HD wars redux

[hobbes_fan]

Speak for yourself. I don't have a PC monitor actually. Both my PC's are hooked up to the 40". Honestly watching Rocky on BD is so much better than going to the movies (I watched a marathon while the most recent one came out) HD sound, HD video without dealing with the assholery in cinemas. I really think this will signal a major change in how cinemas do business. For 2 people to go out and watch a movie is around $50 for tickets popcorn and drinks, not including parking and travel expenses.

But yes not a big deal for most people here, 720p becomes necessary around 30- 32" and 1080p at around 42". My old man was asking me to buy him a HD set top box for his 29" CRT. Had a hard time explaining that HD woouldn't mkae a difference as his TV was only SD capable.

From my understanding most recent film is a hell of lot higher resolution than 1920x1080 (I think it was arounf the beginning of this century or around that time). I remember reading it was something like 3 or 4 times 1080.

[Sinestra]

Im just happy its over I have an HD player for the my Xbox 360 and iv ordered The soney BDP Bluray player so I will have both formats. I held off buying too many HD dvds till the war was over but at least people who were holding off jumping into the next generation dvd game can finally make a choice.

[Ledgem]

Am I the only person here who's interested in using these new formats for data storage? I know it's a few years off but I wouldn't mind it if it helped to drive the price of dual-layer DVDs down. Now that a format is decided, manufacturers should focus on one and bring costs down.

[bayoab]

A reminder for those who are going to out and buy a blu-ray player asap since the war is over: Buyer beware

If you want all the features in the future, get a PS3.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

Am I the only person here who's interested in using these new formats for data storage? I know it's a few years off but I wouldn't mind it if it helped to drive the price of dual-layer DVDs down. Now that a format is decided, manufacturers should focus on one and bring costs down.

No, and the prices keep falling on BR burners, too. I used to think a PS3 was the way to go, but I think it's more likely I'll end up with a burner in the PC connected to my TV. Other than the new Ratchet&Clank game, there's nothing yet that so caught the fancy of either me or my daughter that it made owning a PS3 worth the money. I actually bought an upscaling DVD player when I bought an HDTV, but I now realize that I could have played those DVDs with Kaffeine or Kplayer and upscaled them via my nVidia card.

Of course, I can't watch current HD movies on Linux because they're protected by DRM, but I don't expect that situation to last forever. In the short run, I guess I could always boot up that Vista partition I've got somewhere.

At $16 for 25 GB, the blank BR discs can't touch regular DVD/RW discs for value, but like you I'm hoping that will change.

[Zoe]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

Sorry to crash the thread, but is HD really worth it? You'd need a huge-ass 1080p-capable TV set and to sit at a distance of 5 feet to notice any real improvements over DVD-9 quality. I can understand its use in PCs (plus most monitors today are 1080p-capable), but I can't for the life of me understand its usefulness as a standalone player. Too freaking expensive, and DRM'ed to hell to boot.

I think I'll pass on it and stay with my nice-looking 21'' TV set and DVD players, thankyouverymuch.

I can sure as hell see a huge difference sitting 8 feet away from my 32" 1080i TV.

You're really in no place to comment unless you've seen HD content for yourself.

[wnmnkh]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

Am I the only person here who's interested in using these new formats for data storage? I know it's a few years off but I wouldn't mind it if it helped to drive the price of dual-layer DVDs down. Now that a format is decided, manufacturers should focus on one and bring costs down.

I also only use my blu-ray burner for data storage purpose.

[boggart]

A reminder that BD-R material is not viewable on standalone BD-players... as yet.

[problemedchild]

An external HDD would be cheaper.........

[hobbes_fan]

What kind of HDD? SSD are the next step and last time I checked a 32gb SSD disk was $500+. The mechanical behemoths we use now are at the end of their lifespan. I've been waiting close to a year for a 2tb drive but it's looking more and more that 1tb will be the max capacity for a while yet. Prices have stagnated for HDD as a result. If there's no downward pressre from higher capacity drives there's no movement in price. I'm well aware of RAID options but it's not feasible to run RAID1 or variants in every situation. (Raid0 = bullshit waste of time IMO)

By that reasoning DVD is a better buy than hdd at around $35 (100 Taiyo Yuden master grade DVD's not your cheap shit media either) for close to 500gb over HDD's as the best value drives the 500gb average around $100. The pricing is on par with the first recordable CD media and DVD media, $20-$30 was the initial price for individual disks and almost no CD/DVD player could read them. THe burners at around $500 is probably cheaper than what I paid for my first CD burner in 1996/97 at $400 factoring in inflation.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by problemedchild

An external HDD would be cheaper.........

