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November 24, 2007

Get more from Blu-ray and HD DVD movies

Blu-ray and HD DVD: should you care?

Melissa J Perenson

After a lengthy and painful birth, Blu-ray and HD DVD discs are well-and-truly here. But we can't help but feel a little underwhelmed with the impact HD movies have had on our lives. Interactivity was supposed to allow new possibilities between your TV and high-def movies, but are those features ready for prime time? We take a look, and for a second opinion, asked the head of Paramount Studios.

Two levels of interactivity were discussed recently at the DisplaySearch HDTV Conference 2007. The first level, on-disc interactivity, refers to games and pop-up information intended to supplement the movie being played.

The second level is internet-connected interactivity such as social networking and sharing, shopping and downloading extra content. Extra content might be trailers, new features, audio tracks and subtitle tracks.

What players can do now

Today's Blu-ray players can handle on-disc interactivity (as in the case of the Liar's Dice game on Disney's 'Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest'). But of all existing devices that handle Blu-ray, only the PlayStation 3 (review here) currently can be upgraded to handle internet-connected interactivity.

By contrast, all HD DVD players have an ethernet port and support internet connectivity. Titles such as Universal's 'Heroes' and 'Evan Almighty' permit you to do things like download content and shop.

Universal has said that 40 percent of consumers who bought the 'Heroes' HD-DVD disc signed up for an online account. Given the geek appeal of this NBC series, we're not astonished that this happened. But somehow we doubt that a comedy such as'Evan Almighty' will garner anywhere near that level of support.

The HD DVD camp is heavily promoting the fact that its network-connected interactivity is available today - and certainly Blu-ray has to play catch up on that front. Although Blu-ray is capable of providing similar features, development of the hardware and software needed to actually do so is lagging behind HD DVD's progress.

On the other hand, we question whether interactivity is truly meaningful at this point anyway. For instance, Andy Parsons, of the Blu-ray Disc Association, says, "Picture and sound are what motivates people to check out [high-definition movies]. Interactivity is difficult to explain to people; that's not what someone is going to the store to check out."

(Alan Bell, CTO of Paramount, discusses interactivity with PCA later in this story.)

Interactivity's benefits: what they?

Interactivity is difficult to sell to people. The community aspects of sharing bookmarks and rating collections - the selling points that the HD DVD camp is talking up - will gain steam only when the technology attracts a critical mass of users who use the content and the ancillary social-networking conceived around that content.

The same issue haunts the social-networking components of Joost.com (review here), the web TV streaming site. Neither HD DVD nor Blu-ray is anywhere close to achieving the necessary critical mass.

For that matter, movie studios aren't fully primed to offer such connected, interactive features on a large scale either. So far, Universal is leading the pack. It introduced its U-Shop component tied to the release of 'Evan Almighty' this week. So the ability to shop for 'Evan Almighty' tie-ins will set off a stampede of consumers just dying to buy into a high-def format? It doesn't seem altogether likely.

Now, let's face it: 'Star Trek' fans with money to burn who want to shop for memorabilia while watching the HD DVD release of the original series may see the U-Shop component being a fun and welcome novelty. For the first 10 minutes, anyway. But does the appeal of shopping via disc have staying power? The answer is not particularly clear to us at this point...

NEXT PAGE: we speak to Paramount Movies' CTO > >

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Comments received

wvortices said on Saturday, 24 November 2007

Can anyone answer why HDDVD does not offer linear PCM audio? Honestly, I could care less about these features that HDDVD has, even though I do have a PS3 and all these apparent advantages will be available in early 2008, this is not what HD is all about. It is about quality picture and even more important flawless sound. HDDVD claims to run audio at 1.5 Mbps "best possible sound," however, Disney bluray is currently encoding their disks at 6.5 Mbps. That is over 4 times larger than HDDVD and over 7 times from DVD. Lets get real and focus on what this next generation is about THE MOVIE.

Ghost said on Saturday, 24 November 2007

Honestly, if the compression is done well, and the source audio is good, the sound format doesn't matter as much. Unless you have studio quality system and supermans hearing. To the common user, the sound will be nearly identical. And the video codecs are the same. And maybe i'm rare, but I've watched every special feature on every disc I own. Why? Because usally I'm shelling out (one a new disc) $15-$30 bucks. Now going on a date with a girl to the movies, the bous content has nothing to do with the movie, so when I get the disc I want more than what I can get sitting the theater. And anything that can add new life to a disc that I purchased a couple of months back is a bonus. To use an analogy, your saying the burger is good, I'm saying the burger is better when you get the fries and the shake with it.

wvortices said on Sunday, 25 November 2007

The fact remains, I have a high end system (next generation receiver, speakers and PS3). Many blu ray movies have PCM and dolby digital plus, there is clear difference that even my girlfriend can notice and she is not into this stuff at all. I just ask you to check it out and you will find that the movie can be the burger fries and shake. Extra content is rarely high def anyway. Sound matters most and when you really get connected, it makes all the difference. I'm not going to be apart of a next generation format that can't get the job done with the burger. This is a heated debate and I normally don't get involved because I'm very pleased with my setup, but when I read things like "HDDVD delivers today's best possible high-definition surround sound," I get a little annoyed because it is a flat out lie. I am just one person but for most of the people I hang with, men and women, very few of them eat fast food.

