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Sony's Secret Weapon in the Format War

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 at 2:20 PM - by

So far, the compression techniques used for Blu-ray and HD DVD movies have been similar. Now, Sony has decided to exploit the larger capacity of the Blu-ray discs to give their movies a technical advantage, according to Daily Tech.

Sony's dual layer Blu-ray discs can hold 50 GB. The dual layer HD DVD dics hold 30 GB. So far, that hasn't been a big advantage, and movies on both formats have looked pretty much the same because the studios use nearly the same video codecs.

However, Sony has figured out how to better exploit that size advantage by altering the compression technique used for movies. That added space can be used to improve the quality of the audio and video, and so Sony is planning to publish 80 percent of its new movies on 50 GB discs.

"When transferring a film onto Blu-ray, compression engineers may utilize the extra 20GB to attain higher bit rate video and to accommodate lossless audio streams," the story said.

It takes a well trained eye on a capable 1080p system to to see the difference. Even so, Sony is using every possible feature of the Blu-ray format to its advantage in the war against HD DVD.

"It’s important, especially in this phase, that we make sure we are showing the absolute best quality in video and audio, and 50GB accomplishes that,” said Sony worldwide president David Bishop.

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Mikuro said:

member since 15 Jun 2002 with 457 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:00 pm

Personally, I'm not too excited over having movies encoded at a slightly higher bitrate. No reason NOT to, I suppose, but I'd be more interested in fitting more video on one disc. This will be especially important for TV shows. Fitting 10 episodes per disc instead of 6 at the same quality as HD-DVD is better than putting the 6 eps at a higher bitrate. They could also use the space for more extras. I think those uses would do more to attract and impress consumers than slightly (perhaps imperceptibly) higher video quality. (Although personally I've watched maybe 1% of the extras in my DVD collection...)

In any case, yes, they should milk the technology for all it's worth.

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Tiger said:

member since 17 Jun 2003 with 1018 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:19 pm

Mikuro, I'm with you. Could care a less. I watch video on my iPod

With a 2" screen, who needs all that extra information to strip out before encoding it to .mv4?

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Bosco said:

member since 03 Jun 2002 with 1002 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:35 pm

This will be especially important for HD porn. I'm not entirely sure that Ron Jeremy will fit in a scant 50 GB, but it's worth trying.

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Engine Joe said:

member since 29 Jun 2004 with 413 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:50 pm

Well I'm not in Tiger's boat - I have a 46" 1080p TV, but I still would much rather have more stuff (extras, more episodes crammed on, etc) than higher bit rates.

Actually, especially in the case of TV shows, since those are almost all shot in 720p. There's really no reason to go higher with the bitrates with that content.

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jcbsinger said:

member since 03 Apr 2007 with 1 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Wed Apr 04, 2007 6:23 am

when I first saw the title, I thought "okay, another article for PS3" , I think the success of PS3 around the world will drive the market into Sony's favour

Guide on video to mp4 conversion

http://www.mp4-converter.net

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Intruder said:

member since 07 Jul 2004 with 3149 posts, TMO Mac Specialist, send him a message or view his profile

Wed Apr 04, 2007 9:46 am

jcbsinger wrote:
when I first saw the title, I thought "okay, another article for PS3" , I think the success of PS3 around the world will drive the market into Sony's favour

Guide on video to mp4 conversion

http://www.mp4-converter.net

Please stop spamming our forum with your mp4-converter link. There appear to be about 5 accounts so far that are doing this.

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rezonate said:

member since 04 Feb 2005 with 741 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:14 am

One of the advantages to larger capacity is indeed the extras. I have some amazing content from the new Monster Music label, and it comes already encoded for multi-speaker systems, stereo, and even pre-ripped for the iPod. With the extra 20gb, I'd ask them to put on pre-ripped content for the iPod as my extras. Then all I'd need is a Blu-Ray drive for my computer...

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