HD DVD / Blu ray wtf

ntlbell

I was pretty sure HD DVD was going to win this war but I still held of on buying a HD DVD player.

So now it looks like blu ray is going to win and I'm considering buying a player.

Is it true that blu ray players today may not be able to play future blu ray releases?

We currently have two 32" HD Ready tv's one's a samsung and the other a sony bravia but I belive the insides of both are pretty close would I need to buy a larger tv to get the full benifit of blu ray?

Should people hold off from buying eithier untill it's a bit more "official" of what's going to happen in the future.

Cheers

Kev_ps3

ntlbell wrote: »

I was pretty sure HD DVD was going to win this war but I still held of on buying a HD DVD player.

So now it looks like blu ray is going to win and I'm considering buying a player.

Is it true that blu ray players today may not be able to play future blu ray releases?

We currently have two 32" HD Ready tv's one's a samsung and the other a sony bravia but I belive the insides of both are pretty close would I need to buy a larger tv to get the full benifit of blu ray?

Should people hold off from buying eithier untill it's a bit more "official" of what's going to happen in the future.

Cheers

Why did you think HD DVD was going to win the war?! Bluray has been beating it in sales for nearly a year now, with sales of over 2:1 in recent times!

All bluray players, no matter how old will play your blurays. Its just some features like PIP and BD Java you will need a new player or update an old player. If you get a ps3 then it is updated by Sony/

Ive got a 32" Samsung and I see the benefit of bluray over upscaled dvd. Much clearer picture, better colours and much better sound!

I dont see the point of 'holding off' really. Bluray has really won the war. The next thing after bluray will be downloads but that is 5-10 years away. To download or stream a hi-def movie with uncompressed sound you will need very high connection speeds. I dont see that for a while yet, esp. in this country!

mathias

All bluray players, no matter how old will play your blurays. Its just some features like PIP and BD Java you will need a new player or update an old player.

That is not definite yet , and until profile 2.0 titles come along theres no guarantee that they will play on the older players , Profile 2.0 provides a whole new interface , and if the menus and setup are behind this then old profile 1.0 players will show nothing but a black screen or even reject the disc altogether ... some may well play the main title only , but like I said , there is no guarantee , so its not worth the risk , standalone BD players are expensive , and it doesnt make sense to pay now for a machine that may not play some new titles come october.

Its in this link ,
http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/sony-blu-ray-specification-deadline

heres a quote , and this is from the player manual from Sony,

"This player supports BD-ROM Profile 1 only. Playback of later versions of BDs other than BD-ROM is not guaranteed. Since the Blu-ray Disc specifications are new and evolving, some discs may not play depending on the disc type and the version..."

trabpc

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1441663320080114

Half price players?

xanthor

At the risk of sounding like a sales man..........


....future frimware upgrades will probably be available for the PS3 to keep it up to date.

Kev_ps3

xanthor wrote: »

At the risk of sounding like a sales man..........


....future frimware upgrades will probably be available for the PS3 to keep it up to date.

Its already up to date! We got profile 1.1 there last month in a update for PIP.
The only thing left now is for an update for DTS-MA over bitstream.

vibe666

and it's already been said that profile 2 will be supported by the PS3 and I would imagine that pretty much any player with an ethernet port can have it's firmware updated over the net and most others would be updatable using USB or CD.

it's also worth wondering who'd buy a standalone BD player when a PS3 is more or less the same price?

Kintarō Hattori

vibe666 wrote: »

....it's also worth wondering who'd buy a standalone BD player when a PS3 is more or less the same price?

Those people who spend not inconsiderable amounts of money on Home Entertainment gear. While the PS3 is a good Blu-Ray player it is by no means the best and there is a considerable difference in quality between it and a standalone player from the likes of Pansonic.

viperirl

Kev_ps3 wrote: »

Its already up to date! We got profile 1.1 there last month in a update for PIP.
The only thing left now is for an update for DTS-MA over bitstream.

