Posted on 11/27/2010 2:52:35 PM PST by snarkpup
No DVDs are HD. The lowest HD resolution is 1280x720 (720p). The max DVD resolution in NTSC is 720x480, which is closer to wide-screen 480p SD.
What about a blu ray disc? I thought that is the only true “HD” available, meaning 1080p capability.
However, we have HD tv channels, upconverted dvd’s which play on my HD tv, etc.
I believe there are few true 1080p HD formats (I thought only blu ray), but we still view plenty of what is called “HD”. There is a vast difference in the “HD” tv channels viewed on my HD Sony, although I also understand no broadcast is in tue 1080p HD.
If I have that right?
There is no "true" HD. HD is anything over 480p standard definition (SD). 720 and 1080, interlaced or progressive, are the most common in consumer use. 1080p is the highest-level of HD on the common consumer market, but there are others that go much higher. Blu-ray is simply the winner of the format war for the optical disk successor to DVD. It's just one way of distributing HD content.
There are three factors here: resolution, bitrate and compression. Up the resolution, other two stay the same, picture quality will suffer. Up the bit rate with the same resolution, you can lower compression for better picture quality. Up the compression, you can afford a lower bitrate or a higher resolution, but picture quality will suffer. Obviously what we want is high resolution, high bitrate and low compression. That requires a LOT of storage and a HIGH bandwidth to transmit it.
Blu-ray can store 50 GB dual layer and support movie bitrates up to 48 megabits per second. In practice most movies range around 20-40 megabits per second including audio (that's 18 gigabytes per hour on the high end). This bitrate can support 1080p at 24 frames per second with a very high quality. This is what makes people go "Oooooh" when watching the store demo. But you can get that same quality in a 1080p movie stored on your hard drive, or any modern storage medium for that matter, if your computer is powerful enough to play it.
Over the air to your antenna can't support the bitrate to offer any quality in 1080p, so they just don't do it. Cable doesn't have the infrastructure to support high bitrates for dozens of channels at 1080p, so they don't do it either (as it is, many compress their 720p broadcasts so much that the poor picture quality is quite obvious). Some Internet services offer 1080p streaming, but usually at bitrates much lower than Blu-ray, like 5 Mpbs, meaning quality will suffer. I'd rather see high-quality 720p than poor-quality 1080p.
“I thought flash drives don’t have long enough data retention to archive data”
They don’t, which is why Zip disks are still commonly used for archival purposes.
Everything I’ve seen with the Canon T2i in HD looks great.
We own a SONY VPL-VW60 front projector combined with a 100 inch STEWART Firehawk SST screen. We also have an OPPO up-converting DVD player along with a SONY BPL-550s Blu-ray player, both players have excellent DVD up-converting capabilities. I have an extensive DVD and Blu-ray library and have had the opportunity on numerous occasions to A/B the up-converted DVD with the Blue-ray of the same movie and there is a tremendous difference between the two. The visual difference can be readily seen in the sharpness of the image, higher resolution, the fine DETAIL, the depth of image and overall picture quality. There is such a striking difference between the two formats that we no longer buy DVD's at all and have been in the process of replacing much of our DVD library with Blu-rays.
Some great examples of movies to A/B demo in order to see the difference = Peter Jackson's King Kong, Flight of the Phoenix, Casino Royal, The Wild Bunch, Spielberg's War of the Worlds, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Matrix trilogy, Toy Story 3, Avatar, GLADIATOR to name a few. If you have a decent HD set up: 1080p TV, coupled with a good Blu-ray player, the difference is clearly visible.
There is one more element that figures prominently into purchasing Blu-rays instead of DVD's and that is the AUDIO. Because Blu-rays have much more space available on the disk, most Blu-ray movies come with DTS HD Master Audio or DOLBY TRUE HD 5.1/7.1 codices. The striking sonic difference between these codices and regular DTS and DOLBY that come on standard DVD's are worth buying Blu-ray over DVD in and of themselves. That said, one has to have a home theater set up/equipment capable of reproducing the audio codices. Ultimately it all comes down to the quality of a person's Audio/Video set up. AVS is an outstanding website to go to regarding ALL A/V Home Theater questions, advice, reviews or needs. :
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/
Are there lousy/poor quality Blu-ray disks out there? Yes, but one can avoid them if one does their homework BEFORE the purchase. I strongly recommend checking out the following web pages before making any Blu-ray purchasing decisions:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1168342 Video picture quality
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1190265 Audio quality
Blu-ray disk reviews:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=c26508ddc2122b825edc6c2d5a4ea56b&f=187
One more thing, the good news is the movie studios are responding to the consumers demand for high quality Blu-ray transfers. A good example is GLADIATOR. The first Blu-ray release was TERRIBLE. Immediately word got around that the release had major problems, people complained and refused to buy the Blu-ray movie. The studio got the message loud and clear and re-released GLADIATOR on Blu-ray. They also had a free replacement for anyone who had bought the previous release. Let me tell you, GLADIATOR is STUNNING on Blu-ray!
I can’t tell any appreciable difference in quality between a Blu-ray and a good standard DVD in a progressive scan player. I’ve seen big Blu-ray demos in places like Best Buy — that ought to be using ideal equipment and source media for obvious reasons — and I’m just not that impressed.
No probs, bud. I work in Hollywood and volunteer my time for a fansub group on the karaoke and timing of the subs ONLY if the anime is worth it and interesting. (No Naruto LOL). I turned down the sub group currently handling Bleach releases because I have a heavy workload right now.
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