BluRay or HD-DVD for Red Productions

[Jeff Kilgroe]

When will they come out with a mass produced solid state format? we could get movies on cartridges.

That should have happened some time ago. Manufactured ROMs are dirt cheap... With current fab tech, it would be perfectly feasible to manufacture read-only CF cards in 32GB capacity that hold HD movies and sell them for the same price as current HD-DVD and BluRay titles. And the players would be less than half the price of those units shipping with blue diode lasers.

So for now, I think we lump this into the file with all the other concepts that make entirely too much sense for large companies to consider. In reality, I think what we have here is a couple disc formats that these manufacturers have invested years of research and tens of millions of dollars into. They're going to stick to that product roadmap no matter what, even if other options have outpaced the disc options and make more sense at this time.

With the current shift towards solid-state we're going to see a lot of ROM based products. And it's going to get increasingly competitive over the next couple years. But I also wouldn't count out the spinning disc paradigm just yet... Most forms of holographic storage take the form of the spinning disc and it's still an efficient way to store bits on a flat surface.

OTOH, when a 16GB ROM in a common package like a CF card could hold the entire collection of Beatles albums in 24bit uncompressed multi-channel. Why is this not happening? Oh, I know... Because most music "lovers" are not true audiophiles and they don't mind having most of their music in MP3 128Kbps (about the same quality as a cassette tape) format and they do most of their listening through cheap earbuds from a device in their pocket.

 

[Simon Dunne]

Sony have today announced a $100 price reduction for the PS3 in North America and plan to sell an 80GB unit in the next few months.

Si:shiftyph34r:

 

[C.H.Haskell]

Not to get too far off topic.
I would like to think one day I will have A massive HDD movie collection…even on solid state, similar to my itunes, a massive HD cinema library at my fingertips while avoiding the ever changing format war. The Apple Tv seems to be heading in this direction, there products have HDMI and component outputs but itunes does not yet support any HD download purchases. So I suppose Apple expects there customers to hack HD content in the meantime? Thats the general response I got from the sales rep down in Soho store. Oh and solid state cinema concept is pretty sharp, too much for the big companies who like to spoon feed tiny bits of technology at a time.

 

[Stokestack]

I looked at the highly touted Discover "Planet Earth" on Blu-Ray the other day, for just a few minutes of the "desert" section. In a shot of sand dunes, the shadow areas were full of noise. Disturbing, distracting noise. Even before that, the title sequence and logos exhibited all the crappy banding we've been saddled with for years. I don't know which codec was used for these discs.

The sad fact is that there doesn't appear to be any consumer format, current or foreseeable, that will even come close to maxing out the (already limited) potential of today's TVs. The only way you're going to realize the potential of them is by hooking up a computer and showing some stills you've taken with your digital camera. Motion pictures? Forget about it.

And with the format squabbles between two already lame "HD" formats, the most likely outcome is the same as the DVD-Audio/SACD conflict: both die and we wind up with no physical format at all, just even lamer, more heavily compressed downloadable content. Combo players and hybrid discs simply extend this battle and make it less likely that either format will survive. The only hybrid disc should be DVD on one side and Blu-Ray on the other.

So as far as exhibiting your Red footage to groups with maximum quality, it looks like we're stuck hooking a computer up to a TV and playing it out from there. This is one reason I was disappointed to hear that the camera's HDMI output is limited to 720P. I prefer 720P to 1080I, but was hoping for 1080P.

As far as backing up data, I would never use an optical disc format. There have been some massive threads already about archiving, so check those out. Lots of talk about data tapes and hard drives. Right now I figure I'll buy a lot of drives.

 

[Oskari Sipola]

On the Casino Royale disc you could see when they were using a high-ASA film stock. In the middle of a scene a closeup would come with nois... I'm sorry, grain.

Maybe it was grain?

But I think it's no secret that the first HD-discs on both sides of the aisle were encoded all to hell.

P.S. Woah, that price cut happened sooner than I expected

 

[Steven M. Bailey]

I realize that this may be a little backward thinking but projectionist have been changing reels for years at the local theater. Why not set up a turn table with six disk slots and two lasers. As one disk reads out, the next reads in. I doubt there would be any trouble fitting a little ole movie on six blue-ray disks. Then your not limited by compression artifacting but rather buss speed from the drive to the projector. It would be an oddball format but maybe an option for large venue showings.

 

[Michel Hafner]

I looked at the highly touted Discover "Planet Earth" on Blu-Ray the other day, for just a few minutes of the "desert" section. In a shot of sand dunes, the shadow areas were full of noise. Disturbing, distracting noise. Even before that, the title sequence and logos exhibited all the crappy banding we've been saddled with for years. I don't know which codec was used for these discs.

The codec does not help if the master has already noise and banding. And many masters do.