I doubt this will happen anytime soon. It would be great if it did. At the moment the PS3 as far as I'm aware can't bitstream any of the other new HD audio formats either. It decodes them internally and converts them to uncompressed PCM(LPCM). However you need a HDMI connection to transmit LPCM and your PS3 audio settings must be set to PCM instead of Bitstream.
Plenty of debates in the AV world as to whether its better to have the player decode these formats internally or send them as bitstream to a capable receiver and let it do the decoding.
With the PS3, you have no option as it decodes them internally only.
At least this was my understanding at the end of last year. Unless things have changed in the meantime??

viperirl

eo980 wrote: »

Those people who spend not inconsiderable amounts of money on Home Entertainment gear. While the PS3 is a good Blu-Ray player it is by no means the best and there is a considerable difference in quality between it and a standalone player from the likes of Pansonic.

I have a PS3 and a standalone player from Sony, their new BDP-S500. I've also borrowed a friends Panasonic to compare all 3 players for picture quailty. I wouldn't say that there is a considerable difference in pic quailty between the PS3 and the standalone players. Yes the standalones are better but the PS3 can more than hold its own. Its a terrific player for the money and since some of the picture processing is handled in software, the Sony engineers can improve on this via updates etc.
The only advantages that the standalones have is that they can bitstream most but not all of the new HD audio formats to a suitable AV reciever. (only an advantage if u prefer the receiver to do the decoding)

GrumPy

xanthor wrote: »

....future frimware upgrades will probably be available for the PS3 to keep it up to date.

That's the exact reason the ps3 is the best player on the market atm. It basically IS a profile 2.0. Network, hard drive etc... So when fireware updates are needed, Sony will release it on PSN.

I sell blue ray players in work and it's retarded. Sharp 600, Sony 480? You can buy a ps3 for less than 400. FFS, we even sell hd-dvd players (yes, I know there cheaper online) but even they have network interface cards.


IMHO

It's pretty safe to say blu ray has won, so if your investing - dont get a standalone player unless you wanna wait, just get a ps3.

Kev_ps3

eo980 wrote: »

Those people who spend not inconsiderable amounts of money on Home Entertainment gear. While the PS3 is a good Blu-Ray player it is by no means the best and there is a considerable difference in quality between it and a standalone player from the likes of Pansonic.

"a considerable difference in quality" - thats BS. The ps3 up there with any stand-alone player. Ive never read anywhere of a player that is 'considerably' better than the ps3 as a bluray player. What standalone players are you talking about btw?

Kintarō Hattori

Kev_ps3 wrote: »

"a considerable difference in quality" - thats BS. The ps3 up there with any stand-alone player. Ive never read anywhere of a player that is 'considerably' better than the ps3 as a bluray player. What standalone players are you talking about btw?

Wow - calm down. Well lets look at you for a minute. You have a Playstation avatar and your username mentions the PS3........ are you impartial Kev?
I'm impartial. I have a PS3 and will at some point upgrade to a standalone Blu-Ray player in the future.

I've seen the following Blu-Ray players on 42"-50" Plasma's and I'm not alone in thinking that they look significantly better than the PS3:

Panasonic - DMPBD10EG
Sony - BDPS500B and BDPS300

Kev_ps3

eo980 wrote: »

Wow - calm down. Well lets look at you for a minute. You have a Playstation avatar and your username mentions the PS3........ are you impartial Kev?
I'm impartial. I have a PS3 and will at some point upgrade to a standalone Blu-Ray player in the future.

I've seen the following Blu-Ray players on 42"-50" Plasma's and I'm not alone in thinking that they look significantly better than the PS3:

Panasonic - DMPBD10EG
Sony - BDPS500B and BDPS300

I am calm:rolleyes:

Kev_ps3

Them players might provide a slightly better picture but they are over double the price of the ps3. So until they come down in price alot, then the ps3 is a better bluray player when you include value.

Kintarō Hattori

I never mentioned value. The question was asked as to 'who'd buy a standalone BD player when a PS3 is more or less the same price?'.

Indeed the PS3 is roughly the same price as a low end Blu-Ray player but the fact remains that a top of the line player does provide a noticeably better picture than the PS3.
My original answer stated that the kind of people who buy this kind of player are the type who don't mind spending a few more bob in order to have the best. Most of these people wouldn't entertain the idea of the PS3 as their Blu-Ray player.

