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Commentary: Year-End Studio Report Cards

Fri Dec 28, 2007 at 03:48 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: A long-time movie buff and video collector from laserdisc to DVD and beyond, Joshua Zyber is a veteran disc reviewer, and an enthusiastic supporter of all things High Definition. In his twice-monthly High-Def Digest column, Josh discusses a broad range of topics of interest to other early adopters.

By Joshua Zyber

As we move forward into the new year, it's time to look back fondly on all the exciting developments of the past 12 months. In the world of home video, 2007 was certainly a tumultuous year for the ongoing High Definition format war. Despite proclamations at the end of 2006 that the conflict would be wrapped up within a few months, both the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps remain as firmly entrenched in their positions as ever. In fact, if anything, the animosity between the two sides has only grown more bitter and vitriolic.

Big things happened in 2007, some positive and some negative for both sides. Each format saw the release of around 300 additional titles during the calendar year. Some studios made aggressive pushes for High Definition media, unleashing both major day-and-date new releases and prestigious catalog titles. Other studios seemed to back away from the table. One major player shocked the industry with an unexpected decision to drop one format entirely in favor of the other. Meanwhile, a company that was rumored last year to likewise change strategies wound up holding its ground. As if that weren't enough, yet another studio spent the better part of this last quarter mired in rumors that it was planning a shift of its own.

To bid farewell to the year that was, please join me as I look back at all of the major High Definition studios and hand out some year-end report cards, rating each on how well they've supported their chosen formats.

Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Encompassing the various divisions of the Disney empire, from Walt Disney and Pixar animation to the Touchtone and Miramax labels, Buena Vista released a little over 30 titles on Blu-ray in 2007. Among them were some day-and-date hits like Mel Gibson's controversial 'Apocalypto' and the inexplicably successful John Travota/Tim Allen biker comedy 'Wild Hogs', as well as a smattering of other live action catalog titles. As far as Disney's famed animation, all we saw were the recent digital entries 'Chicken Little' and 'Meet the Robinsons', but none of the classic traditional animation that fans are really waiting for.

Undoubtedly, Buena Vista's most important High-Def releases this year were the three 'Pirates of the Caribbean' blockbusters and a trio of Pixar animation discs: 'Cars', 'Ratatouille', and the 'Pixar Short Films Collection'. The studio wraps up the year with the outstanding 'Lost: The Complete Third Season' television series box set and the massively popular 'tweener TV movie 'High School Musical 2', both of which are sure to sell very well.

Buena Vista has a solid track record for quality, favoring AVC MPEG-4 video encoding and uncompressed PCM sound, though they did let a serious framing error slip though in their 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' disc (the studio recently announced a replacement program for affected copies). In the coming year, they should focus on releasing a broader selection of titles. They've got some tremendous movies in their catalog, from Disney and Pixar animation (let's see 'The Lion King' and 'Toy Story', please) to some great independent and foreign films from their various specialty labels. Not to mention that we still need the first two seasons of 'Lost', as well as some of their other great TV properties. Thus far, the studio still seems to be testing the High Definition waters and has been timid to unleash their most important titles. It's time to open that vault.

It would also be nice if they'd stop forcing numerous movie trailers at the start of all their discs. That's just annoying.
Grade: A-

Lionsgate Entertainment
At the end of 2006, rumors circulated that Lionsgate was on the brink of abandoning their Blu-ray exclusivity and releasing on HD DVD as well. That did not come to pass, and a year later the studio seems to be more gung-ho for Blu-ray than ever.

Lionsgate may not be one of the biggest players in Hollywood, but they do have some appealing titles in their catalog, mostly genre and cult fare. In 2007, they released just over 20 Blu-ray discs. Among them were some perennial favorites like 'First Blood', 'Basic Instinct', and 'Reservoir Dogs', as well as two seasons of the popular Showtime TV series 'Weeds' and a couple entries from the seemingly-endless 'Saw' horror franchise. Their biggest Blu-ray hit this year was easily the Jason Statham action flick 'Crank', a movie that lingered near the top of the High-Def sales lists for months.

Lionsgate has been hit-or-miss in video quality, and has spotty support for lossless or uncompressed audio. Some of their discs, like the major catalog release of 'Dirty Dancing', look just awful. In fact, other than 'Crank', I can't think of any other Lionsgate Blu-rays this year that could be described as having exceptional video or audio quality. Improving their video transfer and disc authoring process is absolutely their biggest area for improvement in the coming year.
Grade: C

Magnolia Home Entertainment
One of the few independent studios to embrace High-Def media in a significant way, Magnolia (a division of Mark Cuban's mini media empire) doesn't have a huge catalog, but has been daring enough to release titles on both Blu-ray and HD DVD. They didn't put out much in 2007, their most notable releases being the acclaimed documentary 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room' (Blu-ray | HD DVD) and the Korean cult monster movie 'The Host' (Blu-ray | HD DVD). Quality is a hit-or-miss affair, largely dependent on the condition of the material they're working with. They almost never offer lossless or uncompressed audio. However, they did knock out a nice transfer for 'The Host', and included PCM sound on the Blu-ray edition (the HD DVD unfortunately had no comparable lossless audio option). Their releases of the French actioner 'District B13' (Blu-ray | HD DVD) were flawed on both formats, including only English closed captions (spelling out all sound effects) to go along with the original French soundtrack.

Magnolia has been erratic in their support of both formats, sometimes delaying their releases on one side or the other for no discernable reason. They need to straighten out problems like that, and work on improving their quality. A more aggressive release slate would also be nice, but with their limited catalog I don't know how much more they can do in that regard.
Grade: C-

MGM Home Entertainment
I kind of feel bad for MGM. In 2006, the studio's Blu-ray support was tied up with Sony as home video distributor, and the discs they released suffered from the quality problems Sony was having at that time. MGM broke off the distribution deal with Sony at the end of last year and switched to Fox, only to have their Blu-ray slate pulled when Fox mysteriously disappeared from the High Definition format for a large chunk of the year (more on this below). As a result, they released a grand total of five Blu-ray discs in 2007, not counting the fact that their name technically appears on the packaging for 'Casino Royale'. Although that James Bond reboot was one of the biggest High-Def titles of the year, the picture was a co-production with Sony, which holds the distribution rights and takes most of the credit. Of the rest of MGM's titles, three were catalog releases: 'Hart's War', 'Hoosiers', and 'RoboCop', the latter two with middle-of-the-road video transfers. The others were new titles: the bizarre Kevin Costner psycho thriller 'Mr. Brooks' and the Werner Herzog war drama 'Rescue Dawn'. Both were box office disappointments, but at least featured better High-Def video transfers. On the plus side, MGM has provided lossless DTS-HD Master Audio (corresponding with new distributor Fox) on all releases this year.

Where should MGM go in 2008? With their distribution problems sorted out, the studio should begin a more aggressive release slate for titles from their still-impressive back catalog. Lest we forget, MGM still holds the rights to the first 20 James Bond films, among other desirable properties. Please, MGM, give us some of those.
Grade: C-

New Line Home Entertainment
Arriving late to the High Definition game, New Line will officially take the same format-neutral stance as parent company Warner Bros. However, the studio has made the frustrating decision to enforce region coding on Blu-ray and to stagger new releases on HD DVD until several months after the comparable DVD and Blu-ray (catalog titles will be released simultaneously). Their first High-Def title was 'Hairspray' on Blu-ray at the end of November, and they knocked it out of the park with stunning video and audio, plus a bunch of good bonus features. Ending the year are 'Rush Hour 3' on Blu-ray (HD DVD to follow later) and the dual-format bow of catalog release 'Pan's Labyrinth' (Blu-ray | HD DVD).

For 2008, I have four words for New Line: 'Lord of the Rings'. You know that fans are salivating for it. You held out on High-Def media too long. It's time to make a splash by jumping in whole-hog with the full Extended Editions and all the bonus features from those lovely DVD box sets. And drop that nonsense with the staggered format release schedules.
Grade: C (mainly due to lack of content released)

Paramount Home Entertainment and Dreamworks Home Entertainment
In August of 2007, Paramount delivered the most shocking development in the High Definition format war to date by dropping their prior stance of format neutrality to support HD DVD exclusively. Though they reportedly received financial incentives to do so, Paramount maintains that the production costs and infrastructure of both formats were their biggest concerns. In making this decision, they've brought Dreamworks Home Entertainment (whom they own and distribute) with them, and the two studios are so tied together that there's no sense in separating them for this discussion. Technically, the Dreamworks Animation division was spun off into its own separate entity back in 2004, and does not fall under the ownership of parent corporation Viacom; however, their home video products are also distributed by Paramount, and the three companies acted as a united front in 2007.

