DVD or Blu Ray?

Finnforest wrote: Epignosis wrote: Finnforest wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: Well, actually it's not surprising that DVD is winning here ... after all this is a prog forum, and prog fans are usually nostalgic. "The grass was greener" ... applied to every technology.  That or people see little point in buying new hardware to play movies they've been forced to re-purchase. Exactly.  I'm not anti-BluRay, I just don't care enough to run out and buy the newest thing.  DVDs and CDs look and sound good enough IMO.  Are they *as* good?  No.  Do I care?  No Absolutely right Jim. How clear can a picture be?  Who wants to see each bead of sweat on Chris Squire's face anyway?  Unless we're talking about erotic films, then I suppose I see the BluRay case

WalterDigsTunes wrote: The T wrote: Finnforest wrote: Epignosis wrote: Finnforest wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: Well, actually it's not surprising that DVD is winning here ... after all this is a prog forum, and prog fans are usually nostalgic. "The grass was greener" ... applied to every technology.  That or people see little point in buying new hardware to play movies they've been forced to re-purchase. Exactly.  I'm not anti-BluRay, I just don't care enough to run out and buy the newest thing.  DVDs and CDs look and sound good enough IMO.  Are they *as* good?  No.  Do I care?  No Absolutely right Jim. How clear can a picture be?  Who wants to see each bead of sweat on Chris Squire's face anyway?  Unless we're talking about erotic films, then I suppose I see the BluRay case For every music fan who wants to listen to 20 minute songs about purple clouds there is another one with a passion for the best possible picture in their movies... I guess the existence of both makes the same sense... And for every one of those there's a few million people who could care less about blowing cash on something with more pixels.

The T wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: The T wrote: Finnforest wrote: Epignosis wrote: Finnforest wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: Well, actually it's not surprising that DVD is winning here ... after all this is a prog forum, and prog fans are usually nostalgic. "The grass was greener" ... applied to every technology.  That or people see little point in buying new hardware to play movies they've been forced to re-purchase. Exactly.  I'm not anti-BluRay, I just don't care enough to run out and buy the newest thing.  DVDs and CDs look and sound good enough IMO.  Are they *as* good?  No.  Do I care?  No Absolutely right Jim. How clear can a picture be?  Who wants to see each bead of sweat on Chris Squire's face anyway?  Unless we're talking about erotic films, then I suppose I see the BluRay case For every music fan who wants to listen to 20 minute songs about purple clouds there is another one with a passion for the best possible picture in their movies... I guess the existence of both makes the same sense... And for every one of those there's a few million people who could care less about blowing cash on something with more pixels. You're probably still with a betamax since you are stuck in 1989 so of course this doesn't make sense to you...

Wasting money never makes sense.

Marty McFly wrote: King By-Tor wrote: rpe9p wrote: Maybe he meant do you buy DVD or Blu Ray, or do you think the slight increase in quality is worth it Slight increase? There's almost 3 time the pixels! Maybe I just prefer it because I'm the visual equivalent to an audiophile. In a few years you'll all have blu ray players anyways, maybe you'll just be watching your crappy old DVDs on them I'm not sure here, but is every Blu Ray (stupid name by the way, it should have been named Blue if you ask me) in this resolution, or are some in lower ? Second thing - I can convert 100x100 video to 1900x1000 px big monster too, but result quality will be terrible. What I'm trying to say that with many DVD's, you have quality as good as possible (and you know how let's say pre 70's films can be terrible in quality), but it is still bad. I remember having one old cartoon on dvd - it was almost flashing with brightness, like in waves of dark and bright picture quality. It was corny, but it was the best it could be. But many people bought it because they saw it was on DVD and expected quality. Yeah, paper cover for DVD was nicely done, but what was inside was good old cartoon, not good in quality of picture. Now let's apply this on Blu Ray

So many things wrong with this.

A good blu ray transfer sees someone going back to the 35 or 16mm master reels and reproducing it from there. 35mm film is far superior to HD 1080x1920, it just can't be shown on a digital medium uncompressed. even 16mm is "bigger" than HD. The Hurt Locker was shot on 16mm for god's sake and it looks fantastic on blu ray! You can't say that "movies from the 70s" look crappy because last time I checked Bladerunner (yes, 80s, I know) and Star Wars or The Shining or Full Metal Jacket look a f**kload better in HD. The only difference between DVD and HD when it comes to film is how much you're compressing it.

Mike, two issues here.  Everyone agrees with you that BR is clearer.  Whether its worth the hassle and money to upgrade is more personal, and there is nothing wrong with people who are content with what they have.  There's lots of cars out there better than my Civic, doesn't mean I'm "leaving reality" if I don't feel driven to upgrade to one of them.   

