyte drives that are selling like hotcakes... Don't the copyright owners ever learn, eg from the music industry experience?
One thing I would emphasise though. Shoot all your home videos on HD, now! I have digitised all my home movies (starting with 8mm and 16mm in the 1950s, Super 8 in the 1970s, analogue videos from the 1980s, digital videos in the 1990s and ending with grand kids on HD) and the enormous quality difference is shocking. All these were "very good" quality for their epoch. Home videos go up in value with the passage of time. 25 years from now your kids will be watching whatever you shoot today on 8ft screens, and SD will most assuredly look horrible. Even HD 1080 will struggle, but it'll be much better than SD, perhaps like 1990s digital SD compared to analogue video from the 1980s.
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I think with digital cameras Mega Pixels are one easy way to measure what you are buying. For the average buyer looking at say P&S cameras they all look the same but one is 10mp and the other 6mp so they think the 10mp ones are better simply because they have a bigger number. I think with High Def TVs you don't need pixel counts as a measuring tool as people can just go into a store and see a nice big flat LCD or Plasma TV. The physical size of the unit is all they need. Then they take them home and watch a DVD on them and are quite happy.
True! But the point I raised was in regard to the attitude of photographers, the sort of people who frequent this site. The average member of the public buys a P&S camera in preference to a DSLR because they are not fussy about image quality. The P&S is good enough, just as SD TV is good enough.
When the P&S is not good enough and you want better quality, more resolution and/or better DR and lower noise, then you buy a DSLR. It just seems very odd that someone like jjj (for example) who obviously appreciates high image quality in his still images, doesn't give a stuff about the low image quality of SDTV. It's not good enough if the image is still. It is good enough if the image is moving. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this dual standard.
Anyway, at least I appreciate the benefits of HD moving images. I'm pleased that grand opera is at last beginning to become available on Blu-ray. I've already ordered from Amazon a selection of operas on Blu-ray, each with a 5 star rating from reviewers; operas such as Bizet's Carmen starring Anna Caterina Antonacci, The Magic Flute, The Barber of Seville, Aida etc.
Grand opera deserves a grand plasma display in full HD .
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When the P&S is not good enough and you want better quality, more resolution and/or better DR and lower noise, then you buy a DSLR. It just seems very odd that someone like jjj (for example) who obviously appreciates high image quality in his still images, doesn't give a stuff about the low image quality of SDTV..
Eh!? Not sure why you think that I don't care about moving image quality. My view is completely the opposite - I'm very fussy about it.
I do not have a HD TV as the quality of most TV [which is still SD], viewed on them is effing awful, plus the nasty digital look that most display is also something I despise. I'd much rather watch SD with subtle gradations of tone, good blacks and highlights that aren't burnt out on my CRT, that virtually any large TV I've looked at. They look OK with a BluRay source, but the chance of my buying/renting BR i very small. I have very few DVDs and have probably watched less than half of them. Don't have the time. Mainly as if I want HD I go to the Cinema and watch film or digital projection, which is way better than your meagre 50" TV.
I should also mention that I don't particularly care for the image out of most digital cameras, too video like a lot of the time.
Besides, if you look at my photography, grain and fuzziness is something I like to use creatively.
When appropriate, I actively 'degrade' my images at times, as it can look great.
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I do not have a HD TV as the quality of most TV [which is still SD], viewed on them is effing awful, plus the nasty digital look that most display is also something I despise. I'd much rather watch SD with subtle gradations of tone, good blacks and highlights that aren't burnt out on my CRT, that virtually any large TV I've looked at. They look OK with a BluRay source, but the chance of my buying/renting BR i very small. I have very few DVDs and have probably watched less than half of them. Don't have the time. Mainly as if I want HD I go to the Cinema and watch film or digital projection, which is way better than your meagre 50" TV.
That's not my experience. I think you are comparing the appearance of maladjusted, cheap or early models of big LCD screens with well-adjusted CRT displays. Any reasonably good quality SD source looks decidely and clearly better on a modern and properly adjusted HD plasma TV, viewed from an appropriate distance in relation to the sceen size. If this wasn't the case, then nobody would buy a projector. Those who do or did buy projectors, HD or not, used to be very impressed with the SD definition of DVDs on their huge 100" screens. Now such people are even more impressed with the improved quallity of full HD from Blu-ray on their 100" screens.
It's possible that certain cheap DVD players or early Plasma TVs have substandard upscaling chips which deliver disappointing results with SD material. However, I can attest that the 11th generation Panasonic Plasma sets do an excellent upscaling job, and that "The Bill" definitely looks better on my 50" plasma set than it used to on my high quality 33" Loewe CRT set.
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That's not my experience. I think you are comparing the appearance of maladjusted, cheap or early models of big LCD screens with well-adjusted CRT displays. Any reasonably good quality SD source looks decidely and clearly better on a modern and properly adjusted HD plasma TV, viewed from an appropriate distance in relation to the sceen size.
Duh, you still seem to be struggling with this part. You won't move your seats back and fore depending on the source material. You either sit too close for SD or too far for HD to do the best job. Now if I want a large screen I want the benefit of the large size so I won't sit a long way back just so the SD looks the same size as on the CRT. Currently, a little closer to my CRT and I can see the pixels - I have good eyesight. So a bigger screen is of no benefit for SD.
There was a article in papers this week claiming most people didn't get the benfit of big TVs/HD as their eyesight wasn't up to it. Possible a publicity stunt by opticians, but there's a germ of truth in it regardless.
It's possible that certain cheap DVD players or early Plasma TVs have substandard upscaling chips which deliver disappointing results with SD material. However, I can attest that the 11th generation Panasonic Plasma sets do an excellent upscaling job, and that "The Bill" definitely looks better on my 50" plasma set than it used to on my high quality 33" Loewe CRT set.
Uh duh again, shops don't stock old TVs and so funnily I've been looking at the latest ones [Panasonics too], and I will also alter them as well from defaults. I'm sure I also mentioned above that that a local highend hifi shop admitted that flat screens simply aren't as good as CRTs yet - they do not sell CRTs.
Upscaled SD, simply looks upscaled to me and doesn't survive being shown on a big screen as it tends to look soft.
How far away was the CRT you watched? It may have been a smaller angle of view than your big screen and probably could have been viewed closer. Most people's CRTs were/are a long way away, relatively. I'm presently at my sisters, looking at the TV in lounge, in a typicaly sized home, it's a 32". Yet interestingly, the angle of view it covers, is less than that of a video on say an iPhone in my hand.