Before the switch, the studios released a solid but unremarkable assortment of content on both formats. Among them were a few big catalog movies like 'The Untouchables' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), and 'The Warriors' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), plus new releases such as 'Babel' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), 'Black Snake Moan' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), and 'Disturbia' (Blu-ray | HD DVD). All were decent titles but none quite broke any High Definition sales records. It wasn't until after the transition that Paramount and Dreamworks brought out the big guns, namely 'Transformers' and 'Shrek the Third', two of the biggest box office hits of the year, for which Paramount pulled out all the stops in terms of outstanding video, audio, and exclusive bonus features. Also notable is the impressive 10-disc box set release of the "Remastered" first season of 'Star Trek: The Original Series', which is available exclusively in DVD/HD DVD Combo format with no separate DVD-only release.

Paramount has largely done a very good job with the video and audio of their releases, with 'Dreamgirls' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), 'Flags of Our Fathers' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), and 'Shrek the Third' ranking as some of the best-looking High Definition movies of the year. Controversially, the studio has not yet embraced lossless audio to any significant degree, but has regardless pushed the bar for sound quality with high bit rate Dolby Digital Plus. Even without a lossless track, 'Transformers' took the prize for Best Audio Quality at the recent High-Def Disc Awards. At the end of the year, the studio also started a push for interactive picture-in-picture and web-enabled bonus features, something they will hopefully continue into the future.

For 2008: Time to start digging into that rich catalog of yours, Paramount. For a major studio, you barely released a measly 30 titles this year. Where are 'Chinatown', 'Apocalypse Now', and 'Grease', or the 'Godfather' and 'Indiana Jones' franchises? For that matter, where are 'Team America', 'The Truman Show', and 'Lemony Snickett', all of which you used to tease us with during those High Definition promos at the start of your discs? Stop holding back. It's time to up your game.
Grade: B+

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
The award for "Most Improved Studio" of 2007 goes to Sony, who completely turned around all the quality problems they experienced in 2006, and delivered over 70 titles on Blu-ray this year, most of them boasting quite impressive quality. To help make up for past transgressions, the studio even remastered 'The Fifth Element' with a significantly better video transfer, and offered buyers of the original disc a free mail-in exchange program. That's probably the classiest thing any High-Def studio did all year. Kudos to you, Sony.

Admittedly, the quality turnaround is largely attributable to the studio's conscious decision to focus mainly on releasing known "eye candy" titles, movies with attractive photography and high production values that have been recently mastered or remastered. Not all of these are particularly good movies, unfortunately. That's a real shame considering how many great films Sony holds in the Columbia and Sony Pictures Classics catalogs, material that deserves to be treated with the same attention and care they've been lavishing so far on marginal titles like 'Identity', 'The Replacement Killers', or 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'.

The studio did however put out a number of respectable movies, including acclaimed foreign-language films 'The Lives of Others', 'Curse of the Golden Flower', and 'Volver'. But their biggest releases of the year were of course 'Casino Royale' and the 'Spider-Man Trilogy', both sure-fire bestsellers. They've also finished off the year with a splendidly remastered edition of the Steven Spielberg classic 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', which features every major version of the movie and a bunch of nice bonus material. Hopefully that's a sign that the studio will continue to dig into their catalog and expand beyond the Playstation 3's gamer demographic they've been largely catering to so far.
Grade: A-

Starz Home Entertainment
Formerly known as Anchor Bay Entertainment, Starz had a rather small Blu-ray release slate in 2007, comprised of only nine titles, four of which were volumes of the 'Masters of Horror' Showtime TV series. The other releases were primarily safe bets such as 'Dawn of the Dead' (1978) and 'Evil Dead 2' that the studio had already released, and re-released, and re-re-released innumerable times on DVD to continually bilk fans for every last dollar. The technical quality of those discs was fine, considering the source of the material, but Starz really screwed up 'Halloween' (1978) by using a miscolored video master that undermined many of director John Carpenter's original artistic decisions.

What to do in 2008? Start releasing a better selection of titles (Anchor Bay had a huge catalog of interesting foreign and cult movies) and pay more attention to the quality of the transfers.
Grade: D+

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Here we go. The most disappointing High-Def studio of 2007 is unquestionably Fox. For a company sitting on such an amazing catalog of huge movies, major franchises, and outstanding television programming, the studio's Blu-ray support has been quite pathetic, primarily focused on low-interest films the likes of 'Chain Reaction' and 'Men of Honor' that would be lucky to sell a couple dozen copies on Blu-ray. Their habitual problems with announcing titles only to delay or cancel them were the joke of the High-Def community this year. In all, Fox barely released 30 titles in 2007. Their discs are some of the highest-priced in High Definition media, yet rarely carry over many bonus features from the original DVD editions and in too many cases have mediocre video transfers. On the other hand, at least they support lossless DTS-HD Master Audio on all discs.

For no clear reason, Fox completely ceased all Blu-ray releases in April of 2007 and didn't resume until six months later in October. Speculation has it that they were concerned about breaches in the format's AACS security encryption and were waiting for the added layer of BD+, but the company made no official statements about the reason for their shutdown (ironically, BD+ was cracked by hackers almost immediately after implementation -- Whoops!).

To give them credit, Fox returned from their sabbatical stronger than when they left. Their discs started including more bonus features, and they've recently put out some very desirable releases such as the 'Die Hard Collection', 'The Simpsons Movie', and 'Prison Break: Season One'.

Unfortunately, not everything has been peachy keen since their return. The company made two of the most frustrating decisions of the year. First, they've released the blockbuster 'Live Free or Die Hard' on Blu-ray only in its PG-13 theatrical cut, while an unrated edition is available on standard DVD. Even more perplexing than that, one of their most high profile catalog releases was '28 Days Later', a movie that was actually shot on Standard Definition video. The Blu-ray contains an upscaled Standard-Def transfer almost indistinguishable from the old DVD edition, and they have the gall to charge $39.98 for it!

To be blunt, Fox needs to clean up its act in 2008. They made a complete mess of things in 2007.
Grade: C-

Universal Studios Home Entertainment
As the biggest and most vocal HD DVD exclusive studio, Universal released over 80 titles on the format in 2007, which has been both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing for the obvious reason of putting a lot of content out there in High Definition. They've really run the gamut from blockbuster hits like 'Knocked Up' and 'The Bourne Ultimatum', to major TV properties 'Heroes' and 'Battlestar Galactica', to cult favorites such as 'The Big Lebowski' and 'Being John Malkovich'.

On the flip side of that, they've made a lot of frankly inexplicable choices in what to release. I'm talking about stuff like 'The Watcher' and 'Mercury Rising' that I can't imagine anyone being eager to purchase. Sometimes it really feels like the studio executives pinned a printed list of all their titles to a wall and have been throwing darts at it to decide what comes out on HD DVD next. Seriously, Universal, you're ending the year with 'Timecop'?

The other big problem is that in cranking out so many titles, Universal has been mainly recycling existing High Definition masters that were originally created for DVD downconversion, some of them quite old and nowhere near modern video transfer standards. While day-and-date stuff and those titles recently mastered or remastered usually looked pretty good, too many of the studio's catalog titles featured pronounced edge enhancement or noise reduction artifacts, like those in 'Liar Liar' and 'In Good Company'.

The studio also continues to use the DVD/HD DVD Combo format for all day-and-date releases, which is frustrating considering that a significant number of discs in that format wind up having glitchy playback problems. Their support for lossless Dolby TrueHD audio has been spotty, though they've done a pretty good job with high bit-rate Dolby Digital Plus, and have started including TrueHD on more titles toward year-end.

In 2008, Universal needs to put more focus on quality rather than quantity. They should take a closer look at the video masters in their archives before rushing them out to HD DVD, and start remastering titles when needed. I'd also like to see them dig a little deeper into their catalog for movies made prior to 1980. Give us some Hitchcock classics like 'Vertigo' and 'Psycho', please. And enough with the damn Combo discs. Those are more trouble than they're worth.
Grade: B+

Warner Home Video
Warner Bros. started out 2007 with a little movie called 'The Departed' (Blu-ray | HD DVD) that you may have heard of. After that came such low-profile releases as 'Happy Feet' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), '300' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), the 'Planet Earth' (Blu-ray | HD DVD) box set (distributed for BBC Video), 'The Ultimate Matrix Collection', the 'Harry Potter Years 1-5 Gift Set' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), and the 'Blade Runner Ultimate Collector's Edition' (Blu-ray | HD DVD) that has all 5 versions of the movie in High Definition! You know, just a bunch of rinky-dink stuff like that.

The only major studio still releasing on both next-gen formats, Warner issued almost 80 titles on each format in 2007, among them many of the best High Definition discs of the year. They've not only aggressively made High-Def new releases available day-and-date with standard DVD, but have dug deep into their catalog to pull out some fantastic material like 'Dog Day Afternoon' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), 'Rio Bravo' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), and five Stanley Kubrick classics including a beautiful presentation of '2001: A Space Odyssey' (Blu-ray | HD DVD). The studio has consistently strong video quality (favoring VC-1 encoding), almost always carries over all the DVD bonus features to both HD formats, and has pushed for innovation in web-enabled and picture-in-picture interactive content.