King By-Tor wrote: Marty McFly wrote: King By-Tor wrote: rpe9p wrote: Maybe he meant do you buy DVD or Blu Ray, or do you think the slight increase in quality is worth it Slight increase? There's almost 3 time the pixels! Maybe I just prefer it because I'm the visual equivalent to an audiophile. In a few years you'll all have blu ray players anyways, maybe you'll just be watching your crappy old DVDs on them I'm not sure here, but is every Blu Ray (stupid name by the way, it should have been named Blue if you ask me) in this resolution, or are some in lower ? Second thing - I can convert 100x100 video to 1900x1000 px big monster too, but result quality will be terrible. What I'm trying to say that with many DVD's, you have quality as good as possible (and you know how let's say pre 70's films can be terrible in quality), but it is still bad. I remember having one old cartoon on dvd - it was almost flashing with brightness, like in waves of dark and bright picture quality. It was corny, but it was the best it could be. But many people bought it because they saw it was on DVD and expected quality. Yeah, paper cover for DVD was nicely done, but what was inside was good old cartoon, not good in quality of picture. Now let's apply this on Blu Ray So many things wrong with this. A good blu ray transfer sees someone going back to the 35 or 16mm master reels and reproducing it from there. 35mm film is far superior to HD 1080x1920, it just can't be shown on a digital medium uncompressed. even 16mm is "bigger" than HD. The Hurt Locker was shot on 16mm for god's sake and it looks fantastic on blu ray! You can't say that "movies from the 70s" look crappy because last time I checked Bladerunner (yes, 80s, I know) and Star Wars or The Shining or Full Metal Jacket look a f**kload better in HD. The only difference between DVD and HD when it comes to film is how much you're compressing it.

God, I wanted just to explain how this works, not to start World Post War III.

I don't understand much how "classic" films works, but when I buy a DVD and want to convert it to lower quality (and size), I rip it with certain programs. I can choose bitrate of both video and audio and the result file, be it .avi or .mkv or .mp4, whatever, looks good or bad. It depends on quality selected.

This is theory and I was talking about this. I didn't experience VHS much, when I was watching VHS I was too young and was just consuming films / movies / cartoons, not thinking about them. But I know that some of them (we still have VHS from late 80's) are in crappy quality.

In my thinking, it depends on few factors. Original quality, when it was shot, edited, cut, how it was stored.

Please, try not to concentrate on thing in my post that irritates you the most and try to see reasoning in it. Main purpose why I have posted it. I'm not saying that 70's films looks crappy and nowadays films looks perfect. I am not. All I am saying is that today, technique used is better, therefore, resulting quality MAY be better. Or may not, it depends on director.

Few questions:

1)Let's move backwards then. Films from 1920's looks worse than films 00's. Why ? Because of what I've just said - they didn't have technology to make picture quality better. Do I take these films as bad ? Nope.
So the question is - do they look worse ?

2)Take for example videos you could record on crappy mobile phones let's say 5 years ago. 176x133 px resulting video, something like that, right ? So I can use some program and transform it to 1900x1000. It will be stretched, it will be terrible to look at, but I can do that, right ? See what I'm trying to tell ?

3)I won't repeat it. This thing about this old cartoon, this happened. DVD we bought for my little sister was in terrible quality, but it's probably because it never was in good quality. It was 720x480, but the quality itself was terrible.

On archive.org I downloaded some black'n'white movies from 1910's, 1920's. Their resolution (measured in pixels) wasn't bad. But quality of picture was.

So, the question is, you can get poor quality picture with 1900x1000 pixels movie.

Second question - Are pixels guarantee of quality or are they not ? 

By the way, I know about Blade Runner (it was close to my 70's, nevermind it), I like the book, I like original book "Does Androids...", I like Philip K. Dick's work at all (I've read most of them), I saw few different endings of this movie and was stunned in each case, be it book or movie.

Also consider remastering

rdtprog wrote: When they will no new DVD available in stores, you'll see how much people will change their preferences to Blu Ray. It could take a lot of years, but it will be a new reality, like it or not. They're will be a new kind of Blu Ray, can't stop the technology...

I don't know- throughout the years several superior technologies have been marketed to the public and have failed to catch on sufficiently enough to become the new standard media.

In fact, I only know one household that has upgraded to Blu-Ray.

harmonium.ro wrote: That's an interesting point. Several new technologies did become the "standard" but all those I can think of (the cassette, the CD, digital radio/video/audio/photo etc.) came with the advantage of a more efficient production and a lower (or at least not higher) price for the end consumer. Not the case with Blu-Ray...

The price of the Blu Ray will go down when people are going to buy more of it and  when the manufacturer going to do more of them.

rdtprog wrote: When they will no new DVD available in stores, you'll see how much people will change their preferences to Blu Ray. It could take a lot of years, but it will be a new reality, like it or not. They're will be a new kind of Blu Ray, can't stop the technology...