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Duh, you still seem to be struggling with this part. You won't move your seats back and fore depending on the source material. You either sit too close for SD or too far for HD to do the best job. Now if I want a large screen I want the benefit of the large size so I won't sit a long way back just so the SD looks the same size as on the CRT. Currently, a little closer to my CRT and I can see the pixels - I have good eyesight. So a bigger screen is of no benefit for SD.
There was a article in papers this week claiming most people didn't get the benfit of big TVs/HD as their eyesight wasn't up to it. Possible a publicity stunt by opticians, but there's a germ of truth in it regardless.
JJJ,
Now who's being silly? You seem to imply that I am recommending you get out your calculator and measuring tape in order to determine the ideal position to sit in relation to a screen of a particular size and a broadcast of a particular quality.
Let me be clear on this matter. Whatever the size of the TV, whatever the quality of the broadcast, I always try to sit at a comfortable viewing distance from the display. I use my eyes to determine what is a comfortable viewing distance and I understand that what may be a comfortable viewing distance for one person may not be for another. I thought everyone did this as a matter of course, so I'm surprised that you seem to have so much difficulty with this issue.
Could it be that all the chairs in your living room are bolted to the floor at an equal distance to your TV screen? This would be very unusual, but if that were the case, then I would agree you might have a slight problem with regard to replacing your CRT TV with a large HD display.
Uh duh again, shops don't stock old TVs
They sometimes stock new TVs with old technology. They are usually of the cheaper and smaller variety. Haven't you noticed?
I'm sure I also mentioned above that that a local highend hifi shop admitted that flat screens simply aren't as good as CRTs yet - they do not sell CRTs.
Well, that settles the matter, doesn't it? Who could possibly argue with the authority of a salesman in your local hi fi shop. Salesman know everything, don't they?
Nobody sells 50" flat panel CRTs, so we can't compare, and your local hi fi shop apparently does't even have a small CRT with which to compare.
The impression that LCD monitors are not as good as CRT monitors for critical image processing, has been around for a long time. It seems to be the case (or certainly was the case) that only top-end and very expensive LCD computer monitors could rival the quality of a medium priced CRT computer monitor. For this reason I have not bothered to replace my old CRT computer monitor with an LCD monitor, although I can see there would be other advantages unrelated to image quality, such as a wider and bigger screen and a smaller footprint.
Plasma displays are in another category. What has been described as the deficiency of the LCD monitor, relatively poor contrast ratio and blacks lacking detail, exists in spades on the plasma screen. I doubt that any old-fashioned CRT would have a better contrast ratio than a modern plasma set.
If you have any links to authoritative sources that can specify in what ways a CRT is still better than the best of the current crop of plasma sets, I'd be interested.
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JJJ,
Now who's being silly? You seem to imply that I am recommending you get out your calculator and measuring tape in order to determine the ideal position to sit in relation to a screen of a particular size and a broadcast of a particular quality.
No, I'm not. I'm pointing out there is a variation in optimum distance that's all. Unlike a photo on a gallery wall, you don't normally have the option of varying viewing distance depending on whether the programme is HD or SD.
Plus, now you've mentioned it, it occured to me that to to pick TV in first place, you may well have to get tape measure out to decide which size is best. Why? Most rooms in Europe have a place for the TV and a place for the sofas, usually on opposite walls as houses/flats are rarely as big as in the less populated countries.
Let me be clear on this matter. Whatever the size of the TV, whatever the quality of the broadcast, I always try to sit at a comfortable viewing distance from the display. I use my eyes to determine what is a comfortable viewing distance and I understand that what may be a comfortable viewing distance for one person may not be for another. I thought everyone did this as a matter of course, so I'm surprised that you seem to have so much difficulty with this issue.
I'm not, you seem to be struggling with reading. The optimum viewing distance for SD + HD on a big screen is not the same, hence the problem.
Could it be that all the chairs in your living room are bolted to the floor at an equal distance to your TV screen? This would be very unusual, but if that were the case, then I would agree you might have a slight problem with regard to replacing your CRT TV with a large HD display.
No not bolted but very heavy and against the wall. A very normal arrangement. Besides to repeat point yet again, who's going change seating arrangements when changing channels if some progs are in SD and some in HD?
They sometimes stock new TVs with old technology. They are usually of the cheaper and smaller variety. Haven't you noticed?
And why would I be looking at small, cheap TVs? I work with images for a living, I'm hardly going to look at crap kit, particularly as it doesn't even show HD anyway. I was looking at a £5.5K Sony plasma a few days back. Not that impressive really, apart from price and size. Not as good a the Panasonics.
Well, that settles the matter, doesn't it? Who could possibly argue with the authority of a salesman in your local hi fi shop. Salesman know everything, don't they?
Nobody sells 50" flat panel CRTs, so we can't compare, and your local hi fi shop apparently does't even have a small CRT with which to compare.
Duh, yet again. They were saying a product they don't even sell is better [in many ways] than one they do sell. That's a very honest answer as it will lose the sale.
The impression that LCD monitors are not as good as CRT monitors for critical image processing, has been around for a long time. It seems to be the case (or certainly was the case) that only top-end and very expensive LCD computer monitors could rival the quality of a medium priced CRT computer monitor. For this reason I have not bothered to replace my old CRT computer monitor with an LCD monitor, although I can see there would be other advantages unrelated to image quality, such as a wider and bigger screen and a smaller footprint.
Plasma displays are in another category. What has been described as the deficiency of the LCD monitor, relatively poor contrast ratio and blacks lacking detail, exists in spades on the plasma screen. I doubt that any old-fashioned CRT would have a better contrast ratio than a modern plasma set.
Image quality is not simply defined by contrast ratio. Just as sound quality is not definined by the figures used to sell audio kit or MPs to sell cameras. It's not the contrast that is the main issue, it's the overall digital look, only part of which is related to the blacks
If you have any links to authoritative sources that can specify in what ways a CRT is still better than the best of the current crop of plasma sets, I'd be interested.
One of my main skills is parsing image quality, so I actually have no need to ask anyone else's opinion on this particular matter and I've spent a lot of time of late looking at Plasmas, they are certainly better than they were, but are still lacking, particularly as I keep repeating, when viewing normal SD TV [95% of current TV], as it simply does not look too good that big, especially after upresing. When SD becomes the minority format then I'll consider a larger replacement for lounge. Though one for the Kitchen is a vague possibilty for convienience, but girlfiend will find it a bit odd having the newer, bigger and fancier TV in kitchen. But as Kitchen viewing distance is quite long compared to lounge, it makes more sense to do that.
