My next buy (maybe next month) for BD movies wud be Pirates of Carribean 2 and either Happy Feet or Monster House.

that's what I was told by a friend of mine that Amazon does offer very good price. Great!

So, how does one know that the title is VC encoded or compressed? Is it written on the covers? I don't see that info on Amazon's pages as well.

Have to wait for user reviews before knowing, u mean?

Havent watch one of the Blue Ray movie yet but i'm sure it will be better than DVD movies since it does not compress anything due to the bigger size of the Blue Ray

If thats how you are justifying the purchase/upgrade, then you must prepare yourself to double/triple/quadruple dip in the future. There will be lots of rererere-releases of better quality for HD movies.

The disc space is not fully utilised properly now as is

I own and have watched several Blu-Ray movies. The one with really outstanding PQ is Crank. Guess its because it was shot entirely in HD as well.
If anyone is interested, I don't mind temporarily trading with another title and so that you can see for yourself how 1080p should really look!

If interested, I have 11 blue ray titles available for exchange, but the others even the newer titles like In Pursuit Of Happiness or Casino Royale can't match Crank's PQ.

This post has been edited by yjtay: Apr 13 2007, 11:05 PM

Err... not that simple... Here's some stupid way to explain...

Find out the standard DVD resolution, I forget the exact number, around 720x480 or something?

Find out the BD resolution, around 1920x1080.

720x480 = 345.600
1920x1080 = 2.073.600

The ratio between the DVD and BD size should be around 1:6.

Let's say the standard Video bitrate for DVD is 7 Mb/s.

Then to achieve same result in 1080p for BD in MPEG2, you will need at least 6 time more bitrate... around 42 Mb/s.

Now check your BD's video bitrate (with MPEG2 compression). Around 17-20 Mb/s only!!! This simple wont produce best result (as we have discussed before, you need around 42 MB/s for achieve high quality movie at 1080p). Blocky image, artefact, etc are the common view for this case.

You may ask, why dont BD use those 42 Mb/s video bitrate? Because, with this bitrate, the 25 GB single layer BD media will not even enough to hold a full length movie! While a 50 GB dual layer BD media is still too expensive.

So, MPEG2 for BD is simply a silly things. You should move to VC1.

With the same bitrate, VC1 simply means better quality than MPEG2, even VC1 can use lower bitrate to achieve same/better result compared with MPEG2 movie (just like comparing MPEG with DivX).

Again, my suggestion, don't buy BD with MPEG2 or you shall regret yourself. I dont pick HD-DVD or BD side. Both are good, only if in VC1.

Thanks.

This post has been edited by xneakers: Apr 13 2007, 11:35 PM

This webpage indicates what codec does a BD movies uses.
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/reviews.html

BTW, BD also using AVC-MP4 codec.

Well, if you wanna know whether the movie is using MPEG-2 or VC-1 compression, you can always surf this site, http://www.dvdtown.com and they have very detailed reviews on all major HD titles including the audio tracks used as well.

Blu-Ray has potential if they start to ditch the ancient MPEG-2 compression thingy from their latest movies. Nobody wants to watch Black Hawk Down on Blu-Ray dual layer with MPEG-2 compression. Come on Sony, do you want to end up like your infamous Betamax format? I'm not a Toshiba supporter or what but at least they did the right thing and also to offer HD-DVD players at attractive prices.

The AVC is still inferior compared with VC1...

So, in addition, forget BD with MPEG2 or AVC

Technically MPEG-2 is inferior to H.264/AVC which in turn is inferior to VC-1.
Also technically with the approriate hardware, VC-1 advance profile, L4 is able to reach a maximum bit rate of 135 Mbit/s at 1920 x 1080 / 60 (1080p) .
However what is technically true may not be true to your eyes and ears!
I have personally tested out the following 4 titles :
Casino Royale - Codec AVC,
The Prestige - Codec AVC,
The Departed - Codec VC-1 and
Crank - Codec merely encoded on MPEG-2
on a Sony VPLVW100 SXRD Digital (Ruby) Projector with a 100" Screen paired with a Denon AVR-4806CI 1080p receiver on my PS3, at a friend's place. Guess which I personally felt clearly came out tops and second for PQ -
So to me, sometimes technical specs should not be the only concern for PQ, there lots of other factors to consider especially how the film was taken! Personally, its what you see and hear which is most important, not only technical specs. You don't need to believe me or even take my word, just get the 4 titles and compare to see and even hear for yourself!

My offer to temporarily trade Crank and the other 3 blu-ray titles still holds if you seriously want to compare!

This post has been edited by yjtay: Apr 15 2007, 12:19 PM

We are talking on the "ideal" condition... which means that the source was as best as we can and then encoded with those 3 codecs as comparison... Sure the result will be VC1>AVC>MPEG2.

You example is very common things happened in our world, so I wont complain... For example in audio world, I like Siti Nurhaliza... but her recording most likely very bad (bass/treble boost, almost no audiophile details, etc)... if there is someone want to put her recording in HDCD/SACD/XRCD formats, then the result wont be better compared to Kari Bremnes or Rebecca Pidgeon in standard CD-A format...

