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161 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+96All things being equal, the only way to tell these things apart is to see a side-by-side comparison. Since most people will never see such a thing in person, EVERY argument made in this article is moot.
People will put in a movie on their HDTV and think, "Wow, the picture is really clear." Sometimes they will say, "Hey, that's a bit better than the regular DVDs I'm used to." But they will NEVER say, "Jesus, this HD-DVD movie looks noticibly better than the Blu-Ray version I saw at my friend Bob's house two weeks ago! That poor sucker is now stuck with his clearly inferior Blu-Ray player! Ha-ha!" - peskypescado, on 10/12/2007, -12/+66@jimmy
You are missing some points really. First off Blu-ray has to have a better coating because the data layer is really really close to the bottom of the disc, much closer than on DVD/HD-DVD.
Next, digital media does allow for picture variation. They are using lossy codecs for heavens sake. The picture can/does vary between different players of even the same format. There can especially be a difference between when different codecs are used as in the Mi3 example.
As for the disc space. 15GB is more than enough by itself for an HD movie encoded with a more advanced codec like VC-1. You can fit HD movies onto DVD-9 discs if you wanted. The Xbox Live HD movie downloads actually only take ~6GB. And while Blu-ray has the higher transfer rate, HD-DVD is still 3x faster than DVD at 36mbit/sec and that really is more than enough.
Any head-to-head comparison I have seen was either a tie or HD-DVD won. Blu-ray is at best equal so far. - soogy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+35Sorry for hijacking the top comment, but did anyone else notice that the title of this digg submission is incredibly inaccurate?
"Outperforms" indicates that some sort of performance test was done. There is NO such thing in this article, it is merely showing you pictures of a selected few titles on three players on one certain television model. - chawkie, on 10/12/2007, -16/+43I think you missed the point. This was a test to see what media player performed better, not what media performed better.
- PunkRampant, on 10/12/2007, -3/+27Neither HD format makes me want to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on a player...
- gamerzworld, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26When will Digg have real news and not all this fanboy/bashing crap?
- Sivvy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+29It's an incredibly unprofessional comparison:
1. Inconsistent, resized, skewed photo's of his TV set.
2. Component cables for HDDVD (I don't buy his "doesn't make any difference").
3. His TV is limited to 1080i, which is only *half* the amount of pixels in 1080p.
4. He should have noted that HDDVDs maximum bitrate is limited to 37mbps, while BluRay can handle up to 54mbps which should counter the fact that BluRay is now using the inferior MPEG2 codec. In the long run the higher bitrate BluRay offers might give it an edge over HDDVD if BluRay defaults to H.264 or VC-1.
Using this most unseasonable setup he is actually comparing the two formats by nitpicking on saturation levels!? If it is possible to drawn any conclusion from this crude comparison it is that there's hardly any difference between the two formats with respect to video quality. If I had to choose between the two for storage it would be BluRay because of the higher capacity and transfer speed. - Splitt3rxx, on 10/12/2007, -11/+34From what I saw I don't think it is necessary to upgrade from DvD, DvD looks good enough already.
- JayD16, on 10/12/2007, -9/+30Thats nice....now do the test again when you've fixed color saturation to optimal levels for both players.
The reviewer seems to have the crazy idea that when you take TV settings into play default = fair. - PFS1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21How on earth are we supposed to do any judging for ourselves, when it comes to sharpness and detail on such a fine and picky level, when the title-touted pics aren't screen caputres but pictures of the TV taken with a digital camera and then shrunk down to a 640x480 image? This is ridiculous.
- apoc06, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18what kills me is the fact that this guy blames sony for movies being encoded with mpeg2. many studios have already released blu-ray movies using other codecs. he mentions this as a footnote, but its variables like this that ruin the credibility of his comparisions. mpeg2 is not mandatory. beyond that, sony has a large say so but decisions regarding blu-ray is handled by the blu-ray consortium [which sony is but one member of]
also, each studio is responsible for its own film transfers; not sony.
finally, he compares the movies using photographs of his tv using two separate connections? who is to say that the differences in quality are not the result of the tv connectors?
last but not least, maybe he could spend a few minutes learning how to adjust/ calibrate the color saturation of his tv's HDMI input saturation. - Vironex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17My goodness, how old are you?
- KayinNasaki, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20I think for most people, the appeal for DVD was beyond quality... Tapes degrade over time.. ya gotta rewind them. They're kinda cumbersome. Skipping around is a pain and you can only fit so much footage.
DVDs solved all that with extra features AND better sound and picture quality.
HD-DVDs don't offer those sorts of gain. - verifex, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19That is true, I find it a bit disingenuous of the blogger not to give us a better setup on how he was going to test these players first before diving right in there. Seems like if Bluray is just DARKER then HD-DVD, the simple solution would be to fix the color/contrast/brightness levels first then compare them.