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Most rooms in Europe have a place for the TV and a place for the sofas, usually on opposite walls as houses/flats are rarely as big as in the less populated countries.
I'm not, you seem to be struggling with reading. The optimum viewing distance for SD + HD on a big screen is not the same, hence the problem.
No problem for me. I can understand if you are renting temporary living quarters, that the seating arrangements might be inflexible. If you own your own house then I presume you would arrange everything to suit your own living style and preferences in all matters. If your argument is, 'I live in rented accommodation which does not lend itself to any sort of flexibility with regard to seating arrangements and it would therefore be impractical and inconvenient for me to install a large screen HD display', then I understand completley. Why didn't you say so in the first place? Duh! Duh! Duh!
And why would I be looking at small, cheap TVs? I work with images for a living, I'm hardly going to look at crap kit, particularly as it doesn't even show HD anyway. I was looking at a £5.5K Sony plasma a few days back. Not that impressive really, apart from price and size. Not as good a the Panasonics.
I don't know why, except I deduced you might have been looking at crap because you seem to have the view that upscaling of SD material is very unsatisfactory. I find it susrprisingly good. I get the impression that Sony are not noted for the excellence of their plasma displays. There was some talk a while back of their discontinuing production of plasma displays and concentrating on LCDs.
By the way, you can get small and cheap, full HD displays. I have a 24" LCD display from Acer that I picked up for around US$270. First impressions are, it's very much lacking in contrast ratio. It probably does all processing of the signal in 8-bit mode and displays the results in 6-bit dithered.
Duh, yet again. They were saying a product they don't even sell is better [in many ways] than one they do sell. That's a very honest answer as it will lose the sale.
It's a shrewd answer. Since you are such a clever fellow and your salesman is local, he knows already that you have the impression, rightly or wrongly, that CRT is better. He also knows that you are not going to buy another CRT TV and that there are no Full HD CRT TVs available anywhere. When you are ready to buy a full HD plasma (after you've sorted out your seating arrangements), he knows you are likely to return to him because he's given you the impression that he's perceptive and knowledgeable on such matters. He will also be in a good position to persuade you to buy a more expensive display than you otherwise might have bought, on the grounds that this latest Plasma display (a Pioneer Kuro perhaps) really is better than a CRT.
Image quality is not simply defined by contrast ratio. Just as sound quality is not definined by the figures used to sell audio kit or MPs to sell cameras. It's not the contrast that is the main issue, it's the overall digital look, only part of which is related to the blacks
One of my main skills is parsing image quality, so I actually have no need to ask anyone else's opinion on this particular matter and I've spent a lot of time of late looking at Plasmas, they are certainly better than they were, but are still lacking, particularly as I keep repeating, when viewing normal SD TV [95% of current TV], as it simply does not look too good that big, especially after upresing. When SD becomes the minority format then I'll consider a larger replacement for lounge. Though one for the Kitchen is a vague possibilty for convienience, but girlfiend will find it a bit odd having the newer, bigger and fancier TV in kitchen. But as Kitchen viewing distance is quite long compared to lounge, it makes more sense to do that.
95% of broadcasts in the U.K are still SD? Dear me! When I used to visit the U.K. when my parents were still alive, I would occasionally find there was some confusion amongst friends and relatives as to whether the time in Australia was 10 hours ahead or 10 hours behind. I sometimes clarified the situation by saying it was easy to remember. Just remember that Australia is ahead in everything. (I know how to win friends and influence people.)
I think part of your problem with SD image quality might have something to do with the difference between the analogue broadcast signal and the digital broadcast signal. A CRT set cannot receive a digital signal, except through a set-top box. During the time of the Olympics in Beijing, and before I bought the Panasonic plasma set for my partner, I hooked up the Loewe CRT TV to a set-top box. The Loewe Calida has a real 16:9 option whereby the scan lines are vertically compressed to the 16:9 aspect ratio (as opposed to cropping the scan lines which effectively reduces vertical resolution).
Through the set-top box I was able to get a very clear 16:9 digital broadcast, which was presumably the full HD signal downscaled to SD, and it seemed to have the resolution edge compared with the analogue broadcast of the same material. However, there were one or two aspects of image quality with which I was not satisfied. First, there was a tendency towards blown highlights which reminded me a bit of the differences between film and digital cameras. The digital highlights tend to clip suddenly whereas film is more gradual in its handling of highlights. I wondered at the time if analogue broadcasts were more like film in this respect.
The second disappointment was in the fine tuning of color shades. The Loewe set has a tint control which was very useful with analogue broadcasts. With the digital broadcast, this control was not functional. It had no effect. These disappointments with the way a CRT TV handles a digital signal influenced my decision to buy a modern plasma display.
There is also sometimes evident, a certain plasticity in the complexions of people in a digital broadcast, as though the image has been subjected to heavy noise reduction. I don't see this effect in HD footage from Blu-ray discs, so I think such effects are in the source material and are a result of digital manipulation. I think you might be confusing such digital manipulation, that seems to be quite common, with the quality of the display.
I've read that the extra clarity of the HD standard in portraying every wart, pore and blemish is a great problem for the porn industry, so I've heard. And I can believe it without seeing for myself.
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OK, now for another controversy(?). I have looked at the 103" Panasonic plasma TV and also the most recent 70" Sony LCD in the same showroom, roughly at the same ridiculous price of $35,000 to $40,000 each, perhaps the largest available single displays from either technology(?), and also many other more affordable versions at around 50", and invariably I come to the conclusion that the LCDs are better displays than the plasmas. Don't get me wrong. That 103" is awesome! Just from the experience I'd say that our kids and grandkids WILL have wall sized displays 20 to 40 years hence. Anyway, why all the above emphasis on plasmas? The plasmas in our corner of the world are invariably cheaper than the same size LCDs (from the same manufacturer such as LG) and they all seem not quite up to the LCDs from the same manufacturers in image quality. The plasmas have lower contrast ratios than the LCD and also the rumoured possibility of screen burn (from games). The old contrast ratios of 5000:1 are now history so image quality has certainly improved a lot in the past year or two. I have never seen HD on a CRT, except possibly on my ancient computer monitor, so I cannot really compare with a state of the art CRT. The only real shortfall I still note on LCDs is grey-scale contouring when there is a very subtle gradation on, eg the sky or similar on a large chunk of the screen. Presumably the culprit must be that 6-bit thing mentioned earlier? We do not have this contouring issue with 8-bit displays of Jpeg images that we look at daily, so human vision is satisfied with 8-bit displays, but if HD displays only 6-bits then that must be the culprit. Next time I am in that shop I'll check out whether the contouring is less or more on the Panasonic plasma. It's definitely present on the Sony LCDs we have at home (also a DLP we have in a vacation home). Of course the programming they use in the showroom is chosen deliberately to avoid all the deficiencies the manufacturers have identified, so it's difficult to compare except by sticking in the same BD into both an LCD and a plasma. I never did notice it when viewing HD on a PC monitor, but now I will of course look for it.
