Forecasts for Blu-ray in 2011 are massive...

The current trend in Higher end Blu Ray and DVD players seems to be to copy the network player facility of the PS3 to receive either on line content or that from a server of some sort at home.

This suggests that the hardware manufacturers see streaming as a significant source of media in one form or another.

My personal view is that upscaling thru HDMI connections for DVD output coupled with a significant premium for Blu Ray will thwart BR market growth. Our family (my vox pox) generally consider the difference between HD and upscaled SD broadcasts minimal - they may be right or wrong but that is their view and that is what matters -what the punter thinks.

(recent LG 1080 37" HD TV and either PS3 or LG blu Ray player, satellite via Sky HD+ box)

That's a familiar view from people who have HD kit but never watch from close enough. You get a completely different opinion once you start to watch from the 'right' distance, which, for a 37" display would be about 54.4 inches, call it 4 foot 6. That's 3 times the picture height.

Alan

I don't disagree with that at all, having used DV Doctor for info before buying our TV (then downsized to what I could get away with :) ).
However for the average viewer I think my "family experience" will be the reality and therefore the perceived value of Blu Ray will be accordingly diminished.

When television screens are sold by optimal viewing distance rather than screen size things may change, possibly.

I would imagine that ALL media resellers are doing their best to keep the faith.

Rallying the troops is a good way to start 2011 for this little cottage industry.

The public at large are quite willing to change technology if they are offered more convenience or useful features (hence the rapid rejection of VHS in favour of DVD). However, better definition is of much less interest.

It was the same in the audio world, where convenience and useful features meant that CDs replaced vinyl and tape but higher-quality CD formats got nowhere.

Now CDs are losing out to the convenience of downloads and in the domestic video world there is little interest in camcorders because phones with video recording are more convenient (despite the lower quality in both instances).

So trying to promote Blu-ray for it's quality aspects is doomed to fail. The manufacturers shot themselves in the foot by having the Blu-ray v. HD DVD format war while the world moved on. Sony then shot themselves in the foot by winning the war and trying to screw every last cent out of their victory by levies and restrictions on the production of Blu-ray.

Blu-ray looks like being the Mini-disc de nos jours.

Ray L

The restrictions imposed on Blu-ray, just like with DVD, were driven by Hollywood paranoia/greed of which Sony Pictures is a small part. Of course the measures were cracked as soon as they were in the public domain leaving the honest punters to suffer the inconveniences that they cause.
Blu-ray is still the only practical route to quality playback of HD for the masses, but as has been implied implied above, the great unwashed won't pay for quality alone. Advertising has created a culture of 'I want it all and I want it now!'

Steve

Yes Sony used to be quite happy to sell us copying equipment in the days before they actually started to own great swathes of the media themselves.

Of course Alan is right about viewing distances. I am forced to comply with them because of room size anyway :D but I also think that not many people care even when they can see the difference.

I read your post with a certain amount of sadness Ray, mainly, I suppose, because I know it's true. Of course we here are but a tiny infinitesimal fraction of the public, yet we all fell about spending at the thought that S-VHS was ''60% sharper'' or some-such nonsense. The public couldn't give a stuff, and continued recording in LP and EP onto VHS.

The manufacturers tried again, but again they messed up the intro by making the first laser discs have analogue pictures, meaning hardware could only play a certain type of disc. It all went horribly wrong. HD-DVD anyone?

Digital VHS? DCC? DAT? Let's introduce MicroMV when we know flash memory cards are coming. Why DAB when UHF is excellent? Why not 21:9 TVs?

'Let's confuse the hell out of them' is no way to get the buying, spending public on your side. Won't get fooled again is not only Townsend's motto, and tom-here won't be buying an electric car any time soon, even if I'm being gleefully told that in a couple of years I'll be able to fill the tank to 80% 'in only 20 minutes' (Radio 4 yesterday). Do they think I'm stupid?

tom.

Chris, that wasn't a dig at you, just a general observation.

Oh, but S-VHS got quite a market when editing was needed. Hence before DV came along, a lot of S-VHS camcorders were being sold - a far higher percentage of market share than S-VHS home decks. And in the lower end professional market, S-VHS to S-VHS got quite a toe hold, and was still acceptable even when then dubbed to VHS - third generation VHS wasn't.

Surely the analogy between then and now is very close? The SVHS/editing market was still small in those days (compared to the sales of VHS with Long Play), in the same way that the HD/editing market is small now (compared to the sales of Sky+ and similar time-shifters). Back then we had to fiddle around with bodge boxes and cables to try and get mechanical decks to give us frame-accurate edits. These days we have computer editing programs that sort-of-work and we continue to bodge along.