I do wish, however, that they'd beef up their audio support. The studio only offers a limited number of titles with either lossless Dolby TrueHD (on HD DVD) or uncompressed PCM (on Blu-ray), and usually defaults to Dolby Digital (BD) or Dolby Digital Plus (HD) at the low 640 kb/s bit rate, which is disappointing to say the least. They still have some titles exclusive to HD DVD (like that 'Matrix' box set) that have yet to make the transition to Blu-ray as well, and insist on using the damned Combo format for all day-and-date releases on HD DVD. These are all things that deserve fixing in the near future, preferably as soon as possible.

Warner has also been experiencing something of a bumpy ride in this last month, during which they've suffered unfortunate production glitches such as packaging HD DVD discs into some copies of the 'Harry Potter' Blu-ray box set, mis-pressing the wrong content onto the final disc in some copies of the 'Blade Runner' collection, and mistakenly encoding the 'Terminator 3' Blu-ray video at 1080i resolution. These were all clearly unintentional errors, and the company has been prompt in responding and taking steps to correct matters, but they are nonetheless a black mark on the firm's reputation.

Even so, in my opinion, Warner Home Video easily qualifies as the best High Definition studio of the year, bar none. Some rumors have recently made the rounds that the company is considering dropping one format and declaring exclusivity to the other. Whether that exclusivity would favor Blu-ray or HD DVD depends on which rumor you believe, but Warner executives have so far denied any such plans. If such a thing were to happen, it would certainly be a tremendous loss to whichever side they abandoned.
Grade: A

The Weinstein Company Home Entertainment
Last and certainly least is The Weinstein Company (distributed via Genius Products), the worst High Definition studio of 2007. Technically HD DVD exclusive, the company released only 7 titles this year, the last back in June. They made no effort to issue new discs day-and-date with DVD and released mostly crappy movies (though I'll admit that 'Feast' is a fun guilty pleasure). They then acted surprised that their discs didn't sell and subsequently pulled up their stakes and vanished. Where are the 'Grindhouse' movies? Where is '1408'? Where's that 'Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair' consolidated edit they've been promising for ages? Nowhere to be found on High-Definition, that's where. Thanks for nothing, Weinstein.
Grade: F

That's it for the major labels. I want to wrap up by offering a shout-out to all the smaller independent studios that dipped their toes into the High Definition waters in 2007: Koch, Concert Hot Spot, and DVD International for all those scenery discs and the 'Digital Video Essentials' calibration tool; Razor Digital for the IMAX documentaries; Eagle Rock, Image, Interscope, and Rhino for the concert videos; FUNimation and Bandai Visual for the anime (though Bandai really needs to rethink its obscenely high prices); Opus Arte for bringing some opera to class up the joint; the porn studios for doing the opposite; and any other indies I've missed for giving it a go in 2007. We're still in the early stages of these High Definition formats, and the breadth of interesting content you bring helps enormously. Here's to more in 2008 and beyond!

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High-Def FAQ: Uncompressed vs. Lossless Audio

Fri Dec 07, 2007 at 06:43 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: As part of his twice-monthly column here at High-Def Digest, from time to time Josh Zyber answers frequently asked questions related to High-Definition and both Blu-ray on HD DVD. This week: Josh tackles the subjects of whether Uncompressed audio is better than Lossless, and what Dialogue Normalization really does to an audio signal.

By Joshua Zyber

A couple of months ago, I wrote a column called Blu-ray and HD DVD Audio Explained that spelled out the basic functions, features, and differences among the various audio formats available on both High-Def disc types. In it, I explained that uncompressed PCM audio (as found on many Blu-rays) is an exact replication of the studio master, encoded on disc without compression, and that the lossless audio formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio are also bit-for-bit identical to the studio master once decoded. Doing the math, that should mean that a lossless track is also identical to an uncompressed track. Indeed, that is the case. However, some confusion remains as to whether an uncompressed track is actually better than a lossless one.

Now that both High-Def formats have been available for over a year, and each has built up a catalog of hundreds of titles, we have several cases where two high-resolution audio tracks (one lossless and one uncompressed) can be directly compared for the same movie. Examples include Warner's dual-format releases of 'The Departed' and 'Troy: Director's Cut', which feature lossless TrueHD on HD DVD and uncompressed PCM on Blu-ray, or Sony's Blu-ray release of 'Ghost Rider' with both PCM and TrueHD on the same disc. Theoretically speaking, playing the same movie's soundtrack in both lossless and uncompressed encodings should sound absolutely identical, shouldn't it? Well, yes, except that sometimes there are extenuating circumstances that come into play, and indeed some listeners have tried comparing the soundtracks and claim to hear a difference between them.

So what would cause a lossless track to not be identical to an uncompressed track? To get to the bottom of this, let's first take a look at the ways in which each audio format is encoded.

Isn't All Compression Bad?

(Note: Please keep in mind that the following examples have been simplified for conceptual purposes, and are not intended to represent the actual mathematical workings of either digital audio encoding or lossless compression, both of which are more complicated than I can explain here. However, this should hopefully serve to illustrate the basic concept of how a digital file can be compressed without losing important data.)

Let's begin with uncompressed audio. A PCM track is an uncompressed digital format that is 100% bit-for-bit identical to the source fed into it. If the studio master is:

101011100100101100010111

Then the PCM track pressed onto the disc would be:

101011100100101100010111

Pretty straightforward, right? The problem when it comes to High-Def discs is that, since the PCM file is totally uncompressed, an entire movie soundtrack takes up a huge amount of disc space. With their greater storage capacity, Blu-ray discs may often have enough room for this, but space is generally more cramped on HD DVD. Even on Blu-ray, some studios prefer to use that extra space for other purposes.

On the other hand, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio are "lossless" compression formats. Although they're compressed to take up less disc space than a PCM track, once decoded they're also bit-for-bit identical to their sources. Think of this like a ZIP file that holds a PCM track. Once you unZIP the file, you get a 100% identical copy of the original PCM, without compromising any sound quality. What these formats do is drop certain data, and instead use flags to indicate that the empty spaces in the stream are meant to be filled with that data when decoded. As an example, let's pretend that we have a movie that's half sound and half complete silence. A PCM track might look like this:

101011100101000000000000

As you can see, all those 0s at the end are needlessly taking up space on the disc, literally for nothing but complete silence in this hypothetical scenario. To losslessly compress this, a TrueHD or Master Audio track might instead look like this:

1_1_111__1_1____________

By dropping the 0s, the lossless version takes up vastly less room, but when decoded those missing 0s are filled in and it looks like this again:

101011100101000000000000

Voila! A perfect reproduction of the source at less than half the disc space.

(Again, the above is a very simplified example of how lossless compression can be achieved. A real lossless audio algorithm doesn't just drop zeroes, but rather employs complex statistical models to analyze patterns in the data.)

Standard Dolby Digital, DTS, and (to a lesser extent) Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD High Resolution are all "lossy" compression formats. In the above scenario, they'd not only drop the 0s, but also drop some of the 1s that are deemed less critical to human hearing, under the belief that most people won't be able to hear the difference. The higher the bit rate, the less data is dropped. DD+ and DTS-HD HR are not only higher bit rate than old DD and DTS, but also more efficient at maintaining more of the data at lower bit rates. Still, they're not a perfect replication of the studio master the way that the PCM or TrueHD and Master Audio formats are.

Comparing Apples to Apples

Now that we've seen how lossless compression works, before we can legitimately compare a lossless track to an uncompressed track, we have to be sure that we're actually comparing the same thing. Over the past year, I've read countless discussion forum postings (and a few editorials from people who ought to know better) in which viewers have tried to compare the soundtracks of different movies to prove a point about one audio format being superior to another. The reasoning usually goes something like this: "The PCM track on 'Black Hawk Down' sounds better than the TrueHD track on 'Batman Begins', therefore PCM must be better than TrueHD."

Unfortunately, this entire argument is based on a huge logical fallacy. You can't compare the soundtracks of completely different movies and draw conclusions about the audio formats used on their video discs. Maybe 'Black Hawk Down' just has a better sound mix than 'Batman Begins'? By the same token, I could argue that the TrueHD track on 'Batman Begins' sounds a lot better than the PCM track on 'The Benchwarmers', so have I just proven that TrueHD is inherently superior to PCM, even though someone else just proved the opposite by picking different titles to compare? Of course not. The entire train of thought is hopelessly flawed.

If a person likes apples better than oranges, does that mean that the crate used to ship the apples is superior to the crate used to ship the oranges? For that matter, does this opinion really mean that apples are better than oranges, or just that this one person happens to prefer them? Likewise, is the 'Black Hawk Down' soundtrack actually superior to the one for 'Batman Begins', or is it just that someone likes that mix better?