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Anyway, why all the above emphasis on plasmas? The plasmas in our corner of the world are invariably cheaper than the same size LCDs (from the same manufacturer such as LG) and they all seem not quite up to the LCDs from the same manufacturers in image quality. The plasmas have lower contrast ratios than the LCD and also the rumoured possibility of screen burn (from games). The old contrast ratios of 5000:1 are now history so image quality has certainly improved a lot in the past year or two.
Plasmas have always had a reputation for having a greater contrast ratio than the LCD. They certainly have a higher published (claimed) CR figure. You may take such claims with a pinch of salt, but it does raise the question as to why manufacturers of plasma displays feel the need to exaggerate their CR figures whilst the same manufacturers of LCD displays feel compelled to provide more honest figures, if it is indeed the case that LCD displays have a higher contrast ratio. Are you implying that manufacturers of Plasma screens have greater need to lie about the CR in order to compete with the LCD?
As I understand, the Plasma system has individual phosophors much like a CRT which can individually be varied in brightness from off to full on. The LCD has a constant backlight. However, recent improvements in LCD technology, using an LED backlight in clusters which can be varied with the changing contrast of the scene being displayed, have improved the situation, but as far as I'm aware, not to the extent that LCD is now better than plasma.
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No problem for me. I can understand if you are renting temporary living quarters, that the seating arrangements might be inflexible. If you own your own house then I presume you would arrange everything to suit your own living style and preferences in all matters. If your argument is, 'I live in rented accommodation which does not lend itself to any sort of flexibility with regard to seating arrangements and it would therefore be impractical and inconvenient for me to install a large screen HD display', then I understand completley. Why didn't you say so in the first place? Duh! Duh! Duh!
More incorrect assumptions and STILL missing the point. The sweet spot for SD + HD are in different spots. That is the issue.
Not sure why you think you cannot move furniture in rented accomodation, particularly when some properies are let unfurnished.
I own my house and have no mortgage thank you, but the walls get in the way of moving furniture back and fore, not that that is a soluion anyway. Plus as I said before, homes in crowded counties tend to be smaller, so normally less room for manouevre and massive screens and SD simply won't work if you care about image quality.
I don't know why, except I deduced you might have been looking at crap because you seem to have the view that upscaling of SD material is very unsatisfactory.
Making asumptions - not good.
I find it susrprisingly good.
Can I recommend a visit to optician.
By the way, you can get small and cheap, full HD displays. I have a 24" LCD display from Acer that I picked up for around US$270.
24" small!?! That was a huge TV not that long ago and is still fairly big for a monitor.
It's a shrewd answer. Since you are such a clever fellow and your salesman is local, he knows already that you have the impression, rightly or wrongly, that CRT is better. He also knows that you are not going to buy another CRT TV and that there are no Full HD CRT TVs available anywhere. When you are ready to buy a full HD plasma (after you've sorted out your seating arrangements), he knows you are likely to return to him because he's given you the impression that he's perceptive and knowledgeable on such matters. He will also be in a good position to persuade you to buy a more expensive display than you otherwise might have bought, on the grounds that this latest Plasma display (a Pioneer Kuro perhaps) really is better than a CRT.
Assumptions again. You don't know how I asked the question or in what context. The other thing is and this may come as a surprise, some shops are actually good. Not many admittedly, but there are good stores and some decent good staff in existence. I've come across a few recently, much to my pleasant surprise. And I know the difference between someone giving an honest answer and one trying to please me in the way you suggest and I normally test their response with safe questions first.
I think part of your problem with SD image quality might have something to do with the difference between the analogue broadcast signal and the digital broadcast signal.
Nope it's not. I'm comparing a CRT with a digital signal and a Plasma/LCD with a digital signal
Through the set-top box I was able to get a very clear 16:9 digital broadcast, which was presumably the full HD signal downscaled to SD, and it seemed to have the resolution edge compared with the analogue broadcast of the same material. However, there were one or two aspects of image quality with which I was not satisfied. First, there was a tendency towards blown highlights which reminded me a bit of the differences between film and digital cameras. The digital highlights tend to clip suddenly whereas film is more gradual in its handling of highlights. I wondered at the time if analogue broadcasts were more like film in this respect.
The only issues I have with a digital signal [on a CRT] is the blockyness of smooth toned areas and things like dissolves, rain, fog which digital really, really struggles with due to compreession issues and can look like a youtube video at times. Compression/bandwith issues. HD takes up even more bandwdth, so....
There is also sometimes evident, a certain plasticity in the complexions of people in a digital broadcast, as though the image has been subjected to heavy noise reduction. I don't see this effect in HD footage from Blu-ray discs, so I think such effects are in the source material and are a result of digital manipulation. I think you might be confusing such digital manipulation, that seems to be quite common, with the quality of the display.
No, I'm not as I've not had an analogue signal in house since wind moved aerial about 5yrs ago - I have cable, so never bothered sorting it out.
I've read that the extra clarity of the HD standard in portraying every wart, pore and blemish is a great problem for the porn industry, so I've heard. And I can believe it without seeing for myself.
I've commented before that sometimes more detail is not a good thing, particularly on skin and as porn is almost all skin, probably not a good idea. Though if you are into leather/PVC stuff, then less of an issue. This may be why the porn industry didn't lead the way with the latest technology during the BluRay/HDD spat as it has in the past.
Certainly one of those things. I remember reading about HDTV in Japan when it first appeared 10+ years ago was that newscasters suddenly had every pore and wrinkle on display and younger presenters were suddenly required. Why not simply put a stocking over lens instead?
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Well, jjj, I guess there's no more to be said on the subject. As a person who doesn't own a full HD plasma set, you are quite adamant that it doesn't have anything to offer you in your current circumstances, considering the paucity of HD broadcasts in the U.K.
