Brad Ideas - Please release HD movies on regular DVDs - Comments

What is Blu-Ray?

Anonymous — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:53:22 -0700

What is Blu-Ray?

HD right NOW

Jeffery Haas — Fri, 18 May 2007 01:29:52 -0700

The JVC SR-DVD100U plays WMVHD at a stunning 8mbps.
Use any of the dozens of NLE proggies to render and burn your content as WMVHD
onto standard DVD data disc and watch it now, on a player that costs about 399.

Example: Sony Vegas will support the new HD-DVD and Blu-Ray codecs, especially VC-1.
Drop the movie on the timeline, render as WMVHD and burn with Nero.
Bam cake done.

HD right NOW.

JeffH in Occupied TX

I said they wouldn't do it

brad — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:17:59 -0700

Since they've now invested in hd-dvd/blu-ray. It's what they should do. But they would in fact sell me a new DVD-player which can play mpeg4 movies (and which costs $80 like a high end DVD player, not $500 like a blu-ray player) and I would not buy and rent exclusively high-def movies, and I think many others would do the same.

I mean I am going to convert to high def DVDs exclusively once the format war is settled and the players are reasonably priced. The disks, at least, are already similar in price to the old format. I would just convert sooner. In fact, I would convert twice, just like they want me to, because I would assume my eventual hd-ray player would also have been able to play mp4 based regular DVDs with 720p movies on them, so I could keep those.

I think you've mistaken the

Anon Y. Mouse — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:19:42 -0700

I think you've mistaken the Hollywood movie industry
companies et. al. for altruistic entities that truly
care about bringing top-flight entertainment to the
masses for the lowest possible cost.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

How would your suggestion sell more, higher-priced
DVDs in the new formats -- especially for titles that
people already own? How would it sell more players
from the consumer electronics manufacturers who have
thrown in with the movie industry and licensed the
new formats?

In short, how would it make more money for all concerned
by extracting it from the end-user?

It wouldn't, which is why your idea is a total non-starter.

A blog of crazy ideas, indeed. Coincidentally, I'm
reminded of a quote from a movie:

"You keep thinking, Butch. That's what you're good at."
-- The Sundance Kid, (Robert Redford), "Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid"

Why not do this in MythTv today?

Joe Barnhart — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 03:29:47 -0700

I've long wondered why MythTv doesn't offer an "enhanced" DVD for those who are able to receive HD broadcasts and would like to archive shows on DVD occasionally. It's now VERY difficult to re-encode an HD broadcast to fit within the confines of a DVD. It actually takes much longer than 1:1 time to convert a show to MPEG4, and then there's no way to write it to DVD within Myth.

Please release HD movies on regular DVDs

brad — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:32:38 -0700

If you’ve looked around, you probably noticed a high-def DVD player, be it HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, is expensive. Expect to pay $500 or so unless you get one bundled with a game console where they are subsidized.

Now they won’t follow this suggestion, but the reality is they didn’t need to make the move to these new DVD formats. Regular old DVD can actually handle pretty decent HDTV movies. Not as good as the new formats, but a lot better than plain DVD. I’ve seen videos with the latest codecs that pack a quite nice HD picture into 2.5 to 3 gigabytes for an hour. I’ve even seen it in less, down to 1.5 gigabytes (actually less that SD DVDs) at 720p 24 fps, though you do notice some problems. But it’s still way better than a standard DVD. Even so, a dual layer DVD can bring about 9 gb, and a double sided dual layer DVD gives you 18gb if you are willing to flip the disk over to get at special features or the 2nd half of a very long movie. Or of course just do 2-disk sets.

Now you might feel that the DVD industry would not want to make a new slew of regular DVD players with the fancier chips in them able to do these mp4 codecs when something clearly better is around the corner. And if they did do this, it would delay adoption of whatever high def DVD format they are backing in the format wars. But in fact, these disks could have been readily playable already, with no change, for the millions who watch DVDs on laptops and media center PCs. More than will have HD DVD or Blu-Ray for some time to come, even with the boost the Playstation 3 gives to Blu-Ray.