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makingmusic476 on 04 January 2008
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LordTheNightKnight said:
makingmusic476 said:
LordTheNightKnight said:
makingmusic476 said:
More clarification from Maxpower at BR.com:

I should have clarified. NL will make their own announcement when they see fit, they are still a fully autonomous studio, but the BDA have made a deal with Time Warner and you can rest assured that it includes all studios operating under TW.


Woot. Just imagine how beautiful Rivendell, Minas Tirith, and the Grey Havens will look on Blu-Ray. :D

They have to annouce the MOVIE RELEASES. This has NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT. What the hell makes you think being format neutral would affect the relase of Lord of the Rings in blu-ray? And don't bring up the Matrix, as this article states NL is autonomous.

So why the hell are you associating NL going blu-ray exclusive with LotR being released on blu-ray? If it's available internationally, BEFORE NL has annouced any decision, there is CLEARLY NO CONNECTION.

Now I'm typing in allcaps because you have been stupidly connecting the two, with NOTHING TO CONNECT THEM.


I'm talking about a Blu-Ray specific encode* vs a format neutral one. :P


First of all, you didn't mention the higher bitrate at first. The way you are posting makes it look as though you are discussing a release at all.

Second, that still isn't a connection. Assuming that NL uses the same release specs as Warners, where is the proof they would drop the one disc thing? You yourself wrote they do that. And did you see my correction that using that one disc is the reason there isn't enough space for the higher bitrate.

*A higher bitrate is not the same as a blu-ray encoding. Both formats use the same encodings.


I don't think you quite understand what I'm saying. We have discussed this at length on Blu-Ray.com and HighDefDigest. Both formats have had ample space for an encode of just about any average size film released yet. Because of this, size is a secondary concern (as well as extras), so the movies are encoded with bitrate only in mind. Because HD DVD has a much lower average bitrate than Blu-Ray, Warner has been encoding their movies to take advantage of HD DVD's bitrates, and simply porting the encode over to BR, wasting BR's higher bitrate levels. If the HD DVD version was removed from the equation, then Warner/NL would be free to take advantage of Blu-Ray's higher bitrates, as NL has already done with Shoot 'Em Up. Disc space isn't an issue. If it was Warner would be using Dolby TrueHD or Dolby MA instead of uncompressed PCM for their BR releases.

If anything, a 4 hour epic like LotR would be even more constrained by HD DVD, so if NL was forced to cater to the lowest common denominator - HD DVD - the encode would not look near as good as it would if they encoded it strictly for Blu-Ray. And I'm pretty sure NL wouldn't mind throwing as many discs at LotR as necessary, given WB's release of Blade Runner.  These are some of the biggest catalog titles out there.

I just noticed the last line of your post. Are you perhaps confusing "encodes" with "codecs"? Both formats you the same codecs (mpeg-2, VC-1, Mpeg-4/AVC). The encode is simply the end result, encoding a film via a certain codec, at certain bitrates, taking up a certain amount of space. A Blu-Ray specific encode could use the same codec as an HD DVD encode, but still have higher average bitrates, and much higher peak bitrates during more intensive scenes, thus resulting in better PQ and AQ. Althoguh I would hope that Warner would switch to AVC, as many reviewers have said that they tend to favor the PQ of AVC releases. I hear HD DVD studios are only using VC-1 because of subsidies from MS anywho, and I assume those will soon be put to an end for Warner.