As a person who does effectively own an HD Plasma TV (although I bought it as a Christmas present for someone) I'm very pleased with the increased detail and image quality of all good broadcasts, both SD and HD as well as DVDs, Blu-ray and my own images, downsampled and converted to jpeg. Of course, it goes without saying, if the image quality of the broadcast is really bad and the colors very much out of adjustment, faces too red or too pale as is often the case with clips that are shown during News programs, then the size or quality of the display is irrelevant.
I notice that Panasonic are now starting to advertise their 12th generation Plasma TVs with even greater contrast ratio. They are now claiming 40,000:1 native, and 2,000,000:1 dynamic. I believe the panel in their top model is only 1" thick.
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I notice that Panasonic are now starting to advertise their 12th generation Plasma TVs with even greater contrast ratio. They are now claiming 40,000:1 native, and 2,000,000:1 dynamic. I believe the panel in their top model is only 1" thick.
More marketing BS. Most spec numbers mean very little in reality.
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More marketing BS. Most spec numbers mean very little in reality.
Perhaps one could apply the principle espoused by George Bernard Shaw; the more photos that are taken, the more 'good' photos that are taken as a small proprtion of the total.
Likewise, the larger the manufacturers' inflated specs, the larger the true specs. Does that make sense .
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Perhaps one could apply the principle espoused by George Bernard Shaw; the more photos that are taken, the more 'good' photos that are taken as a small proprtion of the total.
That's not necessarily true. It depends on the population [statistically speaking] of who's taking the pictures. Not that it has anything to do with what I said anyway.
Likewise, the larger the manufacturers' inflated specs, the larger the true specs. Does that make sense .
No. The logic is poor and the point was that the numbers are often meaningless, even if accurate.
Such as more MP make for a better camera. Yes my GX200 may have more MP that the GX100, but the picture quality [the important part] is actually poorer and noise is worse than cameras I have with half the MPs.
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That's not necessarily true. It depends on the population [statistically speaking] of who's taking the pictures. Not that it has anything to do with what I said anyway.
No. The logic is poor and the point was that the numbers are often meaningless, even if accurate.
Such as more MP make for a better camera. Yes my GX200 may have more MP that the GX100, but the picture quality [the important part] is actually poorer and noise is worse than cameras I have with half the MPs.
It seems you are stuck in old-fashioned paradigms. The jpeg output of P&S cameras with no RAW capability is something I have no experience comparing. But you must have heard of the concept of downsizing higher pixel count images to produce the same noise as lower pixel count cameras of the same format. You can see the effect on DXOmark. They've chosen 8x12" prints as the downsize.
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To get back to the topic, yes Blu Ray is dying. I don't see it ever getting to critical mass before it becomes unnecesary. Global recession means adoption rates will fall even more. I am the target audience, gadget addicted disposable income having geek and I have only recently joined the blu ray revolution and even then dipped the smallest of toes in the water. I would have preferred HD-DVD since I tend to hate Sony and their proprietary crap but that was not to be.
I was a very early adopter on dvd storage. For years I backed up my photos to 2 dvd's and 1 hard drive. That got a lot more troublesome when I got the 1ds2. Nothing like coming home from a long photo trip and taking a day to divvy the pictures up into dvd size folders, then for the next week starting another disk burning everytime I walked by a computer. If the folks behind blu ray had been aggressive and got the price down on the burners and blanks i'd have jumped right in. For a year or so they had a window. They have waited too long though, and now laptop drives are spacious enough that I take 2 of those along on any trip, well 3 counting the one in the laptop. Of course since it's movie studios behind it, they don't want cheap blanks for fear of piracy. This to me was tremendously short sighted. I think DVD really took off when it became cheap to burn them.
I have about 1.5tb of photos and 2tb of video. Western Digital finally announced their new 2tb hard drive today. It's much much easier for me to plink one of those in a desktop quick eject enclosure, drag and drop, come back a few hours later and it's done. So now I keep 3 hard drive copies of everthing, 1 is stored offsite, one in a fireproof box and 1 copy is on my network. Hard drives do fail, and I think fail even more often when not used all the time, so I think keeping 3 is worthwhile. I'd hate to have a fire, pull out my offsite drive and it be dead. One of these days i'll make a lightroom catalog of selects and maybe burn those to dvd's and store online.
Squeezing from the bottom end on storage is the ubiqitous flash drive. I picked up a 16gb one in a christmas deal for $20. There are 32gb now, 64gb on the way. In a few years 16gb flash cards will probably be $5 or less and blu ray will be pointless for storage. Keep going and figure in 5-10 years flash drives are a buck for 16-32gb. At some point video games, movies, etc., everything that is not downloaded will come on a flash drive and by then you'll have USB3.0 widespread so it will be much quicker to use. In the past I have edited down my travel video and burned to dvd, even gave people that were on the trip with me a copy. Now those people ask, but since i'm shooting HD, there's not been an easy way for them to play back the footage. I really thought at some point i'd be able to do it on blu-ray, now I figure i'll give them a flash card. My HDTV has an SD slot and it will slideshow any images on an inserted SD card. I would imagine very soon they will play video the same way.
Forget storage, what about video quality. I recently bought a 42inch tv. I bought a 720p instead of 1080p. Why? Because the 1080p costs a lot more and I sit far enough back I couldn't tell the difference. That means I couldn't tell the difference between DVD and Blu Ray. Here's a chart showing this
http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html (http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html)
Why did I get such a "small" tv? Because the space on the wall above it is all projector screen, about 7 feet diagonal. My projector is 1080i. My next one will be 1080p just because price has fallen tremendously on them but again it's at a size/distance where i'll have a hard time telling the difference. I play my dvd's using a home theater PC so the scaling is top notch.
I did recently buy a Playstation 3 and thus got a Blu Ray player. So far my only video purchase has been Planet Earth(the BBC version of course). When I rent movies I still rent DVD instead of paying extra for Blu Ray. It would have to be some exceptional movie before i'm going to care and the movie will have to be well shot, edited and transferred to digital before i'd be able to tell the difference. There is probably only 5 movies a year that would matter to me and I watch a lot of movies. If I can't tell the difference what about average joe 6 pac?
Just like going from cassette to CD was a huge improvement, going from VHS to DVD was a giant leap. That analog to digital is amazing. Digital to slightly better digital, just doesn't matter to most people.