It depends what you want to do with them. I find it easier to archive and carry around CDs and DVDs in CD binders (I have three such binders, just to give you a sense of the inner librarian within me). Additionally, if I want to lend out data to family and friends I'll generally do it through optical media. Shifting a hard drive around would be a bit awkward.

Originally Posted by hobbes_fan

I've been waiting close to a year for a 2tb drive but it's looking more and more that 1tb will be the max capacity for a while yet. Prices have stagnated for HDD as a result. If there's no downward pressre from higher capacity drives there's no movement in price. I'm well aware of RAID options but it's not feasible to run RAID1 or variants in every situation. (Raid0 = bullshit waste of time IMO)

This is a very important point. I work with video and thus use up gobs of disk space. As of now I have five Western Digital MyBook Premium/Pro (the only difference is the color and what it comes pre-formatted in, it seems) in my office, all of them rated at 1.5 TB. However, each enclosure is a RAID device within itself and contains two 750 GB drives. By default, these are coming in a RAID 0 configuration. Using WD's software you can put these into RAID 1. You can't make a RAID out of two enclosures, not even to do a RAID 0+1.

In my case, I use two of the drives in their full 1.5 TB glory purely as working drives. The archival drives which store DVD masters and layouts are put into RAID 1. In a way it's nice having the RAID 1 done for you, but I'd prefer to have greater control.

More to the point, I feel that while HD manufacturers are getting creative to overcome the limitations of HD space by turning to RAID solutions, they're taking advantage of people's ignorance over technology. The average person - heck, even my boss, who is pretty good with computers - doesn't know a thing about RAID. Even if they did, I haven't seen it written anywhere on the box that this is 1.5 TB in RAID 0. RAID 0 has its place, but it's not with the majority of users who have a hard enough time managing their data from other computer problems. At ~$500 that's an expensive loss of data for not guarding against the potential failures of a RAID 0 setup.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

You can't make a RAID out of two enclosures, not even to do a RAID 0+1.

Does the OS kernel support RAID? I know I could build a Linux box that would mount the five enclosures and connect them together as a RAID 0. If I can address each drive inside the enclosures separately, I could build two RAID 0 arrays using one drive from each enclosure, then use RAID 1 to join them together. I would think any modern operating system that supports kernel-level RAID could do this.

I like RAID 1 more than RAID 5 from bitter experience with the latter. You don't have the unlimited size of RAID 5, but I like knowing that a complete image of my data is on each drive with RAID 1.

RAID 0 has its place, but it's not with the majority of users who have a hard enough time managing their data from other computer problems.

QFT. I was amazed when I started seeing consumer workstations with RAID 0 arrays from the manufacturer. I don't see them so often these days; perhaps the flood of frantic support calls made the manufacturers see the error of their ways.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Does the OS kernel support RAID? I know I could build a Linux box that would mount the five enclosures and connect them together as a RAID 0. If I can address each drive inside the enclosures separately, I could build two RAID 0 arrays using one drive from each enclosure, then use RAID 1 to join them together. I would think any modern operating system that supports kernel-level RAID could do this.

Yep, Mac OS X supports RAID 0 and RAID 1. I'd planned to make a RAID 0+1 (manually, if I had to). The problem is that you can't address each drive individually. To the OS, it looks like one drive. The enclosure itself is a RAID device. In order to switch it between RAID 0 or RAID 1, you need to use Western Digital's proprietary software. Interesting things happen when you try to make a RAID out of two or more of these enclosures (really, 4 or more drives) - the process begins, and then fails.

[hobbes_fan]

I'm really not sold on the usability of RAID0 at all. It's not a backup solution, bt no RAID is, bt other versions of RAID at least offer fault tolerance. Speed? two raptors @ 10,000rpm in RAID0 barely (as in 1/2 a second) faster than a non raided raptor. I'd say the same results would be replicated in your typical 5400/7200rpm drives. Considering how fidgety and temperamental RAID0 is paricularly in your home setup using software as opposed to HArdware raid.