To further complicate matters, even when you're trying to compare the same movie's soundtrack in its different formats, you may still not quite be comparing apples to apples if the two tracks aren't encoded at the same bit depth. While both Blu-ray and HD DVD are capable of utilizing lossless and/or uncompressed audio up to 24-bit resolution, studios may choose to encode at 16-bit resolution instead, depending on the bit depth of the original source or concerns about conserving bandwidth. For example, on that copy of 'Ghost Rider' with both TrueHD and PCM on the same disc, the TrueHD track is encoded at 20-bit resolution, while the PCM track is encoded at 16-bits. Even though it's the same movie soundtrack, and technically both audio formats are "bit-for-bit identical" to their respective sources, in this case the studio chose to use a downsampled source for the PCM option, which may affect the final audible outcome in TrueHD's favor.

When making conclusive claims about the technical merits of one audio format over another, it's critical to accurately take all these factors into account.

Dialogue Normalization – Benefit or Menace?

So let's say we pick a single movie with its soundtrack available at the same bit depth resolution in both uncompressed and lossless formats, like the 'Troy: Director's Cut'. Now we should finally have a case where playing the Blu-ray's PCM track and the HD DVD's TrueHD track back-to-back should sound instantly identical, right? Well, almost.

Now there's a new wrinkle to consider. Many Dolby audio tracks are encoded with a function called Dialnorm, which is short for Dialogue Normalization, a feature Dolby offers to set the default playback levels. The idea is to avoid having some discs start very loudly and others start very quietly when a receiver is set for the exact same volume. To do this, Dialnorm sets a default center of the soundtrack at a common average, using dialogue as a baseline. Therefore, the relative loudness of movie dialogue should be the same from one Dialnorm-encoded disc to another without a viewer needing to change the receiver volume from normal preferences.

There's been a certain level of hysteria about Dialnorm from members of the audiophile community, who misunderstand its purpose and functioning, and believe that it fundamentally alters the soundtracks encoded with it. In actuality, Dialnorm does not affect a movie soundtrack any more than raising or lowering the Volume setting on your receiver does. Contrary to common misconception, Dialnorm does not "boost" the dialogue relative to the rest of the sound mix, or in any way alter the track's dynamic range. A Dialnorm-encoded soundtrack has the exact same peaks and valleys as a soundtrack without Dialnorm; it's just that the Dialnorm track will contain an extra flag in the metadata telling the receiver to either increase or decrease its entire volume scale globally before playback, so that all movies start on the same scale. And it only does this once at the start of the movie; it does not cause fluctuations after the movie begins.

At any given volume setting on your receiver, a movie like 'Gosford Park' will deliver dialogue crisply and clearly, but the soundtrack won't get much louder, because that film is practically all dialogue. Switching to 'Jurassic Park' at the same setting, dialogue will come through just the same as it did for the last picture, until the dinosaur roars shake your house to pieces, because that movie has a lot of sound effects that are much louder relative to the dialogue. Dialnorm will not make 'Gosford Park' a house-shaking experience, or make 'Jurassic Park' any less of an auditory powerhouse. It just sets them both so that their dialogue is at the same loudness as one another.

This is relevant to our discussion because a Dolby TrueHD track encoded with Dialnorm may begin at a higher or lower starting volume than a PCM track without this feature, even though it's the same movie's soundtrack and the receiver is left at the same setting. There's a well-known principle in auditory research that has shown that listeners typically perceive a recording played back at a louder volume as better in quality than the same recording at a lower volume. That's because the louder the playback, the more pressure generated by its sound waves. At a difference of just a few decibels, the listener may not necessarily be able to tell that one track is being played louder than the other, but subtle sounds in the recording will suddenly start to vibrate their eardrums more forcefully. The result will be that the louder track seems to have more clarity, breadth, and "impact," when in fact the only real difference is that it's being played a little louder.

In order to properly compare the same soundtrack on two different audio formats, they must first be matched to the exact same volume, and this will require a sound level meter to measure precisely. Once that's been accomplished, the audible differences between an uncompressed encoding and a lossless one vanish. Being set for different starting volumes doesn't make one track better or worse in actual quality than another; they just need different volume settings on your receiver.

Does the Hardware Affect the Results?

One last factor to take into consideration: A lossless audio track is really only bit-for-bit identical to its source if it's been decoded and processed correctly. In my review of the Toshiba HD-XA2 HD DVD player, I noted a bug in its audio section that causes bass management for the multi-channel analog outputs to be applied inaccurately when the "Digital Out SPDIF" control is set for Bitstream rather than PCM. That player also seems to apply Dynamic Range Compression whether you want it or not unless all speakers are set to a Small size. Without the required workaround settings (SPDIF at "PCM" and all speakers Small) all movie soundtracks seem to be lacking bass over those audio connections.

If a viewer weren't aware of this problem, a first inclination might be to assume that the Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD audio formats used on HD DVD were poor quality. However, this is actually just a defect in one specific player, and not at all indicative of the audio formats themselves.

Similarly, although Fox Home Entertainment prefers to use DTS-HD Master Audio on its Blu-ray releases, at the present time there isn't much hardware that can decode the full lossless extension to the codec. Most currently-available Blu-ray disc players and A/V receivers instead extract the lossy DTS "core," so the majority of listeners aren't hearing the format to its fullest potential. That's not a knock against Master Audio, but rather a limitation imposed by the playback hardware.

What It Boils Down To

The number of new audio formats on Blu-ray and HD DVD have caused a great deal of consumer confusion, especially with three separate formats (PCM, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD Master Audio) all designed to accomplish the exact same goal -- a perfect replication of the movie's audio master. Apprehensions about lossless compression being inferior to an uncompressed version of the same soundtrack are not borne out by the facts. One methodology may have technical advantages over the other in terms of space savings, but the end result is the same whether the disc you buy has an uncompressed soundtrack or a lossless one. They're both equally good, so sit back and enjoy.

Discuss this article in our forums, or check out other recent discussions.

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Joshua Zyber's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this site, its owners or employees. To view a complete collection of Josh's commentaries for High-Def Digest, click here.

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Hardware Review: Panasonic DMP-BD30

Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 01:03 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber, Panasonic, Hardware (all tags)

Is the first Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player worth your high-def dollar? High-Def Digest reviewer Joshua Zyber puts Panasonic's DMP-BD30 player through its paces.

Review Contents (click linked text below to jump to related section of the review) Cosmetics, Connections, and Setup Video Quality Audio Quality Profile 1.1 Features The Bottom Line: Is It Worth It?

By Joshua Zyber

Hitting store shelves at an MSRP of $499.95, Panasonic's new DMP-BD30 is one of the more affordable Blu-ray players currently on the market, as well as the first to be compliant with the format's Profile 1.1 specification (more on this below). That makes for a pretty winning combination, but does it live up to its potential as a category killer?

Cosmetics, Connections, and Setup

The BD30 is rather small for a Blu-ray model. The front of the unit has a flip-down panel, beneath which is an SD Card slot (useful for displaying JPEG images or creating a slide show). Next to this is another motorized panel that will automatically flip down when the disc tray is ejected. Like many Blu-ray players, positioned above the front LED display is a bright blue light, as if to announce, "Hey, this is Blu-ray!" This one is brighter and more distracting than most. Fortunately, the LED can be dimmed in the player's Setup menu, and the brighter light can be turned off with the setting labeled "SD Card LED Control".

On the back are located the expected assortment of video and audio connections: Composite and S-video (both useless for High Definition, so don't bother with them), Component Video, HDMI, and both Coaxial and Optical S/PDIF. The HDMI output is Version 1.3 compliant (more on this below). There are separate sets of stereo and 5.1 analog audio outputs. Disappointingly, the unit does not have 7.1 analog outputs as found on Panasonic's earlier DMP-BD10 model.

The remote controller is one of the ugliest I've ever owned, with a frustrating button layout featuring no fewer than three separate Menu commands. There's a button for the Pop-up Menus available during Blu-ray playback, a button for jumping straight to the Top Menu (if the disc offers one), and another button called Sub Menu that brings up an on-screen menu of other menu options. Neither the Pop-up Menu nor Top Menu buttons work during Standard-Def DVD playback. The only way to access the main menu on a DVD disc is to hit the Sub Menu button and scroll down to the "Menu" command, which is aggravating and far from intuitive. Also annoying is the player's reliance on the Return button (a command I'd never had to use on any previous player) any time you're done with a menu screen and wish to exit it. At the bottom of the remote are two new buttons called "PIP" and "Secondary Audio" that are specific to Profile 1.1 features.

A word of caution about the initial setup: The player defaults from the factory to a resolution setting of "Auto," which will output 1080p60 video if connected by HDMI, or 1080i if connected by Component. If your HDTV doesn't support 1080p input signals (not all do), connecting by HDMI may lead to either a blank screen or garbled video. The Troubleshooting section of the owner's manual advises pushing the Stop and Play buttons simultaneously to reset the resolution. If that doesn't work, try connecting a set of Component cables for the preliminary installation so that you'll be able to navigate through the setup menus to change the resolution.