And another thing, where the hell are the "zoomed in" pixel-by-pixel comparisons that really show the differences, I didn't read the whole article, but I scrolled down and didn't see a damn picture that gave any more detail then a digital camera picture taken of the screen. Lame! - drn666, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16*****, 'outperforms'. These images show now clear advantage to either format. The poster didn't even get the same frames, so it's hard to compare.
Calibrate both ports. If you do so, Syriana (for example) will look identical on both.
Marked as inaccurate. Poor testing methods, clear bias. - akshay626, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16wow marked as lame... those aren't even screen captures and they've been shrunk. This comparison is worthless.
- deardahl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15"With Toshiba being the leader of the HD DVD camp, and having numerous other companies supporting their format, HD DVD has already been called the winner. This may be a little presumptuous as Blu Ray has many backers as well."
Huh? Blu-ray has way more companies behind them, or did something change?
The dude must be high. - proxima, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Sorry? I have an HDTV and can clearly tell the difference between HD and standard, but its is difficult to tell with these small pictures here.
- coheedcollapse, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13So what did he base these findings on? According to all of the examples but Syriana (HD-DVD looks better in that instance...and it looks like the brightness may need to be adjusted a tiny bit on the blu-ray), I'd put the Blu-Ray as the winner overall (unless I'm getting confused about something). The blacks are darker, the whites are whiter, the colors seem less washed out. The details look about the same in both formats though.
I guess I'd rather see them both myself before I take a random guy's word when his proof seems to be contradicting according to my own computer screen. - drn666, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14What photos are you looking at? Even in these AWFUL photos, the DVD is clearly jaggier, blurrier and has less accurate colour.
- peskypescado, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15It is the out of the box experience. How would you know to fix the Blu-ray player unless you bought an HD-DVD player to compare it too? The color problem has more to do with the mastering of the source for each format and the players they used, not their formats. So maybe the 360 has better HD movie picture than the PS3, but another Blu-ray player might do better and another HD-DVD player might do worse. Just depends. Bottom line, there isn't much difference. The IME stuff and the respective backers of each format seem to be the main difference.
- drn666, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13For real. There is one company making HD-DVD equipment right now: Toshiba. The 360 add-on is a Toshiba drive internally.
Blu-ray has 5 companies shipping players RIGHT NOW: Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips and Samsung.
Plus, CES is in two weeks. There is not suggestion that anyone else will join the HD-DVD list, and there is plenty of suggestion that Sharp and LG will finally ship a BD player.
Bottom line, there is A LOT more hardware supporting Blu-ray right now. - proxima, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12I have a hard time making out the differences between any of them, dvd included. Crappy small pictures...
- Ignignokt01, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11The problem with these pictures is that they are all shrunk down to a very low-res size. In reality you'd be watching this on a big screen, so the difference would be huge between DVD and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray. Of course in these pics there isn't a clear difference between the DVD and new-gen formats because its shrunken down to such a low-res size pic! The detail from the HD-formats is lost! This comparison is bullocks, at least from our perspective as article readers.
- ucbmckee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10What a remarkably meaningless comparison. Excluding known differences in mastering or encoding (some discs, some masters, etc. look better than others), you still have profound differences in players. If you're attempting to test the technology, you can't rely upon the 'out of the box' experience - you need to do a full SMPTE calibration and then focus on resolution issues, artifacts, and contrasts, not crap like saturation/brightness. Otherwise, it's just a player comparison (and, even then, different AV components sometimes yield subtle differences in output characteristics, even between models of the same type, due to underlying variations in hardware and the manufacturing process).
Even more technically, though (as others have pointed out), any attempt to do even this is mostly just a codec comparison. The content is digital and the drive format is just a way of holding bits. It has no bearing upon the output whatsoever, as long as it can spin and read fast enough to deliver the necessary bits. One can generalize it to the technology only insofar as the industry as settled on a couple codecs to use. In theory, a codec could fail miserably in the market, and the underlying drive standard could be maintained with a new codec format.
In any event, I have a hard time believing that there's really going to be much difference between the two. On some players and with some discs, one will look better than the other. And vice versa. - dt40, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Prediction: within a couple of years, formats won't matter.
Why? Because the common way to get movies will be downloading via the Internet. It is better in so many dimensions than dealing with physical media. The existance of this silly format war is actually good because it will expedite the move to downloads: consumers will avoid buying either player for fear of being "stuck with a betamax."
Trust me, this Internet thing is gonna be big one day. - Knoton, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16Does the PS3 blu-ray player not have options for saturation and brightness or is this guy just stupid?
- sinfony, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10This is a terrible "comparison" piece. The fact that the writer can't even be bothered to make sure he's got the same exact frame in all three formats is bad enough, but then to take pictures with obvious barrel distortion, shrink them to tiny size, and try to comment on the difference between them is beyond idiotic. There's no value in anything said in here.
- jrlcopy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11OMG HOW MANY TIMES WILL THIS BE POSTED ON DIGG!
