Well, on paper BR has 50GB capacity, while in the real world, it will have 25GB. If the 50GB are ready to go, why release titles on 25GB?

So the Microsoft comments from 9/28/05 are still valid: outside of a lab context, the 50GB disc is missing in action.

Realistically, it doesn't matter why there are no 50GB BR discs, only that they aren't ready to sell. I guess MS correctly assumed that several months later, BR still wouldn't have 50GB discs ready.

Now, HD-DVD is first to market with an initial disc capacity greater than the BR discs will have (30GB vs. 25GB). No matter how you cut it, it is a very bad thing for BR to tout the higher capacity as reason to abandon HD-DVD, yet, ironically, release their first titles on a smaller disc.

Or am I way off here? Are the first BR titles getting dual layer 50 GB discs? If so, I apologize, I missed the memo.

Well, I guess the Blu-ray defense to that is the 50GB discs will be out in a few months and the players will be able to handle them. For HD DVD players 30GB is the limit.

However, I am totally aware of all of Blu-rays launch issues with discs and hardware and will avoid the entire format until 2007. For all of HD DVDs faults it is much closer to being ready for the marketplace than Blu-ray which looks extremely rushed to market.

They don't have the replication issues worked out, the encoding software ready and their first gen hardware is not very future proof for a $1000 product.

I guess I just don't get this. You don't need more than 30GB for the movies though.

Wouldn't BR be the equivalent of a man who hates kids and relationships buying a 4 bedroom house? Costs more and there's a lot of space that he could use but probably won't.

Sony does need it. Due to their bassackward need to include LPCM on their discs (thanks to first-generation players that are totally inept at HD-audio).

Putting an LPCM track on each disc is going to require the video to be heavily compressed on a single-layer BD-ROM. They better hope they get the bugs out of DL production. Otherwise, some discs might be so heavily compressed, DVD releases look as good.

Isn't LPCM lossless? Surely it's better to have that rather than DD+ etc where you'll probably end up having to rebuy a disc in a similar way to people now going out to buy DTS versions of DVDs they already have?

I can't comment on the space issue since I don't know how much space is needed for a regular film with HD video and audio (although I did read somewhere that you can fit HD video on a standard dual layer DVD which would leave a fair amount of space for audio on a standard 25GB BD disc).

Its better to have, but not at the cost of video quality or missing features due to space issues.
I'm personally still not 100% sure that 5.1 LPCM will really be that much better than 7.1 DD+ anyway. On paper it seems it would, but I want to hear both encoded on the same disc to decide.

As far as the HD lossless formats, the big push with those seems to be greatly increasing the number of channels and I just don't know how practical and useful that will be for the average consumer.

Read the article again. It says very clearly dual-layer discs will be ready in October.

Yes.

And Sony very clearly has stuck to all of their dates and promises thus far.

Neither format properly supports next gen audio with the first gen players, so I'm not sure why that's an issue, or even relevant to this particular thread.

It seems likely that BD ROM 50 will not be available for at least a few months after launch, though BD R/RW 50 looks to already be on sale in Japan (and, no, I'm not just talking about those 2 year old caddy jobs but rather the new stuff). It's probably true that for a little while HD DVD will enjoy a slight capacity advantage, though it's also probably true that for nearly the next decade the format will be way behind the eight ball on this aspect of comparison - 30Gb vs 50Gb.

While 30Gb might be enough for most movies with very limited extras that's not likely to be the way things work out in reality. Studios are including ever more extras in an effort to capture additional sales, so it's pointless arguing that you personally only want the movie with top notch AV. These formats aren't being made for one person they're being made for the average consumer, and that demographic seems to want extras, and lots of them. Disney have already signalled their intent in this regard, and Warners are not far behind - I believe they've promised that all their new HD DVD releases will have at least the same extras as the equivalent DVD versions, with some HD only options thrown in for good measure. Them's the real beans.

That's IF the extras go hi-def.

It'll be interesting to see how many "extras" from movies already out on DVD that were shot in HD end up that way on one of the formats.

Actually, the only thing the article clearly states on this subject is that Sony DADC claims that it will be able to produce DL BDs by October. I hope they can reach that goal, but unless the QC issues have been resolved, I don't see how they can guarantee it at this time.