The BD30 boots up very quickly for a next-gen player. I clocked the time from power on to disc tray ejection at 20 seconds. Loading time for a disc is not much better than my last Blu-ray player, however. One of my slowest Blu-rays ('Dirty Dancing') took a solid minute from tray retraction to the first appearance of the disc menu. Navigation of disc menus is also rather slow and clunky.

The player's setup screens are pretty straightforward for the most part, though again the unit does require use of the Return command to navigate them. During movie playback, the Display menu will provide information on the video and audio codecs encoded on the disc (a feature we disc reviewers find very helpful), but will not distinguish between the DTS-HD High Resolution and DTS-HD Master Audio formats.

Video Quality

As with all High Definition disc players of either the Blu-ray or HD DVD formats, the DMP-BD30 is perfectly capable of transmitting HD video up to 1080i resolution over the Component Video outputs so long as the software being played allows it. Should a Blu-ray disc be flagged with an Image Constraint Token (ICT), the player will be forced to downscale the video output to 480p Standard Definition. Fortunately, at the time of this writing no Blu-ray discs have yet been burdened with an ICT flag. Per restrictions set by the DVD Forum, Standard-Def DVD playback is always limited to a maximum 480p resolution over Component, and can only be upscaled to higher resolutions over HDMI.

Using the HDMI connection, video may be output at resolutions up to 1080p60 or 1080p24 (the latter on Blu-ray discs only). For more information on the distinction between these two formats, see my earlier What's the Big Deal About 1080p24? column. Selecting the "Auto" resolution setting defaults everything to 1080p60, except when the 1080p24 function is also activated, in which case suitably encoded Blu-ray movies will output at that rate. Standard-Def DVDs or 1080i Blu-ray content will all be upscaled or deinterlaced to 1080p60 unless a different resolution is specifically chosen.

Since my projector is compatible with 1080p24 resolution, I chose that for my testing of Blu-ray movie playback, all of which looked terrific as expected. I've read comments from owners claiming that the BD30 outputs a sharper picture than the Playstation 3 console. I wasn't able to make that comparison myself, but to my eyes video quality looks identical to my previous Sony BDP-S300 player, appearing neither sharper nor softer to any noticeable degree. That's far from a complaint, as I was always perfectly satisfied with the S300 and anticipated no less here.

Picture controls including Contrast, Brightness, Sharpness, and Color are available through the Display menu. Generally speaking, I advise adjusting these in the display device if possible, not the disc player. Also provided are Noise Reduction enhancements. I played around with these a bit, but didn't care for the results. They didn't seem to affect noisy video content much at all, but did visibly soften real picture detail. Use of these functions is likely to come down to a matter of personal taste.

For Standard-Def DVD playback, it's worth noting that 4:3 aspect ratio discs will be automatically pillarboxed into the center of a 16:9 screen. Using the "Screen Aspect" setting in the Sub Menu, the player does have an option to zoom those in non-anamorphic letterbox format to the appropriate dimensions.

I'm saddened to report that deinterlacing of 1080i Blu-ray content (music concerts, nature programs, etc.) and upconversion of Standard-Def DVD are both seriously flawed. After testing with the Silicon Optix 'HQV Benchmark' (in both DVD and Blu-ray varieties) and the 'Spears & Munsil VRS Evaluation & Optimization DVD', the player failed just about every deinterlacing test I threw at it. There were terrible jaggies visible on all diagonal lines, waving flags, racecar tracks, hockey videos, and more. On film-based material with a simple 3:2 cadence, the unit performed acceptably, but any badly-flagged or complicated content just fell apart. This is simply not the unit's strength. I would recommend outputting 1080i Blu-ray content as 1080i and letting the HDTV display handle the deinterlacing, and I would not advise using the DMP-BD30 as a primary upconverting DVD player at all.

Audio Quality

Like all Blu-ray players, the BD30's Coaxial and Optical S/PDIF outputs can be used to transmit standard Dolby Digital and DTS audio, or PCM up to 2-channels. Advanced codecs such as Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD cannot be transmitted over S/PDIF and will be downconverted to standard Dolby or DTS using those connections. For more information on these new audio formats, see my Blu-ray and HD DVD Audio Explained article. The player also has 5.1 analog outputs useful once again for standard Dolby Digital or DTS, as well as PCM 5.1 soundtracks.

In a major disappointment, the BD30 does not incorporate DD+, TrueHD, or DTS-HD decoding, as Panasonic's prior DMP-BD10 model did. The feature was likely left out to meet the lower price point. As a result, this means that those advanced codecs cannot be decoded internally for output over the 5.1 analog connections in full quality. As with S/PDIF, they will be downconverted to standard Dolby or DTS. This also applies to the HDMI output if connected to an A/V receiver by any version of HDMI up to and including 1.2a.

On the other hand, the DMP-BD30 does have an HDMI 1.3 output, and will transmit the raw bitstreams for any of these audio formats to a compatible receiver for external decoding. This requires that the receiver have its own HDMI 1.3 input and the necessary decoders. Since those are relatively new features, anyone with a receiver more than a year old is basically out of luck, and will not be able to listen to the full high-resolution quality of DD+, TrueHD, or DTS-HD without upgrading to a new receiver.

In a positive development, the unit offers full speaker size, delay, and level calibration controls for the analog audio outputs, which gives it a big leg up over comparable models from Samsung and Sony. Strangely, the controls for this are not located in the Audio section of the setup menu, but rather under the "TV/Device Connection" section.

[Important Note: Extensive testing by users revealed that, in its early firmware versions, the DMP-BD30 had incorrect LFE levels when using the HDMI output. PCM soundtracks, or any other audio format decoded to PCM within the player, suffered –5 dB LFE suppression over HDMI. This problem was corrected with Firmware Ver. 1.6, issued on February 25, 2008. Users relying on the HDMI connection for audio are strongly advised to apply the latest firmware update.]

Profile 1.1 Features

For more information on the meaning of each of Blu-ray's hardware Profiles, please see my separate Blu-ray Profiles Explained column. In short, Blu-ray players released before November 1st, 2007 were all classified as hardware Profile 1.0, which did not require inclusion of secondary video or audio decoders for use with interactive Picture-in-Picture bonus features. Blu-ray Profile 1.1 adds those functions, and the DMP-BD30 is the first model compliant with the new specification.

Since this review is being published in advance of the availability of any Blu-ray discs with actual Profile 1.1 features, my coverage of this area must rely on the limited documentation present in the owner's manual. I assume that Picture-in-Picture and similar content will be accessible from the disc menus, as traditional bonus features are. The player also has "PIP" and "Secondary Audio" buttons at the bottom of the remote, so it seems that the video and audio for these features can be brought up independently.

Under the "Digital Audio Output" section of the player's setup menu and in the owner's manual are some confusing notes on how to configure the settings for use with BD-Video Secondary Audio content. The player's menus imply that you should leave the Secondary Audio setting "Off" until needed. If you leave it "On", all high-resolution audio formats including DD+, TrueHD, and DTS-HD will be automatically downsampled to standard Dolby or DTS quality (even if using the HDMI 1.3 bitstream transmission method) so that the secondary content can be mixed in. On the other hand, the owner's manual states "When playing BD-Video without secondary audio or clicking sounds, the audio is output as the same format as if 'BD-Video Secondary Audio' was set to 'Off'." What isn't clear is whether the high-resolution audio on Profile 1.1 discs will be downgraded automatically only when you turn on those features, or regardless of whether you use them or not. The whole thing seems a little overly complicated for its own good, but hopefully will be cleared up once the first discs start coming out.

The Bottom Line: Is It Worth It?

Each potential buyer will judge the importance of Blu-ray Profile 1.1 based on their own personal priorities. Previous Blu-ray models will continue to play all discs and traditional bonus features, so if you don't find support for interactive content all that important, this feature may not necessarily be a deal-breaker.

In any case, for the first Profile 1.1 compliant Blu-ray player, the Panasonic DMP-BD30 is a well-priced deal that offers excellent video quality on Blu-ray discs and the capability to bitstream advanced audio codecs to a compatible receiver (still a rare feature in Blu-ray players). On the other hand, it lacks the ability to decode those audio codecs internally as prior Panasonic models could, and has very poor deinterlacing and DVD upconversion quality. The BD30 isn't quite a perfect Blu-ray player, but it performs strongly in core areas and rates a worthy recommendation.

Discuss this review in our forums, or check out other recent discussions.

Got a question you'd like to see Josh Zyber answer in a future column? Send it to us via our Feedback form.

Joshua Zyber's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this site, its owners or employees. To view a complete collection of Josh's commentaries for High-Def Digest, click here.