A miss universe will be looked pretty, even without any make up (extra cosmetics)... and on the other side, an "ugly" (sorry) girl will be looked ugly even if you put extra cosmetic on her...

Yup definitely without a doubt agree with your above statements under perfect conditions VC1 is currently the best codec!

However I personally feel, let me take from your example, most Miss Universe without makeup will still look pretty, but an ugly person with the right stylist and maybe the right cosmetics will and can look pretty too!

In simple terms never judge a book by its cover alone! Sometimes even a paltry DVD might match a Bluray transfer. Sometimes even an Mpeg2 encoded bluray could have an amazing PQ which would not be discernable even when or if it is retransfered from source and re encoded in VC1 (my wild assumption).

Its like the argument 1080p is better than 720p. I have no doubt it is better and I am infact watching my materials, movies and playing games using the heavily marketed (touted) Full HD tag, but frankly when I think about it, most of the time I can't see the difference or don't noticed the difference between 720p and 1080p, even on my friend's 100" screen. Its only when I paused the movie or know what to look for and focus on the whole movie then I will see the difference. Guess I am no videophile or audiophile just an easliy influenced consumer!

Anyway as a disclaimer, this is only my personal opinion. Let me reiterate, as video camera technology gets upgraded, VC1 encoding can and will potentially outshine the other mentioned encoding formats.

For details of the not so "bias" lay person Blu-ray and HD-DVD software PQ rankings click either Bluray software tier rankings or HD DVD software tier rankings. Take those AVS forum threads as a guide only and let your senses be the judge. Afterall beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

Joining the blu-ray team soon! Waiting for HT to finish up. Gonna pair PS3 with Anthem Statement D2 SSP AV Processor, wanna see how good the Gennum VXP is. Obviously will be better than Mitsu HC5k's Reon HQV but we'll see. Review before August!

Correct... even I was the one that saying the DVD Region 1 could be better than the BD with MPEG2 (see previous page)... on my case, the "House of Flying Dagger" on BD was so terrible...

But something strange here... if you can create good PQ with MPEG2 compression (example, the CRANK), I believe the result will be MUCH better with VC1... assumed that the source is the same. If you can't get better picture, at least you can save some space with VC1 to hold better audio. So why do you (Sony) use MPEG2? I still cant get the point why Sony forces to use MPEG2... even if you are saying that MPEG2 can produce good PQ... but with VC1, the result should be bettter. Agree?

Finally, I think you are right... it's necessary to review title by title of the movie...

guys, can you actually buy a BR or HD-DVD player in this country? And you need a 1080p to display the full glory of the pq. gosh...this is so amazing. you guys are really early adopters, and seemed so knowledgeable. sorry..cos noob here.

cheers!

I do agree that MPEG2 is an archaic codec when compared to VC1 which could be up to 3 times more efficient. The reason why I think Crank had such a good PQ even with MPEG2 is that the bit rate/ video quality was bumped up through utilisation of the additional capacity a 50GB discs Blu-ray gives. However if VC1 was used it could reach the same quality with maybe less than half the size, but the strange thing is, Crank has enough space to hold uncompressed PCM Audio !

One popular conspiracy theory why Sony insist on using Mpeg2 from a videophile name Pat is
"Blu-ray supports the same compression formats that HD-DVD does. It's just that the studios aren't always authoring VC-1 content for blu-ray. Sony's line is that their discs can hold so much more stuff that they can continue to use MPEG-2 and just crank the bitrate up, but that's not actually true. I think the theory behind it is that Microsoft gets licensing fees for VC-1 when it's used, because it's based on a standardized high-fidelity version of WMV, so Sony doesn't like using it, despite the better quality."

Also from the same guy one of the reasons why Mpeg2 is comparatively more expensive to author : "VC-1 became mandatory in the blu-ray spec originally for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it requires VASTLY less processing power than MPEG-4 (by using integer math instead of floating point), yet produces comparable results. That drives down everyone's costs, and the hardware manufacturers appreciate that."

Lastly click on Sound and Vision Mag for an interesting article by David Ranada, who is the media's leading engineering authority on digital audio and video, from a year ago which led me to believe that sometimes, one should not just rely on the technical specs. His sentiments in last paragraph really made me think!

This post has been edited by yjtay: Apr 16 2007, 12:22 AM

Can anyone please check the bitrate for video on the Crank? I do really need confirmation here...

In my "somewhere around calculation", even the dual layer BD can't find high bitrate MPEG2 with uncompressed audio... So how come the Crank can do that? More information please...

Just click Unofficial Blu-ray Audio and Video Specs to check the bit rate. Btw do take note too, Crank is one of the few Blu-ray titles with LPCM 7.1 too ! You really should order the title and be impressed with both the sound and visual quality!

The blu-ray with the highest bit rate encoded with Mpeg2 is Click, however it pales in comparison with Crank. So like I always believe, eventhough technical specs are important, it should not be the only criteria used to assess AV quality, always let your eyes and ears make the decision after all only you know what you want!

This post has been edited by yjtay: Apr 16 2007, 10:35 AM

WOW Crank wud be my next purchase.