CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Mark_A_W

Ok, I bought myself a Bluray/HD-DVD combo drive for my PC - a LG one, it works a treat. Replaces the Xbox HD-DVD drive I got for $A38.

But I'm not impressed with Bluray so far.

Having enjoyed plundering HD-DVD for a while now - I got all 5 Harry Potters for A$34, when ONE Harry Potter on BD costs A$40, I got really used to buying HD-DVDs for $6 to $8. And the range is pretty good, about half of my favourite films.

But there's bugger all on Bluray - it's getting better but slowly.

And I'm finding out that VERY FEW BDs have decent audio. Most have 16 bit 48khz PCM, which is just adequate these days. About half my HD-DVDs have True HD at 24bit 48khz. (One has DTS-HD at 24 bit 96khz).

Why do they cop out on the audio??

And I dunno the US prices, but over here they all cost A$40, nearly twice the cost of the DVD, and about 8 times the price of a HD-DVD lately...

It's not going to take over DVD in a hurry..

HD-DVD was a much better format. The much vaunted 50gb size of the BD turns out to be marketing bollocks, most are 30gb or so, just like the HD-DVD....and the audio is crapper.

**kal** · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 4:15 am Post subject:

Strange, I've got probably close to 75 Blu-ray discs now and just about all of them have lossless audio tracks.

Kal

Gino · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 4:21 am Post subject:

The earlier releases on Blu-ray coped out on audio, but most I'm picking up now have TrueHD or DTS HD MA!

It will take some time for costs to go down locally I think, and is why I made sure to pick up a region A player to take advantage of overseas pricing. Can't fairly compare it to the cost of HD-DVD lately for obvious reasons.

Mark_A_W · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 4:23 am Post subject:

ecrabb · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:06 am Post subject:

I wasn't aware that 16 bit 48khz PCM had suddenly become "crap audio" since high-res was available?!???!

Mark, what's your audio system like? I'd like to hear a little more about your system that reveals all the wonderful goodness of high-res audio and renders 16/48 PCM as "crap audio"?

SC

Mark_A_W · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 12:34 pm Post subject:

I have a fully active system based on Focal drivers and four 15" Tempest subs in an IB.

Alright, I admit that I struggle to hear the difference between 16 and 24 bits (got to finish that hushbox), but that's not the point. These BDs and HD-DVDs are for the future. It will be a long while before they are superceded like DVD. They should have the BEST audio and video available, especially considering the price they want for BD's here.

Seems there is hope, I just watched Eragon, and it looked stunning, and sounded good - it has DTS-MA Lossless 24 bit 48khz sound.

Movie was a bad rewrite of starwars (so standard boy to hero stuff), but the cinematography was great. Some scenes were stunning, basically as good as King Kong. However the CG was awful, unlike King Kong's...it looked like Starwars ep 1-3....I wish they'd stuck to puppet Yoda and Jabba.

Yes, 16 bit 48khz is crap when 24bit 96khz is technically possible.

**kal** · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 1:33 pm Post subject:

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

I have to agree with Mark. While the original concept of high-definition might have been more resolution via pixels and color, the simple lossless standard definition in audio might have been initially overlooked.

Of course, it would not surprise me that Sony doesn't come out with a Superbit Blu-ray edition of movies with even more compelling audio based on incremental revisions to the Blu-ray standard. Heck, not even initial DVDs had the best in audio or video.

But I do wonder, Mark, if you are more the audiophile than the videophile.

Angus_rg · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:09 pm Post subject:

Mark_A_W · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 9:39 pm Post subject:

Brian Hampton · Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 1173

I got all the harry potters new on Blu Ray for ~$12 each.

Hopefully you will find better prices $40 is too much for any title... I wouldn't buy at that price.

Mark_A_W · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 10:01 pm Post subject:

That's not a bad price, not bad at all.

I can buy any BD from anywhere - I have a PC with Anydvd Wink

It's just like the early days of DVD, when we used to order from Amazon as the local range was pathetic.

Gary M. · Guest

Mark WTF!!