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It seems you are stuck in old-fashioned paradigms. The jpeg output of P&S cameras with no RAW capability is something I have no experience comparing. But you must have heard of the concept of downsizing higher pixel count images to produce the same noise as lower pixel count cameras of the same format. You can see the effect on DXOmark. They've chosen 8x12" prints as the downsize.
And you're stuck yet again on the pointless downsizing to 'improve' quality nonsense. I want the good quality at full size, not half size. It's a very stupid way to compare best quality. No idea why you keep banging on about it.
Not to mention I was talking about cameras with RAW ability.
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And you're stuck yet again on the pointless downsizing to 'improve' quality nonsense. I want the good quality at full size, not half size. It's a very stupid way to compare best quality. No idea why you keep banging on about it.
Not to mention I was talking about cameras with RAW ability.
What is full size? That's a new concept. I've heard of A4 and A3 and A2 etc., but what size is 'full size'?
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To get back to the topic, yes Blu Ray is dying. I don't see it ever getting to critical mass before it becomes unnecesary. Global recession means adoption rates will fall even more. I am the target audience, gadget addicted disposable income having geek and I have only recently joined the blu ray revolution and even then dipped the smallest of toes in the water. I would have preferred HD-DVD since I tend to hate Sony and their proprietary crap but that was not to be.
Is there any evidence to support this view? Blu-ray has been around for little more than 2 1/2 years. Initial take-up was slow because of competition from the HD-DVD format and consequent indecision on the part of some potential cutomers.
After a Google search on the current state of the technology, I came across the following claims.
(1) 1220 titles on Blu-ray are currently available in the US.
(2) In the first week of November 2008, sales of Blu-ray recorders surpassed sales of DVD recorders in Japan.
(3) In December 2008, Pioneer Corporation unveiled a 400 GB Blu-ray disc, which contains 16 data layers, 25 GB each, and will be compatible with current players after a firmware update. A planned launch is in the 2009-2010 time frame for ROM and 2010-2013 for rewritable discs. Ongoing development is under way to create a 1 TB Blu-ray disc as soon as 2013.
Wikipedia covers the subject quite well at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc)
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Is there any evidence to support this view? Blu-ray has been around for little more than 2 1/2 years. Initial take-up was slow because of competition from the HD-DVD format and consequent indecision on the part of some potential cutomers.
After a Google search on the current state of the technology, I came across the following claims.
(1) 1220 titles on Blu-ray are currently available in the US.
(2) In the first week of November 2008, sales of Blu-ray recorders surpassed sales of DVD recorders in Japan.
(3) In December 2008, Pioneer Corporation unveiled a 400 GB Blu-ray disc, which contains 16 data layers, 25 GB each, and will be compatible with current players after a firmware update. A planned launch is in the 2009-2010 time frame for ROM and 2010-2013 for rewritable discs. Ongoing development is under way to create a 1 TB Blu-ray disc as soon as 2013.
Wikipedia covers the subject quite well at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc)
I am an ardent fan of BD and I always buy my movies in BD, if available. Just finished watching 16 hours(! Never thought I'll become vegetative to this extent!) of the BBC series "The Tudors" on my 70" Sony. This is the way all TV should be. Superb cinematography, superb sound, good script even if historically inaccurate. But Sigh... Most of the people I would happily let borrow my discs still do not own any way of playing BDs. They all own (with mis-adjusted aspect ratios) HD displays, but the highest resolution they have ever watched at home are pirated download movies and DVDs. They are generally early adopters and all seem to have terabyte drives full of pirated movies. These pirated downloads are surprisingly good for not much more than a GB per hour (slightly better quality than the HD LLVJ but still very far from a BD movie). But I think there have been too many hurdles imposed on BD, primarily by Sony and other studio owners like Warner Bros. After brilliantly making the PS3 the early-adopter BD player of choice, they still insist on Region Coding, 20 to 30% premium for a BD version of a movie over a DVD, ridiculous price for blanks, still too high a price for burners, etc, etc. Yes, pity, but I think it may indeed be dying.
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What is full size? That's a new concept. I've heard of A4 and A3 and A2 etc., but what size is 'full size'?
Not downrezed. There is no set physical measurement as it depends on image dimensions and dpi. Now if I am comparing a 8mp camera against a 28MP camera I do not print both images at A5 to compare differences. I would compare them at A1, as that is when it matters.
Plus unlike with film printing much smaller print sizes can actually result in a loss of quality. I had to argue with my idiot printers to print one side of my business cards at 600dpi as the downsampling of some of the images to 300dpi, markedly reduced quality [which would not be fixed by sharpening]. But they trotted out the dumb 'no need for more than 300dpi' mantra which is based on ignorant nonsense as it comes from the 'no less than 300dpi' guideline, which is a different suggestion altogether and was a guideline before digital resizing even existed.
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Not downrezed. There is no set physical measurement as it depends on image dimensions and dpi. Now if I am comparing a 8mp camera against a 28MP camera I do not print both images at A5 to compare differences. I would compare them at A1, as that is when it matters.
Plus unlike with film printing much smaller print sizes can actually result in a loss of quality. I had to argue with my idiot printers to print one side of my business cards at 600dpi as the downsampling of some of the images to 300dpi, markedly reduced quality [which would not be fixed by sharpening]. But they trotted out the dumb 'no need for more than 300dpi' mantra which is based on ignorant nonsense as it comes from the 'no less than 300dpi' guideline, which is a different suggestion altogether and was a guideline before digital resizing even existed.
Printing both images at A5 would be going to extremes. Let's be sensible . The 8"x12" standard at 300 ppi, that DXO uses, is representative of an 8mp image.
I rarely downrez images in practice. I print from Qimage which I believe never uses less than 360ppi at default and can interpolate up to 720ppi.
I could be wrong, but I get the impression that the purpose of downrezzing (as opposed to uprezzing) is to eliminate as many variables as possible for the purposes of an easier and less distracting comparison of those image qualities such as dynamic range and noise. We all know that the camera with the higher pixel count can deliver greater resolution. If your purpose is to compare the resolution from cameras with different pixel counts, then uprezzing is the way to go.
I have little doubt that I would be happier making a 24"x36" print from a 15mp 50D image than I would from a 10mp 40D image of the identical scene, but it gets expensive on ink and paper to satisfy my curiosity in this way.