Discs mentioned in this article: (Click for specs and reviews)

Dirty Dancing (20th Anniversary Edition) (Blu-ray)

Earlier on High-Def Digest:

High-Def FAQ: Blu-ray Profiles Explained (Nov 23, 2007)

High-Def FAQ: Blu-ray and HD DVD Audio Explained (Oct 12, 2007)

High-Def FAQ: What's the Big Deal About 1080p24? (Sep 28, 2007)

High-Def FAQ: Is HDMI 1.3 Really Necessary? (Aug 10, 2007)

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High-Def FAQ: Blu-ray Profiles Explained

Fri Nov 23, 2007 at 03:35 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: As part of his twice-monthly column here at High-Def Digest, from time to time Josh Zyber answers frequently asked questions related to High-Definition and both Blu-ray on HD DVD. This week: With the first Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player hitting store shelves, Josh breaks down what all this talk of "Profiles" really means for consumers.

By Joshua Zyber

It's been a year and a half since the first Blu-ray player was introduced to market, and in that time the Blu-ray format has certainly proven capable of delivering exceptional picture and sound quality, as well as traditional bonus features such as audio commentaries, video featurettes, and documentaries. Most discs utilize pop-up menus accessible during a movie, and some titles offer a measure of interactivity in terms of branched-off video content or software-based games and the like. However, while the Blu-ray format spec also makes provisions for advanced interactive features including Picture-in-Picture video or web-enabled content, support for these functions was not initially mandatory in the player hardware. Instead, Blu-ray players are divided into three major categories called "Profiles," a term that's taken on added relevance recently due to the release of the first Profile 1.1 compliant player, the Panasonic DMP-BD30.

Blu-ray Profiles break down as follows:

• The basic Profile 1.0 (also known as the Grace Period Profile) available on all Blu-ray models released before November 1st, 2007 includes neither a secondary video decoder nor an internet connection.


• Profile 1.1 (also called the Final Standard Profile or "Bonus View") adds decoders for secondary PiP video and audio, plus 256 MB of local storage capability.


• Finally, Profile 2.0 (or "BD-Live") includes those secondary video and audio decoders, a larger 1 GB of local storage capability, and an internet connection.

As can be gleaned from its description as the "Final Standard Profile," 1.1 is the new mandatory base requirement for all Blu-ray player models released after the November 1st cutoff date (older models can continue to be sold as-is). Profile 2.0 is an optional enhancement and is unlikely to become a mandatory standard. At present, there has been no announced timeframe for the availability of Profile 2.0 hardware.

Almost all Blu-ray players on the market have gone through a firmware update or two since their release, and some owners may wonder whether their existing units can be upgraded to a higher Profile. Sadly, that does not appear to be the case for any standalone disc players, which lack the decoding chips in their hardware needed for PiP or the internet ports needed for BD-Live. A simple firmware update won't cover it. On the other hand, there has been speculation that Sony's Playstation 3 console with its powerful Cell processor and internet connection (used currently for video games) may be updatable in this regard. Hopefully that's the case, but at the time of this writing we're still awaiting confirmation from Sony.

[Update: Sony officially updated the Playstation 3 to Profile 1.1 compliance on 12/17/07.]

The first discs to incorporate Bonus View/Profile 1.1 features are currently scheduled to hit store shelves in January 2008. To date, announced titles include 'Resident Evil: Extinction' from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 'Sunshine' from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, and 'War' from Lionsgate Entertainment. All Profile 1.1 discs should function normally in existing Grace Period Profile players as far as movie playback and traditional bonus features go (meaning that older players will not necessarily become "obsolete"), but the new 1.1 enhanced features will not be accessible without a new player.

It should go without saying that each potential buyer's own personal priorities will significantly affect their feelings toward all this Profile hoopla. Previous Blu-ray models will continue to play all discs and traditional bonus features, so if you don't find interactive or web-enabled content critical to your movie enjoyment, these features may not necessarily seem all that important. Personally, I find the whole notion of separate hardware Profiles needlessly confusing and not in the best interest of consumers. Whether intentionally designed that way or not, it leaves the impression that the manufacturers are trying to force existing Blu-ray early adopters into upgrading their equipment only a year into the format's life cycle, just to gain some new features that should have been included from the beginning.

Nevertheless, that's the way it worked out. With the release of the Panasonic DMP-BD30 player, Blu-ray Profile 1.1 hardware is now available, and enhanced disc software will be coming soon. We here at High-Def Digest love to play with new technology, and look forward to covering the latest developments in interactive movie content.

Discuss this article in our forums, or check out other recent discussions.

Got a question you'd like to see Josh Zyber answer in a future column? Send it to us via our Feedback form.

Joshua Zyber's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this site, its owners or employees. To view a complete collection of Josh's commentaries for High-Def Digest, click here.

Discs mentioned in this article: (Click for specs and reviews)

Resident Evil: Extinction (Blu-ray)

Sunshine (Blu-ray)

War (Blu-ray)

3:10 to Yuma (2007) (Blu-ray)

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Commentary: Living in Fear of the Niche

Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 04:30 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: A long-time movie buff and video collector from laserdisc to DVD and beyond, Joshua Zyber is a veteran disc reviewer, and an enthusiastic supporter of all things High Definition. In his twice-monthly High-Def Digest column, Josh discusses a broad range of topics of interest to other early adopters.

By Joshua Zyber

It should go without saying that we here at High-Def Digest believe that High Definition, in one form or another, is the way of the future. I have no doubt that some day our current classification of "HDTV" will be the minimum quality standard for all television broadcasts and home video products. Infomercials, religious programming, high school kids airing their homemade wrestling videos on obscure Public Access stations in the middle of the night -- everything will be High Definition. As technology moves forward, progress is inevitable. When that time comes, we'll all look back at Standard Definition NTSC or PAL with a sense of nostalgia and perhaps a twinge of embarrassment, the way we think of Black & White TVs now. Our grandkids will have no frame of reference when we tell them stories about watching television in the olden days at the turn of the century. How quaint it will all seem.

But we're not there yet, and it's going to be a while.

In the meantime, we have to deal with the High Definition format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD, each video disc format vying to establish itself as the next-generation successor to DVD. The fastest-growing, most popular consumer electronic product in history has been a tough act to follow, and the competition between these two adversaries has generated an enormous amount of corporate hype, controversy, and bitter infighting, all of which has spread right to the consumer sector. Not only do we have executives from multi-national electronics corporations and major Hollywood movie studios sniping at each other in tersely-worded press releases, now even the public has gotten involved, picking sides like fans of rival sports teams -- cheering on their favorite, organizing web campaigns to proselytize its benefits, and attacking anyone with an opposing viewpoint. It's not enough to buy your favorite movies in High Definition; you have to buy them on the right High Definition disc type. The fact that both formats are virtually identical in terms of quality and features doesn't seem to matter. If you're not a soldier out there fighting for your side in the format war, you must be the enemy.

As far as I'm concerned, the whole thing seems pretty silly. At the end of the day, I just want to watch movies in High Definition. Naturally, it would probably make life a lot easier and less confusing for everyone if all titles could be watched on a single format, but it didn't work out that way. As a result, I bought players of both types so that I can keep up with the broadest selection of content, and I don't regret it for a minute. So long as the movies keep coming, I'm glad to have both. To look at it a different way, the format war has actually been a tremendous benefit to consumers, forcing both sides to increase quality and drive down prices to stay competitive with one another. Imagine where we might be right now if one side had rolled over and played dead at the start of all this; we'd be stuck watching sub-par quality software on players starting at $1,500 MSRP, with nothing pushing that status to change.

Nonetheless, if you listen to the rhetoric, the format war has brought nothing but misery and suffering, and if dragged out any further can only serve to destroy our dreams of a High Definition future. The argument goes something like this: Consumers are so confused by the format war and afraid of picking the "losing" side that they won't buy either one until the whole mess is sorted out. If they don't buy either one, both sides lose, companies stop making them, and High Definition home video dies out entirely. This conclusion seems to be supported by the slow adoption rates both formats are currently facing, and it kind of sounds logical, doesn't it?

The problem is that this argument just doesn't ring true. While the format war has undoubtedly created some measure of concern and reluctance in the marketplace, it is simply not the biggest impediment to High Definition adoption. The real roadblock is consumer apathy. By and large, most people out there are happy with their DVD players, and don't understand all the fuss about High Definition. A significant number of them believe that DVDs are already High Definition and have no concept of why they should buy a new player for discs in different packaging. Yes, it's true that sales of HDTVs have soared over the last few years, but that has more to do with the size of the sets than anything else. Most people are impressed by a big screen, not the resolution or picture quality.

Let me relay a little story here. Recently, my wife and I were visiting some friends who'd bought a new plasma TV and were eager to show it off to us. Their 10 year-old son insisted that we watch 'Pirates of the Caribbean' on DVD with them. The set was a fairly large screen, certainly bigger than anything they'd ever owned before. However, they had not done anything that could remotely be called "calibration" with it. The brightness level was cranked up so high that there was no such thing as the color black on screen, just a milky gray. They'd only had the set for a few months and already developed burn-in marks from the letterbox bars on DVDs, and for some reason the picture pulsed every so often, filling the whole screen with nasty pixelation artifacts. As if that weren't enough, they had their DVD player connected by Composite Video cable, and set for 4:3 aspect ratio mode, so the 2.35:1 movie image on 'Pirates' was squished down into a tiny strip in the middle of the screen.

