The PS3 is indeed a Media Center which lets you (besides watching DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and playing PS3, PS2 and PS games) play music cds, mp3s, look at a different range of picture formats, chat with friends, play online (for free that is) and also browse the internet with an internal browser.  You can use the PSP for remote play and hook up your PC through ethernet, you can use external harddrives to transfer files or save game data etc etc...

You can also install Yellow Dog Linux on there and even emulate Windows XP

Further firmware updates will bring more and more compatability and new features as well.

Quoting katharsis:

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The PS3 is indeed a Media Center which lets you (besides watching DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and playing PS3, PS2 and PS games) play music cds, mp3s, look at a different range of picture formats, chat with friends, play online (for free that is) and also browse the internet with an internal browser.  You can use the PSP for remote play and hook up your PC through ethernet, you can use external harddrives to transfer files or save game data etc etc...

You can also install Yellow Dog Linux on there and even emulate Windows XP

Further firmware updates will bring more and more compatability and new features as well.

That will do nicely!  Very accurate. 

Quoting Ascended_Saiyan:

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Did you know that 45GB TL discs were approved some time ago?  Where are they?

He will have a hell of a time “knowing” this as TL-45 was never submitted to DVD forum for standardization!  At the risk of stating the obvious, without such a submission, there would be no approval.  So maybe folks should get real data before throwing stones like this .

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Do you have any idea how much more money a 45GB or 51GB TL HD DVD disc would cost to manufacture? 

Hey, you could enlighten all of us by providing BD-50 manufacturing cots. What? You don’t have them or a link to someone who has?  Don’t you think that 8 years after BD format was conceived in a lab, and over a year since the format was launched, it is super strange that no one can quote you the cost on BD-50?  And that the number of companies who can replicate in need no more than 2 fingers to count? So even if you did have a number, lack of competition means the cost will be super high?

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God forbid they EVER come as a combo disc! 

Why?  We already have combo and twin formats which go beyond two layers.  Do you know of any BD discs that do?  OK, I will answer it for you .  BD tried combo discs with more layers but finally decided that it was a manufacturing nightmare and the format was abandoned.  JVC, who provided a sketch for it, later went on to make HD DVD combo discs!

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So, that's the reason Blu-ray owners are enjoying this feature and HD DVD owners can't?

If those movies come to HD DVD, we can nicely accommodate them.  Remember, there is very little information in channels beyond 5.1 since they are quiet most of the time.  So they do not require much space or bandwidth to encode.  If you don’t believe me, do a bit of research on TrueHD and you see that the efficiency of that codec goes up when you have more than 5.1 channels.

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You quoted me wrong.  I said NO HD DVD movie has a 24-bit lossless track.  There are a few short concerts that have them.

Which proves the format has no trouble in accommodating them.  Remember, NIN was more difficult than any movie out there.  Strobes, etc. would kill any compression technology.  Had we not had advanced techniques such as intensity compensation to deal with strobes in VC-1, it would not have looked as good.  MPEG-2 would have made a mess of this content.

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So, they are saying it takes an crap load of time to try to get a decent picture out of LOTR on HD DVD compared to the much shorter time it takes to have a marvelous looking version on Blu-ray (and not with 7.1 lossless 24-bit sound), right?

So you are a fan of quick and dirty encodes?    LOTR is going through super careful encoding and processing.  The project will go on for many months, and ton of that time is spent outside of compression.  I am confident everyone who is a fan of the movie and high fidelity audio and video will be most impressed.  After all, you are dealing with folks who brought you Matrix which btw, has an average data rate a bit more than 12 mbit/sec!  Think about that, 5 star, reference quality, with a codec killer movie and the average data rate is just 12 mbit/sec.  At that rate, 4 hours of video only takes 22 gigabytes. 

As to higher bitrate encodes being better, have you actually watched POTC carefully which is encoded this way?  Despite high praise, this movie is riddled with blocking artifacts in darker areas of the picture showing you that using high rate is no panacea for good quality.  Indeed, you should be afraid, very afraid, if BD data rates encourage quick and dirty encodes. 

As to 24-bit audio, well, then you must be a fan of fantasy marketing because there is no such animal.  Not for movies, and not even for music.  No movie content has anything but noise in the last four bits, and majority will have noise in the last 8 bits if not more (i.e. effective resolution of 16-bits or lower).  But hey, if want to go by numbers rather than quality you can hear, then I can’t blame you for liking “24-bit.”  Maybe you shop for displays on the dynamic contrast ratio too.  If so, then double good luck to you in your viewing pleasures :D.

