Friday

[weaktwos]

This is why Blu-ray is pissing me off.

A special edition of Robocop is coming out on regular DVD, but they are releasing the Blu-ray without those extras. At least so far. Maybe they'll change their tune. This after HD is able to offer a number of fun PIP Extras on their dvds. To be fair, there are a lot of older movies being released on HD-DVD that are meager on extra features, too. But nothing seems to coming out on Blu-ray, wherase 300, Heroes Season 1, and other movies are offering some fun special features.

In other news, my macbook magsafe power adaptor has shown signs of current overload and some melting of the cable just near the power brick portion of the adaptor. Not happy. But, thankfully, this is the first time I've had to replace my power adaptor. Still, I'm not pleased. And would you believe all the places near me are sold out? However, Serendipity is mine, for a Best Buy near an event I'll be going to out in Rocklin, CA tonight has it in stock.

Work is reasonable. We had a bit of a long meeting today, but there was much smartassery had behind the scenes. All was well.

I hope your Fridays are going well!

Comments

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

Would you say it would be like a "Blu-rape" entry?

Yeah, I actually have both a ps3 and an xbox, so I am comparing both. Really, I cannot yet tell the difference in actually viewing. But I'm enjoying my xbox a lot more in general. And the HD DVD was the right price.
(and I took advantage of a killer deal to get the 60gb ps3 for $350)

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

My plan is not to buy either format excessively. I'll rent from Netflix. But I did buy Season 1 of Heroes. :-)

Now there will be some releases in Blu-ray around the holiday time frame that will have some interesting features, but not nearly as much. So it seems that Blu-ray is a sleeping giant that is not living up to its potential. What remains to be seen is whether the new features for Blu-ray will be playable on the Ps3, or if you need to buy a higher end device to really enjoy the capabilities.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

Actually, perhaps more important than the raw capacity, is the transfer rate. HD DVD is limited to 36Mbps for the raw stream, and 29.4Mbps for video. Blu-ray is 54Mbps raw and 40Mbps for video. So BD has more bandwidth to support fast motion, action, etc, without over compression. It also supports higher bandwidth audio streams 640Kbps vs 504Kbps on Dolby Digital, 6Mbps vs 3Mbps on DTS-HD High Resolution.

As for the 51GB 3-layer HD DVD disc - there are still conflicting reports on that. A number of outlets reported the DVD Forum approved it - but then news came out that the DVD Forum's Steering Committee, which has final say, had NOT yet voted on the spec and thus it was NOT officially approved yet. And while it is expected that the new 3rd generation players coming out would handle it, and *maybe* 2nd generation players with a firmware update, based on statements from Toshiba in the past it looks like the first generation of HD DVD drives couldn't play 3-layer discs.

Of course, 3-layer discs mean production line changes - which defeats one of HD DVD's claimed advantages over Blu-ray (not needing those changes). And it is interesting since, to date, the HD DVD camp's mantra has been "30GB is enough - you don't need BD's 50GB capacity!", followed by "Blu-ray is an incomplete spec - HD DVD is finalized!" Now they introduce a revision to the spec - so much for finalized - and boost capacity - so much for 30GB is enough. :-)

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

A lot of that is the studios and not the formats. BD Profile 1.1 and BD Profile 2.0 (aka BD-Live) specs are published and usable. Players supporting both have been announced and titles using both have also been announced - but there has been a lag in adoption. Warner just said that they'll be making the bonus features the same on their HD DVD and BD discs going forward, using BD1.1/2.0. Also that they'll be releasing BD day-and-date with the DVD, but HD DVD will have a several month delay. Why? HD DVD doesn't have region codes and they can't release the discs until the rights in other regions are settled - while they can limit DVD and BD and thus release them sooner.

I expect Sony to update the software on the PS3 to handle BD1.1/2.0 - it has the hardware for it.

Personally special features don't mean a lot to me - I often don't bother with them on the DVDs I own.

[ariedana.livejournal.com]

I just replaced my MacBook MagSafe adapter for the SECOND time in a year and 4 months. First one was replaced by AppleCare after much hemming and hawing over "normal wear-and-tear". Not so lucky this time. Maybe we should start a write-in campaign for a better designed connection with the plug...

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

Maybe so. This is the first time I've had to replace it, and I've had it for a year and a half. So I'll buy it. I'll check to see what the warranty on the replacement is, though.