I disagree.

Stores changed their offer, gradually, from VHS tapes to DVDs. From Vinyl albums and cassettes to CDs.
But the new technology offered back then was radical, different, new. VHS tapes were slow, heavy, bulky, analog, tapes were prone to breakage. DVD offered digital reliability.

Blue-ray is nearly that revolutionary. It's digital media on steroids. Is it worth it? Surely, if you appreciate high-end performance. But in the war of formats, BluRay won over HD-DVD...by a hairline. I'm afraid it will be obsolete in a decade or so, going in history like one of those 'in-between' formats.

Everyone of my age (or older) remember diskettes (floppy disks of 3.5 inch size). They were ubiquitous. But what about the 'new, bigger, better, faster, more reliable'  formats that came later and falled through the cracks of history? Mini disc, zip drive, jazz drive, digital cassette, where are they now?!? UMD, for God's sake! (And they were better, at least some of them, actually.)

Technically, there's no difference in storing the file that contains HD movies on BluRay or on a bunch of (thousands) floppy drives, providing you have a retrofit equipment for the practical use. (You can even store digital media on analog tape, but that's beside the point.) Where's the catch? In blue laser light? Is it really worth it?

In our (near) future, USB stick is the physical format that will prevail (or should). The next step will be, most likely, the complete absence of physical media - on-demand data online. Further on, we will reach quantum computers, and/or non-binary digital devices.

I'm not saying BluRay disk is no good, or not technically better than DVD, that's stupid. A new Ferrari is certainly better car than my old little Ford, no doubt about it: it's faster, stronger, better in overtaking, more stable on a winding road. But, price and availability aside, do I need it? No. I need a car with a reasonably high level of reliability that will transport me from A to B, while I'm able to appreciate the countryside. I'm not interested in driving 300 km/h.

Surely, if driving 300 km/h is your thing, go for Ferrari. If watching high-definition movies with stereo surround is your thing, go for it.

But I tell you one thing: my favourite music genre is progressive rock. I can tell you my favourite actors, directors and movie genres. I experienced them all through various media. Would be my opinion different if watched on different, better media? I don't think so.

clarke2001 wrote: rdtprog wrote: When they will no new DVD available in stores, you'll see how much people will change their preferences to Blu Ray. It could take a lot of years, but it will be a new reality, like it or not. They're will be a new kind of Blu Ray, can't stop the technology... I disagree. Stores changed their offer, gradually, from VHS tapes to DVDs. From Vinyl albums and cassettes to CDs. But the new technology offered back then was radical, different, new. VHS tapes were slow, heavy, bulky, analog, tapes were prone to breakage. DVD offered digital reliability. Blue-ray is nearly that revolutionary. It's digital media on steroids. Is it worth it? Surely, if you appreciate high-end performance. But in the war of formats, BluRay won over HD-DVD...by a hairline. I'm afraid it will be obsolete in a decade or so, going in history like one of those 'in-between' formats. Everyone of my age (or older) remember diskettes (floppy disks of 3.5 inch size). They were ubiquitous. But what about the 'new, bigger, better, faster, more reliable'  formats that came later and falled through the cracks of history? Mini disc, zip drive, jazz drive, digital cassette, where are they now?!? UMD, for God's sake! (And they were better, at least some of them, actually.) Technically, there's no difference in storing the file that contains HD movies on BluRay or on a bunch of (thousands) floppy drives, providing you have a retrofit equipment for the practical use. (You can even store digital media on analog tape, but that's beside the point.) Where's the catch? In blue laser light? Is it really worth it? In our (near) future, USB stick is the physical format that will prevail (or should). The next step will be, most likely, the complete absence of physical media - on-demand data online. Further on, we will reach quantum computers, and/or non-binary digital devices. I'm not saying BluRay disk is no good, or not technically better than DVD, that's stupid. A new Ferrari is certainly better car than my old little Ford, no doubt about it: it's faster, stronger, better in overtaking, more stable on a winding road. But, price and availability aside, do I need it? No. I need a car with a reasonably high level of reliability that will transport me from A to B, while I'm able to appreciate the countryside. I'm not interested in driving 300 km/h. Surely, if driving 300 km/h is your thing, go for Ferrari. If watching high-definition movies with stereo surround is your thing, go for it. But I tell you one thing: my favourite music genre is progressive rock. I can tell you my favourite actors, directors and movie genres. I experienced them all through various media. Would be my opinion different if watched on different, better media? I don't think so.

I like the point about the Ferrarri - they have been around for years and yet who owns one beside the filthy rich? Blu Ray will go down in price but why do we need it at all when DVD is so damn good.