But I do agree that the PS3 is an excellent value for money player- its just not the best.

Kev_ps3

eo980 wrote: »

I never mentioned value. The question was asked as to 'who'd buy a standalone BD player when a PS3 is more or less the same price?'.

Indeed the PS3 is roughly the same price as a low end Blu-Ray player but the fact remains that a top of the line player does provide a noticeably better picture than the PS3.
My original answer stated that the kind of people who buy this kind of player are the type who don't mind spending a few more bob in order to have the best. Most of these people wouldn't entertain the idea of the PS3 as their Blu-Ray player.

But I do agree that the PS3 is an excellent value for money player- its just not the best.

Well over at AV Fourms the majority of people who are into AV use the ps3 and are very happy with it. Ive never read before a stand-alone player that kicks the ps3 into the sidelines when it comes to picture quality, only your post here. Thats why I questioned it. And the fact that the ps3 as a bluray player is known to be an excellent player on its own.

vibe666

I'm sure that there is a difference on high end BD players, and personally as a PS3 owner I hope it's a big difference because it's the high end that pushes the envelope to allow ordinary mass produced consumer products to improve in quality and price in the mid to long term.

BUT most people who will be driving the industry to break new ground are going to be the everyday people with a little disposable income who bought a HDTV in the last couple of years and are looking for something to show it off with and that's where the low/midrange end comes in.

Companies don't do R&D to keep a few geeks happy that they have the latest tech, they do it so that eventually it will filter down to the mass markets where the big money is. new ways of doing things adds features and makes existing features cheaper to mass produce. It's a constant p1ssing contest between all the manufacturers to outdo each other and make more sales.

it takes a proper audio/videophile to think ahead and buy exactly what he/she wants/needs after taking account of all the variables, whereas most normal (and I mean no disrespect to the dedicated HE aficionados) people would go out and buy the first bargain they see in one category of HE and then add to that as time goes by and money allows.

most people get a HDTV cos they saw some advert somewhere about how great it was without really knowing what they're getting themselves into or what they are going to do once they have it and then spend more money adding bits here and there as they realise they need it to make their purchase complete.

Take SkyHD for example. How many people who bought a HDTV in the last year or so because they thought SkyHD would be excellent on it, then when they went to get SkyHD found out that it was over €500 just for the box and then another extra per month subscription to get about a dozen or so HD channels?

I'll put my hand up to that one myself anyway.

I'll also put my hand up to buying a PS3 without having a HDTV with the plan that I'd buy myself a nice top end Bravia when the time (and money) came, but I ended up spending €850 in Aldi for the 40" jobbie they had there in October.

Now I'll need some sort of surround sound setup too to make the most of it.

At the moment I have my classic Xbox running XBMC for playing DivX's & music (and still 'some' gaming) etc, the PS3 for games and a Sky+ box too, all using different connections and all used on a daily basis with my HDTV. Probably none of it used 100% correctly either, with the possible exception of the Xbox which has the composite/component (never sure which is which) HD cables so I can run XBMC at 1080i.

It's all a mess and I have no idea how I'm going to sucessfully integrate a surround sound set up in that lot.

mathias

I'm sure that there is a difference on high end BD players

Mmm ....at this moment Im not so sure on that , sure there are different HDMI electronics implementations on different devices , but the basic spec of taking content from a digital medium , say for instance a blu ray disc , and turning it into a TMDS signal for transmission to a TV is not that variable , its not an analog connection after all , and any differences I can see would be named features of the HDMI interface anyway such as Deep color or HD audio.

If the player is concerned with taking the content off the disc and supplying it to the TV in its purest form ( as they should be , with no post conditioning ) , then most players are going to be identical in outputted signal. You are essentially outputting a code on these machines , with the same disc content , the code should be very very similar , the main reason for my doubts on better picture quality.

