Wrong again. Your constant Blu-ray bashing bores me - at least get your facts right. And you never responded to my contention that "Saw 4" is a BD-50, somewhat blowing you statement that studio continue to release BD-25's.

If you read my post, you'll find that I did indeed mention that those features are present on the HD DVD, IN STANDARD DEFINITION, which points out the fact that the extra space on the BD can be and has been used in ways that HD DVD cannot match. As for your disingenuous and grossly misleading comment about PiP, I'll leave that to others to (easily) discredit that kind of FUD.

Of course you won't comment, since it belies your agenda to acknowledge that Warner has stated that they see a clear advantage in the extra space in getting product to market faster.

I only see one barcode on the data side of Saw IV, so it looks like a BD-25 to me. Not all of the extras that Peter lists as being in HD in his review actually are, for what that's worth.

I just checked 3:10 to Yuma and Good Luck Chuck, and both of those do have two barcodes, so those should be BD-50s. (I don't have War, but I can request that to review and double-check if there's any interest.)

Besides the PS3 and BD-30 what other Blu-ray players can handle true PiP that HD DVD has to offer? Its hardly a bash, but its true.

Saw IV appears to be a 25GB disc. Much like Adam posted, no dual bar code. Some movies have the disc size listed on the back, I guess Lionsgate does not for some reason. I have no way of actually checking it, nor that I really care. I find it amusing though that Saw IV even has a feature that not a single player can actually use right now.

Hardly a bash? You don't see the difference between "not available on some/most players" and "not possible"? One would have been an accurate statement (at least for the moment), while the other is intentionally misleading and slanted.

more then SD-DVD puny 4gb-8gb.

Sorry! Blu Wins! All movie companys are on blu-ray.

When the new 1.3 java profile tru color blu-ray thing comes then the HD-DVD pip won't matter.

I think we assign ignorance to J6P for just about everything on DVD Talk.

Just remember, that one disc will get 5-times more use and abuse. I'd prefer the 5-disc version. Playing one disc at an extended period of time, over and over, is asking for a problem. If you don't think so, just look at your most-played DVDs and see the scratches on them. Even the best of players, best of handling, and best of care still result in scratches. Having one disc for your entire TV series, is a risky idea.

Now, I'm not saying it's not a good idea, because in theory, I'd like my whole damn movie collection on one disc. However, there are certain hardware limits at this point in time, which make One-Disc Wonder releases, not so wise of a choice.

If anything, if you want your entire TV series available to you, then rip them to a hard drive, and output to your television, using an HTPC setup or something similar. In this way, you have your hard copies stored and hardly ever used, and the discs will only be used when you have a hard drive corruption where you'll need to rip again.

Eventually, blank Blu-ray media will be cheap enough to create your own collections on one disc, so this is probably as close to having your eggs in one basket as it will ever be.

Finally, the whole purpose of HD media is to have HD content on it. If movie studios began putting an entire SD quality series on one Blu-ray disc, it would certainly give the wrong marketing message of HD content in general, and it would even cut into HD sales. Movie studios certainly have this on their minds, but it is probably several years away before we even hear of them talking about it.

Sincerely,

J169P

Appears based on some observation you made before you tossed out as fact that it was a BD-25? Or are you just grapsing at straws based on what Adam posted? If you have no way of checking and you don't really care, stop spewing FUD. From now on, when making an argument about how much Blu-ray sucks, why don't you stick to an honest representation of the facts. If you don't know for sure, have no way of chacking, and don't really care - don't say it to begin with.

Just remember, different codecs require different capacities. AVC, VC-1, MPEG-2, etc., are variable codecs which do require different capacities for particular quality comparison.

In addition, we really don't know if, say, a 36GB Close Encounters of the Third Kind with an AVC codec on a 50GB Blu-ray disc, would look just as good on an HD-30 HD DVD disc VC-1 codec. Unfortunately, we just don't know. That's the problem. A person would have to re-code the AVC version on their computer to VC-1 to fit on a 30GB disc (audio taken into account), and I would imagine only a handful of guys on the planet are capable of doing it currently. I would be interested though.

Again, I'm not saying I'm against Blu-ray or anything. I'll probably be purchasing Blu-ray discs later this year if the deals remain the same. However, I really do question capacity, bitrates, codecs, and how they are similar and how they are different.

Very true. The BD-50 doesn't always ensure a better picture, but it does provide a little more flexibility. I always try to determine the codec before deciding on whether or not to upgrade an existing purchase. Some sites are much better than other in mentioning this in their reviews. I try to shy away from MPEG-2 encodes, especially on BD-25's. Ug! Luckily, they seem to be appearing far less frequently.