BDRand said on Sunday, 25 November 2007

What ever happened to our imagination for interactivity ? All this criticism of the interactive features on HD DVD is premature. Remember this whole HD disc format thing is in its infancy. Steady progress is being made. You just have to be patient. Microsoft has a team of 100 technicians assigned to the goal of developing the potential of HD DVD internet connectivity options. For now, sure, these features are lackluster, but they are just beginning attempts at what will surely become a very interesting future for viewer interactivity.
P.S. I've also noticed that Blu-Ray fans tend to trivialize anything HD DVD has that Blu-Ray doesn't, so take some of the comments posted here with a grain of salt.

The _Omega_Man said on Sunday, 25 November 2007

HD DVD also supports LPCM audio, however, LPCM audio is an incredible disc space hog! Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD are lossless audio formats, just like LPCM and they all deliver the SAME bit for bit accurate audio, from the studio masters! Unless you have access to the studio masters, you can not accurately judge the quality of the DD+ lossy versions, as compared to the original soundtracks. Transformers was produced in DD+ on HD DVD and got Reference Quality ratings from most of the professional audio & movie critics. So while a HD Disc format may have the tech. specs. for the application of specific technologies, that does not mean that ALL titles are not capable of the best quality, that can be delivered today!

The_Omega_Man said on Sunday, 25 November 2007

Hell, more than 50% of BR titles were authored with MPEG-2! Which, BTW is the same Compression system used in the current Standard DVDs! How is can this possibly result the BEST movie experience? For many BR fans it isn't, and some BR movies had to be re-released with more advanced Codec and compression methods used! The point here, Picture Quality and Audio quality on BOTH HD formats MUST be judged on a PER TITLE basis. Not on a media format basis!

Warner Bros. Typically uses the exact same Video encode for titles release on BR and HD DVD so the Picture quality is generally identical and they (WB) will generally match the audio as well. However, due to BR's incomplete specification and inconsistent play back hardware capabilities, has not released some titles on BR as they have on HD DVD.

The_Omega_Man said on Sunday, 25 November 2007

wvortices - if you only played the DD+ sound track and did not play the LPCM would it REALLY have mattered to your girlfriend at all, about the total movie experience? I agree that for the money spent, that you should strive to get the most out of your HT, however, let's be real here too!

As Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD are optional for BR, Dolby TrueHD is Mandatory for HD DVD. This was by design, for HD DVD. As a result, not all BR players can decode the adv. audio Codecs within the players - the opposite is the case for HD DVD! All HD DVD players MUST support and INTERNALLY decode the advanced audio Codecs within the HD DVD players. (except for DTS-HD Master Audio). The reason for this is two fold:
a) HD DVD provided support for PiP (dual simultaneous Audio & Video streams to be read from the disc and internally mixed into the output A/V streams)
b) at the time both HD DVD and BR hit the market there were no AV Receivers that could externally decode the new audio formats!

The_Omega_Man said on Monday, 26 November 2007

You do know that anyone who bought a BR player prior to now (PS3 excluded?), will not be able to use MANY of the new interactive features that BR profile 1.1 now mandates? This means that BR is going to shaft many of the folks who now claim that, "I only want to watch the movie anyway," until the really cool stuff that HD DVD already has today, comes to BR!

The other poster is correct, in that many BR fans, try to crap on all of the truly ADVANCED capabilities of HD DVD, and only tout the BR physical advantages of Disc Space , A/V Max. BW, lossless audio and aggregate media sales. BR is an advanced system ONLY WHEN IT IS USED AS SUCH! Delivering MPEG2 Video and PCM + DD audio is barely a notch above regular DVD in terms of technical advancements. By contrast, HD DVD has delivered ADV. Compression AVC & VC-1 Codecs , Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD, PiP, Internet connectivity, the Interactive programming system (HDi) and simply stunning HD Movies! All at a lower ave. price point, than BR!

The_Omega_Man said on Monday, 26 November 2007

The HD Movie Experience is more than just, “Quality picture and even more important flawless sound,” it’s also about the immersion of the viewer into the story and providing insight into the plot and the characters. The overall HD Movie Experience can leverage more elements than what the director and crew could deliver at the time, with their limited operating budgets. I’ve learned so much more about some movies, simply because of the interactive features of HD DVD. This helps me enjoy the HD movie even more the NEXT time I watch it!

HD DVD = (Complete System) = True Value = BUY
BR = (Not yet finished) = Poor Value = WAIT AND SEE

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