In the end all forms of data storage that rely on mechanisms ( tapes, disks, whatever) will disappear. Matt Jeffries, Jimmy Rugg and Irving Feinberg realised that back in the 1960s when they gave the Star Trek crew solid-state gadgets to carry information, do medical diagnosis, etc. Since then we've simply been waiting for technology to catch up.

Blu-ray, with its spinning disk, moving focussed laser and multiple layers is only a passing phase - soon it will join all the other artifacts from the past at the Science Museum (or probably just stored on a shelf in Blythe House).

Ray

I know there are optimal viewing distances for specific displays, but is there a formula for that? Pliz tell.

fuddam: I'm sure I've see Alan's rule: "Optimum viewing distance: For 1080 HD, it's about three picture heights."

This is much closer than people actually tend to view at home (so they're basically wasting their money on HD, and say things like "upscaled SD is good enough") - but interestingly, it's probably more like the viewing distance they use when auditioning sets for 30 seconds in a TV shop!

If Alan doesn't answer this directly I am sure a search would find one of his answers to this question.

On the SVHS thing. It was always the camcorders and not the players that sold. The majority did not have camcorders at all. I suspect the same people are now the ones interested in HD

I was told, about 10 years ago, that more hours of broadcast video was edited on SVHS than on all other formats put together, in the US. This is down to the small local TV stations usage. I'd not be surprised if that situation isn't still true.

SDTV is usually viewed at between 6 and 10 times picture height. That's not a recommendation, it's an observation. HD was designed, from the outset, to be viewed from 3 times picture height. Surveys in the UK and Europe show that typical domestic viewing is from around 2.7 to 3metres, which means that a 60" display would just about do for HD. There's good science in this, it isn't just marketing.

...or 3.16x picture height. I liked the explanation here:

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/sony/story/resolution_and_screen_size/

Good article. It supports what I have been saying to those who'll listen: "Sit closer!" "What?!" they say. "It's already an enormous 42in plasma!!"

I don't usually go much further with the details, but I'm sad they they're wasting their money on HD.

And few are willing to allow a viewing device such power over their living rooms... Screens this big never look pretty and totally control the layout of the room if fitted with that in mind.

Hi
Never mind handing control over to the crap that most broadcasters transmit most of the time.
HD garbage in = garbage out - same as it ever was ;)

Do you read 'Womans Weekly'?
No? Oh.
Well my completely non techy Sister read in it (having bought a 32" TV for Xmas) that a 32" should be viewed from around 4'6 to 7'.
This is the first time in 50 years I can recall my Sister giving me unprompted technical info!
Amazing.

Anyway, I guess it's about 18" high, so that puts viewing at 3 to 4.67 * times the height.

That article puts the cart before the horse.

HD started out in 1964, at NHK in Tokyo. They did subjective tests, to work out what the next generation of tv should be. they came to the interesting conclusion that the picture should be viewed at 3 times picture height, and that there should be 1035 lines in it (this was analogue). If you do the sums based on the acuity limit of average human vision, which is universally regarded as being 1 minute of arc, you find that NHK's figures result in one picture line being just on the borderline of being distiguishable. Scroll forward to 1080, we went from the NHK proposal of 1035 x3 to 1080 16x9, and you find that the sums are even more accurate, because, when viewed at exactly 3 times picture height, the screen is 18 degrees high, which is 1080 minutes of arc, spot on the human limit.

And that's why the recommended closest viewing distance is 3 times picture height. If you get closer, you see pixels, further away and you lose resolution.

The problem is that living rooms (note the adjective) need to be more than just viewing rooms. It may be ok to position the sofa and chairs at 3x the picture height, but in this household I'm guessing the ratio of HD to SD viewing is something in the order of 1: 6 or 7. As such the 46" TV is too far away for HD but even at 2.5m HD still looks better than SD, and the up-scaling Humax is impressive.

tom.

Please note I was quoting from my Sister over the phone - I don't have my own copy of Womans Weekly to quote verbatum.:)

The figures are also of interest in applying to pc monitors where typical viewing distance is closer.
My 19" 4:3 monitors are 1280*1024 and typical viewing at 2'6" (+/- 6").
I'm about to buy an extra monitor 1920*1280 16:9, so the figures echo that any monitor over this size (w/o dual input) is not worthwhile due to observed quality loss.

All i like to say to all the above replies?. As long as i'm happy with what i use and does the job use it.
O.K. Every year new material comes out and there are people out there who enjoy the luxury of these items.
Yes one has to move with the video image archiving older format, which is disk.
In general this video format game you have the "Shakers" and "Movers"

To a point - but I went from a CRT TV to a wall mounted plasma about 3 years ago. The big CRT monolith had a screen size of 32" (widescreen), the plasma 42". As far as dominating the room, the bigger plasma we find is LESS dominating, and can only conclude that it's less screen size than the size of the set and where it's put. (We also mounted it across a corner, and that seems to work well.)