BD audio is by far better than HD-DVD audio, most releases only had DD+ for the later, none had PCM, TrueHD started to pop up pretty often later on but alot of them were 16-20 bit as well

some BD PCM tracks are 24-bit, you can check over at the blurayforum.com for details on that, every Fox/MGM release has DTS Master, every Sony release has TrueHD from the past year, before that they used PCM, lots of both at 24-bit, every Universal and New Line BD release will have DTS Master as well

BD audio is much better than HD-DVD, all releases except some Warner and early Lionsgate have lossless

DTS Master bitstreamed via HDMI 1.3 to a newer preamp(like Integra 9.8) is where it's at Thumbs Up

-Gary

Mark_A_W · Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:05 am Post subject:

Really?

The titles I have bought/rented/borrowed (only about 10...but I only got a BD drive last week) have tended to have 16 bit 48khz LPCM at best (ok, that's not too bad, but I expect better). Only one has had DTS MA (24bit).

I went through every title I liked at the local JB hifi (bulk music/av gear warehouse) and not many had TrueHD/DTS MA at least here in Oz.

Granted there is no way to tell the bitdepth of LPCM/True HD/DTS MA tracks from the back of the label (GRR), it just seems to me so far that LPCM = 16bit 48khz. Happy to be corrected.

Gary M. · Guest

Mark, the Disney blu-ray releases tell the bit depth on the case, a couple are wrong though, additionally I think Sony upconverts most TrueHD to 24-bit

here is a pretty good start:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=3338

Apocalypto and Pearl Harbor have amazing 24-bit LPCM tracks to name a few

-Gary

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

What do you guys prefer for the video codec? VC-1, AVC, Mpeg-2

Athanasios

Brian Hampton · Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 1173

Mark,

Since you can buy from anywhere... You should check out BluRay.com

I check the hot deals forum there every day when I check my email. Some discs that I wouldn't have purchased otherwise come up very cheap from time to time. For example, I Am Legend came up one day at Walmart.com for ~$13 and I had rented it and wasn't going to buy it but for that price I figured it was fun enough to watch again once or twice. With WB coupons the Matrix set was about half of it's MSRP (~$70 with the MSRP of $129.)

Family Video, J&R Music, and Fry's all have unusual prices from time to time. For example,.. I picked up Halloween from J&R for $10.99 + Shipping.

BluRay.com also has deals forums for other regions too (not just region A or 1 or whatever.)

-Brian

Gary M. · Guest

ecrabb · Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:59 pm Post subject:

VC-1 and AVC are very close... The source material, how it's handled, and how well the compression is done is MUCH more important than the codec itself. To tell the difference between the two, you literally have to analyze a decompressed still frame enlarged on a monitor and examine them side-by-side. Done right, they're both excellent.

MPEG-2 isn't even close - certainly not at comparable bit-rates, and not even really if you give MPEG-2 a large data rate advantage. That's not to say you can't make MPEG-2 look good, it just takes a big data rate to do it. That's the main reason the early BD releases sucked - because Sony simply couldn't fit a movie on the BD25 discs with a decent enough bitrate to make the video look good.

Consider that nearly 10 years passed between the time the specs for MPEG-2 HD DTV were finalized and when the specs for the new advanced codecs were finalized.

As for audio, I agree high-res audio is great. I want it, and I want to upgrade my processor ASAP to play it... But, calling 16-bit 48khz uncompressed audio "crap audio" is just silly. Like Kal said, half the releases using that format are old enough that 16/48 is probably how the damn soundtrack was mastered in the first place!!!

I'm not worried, personally. If internet download movie delivery doesn't kill Blu-ray (I don't think it will - I'm just sayin'...), BD releases will only get better and better. The encoding tools, the pros doing the mastering and encoding, the decoding hardware... it's all in its infancy right now. Remember how much better DVD was 5 years after it hit the mainstream? People and tools... The people get experience, and the tools mature.

SC

Gino · Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 4:43 am Post subject:

Mark, which BD rentals did you get, were they Aussie releases? If so, some of the local releases tend to get worse audio than the US versions.