PQ of DVDs good enough for you?

[kalrith]

The following evaluation is in regards to the first comparison link. It only looks at the size of the pictures on my computer monitor and does not take into account the effect that the lower-resolution pictures might have on the comparison.

I sit 18" from a 19" CRT (~17.9" viewable). The images on my screen are 5.6" wide. According to this calculator, that gives me a viewing angle of 17.7 degrees. If I were watching this on a 50" TV, a viewing distance of 11.7 feet would provide the same viewing angle. Roughly 10 feet from a 42" TV would also give the same viewing angle.

If you sit that far from your TV, then you're not going to notice as much difference between SD and HD, let alone 720p and 1080p. If I had a 50" 1080p TV, I would want to sit about 6-7 feet from it, giving me a viewing angle of roughly 30 degrees. At that distance, I'm certain I'd be able to tell the difference between HD DVDs and SD DVDs.

 

[Slick5150]

Originally posted by: DBL

Originally posted by: Slick5150
Actually, I find the first comparison to be far more of a "real world" comparison. You're never sitting 3 inches away from the screen like you are looking at the photo on your computer to compare them. Of course its going to look better there at those resolutions. The 5th element photos are not screen captures downsampled, they are photos taken by a digital camera from a distance you'd be looking at the screen from.

"In case you're wondering, these screen shots were taken with a Canon 1D MkII off a 7 foot wide Syntra board painted with Video Goo. The camera settings were identical for every shot and only the most conservative contrast adjustment in Photoshop was applied in the same way for all shots. The crops were done in the camera, and all shots started off as 8MB and reduced to the same proportions in Photoshop by the same method."

So yes, of course staring at a zoomed in full resolution photo is going to make the HD content look far better, the point is, when you're watching in 15 feet away from your screen, you are going to notice those differences nearly as much.

the difference is substantial provided that you have the proper equipment and are within the recommended seating distance for your screen size.

Read the above sentence again. Distance and screen sized are related. Sure, the differences diminish as you move further away provided screen size stays constant but no one is disputing that.

Your comparison was terrible. What good is a 12,20 or 200mp camera if I am resizing to an image size of .13mp? If that 1D shot was resized to 1080p, assuming a sharp lens, you would see the tremendous difference that is apparent in the other comparison and which can also be seen by a person sitting at the proper recommended distance.

Christ. For the last time, I AM NOT DISPUTING THE FACT THAT THE HD PICTURE IS BETTER.. Of course it is. My point is that to me, there is a huge difference between "noticeable improvements" (as the reviewers in the comparison noted) and "improvements large enough to justify the costs at this point". If I can once again point you to the subject line of this thread, it does not say "Do DVDs have the same picture quality as HD?" If you disagree and want to invest in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, then that's your choice and I'm sure you'll enjoy them. I am making the choice to sit this one out for awhile.

 

[JAG87]

You guys are all spot on with the resolution and color argument, but quite amazingly you all missed a very important aspect of why HD is so much better than DVD.

And that is that H.264 and VC-1 can use 4x4 pixel transform blocks rather than 8x8 used by MPEG-2. Add that to the fact that there are 6x more pixels on a 1080p image than a 480p image, and it becomes easy to see why HD is day and night from SD.

Still don't get it?

1920/4 = 480 blocks
1080/4 = 270 blocks
480x270 = 129600 compression blocks
720/8 = 90 blocks
480/8 = 60 blocks
90x60 = 5400 compression blocks

129600/5400 = 24x better compression, and thats without taking into account that the new codecs have far better quantization matrices and much higher bit rates.

See now? Its not all about the resolution and the pretty colors. Codecs make all the difference until we have enough space to store uncompressed digital streams.

 

[DBL]

Originally posted by: Slick5150
Christ. For the last time, I AM NOT DISPUTING THE FACT THAT THE HD PICTURE IS BETTER.. Of course it is. My point is that to me, there is a huge difference between "noticeable improvements" (as the reviewers in the comparison noted) and "improvements large enough to justify the costs at this point". If I can once again point you to the subject line of this thread, it does not say "Do DVDs have the same picture quality as HD?" If you disagree and want to invest in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, then that's your choice and I'm sure you'll enjoy them. I am making the choice to sit this one out for awhile.

For the record, I don't own Blu-ray or HD-DVD currently. The point is that your comparison was terrible as it would negate any advantage 1080p has. Someone would be much better off loading the other comparison on their HD TV and moving back to their normal seating distance. They could then determine whether Blu-ray or HD-DVD is worth it to them. How would you use your comparison to decide?

 

[Slick5150]

I didn't use that comparison alone to decide, I hooked up a friend's HD-DVD player to my TV and we watched a couple movies, then did a direct comparison between my upscaled King Kong DVD and his King Kong HD-DVD. We both agreed the HD-DVD looked better, but neither of us thought that all of a sudden the DVD looked like crap. The DVD still looked really good.

And I'm someone that ran out and bought a DVD player for like $600 or something back in 1997 because that offered a huge improvement over what VHS offered at the time.

The stuff that I find tempting about HD-DVD is like on the 300 disc where you can flip back and forth between the final version and the version without any special effects added. That's a pretty cool feature that you couldn't pull off an a DVD due to space issues.

