Apple's iTunes 9 rumored to have Blu-ray, social media support - Page 7

Considering the maneuvering Toshiba did to keep Sony out of the DVD licensing group, and all of the work they did (including payments to a couple of studios to drop support for B-R) to kill B-R, and then their defiant statements when they first were forced to kill HD-DVD about how they would NOT make B-R players etc, etc, this sudden, and unexpected announcement, was an embarrassment for them.

Asian leaders don't like losing face over reversing decisions. And just in case someone decides to get all politically correct over that statement, don't. This has been written about to death in financial journals, the NY Times, the WSJ, and plenty of other places.

Really? That must have changed. My understanding was that it was illegal to combine the decryption software that removes the css encryption and the actual ripping software. Last time I ripped a DVD I had to decrypt it to an image on my hard drive, then convert the image to a desktop video file like quicktime or m4v. It's good to hear if that has changed.

Not everything is shot on 35mm film.


Regardless how much money you spend, you can't do wonders with less than 10Mbit MPEG-2 compression. I own very few DVD's, so I couldn't find any outstanding examples. The DC sequence in Batman Begins is an example.

With the legality part, there is a valid argument that it is legal to make a copy for personal backup and that has been a sticking point.

I think the digital copy idea is great - no ripping necessary, I just think that its BS to have to pay extra for it.

The problem is, and it's been stated quite clearly, that you aren't allowed to break the encryption in order to make that "back-up" copy.

Your right to the copy is superseded by your lack of right to break encryption.

There isn't any controversy over this. There are complaints, but that's different.

Most of everything in the 90's was. Through the 70's and 80's some half hour sitcoms were shot on standard def video. But by in large the far majority of scripted television since the dawn of televison was shot on 35mm film.




Everyone is watching 8 bit at home, there isn't much need to go beyond that. Plus televisions have gotten a lot better at decoding and displying low bit rate video.

It's interesting though that while SD video is 8 bit in the recordings, mostly these days, the players are 10 bit.

I forget, is B-R recording 10 bit? HDMI 1.3a is hi-bit depth for B-R.

From what I've seen BR is 8 bit on the disc, some players have 10 bit over sampling to help improve the color. I guess in theory that helps but it's not the same as having 10 bit video thru the whole chain.

10 bit video is a lot to work with.

Just for clarity I never have and never will download pirated films/software. I know you didn't say that but I just wanted to be clear.

To return to your point, some people are more aware of these issues than others. I live in the UK and our terrestrial (non-cable/non-satellite) DVB broadcasts are horrendously low bandwidth. I have neighbours who cannot see the deficiencies of the image quality.

Some people can hear the difference between 256kbps LAME encoded MP3 and the original source material. I cannot (except perhaps for some "difficult test samples").

I can certainly see the inadequacies of the bit rate used on DVDs and also appreciate the higher resolution of Blu Ray disks. Even commercially produced DVDs have noticeable artefacts (google Edge Enhancement for example) which may or may not bother a viewer (I find them infuriatingly distracting, thank God I don't have a projector). These anomalies are still found on Blu Ray copies but to much lesser extent (read some reviews on http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/ to see the sort of issues that can exist on transfers).

To be honest Blu Ray transfers are generally excellent and it most likely going to be excessive Edge Enhancement, poor source material (those old tape reals aren't always in the best shape), or digital processing. Attempts to remove grain to make things look more polished for modern audiences that are increasingly used to CGI, digital sources, and Pixar films are the biggest problem these days. Oh and I am not entirely happy with grain added to films, but don't mind as long as it is soft.

Anyway, sadly many people cannot see these things. Many people don't play there Apocalypse Now Redux DVDs and see the banding and compression artefacts during the helicopter scenes near the start. For these people DVD is doubtless enough until they get a big enough TV that it starts to annoy even them.

Finally, you mention film sources in a few posts. Have a look at The Godfather box set on Blu Ray or read this review http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1613...ollection.html it gives you a good idea about the challenges of a lot of classic source material.