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I am an ardent fan of BD and I always buy my movies in BD, if available. Just finished watching 16 hours(! Never thought I'll become vegetative to this extent!) of the BBC series "The Tudors" on my 70" Sony. This is the way all TV should be. Superb cinematography, superb sound, good script even if historically inaccurate. But Sigh... Most of the people I would happily let borrow my discs still do not own any way of playing BDs. They all own (with mis-adjusted aspect ratios) HD displays, but the highest resolution they have ever watched at home are pirated download movies and DVDs. They are generally early adopters and all seem to have terabyte drives full of pirated movies. These pirated downloads are surprisingly good for not much more than a GB per hour (slightly better quality than the HD LLVJ but still very far from a BD movie). But I think there have been too many hurdles imposed on BD, primarily by Sony and other studio owners like Warner Bros. After brilliantly making the PS3 the early-adopter BD player of choice, they still insist on Region Coding, 20 to 30% premium for a BD version of a movie over a DVD, ridiculous price for blanks, still too high a price for burners, etc, etc. Yes, pity, but I think it may indeed be dying.
As I see it, if Blu-ray is dying then it is likely to be true only within the context of optical media in general, dying. I cannot see a situation where Blu-ray would die and standard defition DVD would continue. If optical media is superceded by cheaper, sold state and/or 'race track' hard drive storage (whatever), in conjunction with increased internet speeds, then possibly all optical media will become obsolete.
However, there are large areas of the globe where fast and affordable broadband internet is not available. Even in Australia, 25GB of internet downloads currently can cost a lot more than a 25GB Blu-ray movie, without even including the cost of the storage of that download.
If we go back in time to the introduction of the music CD, and then the DVD , I think probably 2 1/2 years after the introduction of those media formats, prices were then far greater than they currently are for Blu-ray, whether blanks or recorded data, if one takes inflation into consideration. In fact, I recall paying as much as A$25 for a single music CD in the early 1980's, which by today's value would be at least A$100.
Nor do I believe that 2 1/2 years after the introduction of the DVD, I would have been able to buy a multi-region DVD player for even close to A$250. I can get such a Blu-ray player in Australia today, albeit made in China, multi-region for both Blu-ray and DVD movies.
50" Plasma displays, Blu-ray players and Blu-ray movies are all tremendously good value. The recession will of course have an impact, as it will in most areas, but entertainment seems to be relatively immune to recession. People need to be entertained .
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I think the question relates very much to Michael's Feb. 1 column, "Quality vs. Value - When is Enough Enough."
I'm a lifelong audio-and videophile who gladly plunked down US$80 to $100 for the first CDs and pre-recorded Beta video tapes (I eschewed VHS), and was first in line for LaserDiscs.
But not a dime for Blu-Ray.
Why? Because in a market already saturated with DVD upres players the improvement in spec isn't worth the cost.
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I think the question relates very much to Michael's Feb. 1 column, "Quality vs. Value - When is Enough Enough."
I'm a lifelong audio-and videophile who gladly plunked down US$80 to $100 for the first CDs and pre-recorded Beta video tapes (I eschewed VHS), and was first in line for LaserDiscs.
But not a dime for Blu-Ray.
Why? Because in a market already saturated with DVD upres players the improvement in spec isn't worth the cost.
This is the sort of argument I find very odd indeed. If we were talking about small increments in improvement, such as moving up from an SVGA projector to an XGA projector at great expense, or moving up from an NTSC 480 lines SD system to a PAL 525 lines SD system, I would agree. We'd be into marginal improvements that only the most dedicated videophile would be interested in.
But HD video is in a different ball park. At it's best, as manifest in Blu-ray discs, HD video has approximately 6x more picture resolution (detail) than standard definition at its best.
The comparison would be between Canon's first DSLR, the 3mp D30, and the 16mp 1Ds2. The difference is so huge I hardly think that Michael's recent essay is relevant in any shape or form to this situation.
There's something else going on here, which is very puzzling. The difference between video from Blu-ray on my 50" plasma set and SD video from a DVD on my 50" plasma set is so obvious, from an appropriate viewing distance, that I can only assume that those who think the improvement is marginal are simply switching off their brains.
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There's something else going on here, which is very puzzling. The difference between video from Blu-ray on my 50" plasma set and SD video from a DVD on my 50" plasma set is so obvious, from an appropriate viewing distance, that I can only assume that those who think the improvement is marginal are simply switching off their brains.
There is indeed a difference in the quality of the image.
And you're right that something else is going on here.
What it is, however, is not people switching off their brains.
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I'm a lifelong audio-and videophile who gladly plunked down US$80 to $100 for the first CDs
That's a contradiction as the early CDs sounded awful - mainly due to the kit they were being played on. I waited until the 90s and only bought a CD player as stuff I wanted wasn't available on vinyl, though plenty of other music I bought wasn't available on CDs.
Ironically it was DJing that totally swung me to CDs, as after playing with some Pioneeer CDJs, I realised, how much better there were was compard to a Technics 1200.
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What it is, however, is not people switching off their brains.
Well, tell us what it is. No need to be smug. Switching off their brains is the only explanation I can think of. If you have a better one, please enlighten us.
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That's a contradiction as the early CDs sounded awful - mainly due to the kit they were being played on. .
The early CDs had brick-wall filtering and harsh high frequencies as a consequence. However, they had the advantage of freedom from pops and crackles, and background 'hiss'. This is a bit analogous to the sudden blowing of highlights in digital images, as opposed the the gradual shoulder of film.
The sound recording engineers, when confronted with digital recorders, were a bit like photographers who had switched to digital. They would often use the same techniques they were familiar with when using analog tape recorders, and blow the 'sound equivalent' of highlights on the digital recorders.
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That's a contradiction as the early CDs sounded awful
For so many of us audiophiles there was no contradiction at all between the amount of our individual GDP's that we plunked down to purchase early consumer digital, and how it sounded (sucky, in fact). It was <drum roll> hot, new, and Cutting Edge. And that was key.
Nigh on thirty years later, I and my friends who weep at the the mass popularity of MP3 groan at Blu-Ray. Not at its video spec, but at the sham that the industry made of the development and marketing process. High-definition DVD formats are perceived by the public as "gimmicks" -- the result of years of publicity bought and paid for by the manufacturers and movie studios themselves in their myopic spec-wars with each other.
