Community/SoapBox

I just want the best picture and audio quality. And right now Blu-ray is it. Why is it non consumer friendly?

You are misinformed. Picture quality are relatively the same. Remember that they both have the same codecs mandated for each player. They can you the same audio codecs. True-HD/ DTS are the best and very few studios are using this for either side. PCM is being used for Blu-Ray but many experts have said that the human brain can not distinguish between PCM and True-HD/DTS. 

Now lets look at consumer friendly.  Blu-Ray is DRMed to and region code to death and because of BD+ they are going back on their word to provide managed coping. If I buy a product I should own the way I use it. Yes they own the rights to the content but I own the right to store and watch it anyway I want. Buy buying Blu-Ray; you give up your right to fair use.

sorry about the few typos in my last post

I see your point. But I can’t copy standard DVD so I don’t expect to have the ability to copy Blu-ray either. I know too many people that would give a copy to a friend or relative if it was easy. So I can see Hollywood’s position.

I’m not comparing picture/Audio quality between HD formats. I’m comparing quality between downloads and Blu-ray/HD-DVD formats

Uncompressed PCM is just as good as lossless formats, maybe better but on worse.

Dan,

You say “I just want the best picture and audio quality. And right now Blu-ray is it.” Then don’t watch “The Fifth Element” on Bluray because that looks horrible. Sony should be ashamed to call that a High Definition release.

Boy are you grasping at straws. That movie was re mastered. I sent my original copy back to Sony and they sent me a new one. Complete with A new Dolby TruHD sound track.
We all know the quality capability of Blu-ray is as good or better than HD DVD. Blu-ray has the ability to offer higher bit rates than HD DVD and it supports the same compression standards.
If a movie doesn’t look good it’s the way the studio transferred it.  Not because of some Blu-ray shortcoming.

I sent my orignal copy of The Fifth Element in and received the remastered version as well.  100% improvement over the previous master.  I hope they do a similar exchange program for Stargate, that us another movie that was mastered very badly.  In any case, as someone else said, those are mastering issues, not format specific issues… Much like the crappy release of Full Metal Jacket initially on HD-DVD

It’s not really grasping at straws when it goes back to the argument that Bluray is a rushed unfinished product. I’m looking for link where Sony executive even admits that they rushed it out to compete with HDDVD....I just read that a few days ago, but it take sometime to find it.

Also, it was an example to show where people keep saying Bluray picture is superior to HDDVD when it is not. They are basically identical formats (i.e. both has their bad releases and both excellent releases) and the only thing that really distinguishes the two in specifications are features.

Okay, it was not a Sony executive, but BDA ones.

Here are the articles admitting the rush job and they are going to screw the early adopters of Bluray out of interactive features:

BDA President Andy Parsons:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Bluray_Early_adopters_knew_what_they_were_getting_into/1199841379

Frank Simonis, European BDA chairman http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7187179.stm

Video consumers haven’t decided at all—about 99% of homes still use standard DVD. Declarations that consumers have decided on blu-ray because a *game system* happened to come out with one of the next generation formats is just patently ridiculous. If the Xbox360 had come out with HD-DVD built-in, would the blu-ray fanboys concede that the “consumer has chosen”.

Give me a break.

And when real consumers—meaning not people who went “Oh gosh my game machine can play movies!”—did pick, they chose HD-DVD, despite an umbrella of fear caused by media companies that are allured by BD+’s potential for extremely restrictive DRM (prepare for phone home for authorization discs...think I’m joking? How about we make a wager).

It isn’t over, despite all of the fearful, almost pathetic rhetoric from the PS3 gaming camp. When the HD-DVD camp went silent after Warner’s announcement, there was no big surprize that HD-DVD sales collapses, but since then Toshiba has gone gangbusters, and I suspect we’ll be having a very, very different discussion in a couple of weeks.

I see that Warner has already extended their HD-DVD support period by almost a month...curious, no?