The Toshiba has on-board decoders (which can be accessed using the 5.1 outs). The 1st generation Blu-Ray players are missing this important (IMO) feature.

It it relevant to this article/thread because including an LPCM track is going basically require DL releases. With 25GB discs, the video is going to need to be very heavily compressed to fit.

MPEG-2 video encoding and LPCM on a single-layer disc is going to be trouble.

When you can fit a whole movie of HD (encoded with VC-1 with no compression artifacts) on a SD DVD (DVD-9), I don't see where 25 GB would be limited at all.

And besides, consumers equate more discs with more value for their $. Sony would be stupid to eliminate double-disc releases, even if they can fit them all on one disc.

30GB is more than enough space for a HD movie with SD extras.

If they want the extras in HD, then there'll be a 2nd disc.

We'll be seeing 2-disc releases for BR as well, regardless if the movie is on a 25GB or 50GB disc.

The space issue is really a non-issue.

LPCM isn't just lossless, it's uncompressed. So, depending on how many channels they use, and which sampling rate, the space required for a 2 hour movie could be as much as 7 GB. That would leave less than 18GB for the video (after factoring in menus and whatever extras are included).

As far as "fitting" HD video on a standard DVD, of course it is possible. It's all just data. The question is how much HD video could one fit on a standard DVD? And the answer, with any kind of reasonable image quality, is "not much."

I take it you have not seen any of the WMV-HD movies (such as T2 and a number of IMAX titles)?

I have a few and they certainly prove your "answer" to be quite incorrect.

Do you have a link for this? I know VC-1 is very good, but I haven't read anywhere where a complete 2 hour movie has been compressed down to less than 9 GB.

Exactly. There is already a pattern of acceptance with "2-disc" packages at higher prices, and that would not translate well at all to single disc releases.

We seem to be typing over each other ;). You're right. I haven't seen any of the WMV-HD titles. Are they encoded at 1080p?

Yes, they are encoded as 1080p24.

A list of the few titles can be found here: MS link. They are quite impressive, I've noticed no compression issues and they look as good (or better) than OTA HD at 720p (my TV's native resolution is 720p).

Here is a mini-FAQ by Chris Lanier: mini-FAQ

I was always hoping for more titles, but that never happened (mainly IMAX movies, and T2 and Step Into liquid -- though there is some pr0n on WMV-HD).

Thanks for those links! Looking over the showcase, It seems that they average around 50 MB per minute of video. Using that as a rough barometer, a 2 hour movie could fit into as little as 6-7 GB. Very impressive.

Though it is only capable of outputing Stereo (2 Channel) Tru HD. It also appears to re-encode DD+ to a form of DTS which is somewhat strange. Frankly I'm not sure this is much of a better solution than the clearly audio impared proposed BD players.

LPCM tracks have only been anounced for 2 titles, which are also slated for 50Gb dual layer discs.

It's possible, it just takes a really low bitrate as seen by WMV-HD. These discs are far from being transparent to the source. Incidentally I believe Terminator 2 (one of the few mainstream Hollywood movies to be released on this format) was of resolution 816*1440. That's better than 720 but nowhere near 1080.

It's certainly true there's a "more discs = more value" perception. Though that's for DVD. I'm not sure the BDA really want to market their product as just an extention of the existing technology. I expect the interactive nature of this new format to be pushed very hard in marketing, to try and clearly differentiate it from the old DVDs.

It only re-encodes the DD+ to full stream DTS because of the limitation of the digital connection. If you use an HDMI input to a receiver or the 6 channel analog connection most receivers have it will decode the full DD+ stream and output it to your receiver without any re-encoding and degrading of the sound.

They may try, but it will be an extraordinarily difficult uphill battle. Like it or not, discs with movies on them are now called DVDs, just as tissues for one's face are so commonly referred to as Kleenex. Just do a simple google search for "Blu-ray DVD" (with quotes) and you'll be amazed at the number of hits, even from (more-or-less) reputable news sources.

I think issue is that HD-DVD is able to use existing replication facilities with modification to churn out discs, and BD requires all new fab set ups. At least that was one of HD's bullet points last year.

Of course, I think it will be quite a while before any title is hard to find on either format.