PSA: HD to Blu-Ray

[unixronin]

Wired has a how-to on converting your HD-DVDs to Blu-Ray.  You'll need a fast Windows machine, a HD-DVD drive, a Blu-Ray burner, 30-40GB of available disk space, a whole bunch of software, and a whole lot of patience.  But check your costs first; you may be able to just buy a Blu-Ray copy of the movie cheaper than you can buy a blank Blu-Ray disc ($15-$25 per blank for single-layer write-once media; dual-layer writeable Blu-Ray discs aren't available yet).

Comments

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

i've been wanting extended cable for years. have held out. saved those $$$ towards dvds... buying used dvds, and buy 2get1free sles are good things. works out to getting a nice library of media.

now of course, BR being the winner, eventually... BR. buying used will still workout probably as the clear win, esp with the limited titles, and costs. feh on them ;) there's only TWO titles i'd want right now.

since the TV does such a good job scaling, even at 480i dvd input, it's fantastic. BR is going to have to be mindblowingly good for its particular version to want that...

problem: TV is also full spec 1080p HDTV... it wouldn't suck to have Discovery, Animal Planet, PBS, and SciFi... but not for an extra $60-80 month. feh on them ;) i'll continue to save.

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[unixronin.livejournal.com]

problem: TV is also full spec 1080p HDTV... it wouldn't suck to have Discovery, Animal Planet, PBS, and SciFi... but not for an extra $60-80 month.

Yeah, that. I think cable TV pricing has climbed to the level where a lot of people are choking on it and walking away. I think in order to survive long-term, the cable companies and other pay-for-service TV carriers are going to have to change their entire pricing structure and way of selling service. But I suspect they'll prove themselves unable to adapt.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

The only reason I have even basic cable is because it's cheaper for me to buy basic cable and add on internet, than internet alone. ($30 + $10 vs: $60)

I have no idea why they do that (maybe to have more cable subscribers on the books?) but I'm not going to fight them on it.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sometimes those bundling prices work in your favor. Nice when it works out that way.
"Here, let us take $20 off your Internet bill and give you free cable TV as well!"
"Uh .... OK. Sure. Don't let me stop you."

[tabbifli.livejournal.com]

OKay, I haven't actually been paying much attention to this, but what does it actually mean to those of us out here in Random Consumer Land?

I go into a store, find the movie (or TV series) I want on a little silver disk, take it home, and watch it. Is that little silver disk now about as worthless as my VCR tapes, which I have been trying to figure out how to upgrade (save that it'll last a bit longer, because it won't stretch, tear, or rip in the reader)?

What's the difference between "dvd" and "hd-dvd" and "blu-ray" ? In 3 or 5 years when I finally get around to completely replacing my AV equipment, what am I going to be buying, and how much of the stuff that I have right now am I keeping for legacy reasons? Other than the TiVo, which I have a lifetime subscription to, and it can be pried out of my cold, dead hands.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

In the '80s, remember how VHS and Betamax were duking it out to see who would be the king of home video? And remember how all the people who bought Betamax were left high and dry when VHS won? No movies came out on Betamax anymore, you couldn't buy a Betamax player, technicians looked at you funny if you asked them "can you fix my Betamax player"?

HD-DVD = the new Betamax.
Blu-Ray = the new VHS.

The big difference between DVD and Blu-Ray is that Blu-Ray discs will look much more crisp, but only when played on a high-definition TV.

Your DVDs will be fine for years. While in just a few years virtually all new movies will only be available in Blu-Ray, Blu-Ray players will also play DVDs without any problem.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Except that Betamax was technically superior to VHS. This time, the shoe's on the other foot: the technically superior (but heavily DRM-encumbered) technology won. (Though some sources allege it finally won because Sony spent $2 billion on bribes.)

[tabbifli.livejournal.com]

Thank you, but that didn't actually answer the question I asked.

I do recall Betamax. Or, rather, I recall the lack of Betamax. I also recall Laserdisks.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

OK, here's the basic 5-minute primer.