I think the 3x picture height is being looked at the wrong way round - it should be seen as a maximum, not a minimum, and the same with 6x for SD. If we assume 9 foot as a typical viewing distance, then that gives max picture heights of 3 foot for HD, 18 inches for SD. Which translates into MAXIMUM TV sizes of 60" for HD, 30" for SD before the eye is good enough to see more than the display offers. So for a 42" screen, and 9 foot viewing, the prediction is that SD is not really good enough, and you should see an improvement with HD. Which is exactly what I find in practice.

At 9 foot viewing, you may see little difference between HD and SD on a 32" screen or smaller. Any bigger screen size and the difference should be noticeable. The other thing I found is less noticeable compression effects on BBC One HD, than ordinary Freeview BBC One, even on upscaled material that's originally SD.

Upconverted BBC ONE HD material looks better than it does on BBC ONE, on my 42" plasma. Simple reason, the BBC uses a better upconverter than is in my tv set.

Surely the fact that the upconversion is done from network SD distribution bandwidth (9Mb/s MPEG2?) rather than 2-4Mb/s decoded off-air has as big an influence as the set's upconverter.
Also, provided the network upconverter doesn't generate significant artifacts, it passes through the HD MPEG4 coder (9.75 Mb/s bandwidth) easier than true HD sourced material.

Steve

Both points help, certainly, but the display upconverter has a bigger effect than both of those combined, in my experience. You can test this yourself if you run Edius with an HDspark. I've got an SD project which looks cleaner on the HDspark if I set the project to HD such that the display gets 1920x1080 rather than it having to do the up-conversion, just because the conversion in Edius is better than the one in the display (that's LG Flatron M227WDP and Panasonic PZ42).

I have invested in Blu-ray players and burners and usually place the HD videos onto a standard DVD disc using a Blu-ray burner. Unfortunately they have to be played back on a Blu-ray player. As many of my friends haven't got such players, the excercise is pointless and I have to covert the videos to SD. Most of the people I talk to say that Blu-ray is little different from a normal DVD which has been upscaled by a DVD player. In my humble opinion being a sound man for 60 odd years, my experience has been as one grows older the ears can not detect certain ranges of recorded sound, and that also applies to the eyes and what they can detect in recorded vision. My own experience is that I can no longer detect certain high quality of sound and vision, and so all the expensive Hi-fi sets and extra high quality recorded vision is wasted on me and I would imagine that goes for the majority of people once past a certain age. As for the younger people the majority of them are not interested in quality only quantity. Just look at the Youtube where unedited videos from phones abound. This coupled with price is why I think that Blu-ray is doomed. Maybe I'm talking out of my hat, or further south, but I think there is an element of truth in what I think.

But that's not having to undergo any compression other than in the original camera footage?

I certainly don't doubt what you're saying as such (the upscaler is better than in the display), but in terms of broadcast transmission, the main differences I see look very much more down to compression differences. And as steve says, we're talking about an MPEG4 coding at 9+Mbs versus MPEG2 at something about a third the data rate!

Roy, you could not have put it any better. Being in the same age group all what matters to me regards equipment? It works and does the job. Yes we will be bombarded with new formats and better quality. But at what scale does the quality ends. 3D is the next format to make money from. But not in my life time.

I've been supplying a small amount of content to Sky Sports, and they sent me a briefing sheet saying DVCAM footage as a minimum spec was fine. So whilst it's 'Sky Sports in HD', they're happy with 16:9 SD from me. Whilst we use mostly HD cameras it's easier (and cheaper) for me to vision-mix and record on DVCAM. Interestingly I was told, no HDV please (which is just as well as we never use it). :)

I still claim, because I've witnessed it daily for months now, that SD footage shown on BBC ONE HD looks better than the same footage on BBC ONE, on the same display. I see it daily. The broadcaster's upconverter is better tha n the one in the display. Also, the upconverter in my HDspark is better tha n the one in my Flatlron 22" and Panasonic 42" PZ. Incidentally, I'm not the only one to observe this, it was the common opinion in BBC R&D this week when I mentioned it there. Not having to deal with the MPEG2 artefacts helps, of course, but the Edius experiment confirms that it's more to do with the upconversion itself than with the quality of the original footage.

Bluray discs in my local HMV occupy about 10m of display by comparison there is 150m of DVD.

With movies on Sky HD and Cable HD, movies available for downloard via Lovefilm and BT the future for the shiny HD disc is bound to be uncertain.

As there is already ripping software for the latest copy protected titles why would anyone want to buy a shiny disc when they can rent (or borrow) and rip?

