Hd Dvd

[howie85]

Does anyone know what the format of the HD DVD players will be? 720,1080i/p? Also I was looking at the list of movies that will be available this year in HD DVD looks like a good start, anyone know what they will be recorded in? 720,1080i/p? Seems that the 1080p tv is hitting the streets at about the same time could there be a match there? Thanks, Curt

 

[BMXTRIX]

Curt,

It seems there are no final words from either the Blu-Ray camp or the HD/DVD camp about what formats the players will actually output. What is certain, at least with Blu-Ray, is that 1080p content will be supported natively on the disc.

I have a feeling that the players will be similar to today's players in that they can scale the output to multiple formats and the discs can be encoded in different formats. 24p, 30i, 60i may all exist. 1080p/i, 720p, 480p/i may all be supported by the player. So I would expect we will see players that allow you to specify an output resolution where your player reads what is on a disc, then converts it to a fixed output, like 720p, or you can tell it to pass through the native resolution that is stored on the disc.

I have confirmed that 1080p will be a supported encoding rate though and that the Blu-Ray players will capable of outputting it. But, the manufacturers may not actually make one that outputs 1080p right away. My guess is that they will hold some features back for at least a year or two so they can upgrade into newer stuff and work bugs out on assembly lines.

There is also a question of output connections that will be on the players. Component? DVI? HDMI? There really isn't anything that I have read that provides this info.

Anyone else have some more info?

 

[howie85]

Thanks, clear as mud... As I understand the standard DVD is 480I/P. You mentioned some different numbers for how a disc is actually encoded.

can be encoded in different formats. 24p, 30i, 60i may all exist.

How do these relate to the standards I hear most commonly referred to ie 480p, 720p, 1080i etc.

 

[BMXTRIX]

You also may have heard of 3:2 pull down or something like that - or film detection.

480i video is (more or less) 480 lines of video that is shown half a frame at a time 60 times per second. 480p, well I'm not sure if it shows 60 frames per second or 30 frames per second with each frame shown twice. But, it is possible that either could occur.

Movies are shot at 24 frames per second. Ideally, in a film to video conversion, you would take those 24 frames per second and transfer them directly to video at a high resolution (1920x1080 - 1080p) and then encode it at 24 frames per second. That would be the truest to the original playback. So, you want the new formats to allow that, and the new TVs to be capable of displaying it accurately. This is referred to as 1080p/24 whenever I have seen it.

1080i/60 is what is common as well. If you review the ATSC high definition standards you will see that there are 18 (according to the site I just looked up) different formats that any ATSC compatible television must be able to display.

Look here to see all the formats and the frame rates/field rate that accompany it:
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html

It is a little more exact than my explanation.

 

[howie85]

Something else I have been thinking about. With the rush for the release of some pretty fancy upconverting players, ie Denon 5910, to the tune of 3500bucks. What is the suggested MSRP of the upcoming units any rumors? Also it would be a good comparison to see a upconverted vs HD comparison after they get going.

 

[BMXTRIX]

I imagine between 1 and 2 grand for the first units and a quick decline thereafter. The bad thing is HD/DVD vs. Blu-Ray Disc... The good thing may be the competition forcing prices down much quicker than if only one format existed. Like X-Box vs. PS2 - when one dropped in price, the other was forced to follow.

Discs may cost a little more though.

Oh, and I agree about the comparison... My believe is that BD or HD/DVD will blow upconverted DVDs away. Completely and totally blow them away. HD has about 3 times the resolution to begin with that DVD current has on a disc. No matter how good your processors are, they just can't add the detail that will be native on a HD disc. I am cutting back my DVD purchases this year in anticipation.

 

[howie85]

I have also tapered off. Im considering selling some of my collection. I will probably start with the ones that I can replace in HD format. I hope it works out like SACD. For a while it was all alone now universal players seem to be the rule and everybody is happy. Perhaps if DVD A and SACD software sales increase the mfgrs will see the light and note that the more people with a player that will accomodate your format the more titles you will sell. Im sure they make more money on the software than on the players, you think?

 

[Vancouver]

Any news when a TV will be available which can support 1080p?

 

[Mort Corey]

Any news when a TV will be available which can support 1080p?

IIRC, JVC has one slated in the near future using their Lcos hybrid technology.

Mort

 

[tedmjr2]

Sharp's Aquos LCDs have supported 1080p since 4th qtr., 2004 (e.g., lc-45gd6u).

 

[howie85]

Samsung will be releasing a DLP that will display 1080p supposedly around june this year but there seems to be some question wether one will accept an input of 1080p for some reason.

 

[djoxygen]

Here's a nice (if a couple months out-of-date) article on the current state of HD in broadcast and playback. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/08/hd_and_hdtv_analysis/

Also of interest, the news broke this morning that Apple has signed on with the Blu-Ray camp. While the movie studios were essentially a dead-even split, this is huge weight for Blu-Ray because so much content is produced using Mac-based hardware and software. iMovie and Final Cut Pro already support HD for a very reasonable cost, but there's no easy way to deliver/distribute the content. If/when Apple starts including BD-R/W-capable drives as an option or standard equipment, and Sony is flooding the market with below-cost BD-equipped Playstation 3 machines, HD-DVD is going to have a hard time keeping up.

 

[djoxygen]

Another note re: HD progressive scan (i.e. 1080p)

If we can assume that HD (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray) work similarly to current DVDs, then content created at 1080 will be inherently capable of being displayed in a progressive-scan format. Up until a couple years ago, almost all progressive scan DVD players de-interlaced the picture after it was already interlaced. I don't entirely understand the "math", but it turns out that an interlaced/de-interlaced video signal is essentially identical to one that would have been progressive-scan from the beginning. In order to support both older displays and prog-scan-capable newer TVs with the least amount of complexity in the player, the decision was made to do it this way in most models. (Probably most cheaper DVD players still use this method.)

Seems a pretty safe assumption that the HD formats will also inherently support 1080p and it will just be up to the players' hardware to deliver that to the back panel.

 

[mmmazzar]

Does anyone know whether the new HD DVD players will still play our older discs?

 

[djoxygen]

Yes. Both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD hardware will contain 2 lasers, a blue one for the new disc and a red one for current DVDs.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Sharp's Aquos LCDs have supported 1080p since 4th qtr., 2004 (e.g., lc-45gd6u).

No, they don't accept 1080p. Actually, the one that has the external processor does accept 1080p, if you remove the external processor and hook up a 1080p source to the input the external processor was using.

But, not one of the 1080p Aquos displays actually is designed to accept 1080p on a normal input. I have confirmed this with Sharp who, in my opinion, has some of the worst engineers in the business.

1080p is definitely a white paper specification to be included on Blu-Ray disc. Not sure about HD-DVD, but I would expect so.