The constant bashing on both sides bores me.
He can't say that PiP can't be done because it has been. May not be exactly how HD DVD had done it, but it has been done.

YOU can't say that those features were in SD on the HP HD DVD because of space limitations; perhaps WB didn't feel the need to wast space with a full HD stream for content in a small window. Perhaps that is a limitation of HD DVD's IME.

Both of you need to stop spinning and hyperbolizing to jockey your format to the front. You constantly derail every thread with this crap.

Ridiculous.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...5&postcount=20

FACT?

I wasn't calling them (I'm pretty much a J6P) ignorant, just relaying what I've seen.

I see your point on the risk of having everything on one disc. And in my "perfect world" I'd take your advice and burn all my frequently watched DVDs onto massive hard drives, and have them hooked up to my TV. But knowing me, I won't make the time to do that until everyone and their grandfather does it that way.

Your premise is flawed. First, you presume that only the IME material was encoded in HD on the Blu-ray version of the movie. That is incorrect. The Focus Points, Deleted Scenes, and the Trailing Tonks featurette were all encoded in HD, where none of them were on the HD DVD. And second, you presume that the IME material is only available through IME. That is also incorrect. The Focus Points can be viewed either through IME or separately.

So, unless you believe that the IME-related material was encoded in SD to better accommodate IME, at the expense of the opportunity to view the same material separately from the movie, AND that the other HD material from the BD was arbitrarily encoded in SD for the HD DVD for no apparent reason at all, then the only logical reason for the difference is the space issue.

And finally, I have read confirmations from several people that the file sizes from the BD total 39GB. As far as I know, it would be rather difficult to squeeze that much data on a single HD DVD.

Cleared out the last couple of replies. Not to sound like an AVS mod, but...y'know, attack the posts, not the poster.

ah, darn, i hate modified threads... missed the arguments

i really want to see the responses to RoboDad's post...

Thanks for completely taking my side on this.

I say "taking my side" because I wasn't the person who said anything about HD's IME not being hi-def.

Why does it have to be about "sides?" That's the point.

I'm surprised that Lionsgate would only use a BD-25 for a major day and date but whatever. Either way, the bashing and spin to smear the opposing format is getting very tiresome.

Gator Deb asked a simple question but I have no idea how it delved into this. Can we not just answer her simple question and just leave it at that?

Just to be clear, I have never really been on Blu-ray's "side". The only "side" I am on is the "end the stupid format war now" side. I would have been just as much on that side (perhaps even more so) had HD DVD been able to reach a point where they became the apparent victor (such as getting Warner and Fox to both go HD DVD exclusive).

Technologically, I've always preferred HD DVD. But the situation is, at least from my perspective, that HD DVD has no real chance of recovering from the Warner "defection". So now we have the chance to get unified behind one format, and help HDM achieve at least enough market penetration to ensure its viability for another 10 years or so. As long as the format war persists, that will never happen, and pining over what might have been only makes it worse.

It doesn't have to be about sides, but it should be about facts. And I was pointing out that you had your facts wrong by accusing me of saying something that somebody else said.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the Blu-ray version has several very large PCM tracks in different languages, right? That very well could axxoint for the 39GB size, right?

Just one: English. The rest (11) are all 640kbps DD tracks.

Still. A 5.1 PCM takes up a lot of space. And having 11 different 640kbps tracks for other languages tends to eat up quite a chunk of real estate, too.

Had they truly wanted to, they could have added another disc to the HD DVD release. They didn't want to. It's pretty clear that Warner Bros. has just wanted to play little cat-and-mouse games with everyone from the beginning.

That's a good point.

The HD DVD has one English Dolby TrueHD track, where the BD has one uncompressed PCM track, so that will account for some difference (not sure exactly how much, since I don't know what the bit rate of the TrueHD track is), but I doubt it would account for all of it. The BD also has a dozen DD 5.1 compressed track in various languages (probably at 448 Kbps), and while I know that the HD DVD also has some, I don't know how many.

So, it is certainly reasonable to say the the difference between the TrueHD and PCM tracks and the additional DD 5.1 tracks (whatever that difference may be) will require more space on the BD. Of course, I also don't know exactly how full the HD DVD disc is, either. There may be a GB or two of unused space on there.

With all that said, I still find it very difficult to believe that the choice to encode the supplemental material for the Blu-ray release in HD was completely arbitrary. That would make no sense to me at all.