But to redirect this thread, as well the intermediate capacity optical media Dual layer DVD's have started dropping in price it's down by 1/4 from January, I bought a 10 pack of TDK's for $35 it's now $22.00. It's more like half if I decide to buy bulk packs of 100. And DL is nearly almost in all instances the highest grade of media available as opposed to the random nature of standard dvd's

So while BD is expensive, it's appearance has at least put downward pressure on the older formats. 9gb is still very high capacity considering. Using the highest res anime I have gundam00 - that's a full 26 episode season of mkv's in h264 1280x720. It's becoming a more viable storage solution. these releases are uncommon though at this stage, but if we use the standard 700x400 size that's almost 52 episodes. As a 2-3 year backup solution its very viable IMO. I mean if my usage is anything indicative of the average user here my photos and docs will fill 1 DL dvd, My music will cover maybe 2 dl dvd's, my home movies around 3 or 4 if I compress them to h264 and upscale them to 1280x720 with AC3 sound which is what I'm doing atm. My anime collection and NBA game collection is by far the highest at close to 1tb, and those barring the old anime from the 70's early 80's are easily dl, so they're not all crucial unreplaceable data. Of my 1tb in use I'd say maybe 300gb requires a backup.

I am interested to see what will happen to the HDDVD only titles and when (if) they can be transferred to BD media

[Sides]

Well there is a guide on doom9 how to convert HD dvd to blu ray, if you mean that. If i'm not mistaken both formats do have a red laser option, HDREC and AVCREC, basically allowing the usage of h264 & VC1, when authoured properly to be stored onto DVD5/9. Only problem some bluray player don't support AVCREC just yet, which is funny, since AVCREC camcorders where released pretty early.

[hobbes_fan]

No I mean proper releases - some things are just better bought. Star wars in BD the Godfather trilogy in BD, Saving Private Ryan in BD etc etc. Classic movies that aren't done justice by DVD on a big screen. It's not just putting them on BD disk it's the extras which makes the boxsets worth it for me. The same with anime for me - TBH of all my anime I've only bought only a couple of DVD boxsets where I feel the extras made them really good value, Macross and end of eva for the commentary track and Excel Saga with the Menchi pop ups. I'll be honest and say I do get buyers remorse most of the time buying anime because there's really nothing separating them from fansubs most of the time. It's the extra content that makes it a bit easier to swallow.

[kujoe]

I agree.

I used to convert Seirei no Moribito to play on the PS3 so that I could enjoy it on a hdtv, (really worth it by the way) but it's such a hassle. I'd rather wait for a BD release of movies and anime than go through the trouble of making things work. Call me old-fashoined, but that's one of the reasons why physical formats will be here to stay for quite some time. Fortunately, I've held back on what little dvd buying habits I have, but I'd be pissed if the recent boxed sets I purchased will have BD versions coming out in the future.

GITS (series and movies) in particular, or any great theatrical anime title for that matter, definitely deserves a BD version.

[SeijiSensei]

The best article I've seen on HDTV technologies written for a relatively non-technical audience. Great graphics comparing progressive and interlaced formats, how 3:2 pulldown works, and how scaling images can create artifacts.

They also answer my earlier question about 1080p material:
"Most of the HDTV material you could tune into tonight falls into one of two categories: either the material was shot with a digital camera at 1080p24, or it was shot on 35mm film and transferred to this very same 1080p24 digital format. With the exception of some sports and some other "live" shows, everything from sitcoms to dramas, and of course all movies, fall into this 1080p24 realm."

Much of the article demonstrates why 1080p is the right choice regardless of the size of the screen, the distance away that you sit, and similar factors.

[grey_moon]

I didn't think about laptops...

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/pcs/new...2/bluray_power

[hobbes_fan]

Well regardless of which format won - bear in mind that any additional power requirements will be offset by the reduced power requirements of the much improved HDD power requirements (watch for the SSD & hybrid HDDs to make the most difference), LCD tech and CPU power/cooling tech.

As it stands very few lapops can play more than 1x2.5hr DVD on battery power. The best I've seen tops out at just over 3hrs. So as i stand IMO you get a break even at even marginal reduction (<10min) in overall battery life over your mean performance across all specs. As the article says battery capacity tech is just not keeping up.