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Personally, without having the chance to have this in 7.1 lossless 24-bit sound, they ARE messing with this symbol of home theater. 

First,  no one has provided you the audio specs so you are being presumptuous in your criticism in advance.  Second, the statement above is a clear case of what I stated before.  You seem to think if it has 24-bit written on the box, somehow it sounds better.  I have to say, your knowledge of digital audio is clearly lacking if this is the case.  Please read this paper: http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Coding2.PDF.  Then come and tell me how Bob Stuart, the founder of Meridian and creator of MLP/TrueHD, doesn’t know what he is talking about when he says 24-bit is unnecessary and that you get infinite resolution with 20-bits and even well encoded 16-bits.

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Most likely, Blu-ray would have to suck it up and live with HD DVD's video and audio encode port over.  Like I said, they are messing with this symbol of home theater.

There is a good solution to this.  Go ahead and start a campaign to tell NL not to publish in BD because their encodes are beneath you.  No one would be happier than HD DVD fans for this kind of contempt for the superb product this title is going to be.  We will go ahead and enjoy this fantastic series and experience, while you wait for “24-bit” audio.

BTW, I am happy to keep coming back to correct your posts.  But I suggest researching your data more and backing off on strong claims without them.  It saves us both a ton of time and energy.

P.S.  Not sure what happened to my previous login as I had to create it again…

Quoting amirm:

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P.S.  Not sure what happened to my previous login as I had to create it again…

New site, new program.  Now with (almost) full HD DVD and BD support.

Thanks as always for dropping by providing informative, sharp, and insightful info.

Quoting Erik:

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Thanks as always for dropping by providing informative, sharp, and insightful info.

Agreed

Quoting Ascended_Saiyan:

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Then we'll look forward to 7.1 channels on future HD DVD releases then.  Any idea when that might be?

Ooh, we have Ascended_Saiyan 2.0 (or 7.1 ).  First time around he was in humble and "well, yeah, maybe..." mode.

Now it's cheek and semi-rudeness.  How surprising.

Amirm, thanks for taking the time to join in, and for the info you bring.  I appreciate it and I'm pretty sure a few others do as well.  However, "discussing" anything HD related with Ascended_Saiyan is an exercise in futility, (but I think you know that).  For what it's worth, I'll be looking forward to what you have to say.

Thanks again for taking the time to post here!!!!

Quoting Ascended_Saiyan:

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Quoting amirm:

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He will have a hell of a time “knowing” this as TL-45 was never submitted to DVD forum for standardization!  At the risk of stating the obvious, without such a submission, there would be no approval.  So maybe folks should get real data before throwing stones like this .

So when can we expect those 51GB HD DVD disc?  Do you know for sure that they will work with with existing players or not?  If you don't know for sure, why would you make them?  I thought the HD DVD camp said 30GB was enough.  If so, why would you make them?  If not, why were the HD DVD supporters lied to?

No studio we work with needs or has asked for TL-51.  Otherwise, TL-45 would have been productized long time ago.  They see clearly that consumer pays more when there are more discs in a package, not less.  Remember MI3?

So why is it there?  Because Toshiba engineers don’t sit still.  They have continued research and created even a higher capacity disc than BD and like to see a standard defined around it, as they have done with their other proposals like DVD and HD DVD.  The DVD Forum is the right place for that so a working group has been created to study their proposal and will weigh in with a final spec a few months from now.  Once that spec is finished, we will know the level of compatibility.

Due to above reasons, TL-51 is a non-event for us.  We have 3 hour plus movies already out in HD DVD-30 and there will be more. 

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Hey, you could enlighten all of us by providing BD-50 manufacturing cots. What? You don’t have them or a link to someone who has?
Here is the link.

Right.  An unknown source telling someone how much the discs costs.  Let me ask you something.  If BD-50 discs are such a bargain, and can be readily produced, why would a replicator not quote the price in public?  As you noticed in the article, there are replicators quoting HD DVD-15 and 30 plus BD-25 but not BD-50.  Do you know why?  Well, you would if you read the AVS Forum insider thread where one of their employees said they could not replicate BD-50.  So my request remains for you to show rates from an independent replicator.  Not the secret word of someone else that no one can verify for accuracy.

