HD DVD VS. BD Round 2:

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/kisskissbangbang.html

Keep em coming...

I wonder what the excuse is going to be NOW???

Actually, it sounds like there will be no excuses on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang because the picture quality is barely inferior, according to that review. Now, of course, the fact that all these discs only have Legacy Dolby Digital is sickening. Making all advanced sound codecs optional on BD was one of the dumbest ideas the BDA decided upon. And if Sony really sticks with MPEG-2 for all releases, I wouldn't expect even DD+ on any of them.

Rumor Has It... that BD isn't as good as HD DVD.

I love this final conclusion: "...yet even with its higher list price the HD DVD combo release overall delivers better bang for the buck."

It's great how HD DVD can do more with 15GB than Blu-Ray can do with 25GB, yet those Blu-Ray nuts keep yammering on about how great it'll be when 50GB discs make it out.

Yikes, I forgot about that. Even a single layered HD DVD is better than a single layered Blu-ray disc? Beyond High Definition my ass.

Some quotes need to be here from that article:

And this is disturbing:

Can the Samsung even decode DD+? I don't think it can...

No, it can only do the basic downconverting to DD. I'm not sure what they call that. Extracting the data or something?

It's not too disturbing, to be expected, really. Just another reason to not get anything BD.

My understanding is that it can.

To my knowledge it can't. It can only extract the DD 5.1 core.

That's a far cry from them saying it can actually decode Dolby Digital Plus. ^{[Samsung.com]}

But the DVD Talk review does note that it doesn't do DD+.

What gives? Wouldn't Samsung be torched right now if they promise it does DD+ but doesn't actually? And don't receivers handle DD+ as "regular" Dolby Digital? Isn't this akin to saying an iPod can play a 128kbps MP3 but not a 256kbps MP3?

Someone enlighten me please.

For the record, Warner confirmed that none of their first BD's have DD+. A few discs went out with a printing error. They also confirmed that these are all MPEG-2.

Well to be fair they also make a big deal about 1080p output when the truth is its decoding to 1080i and then upconverting it back to 1080p. The tricky thing about Blu-ray is it is DD+ compatible. However, the Samsung is only extracting the DD 5.1 core and ignoring the + enhancements. Blu-ray is built around half truths and clever wording to disguise its real performance.

The Toshiba has a true DD+ decoder so the sound its sending to the receiver is already decoded and what you hear over HDMI or 6 channel analog is the full DD+ sound. The Samsung and Sony players are not listed as having this ability.

I found this post by suprmallet very interesting ;)

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post8116429

Wish he would re-post those charts here.

In addition, Amir just posted this:

So this makes me curious...how many of the BD discs go over 20? Does that mean that most of the discs out now are under 20 because there are still low yields above 20?!?!? And they want to go to 50???

Well, yea, 'cause that'll let 'em go up to 40!

That doesn't make any sense. A Blu Ray disc is 25GB, that's it. It's not like making a 20GB is easier.

That's like saying making a 500MB CD-ROM is easier than a 600MB CD-ROM. Both fall under the max specs.

I really do wish Amir didn't talk nonsense. Or at least, what appears to be nonsense.

There are BD-9's. So why not smaller versions of the discs?

I think they are refering to how much of the 25GB disc is actually usable. I would like more proof though. You would think by now they could replicate a single layered disc without 5GB of it being useless.

Actually they explained this pretty well before on AVS. The test yields on 25gb discs were not very good. They were supposedly throwing away a very high % of discs. The problems(disc errors) came in on the data being written on the outside edges of the disc I believe. To work around the problem they decided to just use less capacity. This could be fixed by now, but it says alot about the launch state of BD25 much less the trouble Sony is having with BD50.

I found this qoute by Amir on the state of Triple Layer HD-dvd even more interesting though:

" BTW, one thing that would make TL-45 a reality overnight is one of the BD studios making that a condition of supporting HD DVD (the original intention behind TL-45)."

So does Sony test each disc? or do they randomly spot check? And if so, how do they do that? All very interesting...to me, at least.

I doubt they test each of the mass produced discs. I know Sony is currently making them in Terre Haute but I don't know if any of the big replicator's have started production yet. If yields are not very good I wouldn't expect to hear anything from Sony on the issue.

Judging by the overall general quality of some of the release titles I think they just wanted to get them on the store shelf without risking a high return rate if they were all duds. Hence, bump them down to safe 20gbs and call it a day for now. BD25 yields were quoted from both Sony and Panasonic as being at 80% over the last year. Dropping down to 20gb probably brought them up to the 90% figure the were shooting for in the lab.

One thing to remember is the rumor that studios were concerned with poor BD yields, and to get them on board, Sony agreed to subsidize the bad discs for the studios. This makes it easier to understand why Sony wants to be as efficient as possible regarding their current disc manufacturing.

With BD50, it sounds like Sony is testing each disc. Don't know about BD25.

Probably. I wouldn't be surprised if bd50 is still in the lab.

I've heard that for every 10 BD50's produced, 9 get thrown away. 90% of the yields are unusable. Yikes!

If that's true, they should just quit. 10% is barely an acceptable failure rate on things like processors, it would be horrible for discs. 90% means they've failed completely and should just scrap the technology.