As a dyed-in-the-wool videophile, I naturally found the whole situation appalling, but as the movie started my wife gave me a dirty look that said, "Not one word. Keep your mouth shut and pretend to enjoy yourself!" Of course, she was right. Our friends were so proud of their new purchase that it would have been unbearably rude of me to criticize. After the seemingly-endless movie, I politely asked to use the DVD player remote for a minute to "tweak" a setting for them, during which I mercifully fixed the aspect ratio setting to 16:9 mode. I quickly checked a scene to verify that the change took, only to be greeted with the response that, "We don't see any difference." Indeed, they never noticed that there was any problem before, and were perfectly happy with the squished, stretched, and obviously distorted picture they'd been watching.

Is there a home theater fan reading this without a similar story? We've all faced it, the blank stare of indifference and the assumption that so long as the TV screen is big that everything on it must be High Definition. Out there in the general populace, there's no great consternation about the HD format war, because the vast majority of people are totally oblivious to it. They don't know the difference between Blu-ray and HD DVD, couldn't tell you what either one offers over standard DVD, and just plain don't care in any case. DVD is perfectly satisfying for them. High Definition is not a priority in their lives, and one side "winning" the format war is not going to drive them to buy it any more than they are now.

It's time to face the fact that we in the High Definition community are a specialized niche market. And honestly, there's nothing wrong with that. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard the complaint that one of these formats had better win quickly and take over the DVD market, or we'll be faced with just another Laserdisc situation all over again. The comment amuses me. Sure, Laserdisc was a niche format that never achieved mass market penetration in its day, but it also lasted for over 20 years as the highest quality home video format available at the time, and saw every major new movie released on it. I wish both Blu-ray and HD DVD that much success.

We've already overcome the biggest obstacle that made movie collecting on Laserdisc so difficult, its high prices. Thanks to the format war, we now have reasonably priced hardware and software on both HD DVD and Blu-ray. With Blu-ray players moving down to the $399 range and HD DVD players below $199, we can buy one of each for less than the price of a decent Laserdisc player back in the day. Although it can be argued that $600 is a lot of money in many aspects of life, the home theater hobby has never been cheap. I have a feeling that most reading this article spent more than that (perhaps significantly more) on their surround sound receiver or speakers.

Outside the confines of the boardrooms of the corporations making these products, what difference does it make to the rest of us as consumers whether these formats achieve mass market penetration? Is the fear that both formats will die if they don't take over from DVD? Even within the movie studios releasing these discs, I doubt anyone expects or wants High-Def media to fully replace DVD. The DVD format is cheap to produce and brings in a lot of money. These days, most movies earn more on DVD than they do in theaters. Why would anyone want to kill that cash cow? No, what the studios really want from High Definition is to supplement DVD income, not to merely replace it. Two revenue streams are better than one. The adoption rates for both Blu-ray and HD DVD have been slow, but they are growing, and it's perfectly conceivable that both will eventually be profitable enough to satisfy the movie studio accountants as to the viability of their investments.

The video game market has survived and thrived for many years despite the presence of multiple formats. Why can't the High Definition market do the same? Peaceful coexistence should be possible. The split in studio support means that neither format will have 100% of movies that any given customer may want, but by the same token each video game console has its own highly-desirable exclusive titles. Hard core gamers buy every console, while casual gamers look at the selection available and pick the format that has more titles appealing to their taste. The same rationale applies here. If you need to have every movie in High Definition, it will be worth your time to buy both Blu-ray and HD DVD players. If that's not an option, look through the following lists and decide which one offers more of what you personally like:

Blu-ray Historical Release List
Blu-ray Upcoming Release List

HD DVD Historical Release List
HD DVD Upcoming Release List

Both formats already have hundreds of titles available, across a wide variety of genres: drama, comedy, action, family, classics, science fiction, Western, horror, and everything in between, with plenty more aggressively slated for future release. Even if you can't necessarily get every single movie you want on one format, surely no matter which one you pick will supply plenty of content to keep you busy. And if that's just not satisfying enough, what's the alternative? Stick with regular DVD and stay limited to blurry Standard Definition forever? Where's the benefit in that?

Loudmouth pundits will whine that the format war has been a miserable disaster that will doom High Definition to remain a niche, a scenario they want you to fear as the worst of all possible outcomes. That's a load of bunk and I don't buy it for a second. If the movies keep coming at reasonable prices (those who feel High-Def media prices are unreasonable clearly never bought a $125 Laserdisc "Special Edition"), why should anyone not specifically employed by one of these companies be upset that their format is just a niche? These products are meant to be enjoyed, not to have their weekly sales statistics scrutinized with ruthless obsession. Are we so insecure that we need mainstream popularity to validate our hobby? Are we in this because we love movies, or because we want to boast of owning the latest "hot" new toy?

I'm in it for the movies, in the best quality I can get them. I believe that High Definition is the future, that it will eventually take over as the default standard for all home video. But that time hasn't come yet, and for now we're in a niche market. Mass popularity or not, High Definition quality is here right now. It's available, it's affordable, and I'll gladly take it on whichever formats give it to me.

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Commentary: Specs vs. Reality

Fri Oct 26, 2007 at 04:22 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: A long-time movie buff and collector of discs from laserdisc to DVD, Joshua Zyber is a veteran disc reviewer, and an enthusiastic supporter of all things High Definition. In his twice-monthly High-Def Digest column, Josh discusses a broad range of topics of interest to other early adopters.

By Joshua Zyber

One of the inevitable side effects of the High Definition revolution is that the advanced video and audio technology used in the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats tends to bring out the know-it-all tech geek in home theater fans. Sometimes this can be a great benefit, when knowledgeable users band together to analyze specific technical deficiencies that have occurred and share their feedback with the parties responsible, hopefully leading to improvements in the future. We've seen some of this at various points during the format war. Early Blu-ray releases such as 'The Fifth Element' exhibited obvious visual deficiencies due to weak source materials and poor digital compression encoding. Likewise, HD DVD catalog titles from Universal have been hit-or-miss in quality, many of them recycled from dated and problematic video masters (like 'In Good Company', with its ghastly edge enhancement artifacts). Reviews published on this site and others were negative, and buyers voiced their displeasure to the studios, eventually resulting in improved mastering on subsequent releases. 'The Fifth Element' was even remastered in significantly better quality as a direct result of owner feedback. That wouldn't have happened had no one spoken up about it.

Generally speaking, the High Definition studios, knowing the intense scrutiny their work is placed under, have maintained a much higher standard of quality on recent releases (with some notable exceptions, of course). Just imagine what might have happened had the public been apathetic and merely accepted whatever shoddy treatment they were handed. In this case, the voice of the people resulted in a better end product for everyone to enjoy.

Unfortunately, the above example is a best case scenario. On the flip side of that coin, we have countless cases of agenda-driven individuals attempting to use a partial understanding of technical matters as a bludgeon in arguments supposedly "proving" the superiority of one format over the other. Anyone who's spent time browsing home theater discussion forums has suffered through an endless string of debates about how the HD DVD format "sucks" because its discs can only store 30 gb of content, while Blu-ray discs can store up to 50 gb, and therefore must be amazingly superior. Never mind that HD DVD has time and again proven capable of delivering exceptional picture and sound quality, plus copious bonus material, easily equaling even the best available on Blu-ray. At the same time, there are others who point to the occasional Blu-ray encoded with MPEG-2 compression as being "unacceptable", even though MPEG-2 can certainly achieve excellent results when given enough room to breathe (witness 'Black Hawk Down'). To some people, the actual quality presented to them is irrelevant if they don't like the sound of the specs on paper.

This "specs above all else" mentality has reared its ugly head again recently with the release of 'Transformers' on HD DVD, a title that delivers stunning video and audio, as well as a number of innovative interactive features. What could possibly be the problem here? Well, the soundtrack is only encoded in Dolby Digital Plus format, not a lossless codec such as Dolby TrueHD or an uncompressed one like PCM. In his review of the disc for this site, our Peter Bracke gave the DD+ track a perfect "5" for audio quality and said of it that, "Directionality, imaging, accuracy of localized effects, and the sheer depth of the soundfield are all fantastic stuff." Nonetheless, in the minds of many, this disc is a huge failure, and its soundtrack a pathetic disgrace for not including a TrueHD or PCM option.

I should mention at this point that at least one working Hollywood sound mixer has voiced his opinion that, when played back on his professional dubbing stage, well-mastered Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks encoded at the high 1.5 Mb/s bit rate that Paramount uses can be audibly transparent to the studio masters, when tested on movies that he mixed himself and would presumably know better than anyone else. But what use is the informed opinion of an expert in the field when it's easier to just point to the specs list on the back of a disc's packaging to make conclusive statements about matters of quality? In the forum on this site, a number of readers have made proclamations such as, "Compressed audio is just not acceptable these days" and "Whether you can tell the difference or not is irrelevant."