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>Why?  We already have combo and twin formats which go beyond two layers.  Do you know of any BD discs that do?
The main reason is because of the additional costs to do so.  They already had a working product.  They probably figured it wouldn't be worth the additional costs to the BD titles.

Your answer seems to indicate that you don’t really understand the technology involved.  So let me explain it.

BD discs require very high level of flatness for the layers (about 8 microns if my memory is right).  DVD however, does not.  If you build a DVD layer, and then try to put the BD layers on top of it, you run out of tolerance and your yields go to zero, making the cost essentially astronomical.  It is a bit like wanting an ultra flat surface, but painting on top of wallpaper.  The thickness variation shows through no matter how flat you attempt to make the paint layer.

The analogy in computer is if Intel wanted to product 5 Ghz processors.  I am sure they could push to produce one chip that would work at this speed.  But with a failure rate of 99.9999% at this clock speed, it would not really matter that they could get a single chip working.

So it was not a matter of it costing a bit more.  It was a matter of designing something that simply is not practical to manufacture.  Like wishing you could build a BMW for 10,000.  You can wish it.  You can draw some pictures of it.  But if you can’t manufacture and sell it for that price, you don’t have a design.  You don’t get to come back and say it cost too much.  Your competition doesn’t seem to have that problem.

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>If those movies come to HD DVD, we can nicely accommodate them.  Remember, there is very little information in channels beyond 5.1 since they are quiet most of the time.  So they do not require much space or bandwidth to encode.
Then we'll look forward to 7.1 channels on future HD DVD releases then.  Any idea when that might be?

Whenever someone shows up with a movie with that many channels.  And thinks there is a real market for them.  Go and ask the people in the business about 7.1  They all tell you that the see NO demand for it and they have fallen back on 5.1 production.

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>Which proves the format has no trouble in accommodating them.  Remember, NIN was more difficult than any movie out there.  Strobes, etc. would kill any compression technology.

Then we all will look forward to 24-bit audio on HD DVD movies.  Any idea when that might be?

So you still want 24-bit audio? Can you please tell me what audio system you have?

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>Had we not had advanced techniques such as intensity compensation to deal with strobes in VC-1, it would not have looked as good.  MPEG-2 would have made a mess of this content.
Speaking of VC-1.  Why is this article stating that Microsoft has less patents on VC-1 than Sony does?

Funny isn’t it?  Sony would rather roll over and play dead than to use VC-1.  Yet it seems from above, they can make more money than we can from VC-1 .  Seriously, the reason for it is rather simple and has to do with patent system in US.  Sony has a number of old patents that read on many compression technologies including MPEG-2, AVC and VC-1.  Microsoft innovations however, are much newer and since it takes about 4 years to have a patent granted from the time of application, those patents are just getting granted now.  As such, we expect to have a significant number of patents soon in VC-1.  And per above, these would cover much more advanced and innovative techniques for video compression like the features used in NIN.

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>So you are a fan of quick and dirty encodes? 
You mean like the last few batches of Universal's releases?  In that case, that answer would be a resounding no.

Then please quit saying that high bitrate allows compressionists to be lazy and produce content quicker.  The best way to speed up encoding is to provide the best tools possible to allow the people who compress movies to have absolutely the best control over all the parameters.  Microsoft’s latest VC-1 encoder, which is now marketed by Sonic Solutions, is unrivaled in level of control.  For example, you can mark a “region of interest” and have the codec optimize the picture quality there (e.g. someone’s face).  For this reason, our encoder is considered the favorite among many compression houses.  There are some benefits to being in software business .

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>As to higher bitrate encodes being better, have you actually watched POTC carefully which is encoded this way?  Despite high praise, this movie is riddled with blocking artifacts in darker areas of the picture showing you that using high rate is no panacea for good quality.
So, basically, you are saying that all these blocking artifacts in darker areas were missed by EVERY major reviewer of this title, right?  We all know that blocking artifacts (especially if riddled throughout the movie) decreases the rating.  I think I will stick with the major reviewers and my own eyes on that one.

Yes, they were missed.  But frames have been posted in AVS Forum showing the artifacts and I can give you the time codes to verify.  Of course, if your display is not good enough to already see them, well, not sure that will do any good.  Can you tell me what display you have?

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I guess there is no difference between 48kHz and 96kHz either, right.  The Holy Grail of audio (96kHz/24-bit) doesn't exist either, right?  I guess that's why these content owners try to make sure this is 96/24 audio is on these audio concerts, right?  Silly small company owners like Richard J. Casey at R&B Films, that care nothing about marketing anything but a quality product, are just mislead audio neophytes, right?