I havnt done this particular test yet , but would love to hook up our equipment to various players and analyse the signals coming out for differences.
At the moment , based purely on theory , I cant see there being that much of a difference.

viperirl

mathias wrote: »

Mmm ....at this moment Im not so sure on that , sure there are different HDMI electronics implementations on different devices , but the basic spec of taking content from a digital medium , say for instance a blu ray disc , and turning it into a TMDS signal for transmission to a TV is not that variable , its not an analog connection after all , and any differences I can see would be named features of the HDMI interface anyway such as Deep color or HD audio.

If the player is concerned with taking the content off the disc and supplying it to the TV in its purest form ( as they should be , with no post conditioning ) , then most players are going to be identical in outputted signal. You are essentially outputting a code on these machines , with the same disc content , the code should be very very similar , the main reason for my doubts on better picture quality.

I havnt done this particular test yet , but would love to hook up our equipment to various players and analyse the signals coming out for differences.
At the moment , based purely on theory , I cant see there being that much of a difference.

Hi Mathias,

I've carefully done a comparison between the PS3 and the high end model from Sony, the BDP-S500 using a projected image of 110inches. The picture on the S500 was a little better but not by much at all. The Panasonic standalone was a similar story. I was trying to understand or at least theorise on why the higher end model is marginally better given the all digital transmission which in theory should mean no loss of information to the display.
A HDMI source(i.e the player) needs to meet the HDMI TP1 spec which allows for a certain amount of 'eye closure' in the HDMI differential signalling. What if the source was barely meeting this compliance? It would make the HDMI reciever chip at the end of the cable having to work a bit harder via adaptive EQ, deskew etc to recover and make a decision on what the digital bits coming off the cable are. Lets say the receiver 'guesses' wrong on a few bits due to significant eye closure etc. Would this have an impact on the display picture? Sooner or later I guess you'd have bit errors in vital parts of the frame such ad hsync/vsync and other control characters and then you'd have noticable breakup in the picture or the receiver loosing lock on the signal. So as has been said many times here and in other forums, HDMI usually works or it doesn't.

Perhaps the way the players read and process the data off the disc prior to HDMI transmission is not the same and this gives rise to suttle differences in the final picture quality?

Sorry, this post was a bit nerdy! :-)

Kev_ps3

viperirl wrote: »

Hi Mathias,

The picture on the S500 was a little better but not by much at all. The Panasonic standalone was a similar story. :-)

You say a 'little better'. Is this worth the extra 5, 600 euro over the ps3?

Gilgamesh

I am just wondeirng how there can reallybe much difference in the picture quality or sound at all?

I mean they are both purely digital at this stage? or am I missing something?
it's just data been crunched and spat out through HDMI anyway

viperirl

Kev_ps3 wrote: »

You say a 'little better'. Is this worth the extra 5, 600 euro over the ps3?

No way, not a chance!
I did end up buying the Sony standalone, the S500 model cos it can bitstream out the new HD audio formats over HDMI so my Yamaha RX-V1800 receiver did the audio decoding. To me, this sounded better than the PS3 doing the the decoding and conversion into LPCM internally hence the reason I went for the standalone. Its not Profile 1.1, but extras dont really bother me to be honest.

On another note, I only noticed the difference between HD audio and normal audio on very decent speakers and amps. I couldnt hear any difference in budget or entry level stuff.

viperirl

Gilgamesh wrote: »

I am just wondeirng how there can reallybe much difference in the picture quality or sound at all?

I mean they are both purely digital at this stage? or am I missing something?
it's just data been crunched and spat out through HDMI anyway

Well I can kinda understand why there might be differences in the audio playback from one device to another. In HDMI signalling, both the video and audio data are encrypted and sent over TMDS data lines timed on a pixel or video clock which is sent on another TMDS link. At the reciever end, the chip has to decode and strip out the audio information including what the intended frequency of the audio is. Then, locally, a seperate audio clock needs to be generated from this info and be used to transmit the recovered data via optical, coax or to a DAC perhaps. I've seen all sorts of implementations here. They are not all the same. Any differences in percieved audio quality would be due the receiver implementation I guess. Maybe somebody else has other theories?

mathias

Perhaps the way the players read and process the data off the disc prior to HDMI transmission is not the same and this gives rise to suttle differences in the final picture quality?