The disc's audio being indistinguishable from its studio master is "irrelevant"? Even with just a Dolby Digital Plus track, the 'Transformers' disc rated the highest score for audio quality that we can give. What more could we demand from it? It's absolutely terrific, but it's just not absolutely terrific enough if the packaging doesn't have a listing for TrueHD or PCM, even when it's likely impossible for human ears to tell the difference? What kind of argument is that?

The lossy compressed audio formats offered by Dolby and DTS use perceptual encoding techniques to filter out data from the studio masters in order to conserve disc space. The intent of perceptual encoding is that the data removed should consist mainly of either frequencies beyond the range of human hearing or frequencies that would normally be masked by other frequencies in the track anyway. With the most heavily compressed formats, including basic Dolby Digital and DTS (the standards on regular DVD), often additional frequencies within the range of hearing are affected, and this has resulted in much variability in sound quality. However, Dolby Digital Plus, especially the 1.5 Mb/s variety found on a disc like the 'Transformers' HD DVD, uses much more efficient encoding techniques at a very high bit rate. The people who actually make these movie soundtracks have found it pretty impressive, and yet average home listeners seem to believe with absolute certainty that the home theater speakers in their living rooms would be capable of resolving with precision the mathematical difference between a high bit rate Dolby Digital Plus track and a lossless one, and that their golden audiophile ears would also be capable of discerning it. Personally, I would like to put these people to a properly-controlled blind test, where all of the audio levels have been carefully matched to the same volume, and then see how well their hearing fares.

I would not claim that all DD+ tracks are flawless or transparent to their masters; it does take some effort to encode them properly. But to dismiss the format out of hand simply because the soundtrack isn't labeled as lossless or uncompressed demonstrates an ignorance of the technology being used. If the audio codec alone were the only important criteria in sound quality, how could it be that a disc like 'Dinosaur' with a 48 kHz / 24-bit PCM 5.1 track would sound so underwhelming? With specs like those, why isn't that disc a spectacular audio showcase? Somehow I doubt you'll find too many critical listeners who would ever claim that 'Dinosaur' sounds better than 'Transformers', but based on the specs, shouldn't it? Perhaps it's time we all realize that there's more to quality than the specs can tell us.

Yet we see the same thinking applied to matters of video. How many more arguments must there be about the different video compression codecs? Proponents on one side proclaim the infallible superiority of VC-1 above all other options, while those opposed insist that VC-1 is garbage and only AVC MPEG-4 is any good. Both camps attempt to prove their point by capturing screen shots on their computers, which they run through Photoshop to crop, zoom, filter, and distort in all manner of convoluted ways in order to locate individual errant pixels, completely invisible to the naked eye in the normal course of movie watching, and heartily declare their victory in the debate.

The truth of the matter is that all video compression codecs have the same purpose, to accurately represent the source using a fraction of the storage space. In the hands of a good operator, both VC-1 and AVC are more than capable of achieving this goal. Even the dated MPEG-2 codec has been known to deliver excellent results (owners of the now-defunct D-Theater tape format sure didn't seem to have any problem with it). There are plenty of examples of "reference quality" transfers using any of the above, from 'King Kong' (VC-1) to 'Final Fantasy' (AVC) to 'Kingdom of Heaven' (MPEG-2). In all cases, the skill of the compressionist and the quality of the work is more important than the codec used to get there.

It's also more important than the bit rate. As far as I'm concerned, Sony's decision to incorporate a bit rate meter in their PS3 Blu-ray player is one of the worst things to have ever happened to the home theater hobby. Because of that one seemingly-innocuous and frequently-inaccurate data display, now just about anyone, no matter how technologically ignorant, can believe themselves to be experts in the field of video reproduction, based on nothing more than whether their bit rate meters read a high number or a low one -- as if that number were even relevant. The whole point of video compression is to squeeze a High Definition picture into as little space as possible. A compressionist who's maintained a high-quality picture with a low bit rate has done an excellent job, but that's a point lost on most consumers, who assume that a good picture needs a high bit rate, regardless of what they actually see on their TV screens. The bit rate alone is a meaningless statistic and says nothing about the quality of the compression work. It is equally possible to create a lousy video image with a high bit rate, or a great image with a low bit rate, depending on the complexity of the content and how well the work is done. I found it extremely amusing to read complaints about the low bit rate used on 'TMNT', a disc with a razor sharp and amazingly detailed picture that some owners nonetheless decried as "soft" against the evidence their own eyes gave them, for no reason other than an ill-founded assumption that the picture would have been even sharper if the bit rate meter spiked a little higher. How would they know? Have they compared it against the studio master?

This misconception has reached such heights of absurdity that certain viewers have started petitions demanding that Warner Bros. stop using the same video encodes on HD DVD and Blu-ray, and instead "maximize" the bit rates on their Blu-ray releases if the extra disc space is available. But for what purpose? Video compression doesn't work on a linear scale. Using advanced codecs like VC-1 and AVC, there are diminishing returns above a certain point, and throwing more bits at a picture that doesn't require them accomplishes nothing more than to make the meter number go up. As time goes on, compression tools and techniques become more efficient, requiring even less space to achieve visual transparency to the original master. Warner Bros. has many times over demonstrated outstanding results within the 30 gb limit of HD DVD, even on very long films such as the 'Troy: Director's Cut', a movie that runs 3 1/2 hours and yet fits comfortably on a 30 gb disc with beautiful picture quality, despite also squeezing in a lossless Dolby TrueHD audio track and a bunch of supplements. So what if the Blu-ray edition has an extra 20 gb of space available? Are we watching the movie or watching the bit rate meter? If there were no bit rate meter, would anyone have a legitimate basis to complain?

Back when they were supporting both High-Def formats, Paramount actually did what these users are demanding. They authored every movie separately for HD DVD and Blu-ray, each maximized to its format's potential. And what were the results? The same movie looked visibly identical on the bit rate maximized Blu-ray as it did on the lower bit rate HD DVD. Once again, the quality of the compression trumped other considerations regarding tech specs or bit rate.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to imply that all HD DVDs and Blu-rays are perfect now. Video artifacts do occur, and the studios have been known to rest on their laurels and allow shoddy work to slip through. Sometimes disc space really does strain the limits of what a studio wants to include on a High-Def title. It's important to scrutinize their results, lest we return to a state where the original 'Fifth Element' Blu-ray is considered acceptable. But it's equally important to understand what we're actually looking at. Many times, the "artifacts" picked apart by viewers have nothing to do with video compression or encoding whatsoever, but rather are issues found in the source, such as natural film grain, which isn't a flaw at all. Yes, a soft picture can be the result of poor compression or excessive filtering, but it can also be the result of soft focus photography. A heavily-grainy image could be overcompressed, or it could be stylistically intentional. Not every movie is photographed to look exactly the same as every other, and even within a film certain shots or scenes may look different than others. We must understand what a movie is supposed to look like before we can judge how well a video disc reproduces it. Being moderately proficient at manipulating still images in Photoshop does not necessarily qualify someone as an expert in the art of filmmaking.

I'm not suggesting that viewers should relax their standards or accept substandard quality as "good enough" when it's really not, but the technical specs alone simply do not tell the whole story, and over-emphasizing them is a matter of misplaced priorities. We should judge these discs by the actual quality they deliver, not by misleading statistics like the bit rate or the specs listing on the packaging. Surely, that can't be too much to ask.

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Joshua Zyber's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this site, its owners or employees. To view a complete collection of Josh's commentaries for High-Def Digest, click here.

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High-Def FAQ: Blu-ray and HD DVD Audio Explained

Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 04:37 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: As part of his twice-monthly column here at High-Def Digest, from time to time, Josh Zyber answers frequently asked questions related to High-Definition and both Blu-ray on HD DVD. This week: Josh provides a comprehensive rundown of all the audio formats currently available on next-gen disc.

Commentary by Joshua Zyber

If there's one request we get here at High-Def Digest more than any other, it's to help readers sort through all the confusion swirling around the new audio formats that come on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. It seems that most early adopters can easily identify the benefit of a High Definition picture over Standard-Def DVD, but making sense of the difference between Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD, or PCM and TrueHD is a lot harder to get a good grasp on. It doesn't help that the companies who designed these sound formats (Dolby and DTS) haven't always been clear in their labeling or naming conventions.

A Quick Recap of the DVD Situation

On Standard-Def DVD, there are essentially only two competing sound formats to choose from: Dolby Digital or DTS. Both can accommodate movie soundtracks from monaural 1.0 to multi-channel 5.1, and in some cases add a matrixed center back channel as well (DTS also offers a discrete 6.1 option on selected titles). A small number of discs (mostly music concerts) may provide 2-channel PCM audio, but those are few and far between. As a rule of thumb, it's Dolby or DTS. The DVD spec requires all discs to contain either a Dolby Digital or PCM soundtrack as the base standard (pretty much everyone uses Dolby), and all DVD players are required to decode both. DTS is optional, and is generally considered (fairly or not) an a