Why would you not read the paper I provided to you before answering back like this?  Maybe you feel you already know the science.  If so, do you know what thermal noise is?  Do you know what DAC linearity means?  Do you think Meridian who makes DVD players that cost more than your car, doesn’t know about digital audio?  But Richard does?

Let me explain it to you in layman terms until you read the paper.  No analog to digital converter is able to digitize a signal that has more than 20 bits of resolution.  Let me repeat this again.  There is no ADC in the world that can produce anything better then 20-bits.  Internal noise generated by ADC dwarfs the input signal and the ADC winds up giving you its own noise rather than the input signal.

On the playback side, Digital to analog converters have similar problem.  Here we not only have to deal with noise, we also have to deal with linearity and jitter.  In practical terms, typical consumer gear which advertises “24-bit” DAC/192khz, only resolves to about 14-bits.  Yes, not even 16-bits!  I have a Mark Levinson DAC which costs $8,000 and the only thing it does is convert digital signals to analog.  Do you want to guess how accurate its output is, even though it advertizes 24-bits of resolution also?  19-bits and if pushed, maybe 20-bits.  So think about what performance the $10 part in your AVR has.

So from reproduction point of view, there is no system on the planet using digital delivery that can achieve anything equal to or better than 20-bits.  And I am confident whatever equipment you have, cannot even resolve the full resolution of CD, let alone something better.

Now, 24-bit is talked about a lot.  You are right about that.  But that is because in the professional space, where we mix audio a lot and like to have “headroom” and “guard bits” to avoid overflowing computations.  For example, if you add to 16-bit numbers, you need more than 16-bits to hold the results or you lose data.  So we use 24-bits.

You may be thinking, well, deliver the 24-bits if that is what the mix is using.  But if you read the Meridian paper you see that there is no need for that and you would simply be wasting space.  That’s because dithered 16-bits or 20-bits provides infinite resolution and a noise floor which is below of the quietest recording room in the world, let alone your home theater.  As such, there is no need to go beyond that.  Bob also makes excellent point about not going past 50 Khz or so on sample rate. 

Moreover, Bob explains nicely that if you run a DAC at too high a speed, e.g. 192khz, its performance actually goes down because small error signals, become much larger percentage wise, when the DAC is running at higher speed.    So once again, reality is very different than the marketing game CE companies (and now some studios) are using to sell you stuff.  A true enthusiast would want to learn what all of this means and not follow others like lemmings and parrot “24/192khz” is good.  Those are hollow numbers if you understand the science.

Net, net, no movie released with 24-bit audio, has that kind of resolution.  What you have on the disc is a bunch of noise toggling in the low order bits and does not represent any level of quality.  Unless you are more impressed by what is written on a box than what sounds good, you should put no value on such marketing specs.  The science simply does not support it.

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>Second, the statement above is a clear case of what I stated before.  You seem to think if it has 24-bit written on the box, somehow it sounds better.
Just my ears tell me.  That's what makes me look at the box.  Just like if something taste good to you, you ask what's in it.  It's the way a lot of people try to figure out why it tastes so good.  The audio situation is similar.

Per above, your ears are not telling you anything.  Note that even if I did manage to play something with 24-bits of resolution, the number of people in the world who can tell the difference would be exceptionally small.  Otherwise, please explain to me why SACD/DVD-A failed with their higher resolution audio.  As such, I am confident that your ears cannot resolve the difference between 16 and 20-bits let alone 24-bits.  Detecting that level of quantization noise requires training, and very transparent equipment.  When I am testing things at this level, I pair up the above $8K DAC with a $6K electrostatic headphone/amp and only then, can I discern the difference.  I am talking about a $14K audio system just for stereo!  Play a movie on a bunch of consumers speakers and you have no prayer of hearing such detail.

Note that I am not saying the sound track you are hearing is not great.  It probably is.  It is just that it is not 24-bits.  It is probably not even 16-bits.

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>We will go ahead and enjoy this fantastic series and experience, while you wait for “24-bit” audio.
That's the beauty of it.  I don't have to wait.  I already have it in spades.

Wow, didn’t realize Matrix was already available in BD.  For V for Vendata.  Or the other 12 Warner titles which have yet to make it to BD format due to lack of interactivity features there .