In a world with an enormous SD DVD installed base, many of whom have been through at least one standards conversion that rendered their entire collection of media un-hot, not-new, and Dull Edge, there seems little likelihood of a mass embracing of Blu-Ray or any other new DVD spec -- until and unless the new spec hardware & media is the same price and availability as the existing popular spec; is transparently compatible with existing spec hardware & media; and is of such quality improvement as to create virtual ecstasy for the eyes and ears of John and Jane Q. Public.
Blu-Ray, improved video notwithstanding, isn't it.
Or as a friend of mine pointed out when we were jawing about this very topic, "If consumer audio & video was driven by considerations of technical quality, FM would have been the rage in the 30's and everyone would know who Ed Armstrong was."
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Well, tell us what it is. No need to be smug. Switching off their brains is the only explanation I can think of. If you have a better one, please enlighten us.
Believe me, no smugness or disrespect is intended: if the only explanation you can think of to explain why Blu-Ray isn't being better accepted is the mass stupidity of people, I'm truly the least qualified person I can think of to persuade you otherwise.
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Believe me, no smugness or disrespect is intended: if the only explanation you can think of to explain why Blu-Ray isn't being better accepted is the mass stupidity of people, I'm truly the least qualified person I can think of to persuade you otherwise.
I didn't use the expression 'mass stupidity'. You did. I will always opt for any explanation that is reasonable as opposed to no explanation at all.
I'll expand upon my theory. The mass of video material available to watch on TV, including most movies transferred to video tape and DVD, requires no more than a low order of intelligence to appreciate. The average Joe Blow, after a hard day's work, plonks himself down in his favourite chair to be entertained. He switches off his mind. The emotional impact and excitement of Arnold Schwarzenegger smashing someone's brains onto the concrete floor, or the sight of a car being chased by the cops and crashing through a restaurant window, is not greatly enhanced when seen in high definition. It is enhanced to some degree but not to a sufficient degree to get most people concerned, just as most people are not concerned about the quality of their snapshots, and for the same reason, why P&S cameras are far more popular than DSLRs.
Perhaps this is a weak explanation and perhaps also derogatory. Let's have a better one, then. Your explanation that 6x the picture detail is too marginal an improvement, just doesn't make sense.
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In a world with an enormous SD DVD installed base, many of whom have been through at least one standards conversion that rendered their entire collection of media un-hot, not-new, and Dull Edge, there seems little likelihood of a mass embracing of Blu-Ray or any other new DVD spec -- until and unless the new spec hardware & media is the same price and availability as the existing popular spec; is transparently compatible with existing spec hardware & media; and is of such quality improvement as to create virtual ecstasy for the eyes and ears of John and Jane Q. Public.
Agreed, as I (probably badly) phrased it myself early in this thread.
Ray, I don't say that a DVD SD TV picture is as nice as the image on large HD screen. It isn't. All I am saying I don't think that the improvement matters enough to enough people. I think for most people, most of what they watch on TV for home entertainment does not need high quality reproduction. What I have is good enough for my purposes, but it goes without saying that my needs are not the same as those of others. If I could have better at zero (or near zero) cost, then sure, why not. But I will likely not budge until I have to. My old TV is working fine and so long as I can rent DVDs at my local rental store, it is not important for me to upgrade.
You asked in an earlier post why people who care about image quality (presumably people on this site) can live with substandard TV reproduction. It's easy. Different standards for different purposes. Not all my meals are gourmet feasts, sometimes I listen to music in my car with lots of ambient noise, and sometimes I watch some films on VHS. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that important. Anyway, there is always something better out there to measure against.
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I don't say that a DVD SD TV picture is as nice as the image on large HD screen. It isn't. All I am saying I don't think that the improvement matters enough to enough people.
Bingo. In marketing-speak, BD's OOB* doesn't have enough WOW.
Just ask the folks who sell BD at the retail level: the buying public clearly sees BD's improved video quality yet doesn't purchase in mass numbers -- a pattern which was established well before the economic bubble burst.
Arguments of working-class aesthetics aside, BD simply doesn't have sufficient Wow to overcome SD DVD's combination of installed-base ubiquitousness, low cost and enormous selection of media. Nor can its superior video quality change the popular perception that it's a videophile's luxury toy at best and a gimmick at worst -- just another combatant in the ongoing post-modern Beta-VHS wars.
As a result, the thing that anoints all commercially successful consumer tech as Must-Have -- enthusiastic word of mouth -- isn't generated.
And so, as noted earlier in the thread, BD sits at sub-critical mass.
Dead? Not in the sense of having to nail the parrot's feet to the perch.
But dying? Well... even without the current recession, what industry would continue to shovel money into a new, proprietary DVD format in the hopes that it eventually catches on?
*Out of the box experience.
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Our local big box store has many more BD movies than ordinary music CDS at the moment. Probably about 30% as many BDs as standard def DVDs right now. I'd say BD is doing fine. It may or may not eventually supplant DVD, but everyone I know who has seen BD has either bought a player already, or is planning to. My family members all claim to see a very big improvement, and my wife won't consider buying or renting a regular DVD now, even at a discount.
I'm also convinced that content delivered over the net will eventually kill off all prerecorded media. The big question is how the production and distribution companies will divide that pie. Undoubtedly, they'll make the same kind of short-sighted mistakes they did with MP3. The music industry acted like they could force people to continue buying standard CDs forever, but it hasn't taken long to prove otherwise. I've never been impressed with the quality of MP3 (or WMA, etc., etc.), but it sure is convenient to carry 7,000 songs in the car (which is the defintion of a bad listening environment). It would be great to be able to watch, say, some obscure episode of a long-cancelled TV show at a whim. But speaking striclty for myself, it will be hard to tolerate low quality video from now on. BD, and to some extent broadcast HD, has seen to that.
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For so many of us audiophiles there was no contradiction at all between the amount of our individual GDP's that we plunked down to purchase early consumer digital, and how it sounded (sucky, in fact). It was <drum roll> hot, new, and Cutting Edge. And that was key.
An audiophile cares first and foremost about the quality of the sound, not how new the equipment is. As I said contradictory.
I'd be likely to describe you as an early adopter/ gadget freak instead.
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I'd be likely to describe you as an early adopter/ gadget freak instead.
Merely a temporary lapse of sanity. (Something in the water that year, I suspect.)
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Bingo. In marketing-speak, BD's OOB* doesn't have enough WOW.
*Out of the box experience.
If it's WOW! you want, can I recommend Sky Diving, Hang Gliding, Bungee Jumping and climbing Mount Everest. You might also consider joining the army and requesting a posting to Afghanistan .
Polycarbonate discs may not be sufficient.