Yeah , that would be the only thing that makes sense here , I must get bring it up and see if we can get time allocated and justify doing the work, it would be very interesting indeed.

Any perceived difference in picture must be in the signal if its not being imagined and should show up easily.

viperirl

mathias wrote: »

Yeah , that would be the only thing that makes sense here , I must get bring it up and see if we can get time allocated and justify doing the work, it would be very interesting indeed.

Any perceived difference in picture must be in the signal if its not being imagined and should show up easily.

It makes me cringe when I see some of the Home cinema magazines tell you that a 150Euro HDMI cable will give you 'deeper blacks', 'richer colours', etc than a cable from another manufacturer that maybe costs only 80Euro for example. I believe that the systems in the transmit side before the HDMI transmission and the video processing after the HDMI decoding in the receiver have the most say in the picture/audio quality in an all digital chain.

I have seen instances where a very very cheap thin HDMI cable didnt work at all when connected to a certain type of receiver chip with basic functionality. When this chip had its 'intelligent' bits enabled, the screen sprang to life with a perfect picture. But there was no further improved pic quality after that even using better shielded or thicker cables. The picture remained the same in my opinion.
In the reverse situation when the receiver chip was operating with only it basic functions, the more expensive better shielded cable was necessary to a get a good picture.

mathias

We recently completed a series of tests for a customer about HDMI cables.

Using the same source , the same material , and a massive selection of cables we grabbed the signal off all pins and compared ,

The results were as conclusive as they get , the only cables that werent up to the job were cheap cables 10 meters or more , at less than 5 meters , everything worked perfectly , regardless of price or cable makeup.

Of course as this was a cable test only , only the cables were changed between tests , so chipsets didnt come into it here , but very revealing results nevertheless.

I totally agree with you on this , the analog world was full of snakeoil cable salesmen , who are still trying to pull the same tricks with digital cables , having absolutely no idea that the dynamics have changed completely.

viperirl

2 interesting articles in the February issue of HiFi News on HDMI cables. They have an interview with the founder of Monster cables. Some interesting things in the article however the interviewer asked all the wrong questions in my opinion. I'd have loved to have given him a grilling given my knowledge of what HDMI chipsets can achieve. These chipsets are becoming more adaptable and better all the time which can allow a HDMI cable be as thin as the wire on a PC mouse even at 3.4GHz. HDMI cables under 5 metres should be getting thiner and cheaper.

I've a fairly high end HiFi system at home myself and I've seen and heard differences between certain analog cables for sure, although at the same time I agree that there is a lot of snake oil nonsense around those too.
But all this HDMI cable nonsense is confusing for and ripping off Joe Public.

branners69

I also got a pain in my face with this Blu Ray/ HD DVD arguement so I decided to get both! Until a winner is decided. Every article I read contradicts the last about who is winning the war. I dont actually believe any of them!

I have the PS3 for blu ray and have just bought the Toshiba EP10 for €162 delivered with 4 HD DVDs and potentially another 5!

While I believe Blu ray have pulled ahead I really dont see this as being over just yet. But the many people with blu ray hard-ons contributing to this thread will probably disagree!!!

fat-tony

mathias wrote: »

Yeah , that would be the only thing that makes sense here , I must get bring it up and see if we can get time allocated and justify doing the work, it would be very interesting indeed.

Any perceived difference in picture must be in the signal if its not being imagined and should show up easily.

Jitter (time-base error) in digital signals caused by poor extraction of the data from the CD on cheapo CD/DVD players is often blamed for poor audio performance. This is caused when the DACs convert the jittery digital signal back to analogue and introduce subtle errors in the sound. Mind you this is for audio only - don't think it affects the much higher frequencies used in video. The hi-fi mags make a huge deal of this jitter problem when encouraging you to use high-end players for CD audio. Haven't seen anything comparable talked about for video quality - it's almost "all or nothing" - if the DVD player is introducing gross jitter in the digital video signal, then you will see dropouts or artefacts in the image. Cables, too, won't affect the "quality" of the image unless they are so crap that they pick up interference or introduce huge amounts of jitter such that the TV cannot decode the signal properly.