DVDs, Digital Versatile Discs, are optical discs that use a 650nm red laser to read microscopic pits in a data layer embedded within a polycarbonate disc. They're good, as far as they go. And "as far as they go" is what's now referred to as SD, Standard Definition, 640x480. But their capacity (4.7GB for a single-layer disc, 9.4GB for dual-layer) is inadequate for high-definition video modes.

Blu-Ray is a disc technology conceptually similar to a DVD, except that it uses a much shorter wavelength (405nm) blue-violet laser. The shorter wavelength means that it can resolve much smaller pits, which means ones and zeros can be packed more tightly on the disc about five times more tightly, increasing the data capacity of the disc from 4.7GB per layer to 25GB per layer. That's plenty of room for a HDTV movie with multiple soundtracks. (However, a Blu-Ray player can't read a regular DVD unless it incorporates a second, red laser as well.)

HD-DVD is a competing technology developed at about the same time. It uses the same 650nm red laser as a DVDplayer, and so it can read regular DVDs as well, but it uses some tricks to try to cram data together on the disc as tightly as possible, and — using HD discs — can cram 15GB of data per layer, three times as much as a regular DVD and enough for a HD movie, but still only 60% of what a Blu-Ray disc holds per layer. (Blu-Ray discs can also have more layers than a HD-DVD disc, but that's academic for now.)

However, although the Blu-Ray disc technology is better, HD-DVD players are much cheaper than Blu-Ray players, and backward compatible — they can play regular DVDs as well. And Sony, which controls the Blu-Ray spec, bolted a lot of copy-protection measures on top of it. They also keep changing the spec.

Your existing DVD player will continue to work, and to play your standard-definition DVDs, just fine. However, it cannot play either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs. Your existing DVDs will last as long today as they did yesterday, and look just the same.

If you buy a Blu-Ray player, it will be able to play Blu-Ray discs, but may not be able to play your existing DVDs, and will not be able to play HD-DVD discs. (But then, you probably don't have any HD-DVD discs now, and there won't be any on the market pretty soon.) Blu-Ray players are seriously expensive right now; but now, the companies manufacturing them no longer need to stick together to beat HD-DVD, and they're likely to start seriously competing against each other pretty soon. Expect prices to drop, fast.

If you buy a HD-DVD player, it will be able to play HD-DVD discs and your existing DVDs, but cannot play Blu-Ray discs. But, since HD-DVD just died, why would you buy one now? Well, as someone pointed out elsewhere, the prices of HD-DVD players just went through the floor. Consider bundled movies, closeouts and two-for-one deals, and you could probably pick up a HD-DVD player and fifty to a hundred or so HD-DVD movies for the current price of a Blu-Ray player.

And, unless you have a HDTV, you can't take advantage of either one anyway, because if you only have a standard-definition TV, well, a regular DVD will fill that screen just fine.

So, right now, if you don't already have a HDTV and weren't already considering a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player ... just don't worry about it. Five years from now when you completely replace all your AV equipment, you probably won't have any choice but to buy a HDTV, and it'll make sense to buy a HD player, which will probably be Blu-Ray. But by then, prices should have come down a lot, and hopefully Sony's damned format spec will have finally stabilized.

But even then, all the standard-definition DVDs you have now will still work, provided your DVD player still works (or you get a Blu-Ray player with DVD compatibility built in).

[tabbifli.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

So, in essence, if I have any video cassette tapes left, because I've been lazy about either copying or replacing them, I'll still need a VCR.

Otherwise, I'll want to "upgrade" to a Blu-Ray player that has DVD capabilities installed in it, and quietly avoid getting any HD-DVDs at all (shouldn't be hard).

I'm hoping that I can, in the next several years, copy my tapes to DVD (or simply replace them as I find them on sale), just so I don't have to maintain a VCR. I keep looking in the sale bins for most of them, it's faster that way. :)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty good summary, yeah. And it's hard to find a decent VCR any more. Most of the models left on the market are complete crap.

Don't feel like you have to burn rubber on the way to the store to get a shiny new Blu-Ray player, either. I'd wait a few years for the platform standard to stabilize (translation: for Sony to lay off the creeping featuritis) and player prices to drop. Expect to see a lot of movies released on dual-format disks, too — a DVD layer and a Blu-Ray layer on the same disk containing SD and HD versions of the same movie.