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The Blu-ray Support Petition Campaign |
Blu-ray Disc - The Superior Format
Blu-ray Disc is truly the next generation format for the entertainment industry. Blu-ray Disc was designed from the ground up as a new blue laser high density format and as a result does not suffer from limitations associated with HD DVD, where the prime goal was to be a cheap upgrade from DVD. The Blu-ray Discs were initially released back in 2003 in Japan where the format was a recordable medium used to record High Definition content from the Japanese HD Satellite broadcasting system. Since then the format has been extended to include pressed disc like DVDs as well as the basis for XDCAM professional video recording equipment and is of course the format for games with the Playstation 3 system. The first and most obvious advantage of the Blu-ray Disc is the disc capacity. With 25 GB per layer, the dual layer discs have a 50GB capacity. This additional capacity allows for a great deal of content to be included with movie titles, and this has been evident with many Blu-ray Disc movie titles containing extras in High Definition video where this is much less common on HD DVDs. In the gaming world it allows titles like Metal Gear Solid 4 to be on one disc where Microsoft Xbox 360 titles like Lost Odyssey span as many as 4 DVDs. Currently discs are available in pressed, writable and rewritable versions at 50GB dual layer, but prototypes for 100GB and even 200GB recordable discs have been shown at trade shows. The second big advantage is considered by many to be the most important one – the bitrate for Blu-ray Disc is significantly higher than HD DVD. The extra bitrate is significant in that it allows for superior and less time consuming video encoding, high bitrate lossless audio, multiple audio tracks and combinations of these. It also makes the seamless branching feature of Blu-ray Disc simpler to achieve. The benefits of this extra bandwidth can be seen in the Blu-ray Disc movie releases from Blu-ray exclusive studios Buena Vista Home Entertainment (Disney), Sony Pictures, Fox Home Entertainment and MGM, where 100% of releases from these studios include lossless primary audio tracks. In contrast, currently fewer than 15% of HD DVD titles feature lossless audio. The seamless branching feature is to date a feature unique to Blu-ray Disc. Seamless branching identifies the differences between multiple versions of a title and segments the footage accordingly. The user can choose one of the versions, and the player will jump to the scene segments where needed without any pause in playback. The extra bandwidth available on Blu-ray Discs is the key to this feature and while HD DVD allows for this feature, no HD DVD titles have made use of it. Look for this feature on high profile titles such as Spider-man 2 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as well as a number of other Blu-ray Disc titles. One of the most exciting features of Blu-ray Disc is the BD-J Java Virtual Machine built in to every player. Being a true object oriented programming language, the Blu-ray Disc platform offers an incredibly flexible interactive capability. We have seen Java games on a number of Fox and Disney discs and expect to see wider uses of BD-J moving forward. Blu-ray Disc is simply the best platform for movies. The specification allows for movies encoded at their native rate of 24 frames per second in progressive format. This native encoding allows for the native ‘24p’ output on a number of Blu-ray Disc players, which greatly reduces motion artifacts on displays that can properly handle this display mode. HD DVD on the other hand specifies that encoded content must be interlaced. While it is possible for titles to use progressive encoding, the data must be flagged so that the decoder in the player sees it as interlaced format. This is the same as the 1080i format used by broadcast HDTV including HBO, Showtime and even NBC HDTV shows. As a result of this HD DVD specification oversight, very few HD DVD players are capable of true 24p output and recent firmware which enabled this mode has only proven to be successful on one player. While Blu-ray Disc is truly a step beyond DVD while HD DVD is simply an extension of DVD, Blu-ray Disc has retained a number of key DVD features that are mysteriously absent on HD DVD discs. Seemingly simple features such as the ability to resume from where you stopped are included in Blu-ray, yet this feature of good old DVD does not work on HD DVD titles. Included in this set of missing features is the ability to jump to a specific time code and the ability to step forward frame by frame. All of these features are enabled on Blu-ray Discs but it appears that for some reason the HDi interactive layer on HD DVD titles prevents these features from working. The irony is that while most, if not all, HD DVD titles feature this HDi interactive layer, a great percentage of them do nothing special with it, meaning that there is no gain, only the loss of these important yet seemingly trivial to implement functions. Another legacy feature that Blu-ray Disc supports but has been dropped by HD DVD is the Region Code. The Region Code for Blu-ray Disc is much improved over DVD with fewer regions and a rule where titles must become region free after a year of release. Region Code is needed by studios to protect the theatrical release income in other regions from sales of imported discs. This has been clearly demonstrated by New Line where they are releasing the titles Hairspray and Rush Hour 3 on Blu-ray Disc at the same time as DVD in 2007, but delaying the release of these titles until some time in 2008 for the HD DVD format due to the lack of Region Coding for HD DVD. This approach is expected to apply to all New Line that have theatrical releases internationally that are later than the USA theatrical release date. Regardless of how you look at it, Blu-ray Disc offers the best capacity, highest video and audio quality, the most capable interactivity language and the best and most useful features. Blu-ray Disc is the obvious media choice for High Definition movies and video content as well as video games as the High Definition future takes shape.
See current rank and price statistics comparisons for Warner titles. Blu-ray Disc - The Superior Format Blu-ray Disc is truly the next generation format for the entertainment industry. Why Warner Brothers Is Almost Certain To Go Blu-ray Exclusive In Early 2008 There is no doubt that Warner Brothers (WB) will be watching the sales of High Definition
Media (HDM) very closely during the 4th Quarter of 2007.
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