The Format War: Continued
The first players are now out: The Toshiba HD-DVD player, and the newly released Samsung Bluray player.
Toshiba's player was released in April, the Samsung just a mere week ago. So how does the "superior" bluray format stand up against HD-DVD?
In short... it doesn't.
Reviews coming in from everywhere now confirm the exact opposite of what everyone had expected, the player is actually inferior to the Toshiba HD-DVD player. The movies, while in HD, and definitely far better looking then regular SD (standard definition) content, aparently fall short of the quality that HD-DVD titles currently have.
How is this possible? How is it possible that you can walk into best buy and have a choice between a $1000 Bluray player and a $500 HD-DVD player, and the HD-DVD player actually produces a better image?
Blame Sony.
Sony, in their inifinite wisdom, released a press statement that they are not going to be using VC1 (Microsoft's compression algo) or H.264 (aka MPEG4) but are going to continue to use MPEG2 (Current DVD compression algo).
So basically, the measure of the quality of a decompression algorithm, is.. how much information can be stored as accurately as possible in as small a space as possible.. So, for most compression algorithms, you can specify the quality of the compression. This tells the algo how much information it is allowed to "toss out" as it tries to get the file smaller. So, in theory, all compression algorithms can have equal visual fidelity, but at VERY different file sizes.
MPEG2, therefore can in fact produce an image that is equal in quality to the best that VC1 or H.264 can offer, the problem is, it will consume a great deal more space to do so.
And therein lies the kicker.
Sony made a public statement that they believe MPEG2 to be a better compression algo then VC1.
This is, in fact, flat out false. Given enough processing power to decompress a VC1 stream, it will offer equal visual fidelity to MPEG2 but with a vastly smaller file size. But hey, Sony has never lied before right?
What is the REAL reason behind Sony doing something that appears to be completely ass-backwards? Royalties
Sony is part of the DVD Consortium. They selected MPEG2 as the algo of choice, and Sony does not need to pay anyone royalties for the use of the algo. However, Microsoft is the owner and creator of the VC1 algo. It is apparent that Sony would cut their nose to spite their face and are refusing to use Microsoft's algo for Bluray, because they don't want to pay Microsoft royalties.
They thought they could get away with this because of Bluray's superior storage space.
With Bluray offering 50GB disks and HD-DVD offering 30GB disks, why not? You can use MPEG2 and offer equivalent image quality, and not worry about space since you've got so much more to play with anyway.
BUT, in an unfortunate twist of fate, the Bluray camp has struggled to make dual-layer disks. The result is that all movies coming out are capped at 25GB, which is actually LESS than HD-DVD.
So, not only are the disks being released holding less than the competition, the compression algo being used is far less space efficient than the competitors. This results in Bluray movie producers being forced to decrease bitrate, resulting in image degradation.
Now, this is potentially a temporary problem. If all goes well, the bluray camp will finally get their act together and start stamping out those 50GB dual-layer disks, at which point they will be able to increase image quality... but this was a very poor move in the battle.
HD-DVD has effectively won this round. It costs half as much, has a lot more titles available, AND offers better image quality. Apparently the actual player is better too, the Toshiba has higher quality DVD playback, better sound, better options, ethernet and usb ports, none of which the player that costs 2x as much has.
Me thinks the Bluray camp is getting a little too cocky. I am still gambling on Bluray winning the war, under two assumptions, someday 50GB disks will be available, and the PS3 is going to sell by the assload... but I'll be damned if I wouldn't mind seeing Sony get bitch slapped for this stupidity.
Toshiba's player was released in April, the Samsung just a mere week ago. So how does the "superior" bluray format stand up against HD-DVD?
In short... it doesn't.
Reviews coming in from everywhere now confirm the exact opposite of what everyone had expected, the player is actually inferior to the Toshiba HD-DVD player. The movies, while in HD, and definitely far better looking then regular SD (standard definition) content, aparently fall short of the quality that HD-DVD titles currently have.
How is this possible? How is it possible that you can walk into best buy and have a choice between a $1000 Bluray player and a $500 HD-DVD player, and the HD-DVD player actually produces a better image?
Blame Sony.
Sony, in their inifinite wisdom, released a press statement that they are not going to be using VC1 (Microsoft's compression algo) or H.264 (aka MPEG4) but are going to continue to use MPEG2 (Current DVD compression algo).
So basically, the measure of the quality of a decompression algorithm, is.. how much information can be stored as accurately as possible in as small a space as possible.. So, for most compression algorithms, you can specify the quality of the compression. This tells the algo how much information it is allowed to "toss out" as it tries to get the file smaller. So, in theory, all compression algorithms can have equal visual fidelity, but at VERY different file sizes.
MPEG2, therefore can in fact produce an image that is equal in quality to the best that VC1 or H.264 can offer, the problem is, it will consume a great deal more space to do so.
And therein lies the kicker.
Sony made a public statement that they believe MPEG2 to be a better compression algo then VC1.
This is, in fact, flat out false. Given enough processing power to decompress a VC1 stream, it will offer equal visual fidelity to MPEG2 but with a vastly smaller file size. But hey, Sony has never lied before right?
What is the REAL reason behind Sony doing something that appears to be completely ass-backwards? Royalties
Sony is part of the DVD Consortium. They selected MPEG2 as the algo of choice, and Sony does not need to pay anyone royalties for the use of the algo. However, Microsoft is the owner and creator of the VC1 algo. It is apparent that Sony would cut their nose to spite their face and are refusing to use Microsoft's algo for Bluray, because they don't want to pay Microsoft royalties.
They thought they could get away with this because of Bluray's superior storage space.
With Bluray offering 50GB disks and HD-DVD offering 30GB disks, why not? You can use MPEG2 and offer equivalent image quality, and not worry about space since you've got so much more to play with anyway.
BUT, in an unfortunate twist of fate, the Bluray camp has struggled to make dual-layer disks. The result is that all movies coming out are capped at 25GB, which is actually LESS than HD-DVD.
So, not only are the disks being released holding less than the competition, the compression algo being used is far less space efficient than the competitors. This results in Bluray movie producers being forced to decrease bitrate, resulting in image degradation.
Now, this is potentially a temporary problem. If all goes well, the bluray camp will finally get their act together and start stamping out those 50GB dual-layer disks, at which point they will be able to increase image quality... but this was a very poor move in the battle.
HD-DVD has effectively won this round. It costs half as much, has a lot more titles available, AND offers better image quality. Apparently the actual player is better too, the Toshiba has higher quality DVD playback, better sound, better options, ethernet and usb ports, none of which the player that costs 2x as much has.
Me thinks the Bluray camp is getting a little too cocky. I am still gambling on Bluray winning the war, under two assumptions, someday 50GB disks will be available, and the PS3 is going to sell by the assload... but I'll be damned if I wouldn't mind seeing Sony get bitch slapped for this stupidity.
posted by Gigaflop at
6:28 AM
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