Following on to an earlier post the subject of 3D, did anyone see the programme on Sky "the making of" David Attenborough's 3D Dinosaur programme that was on over the Christmas period? The amount of kit and crew required to video in 3D is collosal hence the production costs will be astronomical and someone has to pay for it. As it happens I was at the Eden Project the day they were videoing using the 3D kit and saw for myself the kit and crew involved.

Just into put 3D into context:

I was at IBC last September, and watched peter Wilson's crew put together a single 3D pair of Sony HDC1500Rs. It took them just under 9 hours to get it all assembled and working. And that was with a setup that had been assembled and working before it was dismantled for transport to Amsterdam.Big cameras are disastrous for 3D, you need small ones, like Polecam do.

And, the first person to shoot 3D movies was Eadweard Muybridge, 1878.He could show them as such, but he certainly shot footage with stereo cameras at Palo Alto.

'Prototype could remove need for 3D cameras' clip from trade show:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9362275.stm

That certainly looks like the way forward. Anyone notice the time lag ? A lot of processing going on and certainly an exciting development. Perhaps there is a futher thinking that uses distance sensing cameras

'Normal' loop via laptop often has a delay, so I wouldn't knock them on that, even though personally I have no interest in 3D.
Moving image technology seems to have moved forward from being intra-frame (like photoshop) to recognising same feature in subsequent frames.
We had simple motion tracking before, but it seems improved now including shape recognition - and the the way the shape moves across frames (e.g. rotating).
Adobe after affects CS5 roto brush being an example.
The 3D processing, I'm guessing uses this ability as its start point.

Does anyone remember back in the days before Video, the major hollywood film companies dabbled with 3D blockbuster films such as the Robe and the House of wax where the patrons had to use Red and Green cardboard framed glasses. Well during this period the Russian cinema industry brought out and used a system of 3D, glasses were not needed nor any other accessory had to be used by the viewer. I can't remember the details except for one fact, the screen was slit vertically from top to bottom every few inches. Perhaps it presented an optical illusion of 3D. I often wondered what became of the System. Of course the West and Russia wern't the best of friends at that time so information never came our way.

Lenticular Barrier Screens

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_film#Lenticular_or_barrier_screens

I'm too young to remember them......as in not even born.... ;)

Don't hold your breath. There were 2D to 3D convertors being demonstrated at BVE last year (by JVC). They were actually far better than I expected them to be - but expensive, and still with more limitations than "true" 3D.

I personally expect problems to lessen by going the other way - smaller cameras, with 3D thought about from the beginning. The Sony F3 is an obvious first step in that direction. Another possibility may be dual lenses in one package, maybe even designed to give side by side images onto a single chip, so a lot of the difficult setup factory aligned.

Apparently some of the big blockbuster films are either converted from 2D to 3D or at least parts of them. I believe the latest Narnia film was part converted.

Yeah - the trouble is, it's simply not as good as good being shot in 3D. And sometimes the conversion either just doesn't really work as well as it should, or might even end up more expensive than doing it properly in the first place. The most talked about attempt to (unsuccessfully) convert is the latest Harry Potter film - http://movies.sky.com/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-1/cameron-rants-at-harry-potter-3d-failure . I can't do better than quote James Cameron:

But the whole tone of this thread is how undiscerning the general public are so unless there is a sign outside the theatre saying "not really 3D", I can't see them worrying.

The fact that it is just as, or more expensive is more of a factor.

Just a small matter that some people might find interesting. In 1955 I owned a small chain of 16mm cinemas in North Wales and I remember showing a 3D film which was twenty minutes long and was extremely effective having the audiance ducking and diving. I showed it for two months along with the normal programme and all the cinemas was packed out. Nothing unusual you might think. Well I showed the film using ONE PROJECTOR ONLY. I side note to this is, of course in those days the currency was Pounds Shillings and pence, and I not thinking ,I advertised the film as 3D. On opening night every cinema in the chain had a long queue right round the block, more patrons that could possibly get in. The reason soon became apparrant. In those days the letter D was the letter used to denote pence. Most of the patrons thought the entry fee was three pence and actually proffered a three pence coin at the box offices. Happy days.

My mate was a projectionist when he was 20 - that's almost 50 years ago - he's just asked me to source a Blu-ray writer for his editing system now that he's got the hang of Encore CS5.

He's got a few thousand feet of 8mm to get onto disc. Plus the AVCHD he shot with his new Canon HFS200 last summer.

Whether or not Joe public falls for HD it really is great fun for hobbyists.

Some amusing artefacts on BBC One HD at the moment with the Tennis from the Australia (in SD). It's covered in aliasing artefacts, even the SD feed, so I suspect it is being shot HD down under -- downconverted to SD badly then reupconverted.

In fact, the artefacts are reminiscent of the Z1's downconverter at its worst... Trouble is the Tennis court seems to be covered in patterns designed to show it up (esp. the cups where the pattern on them inverted as the camera moved :))

Steve