On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 10:59:33AM +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
What I don't understand is that HD quality surely isn't *that* much better than DVD quality? A DVD can be transcoded to around 1GB without loss of quality as an XVID, which means doubling the resolution should still comfortably fit a film on a DVD, so why the need for something 7+ times bigger?
Doubling the resolution makes the output 4 times as big... Anyhow, DVD is 720x576 (ish) and a full HD film will be 1920x1080 so actually 5 times as big just in pixel count (ish). Then you have to take into account that most HD-DVD discs have much better audio soundtracks options than normal DVD soundtracks, so these will take up more space. Oh, and both the audio and video will most likely be encoded at a higher bitrate than on a DVD encoding of the film so that it fills the disc, if the space is there then why not use it? When you consider it in those terms you have to think that the encoding technology must be much better as if it was encoded using DVD technology you'd need a 35GB disc vs. the 30GB that HD-DVD gives you.
I can also assure you that playing a full HD source on a good full HD panel you can really see the difference, I've compared a couple of the firesale HD-DVD's that I purchased against the DVD versions of the same films and there is quite a big difference. I also note that both my kids who will undoubtedly have much better eyesight than me will sit and watch entire episodes of things like Planet Earth by the BBC when it's being played from HD-DVD.
I'd also disagree about being able to re-encode a DVD down to 1GB with XVID with no loss of quality, as everything I've ever watched that has been encoded this way looks somewhere about the same level of quality as Freeview ;)
Adam