 

[JAG87]

Originally posted by: Slick5150

The stuff that I find tempting about HD-DVD is like on the 300 disc where you can flip back and forth between the final version and the version without any special effects added. That's a pretty cool feature that you couldn't pull off an a DVD due to space issues.

If thats all then clearly you haven't heard the TrueHD/PCM track of 300. Its like 30x better than the Dolby Digital Plus track, never mind the regular Dolby Digital on the DVD. I am not kidding, I have never been more serious in my life.

 

[Slick5150]

Originally posted by: JAG87

Originally posted by: Slick5150

The stuff that I find tempting about HD-DVD is like on the 300 disc where you can flip back and forth between the final version and the version without any special effects added. That's a pretty cool feature that you couldn't pull off an a DVD due to space issues.

If thats all then clearly you haven't heard the TrueHD/PCM track of 300. Its like 30x better than the Dolby Digital Plus track, never mind the regular Dolby Digital on the DVD. I am not kidding, I have never been more serious in my life.

True, I did forget to mention that. The TrueHD audio track on that disc is pretty sweet. But then again, this thread was about picture quality

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: Slick5150

And I'm someone that ran out and bought a DVD player for like $600 or something back in 1997 because that offered a huge improvement over what VHS offered at the time.

Wow.... and add 25% for inflation to equal today's dollars. I waited until 1998 and started with 3 DVD's for $1 from 800.com, a video card that was virtually free AR and a DVD-ROM drive all of which totalled less than $45. Player/decoder was free and/or included.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Originally posted by: Slick5150
Actually, I find the first comparison to be far more of a "real world" comparison. You're never sitting 3 inches away from the screen like you are looking at the photo on your computer to compare them. Of course its going to look better there at those resolutions. The 5th element photos are not screen captures downsampled, they are photos taken by a digital camera from a distance you'd be looking at the screen from.

"In case you're wondering, these screen shots were taken with a Canon 1D MkII off a 7 foot wide Syntra board painted with Video Goo. The camera settings were identical for every shot and only the most conservative contrast adjustment in Photoshop was applied in the same way for all shots. The crops were done in the camera, and all shots started off as 8MB and reduced to the same proportions in Photoshop by the same method."

So yes, of course staring at a zoomed in full resolution photo is going to make the HD content look far better, the point is, when you're watching in 15 feet away from your screen, you are going to notice those differences nearly as much.

The guy making the comparison still shouldn't have reduced the images to the size of a postage stamp for direct comparison. If you want to sample real world application, don't rely on image resizing; move farther away from a screen showing the uncompressed image. On the link that Auric posted, I can see a clear difference in picture quality from across the room on my 19 inch LCD. I can't on the comparison you showed. Maybe because the pictures should not be resized when you're talking about how compression affects image quality...

And who sits 15 feet away from their TV?

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
To be honest, the difference between HD formats and "regular" DVDs is NOT as dramatic as the one between VHS and DVD.

I was just talking to a friend of mine about this, and we both agreed - the fact that the DVD brought so many innovations to the average consumer (widescreen, DD, DTS, loads of extras) made it a very desirable medium... the new formats don't offer that much of a leap, even if if the consumers have bought the new LCD or plasma TV sets, but the average screen size is still under 42 inch...

Honestly, if you play DVD through a good upconverting machine (such as an Oppo player, or a HTPC) you will not be seeing much of a difference between that and HD formats.

...

x2. I now have a PS3, and I still think a lot of my DVDs upconverted through that look pretty damn good next to my Blu Ray discs. biggest difference I have seen is b/w crappy DVDs and well-mastered DVDs.

That being said, I am not buying anymore SD DVDs.....

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: The Boston Dangler

Originally posted by: Slick5150

Originally posted by: montypythizzle

Originally posted by: Slick5150
Frankly, i find the difference between the HD stuff I have and the DVDs I have isn't that big. If you have a good upscaling player, properly mastered DVDs can have a very sharp picture quality. Yes, HD-DVD (or Blu-Ray I assume, but I haven't seen one of those personally) are a bit better, but not enough for me to justify their cost right now.

Your nuts then.

No, I'm just not deluding myself into thinking that either HD-DVD or BluRay is a groundbreaking improvement over DVD, like DVD was to VHS.

It offers better picture quality, yes, but my upscaled DVDs look damn good on my LCD set, and the improvements that either HD format would offer don't justify the cost of rebuilding my entire collection in HD.

If a new format comes along to replace DVD at some point (which I don't think either HD-DVD or BluRay will) as THE standard format, then sure, I'll upgrade, but neither pass the "bang for the buck" test at this point.

:thumbsup:

The Fifth Element Superbit DVD looks 90 to 95% as good as the HD I saw on cable. The same cannot be said for every DVD, but my entire library looks great on my 720p set. That, and I'm still stinging from DVD-A/SACD. I won't go with HD discs for years.
Quality disc + quality equipment = quality picture.

You are smoking crack.

There isn't even a comparison. Plus you have a non true HD (1080p) set so you're not getting all the resolution and scalling both DVDs and HD.

If you can't tell from the color alone then something is wrong.

1080p doesn't matter on anything below 50"; hell, maybe even 60"...it is absolutely no different than a 720p at that size. laws of physics and such.

we will all be blind a lot faster than normal thanks to the "necessary" screen sizes we are now becoming accustomed to.

(yeah, I have a 42" plasma...and I :heart: it)