2nd time that this hit the frontage.
The writer is completely idiotic, misses many facts, doesn't have his own facts straight. Stupid 16 year old 'blogger' that thinks he knows what he is talking about. - baxtermaddux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9someone ought to do a tutorial on how to do a decent online screenshot comparison for dvd's since so many bad ones are showing up on DIGG. this is a particularly bad comparison
- Rayonic, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11The PS3 has no built-in scalar, except whatever component chops video down to 480p. Fortunately I think all HDTVs support 1080i input at least. (1080i predates 720p, if I recall)
- disti, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10He actually says he's using HDMI with PS3 and would do that with 360 if it supported it.. Where did you get that he's using anything else?
- Koros8, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Somebody forgot to read Sound and Vision's test report of the PS3's Blu-Ray performance.
- JimmyJJWalker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Man, is it me or is Digg becoming more a source for propaganda than information.
- JimmyJJWalker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Good point, for lazy people I found the link:
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hd-dvd-bluray/1982/sony-playstation-3.html - Neobot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Unbelievable biased crap!
Notice how when there's a slight difference FOR blu-ray he just says "Same: other than the water for blu-ray." But when there's a slight difference in favor of hd dvd. He embellishes, "clear winner is hd dvd." Blah, blah...
After seeing the color comparison (color saturation, he calls it), I'm even more sold on blu-ray. Adding the fact that we're comparing mpeg2 to vc1 is even more reason. I mean, hey! vc1 was supposed to be end-all-be-all, right? Yet, mpeg2 is looking pretty similar to vc1? Wow!
Oh, and lighter image does not necessarily mean better. There is something called contrast and calibration. And maybe next time he'll use a 1080p set instead of hamstring the PS3 down to 1080i. - sinfony, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Quit spamming your braindead fanboy ideas. Please.
- yeahbuddy, on 10/12/2007, -13/+19@ mark,
Sony will release a firmware update in March 07 that will enable DVD upscaling on the PS3. It's rumored to be a better scaler than any upconverting player on the marktet (i.e. Oppo, et.al.).
With the PS3 and Blu-Ray in it's infancy, the possibilities are endless. I'm so glad I have a PS3. The future is bright, and Blu-Ray will win. Here's why:
(credit goes to Innerloop on avsforum):
________________________________
The following things would have to happen for Blu Ray to go away:
- The PS3 goes away.
- Sony switches to HD-DVD
- Fox switches to HD-DVD
- Lionsgate switches to HD-DVD
- Pioneer switches to HD-DVD
- Samsung switches to HD-DVD
- Disney switches to HD-DVD
- Panasonic switches to HD-DVD
The following things need to happen for HD-DVD to go away:
- Toshiba switches to Blu Ray
- Universal switch to Blu Ray
Which of these scenarios is more likely to occur, would you think?
I got nothing against the underdog in a good fight, but some people really need to snap out of their spell.
_____________
That said, my money is on Blu-Ray. It's the future, plain and simple. - drn666, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6What, you don't like that Blu-Wizard 'let us you customize"? :)
- staticneuron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Nope. It has to do with the movie. I have done this comparison on a Sony XBR 2 and it really just depends on the movie. Superman returns and Lady in the water looks the same. MI:3 looks better on blu ray. Sahara looks better on HD-DVD. It is not surprising in the least. This really came down to a size issue apparently. After a while both formats are going to start to look the same and the major deciding factor will be the price. Chances are in the long run blu ray disks are going to drop faster than HD DVD while the drives will have to come to comparable prices. I have to hand it to HD DVD for being and easier transition for consumers. Films like Superman returns and lady in the water has the HD version on one side and the regular DVD version on the other.
- Tenlow, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11That's the point of a comparison.
- KyleMistry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6As soon as they disable comments.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Who has the time to take all those pictures....wow....
- ebrake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I stopped reading after he spelled Laser Disc with a K (Disk).
- JAppi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"RCA" is actually the connector not the cable.
Do you call ethernet cables RJ47 cables? Or Phone cables RJ11 cables?
No you call them what they are. Composite and Component cables both use RCA connectors but they're actually used for different things - n3tfury, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4from OP : "...even over component cables"
LOL, you can't tell the difference in video quality between HDMI and component. if you can, you have ***** component cables, sorry. - cdwhatcott, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5This is one of the worst comparisons I've ever seen. The way he's just taken a picture of the TV with a digital camera makes all three shots look nearly the same. I don't see how it shows that one format is "better" than the other. I can barely see any difference between DVD and the HD formats.
- octoquake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5would you give me a break?
i saw no difference whatsoever in the two screenshots of any of the comparisons. at least nothing that was better or worse in either one.
to say anything about either one is a "clear" winner is a far stretch - sinfony, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Your argument is even less coherent than the one in this article. Calm down.
- triplehelix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4awww, someone need a friend?
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