HD DVD and Blu-ray releases on May 15th, 2007
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted May 14th 2007 1:16PM
posted May 14th 2007 1:16PM
In a week that can only be described as the calm before the storm, Warner has a few solid catalog titles for both camps, as well as the best offering this week in The Fountain. Also as expected, HD DVD titles get a DD+ audio track while the Blu-ray fans are still stuck with plain ol' DD. If audio quality is your thing, than Sony has Stomp the Yard, which happens to be in the IMDB bottom 250 of all time. The movie might not be that great, but it does include both a PCM 48kHz/16-Bit/4.6mbps) and Dolby TrueHD (48kHz/16-bit) sound track. The storm gets started next week with a total of 20 titles between the two formats, and big names such as Pirates, Apocalypto and Matrix, to name a few.HD DVD 187 vs Blu-ray 220.
Blu-ray
- Battle of the Bulge (Warner)
- The Fountain (Warner)
- The Road Warrior (Warner)
- Stomp the Yard (Sony)
- Battle of the Bulge (Warner)
- The Fountain (Warner)
- The Road Warrior (Warner)
I know It's been mentioned before but Battle of the Bulge came out on HD DVD last week. Watched it over the weekend.
Oh yeah, 20 new titles next week makes me cream my pants.
You guys should really do some research before you make comments like this one:
"Also as expected, HD DVD titles get a DD+ audio track while the Blu-ray fans are still stuck with plain ol' DD."
Each Warner Bros. HD release this week features the same bit rate (640kbps) for both BD and HD DVD. Just because it says DD+ doesn't automatically make it 'better'. Apparently, anything less than 1.5mbps can be defined as DD+. Ah, the beautry of marketing.
Paul,
Please enlighten us, why isn't DD+ better than DD even at the same bit-rate?
Ben
Can you hear any difference in sound quality between a DD and DD+ track of the same bitrate? While this is undoubtably subjective, the majority of reviews I have read would seem to agree with my ears that is little to no difference. But now that you mention it, it would make for an interesting comparison.
My point was that it is worth looking at the bitrate before slagging the DD encoding as automatically inferior to the DD+ without listening to them both.
You have a great point, but..
According to this Wikipedia article, DD+ is a newer codec with advantages over DD other than bit-rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital_Plus
That being said, DD+ is a minimum for HD DVD and if it were on the Blu-ray version as well, the BDA requires that they also have a normal DD track, because BDA hardware is not required to decode DD+ like HD DVD hardware is.
Considering these requirements and the fact that both are the same bit-rate, it is probably safe to assume that almost no one can tell the difference between the two audio tracks.
This is actually a valid commit. It cracks me up how many people with crappy little HTIB setups are concerned about whether a title is in DD+. The fact is, unless you have excellent speakers and a room that is acoustically optimized, there's no way that you'll be able to hear a difference. I know a bunch of guys are going to come back to me saying "I can" but try this little embarrassing test. Close your eyes and have a friend switch back and forth. Unless your receiver is crappy and screws up the bass-handling with the DD+ soundtrack, I bet you won't be able to tell which is which.
"The fact is, unless you have excellent speakers and a room that is acoustically optimized, there's no way that you'll be able to hear a difference."
Yes, but a lot of people (especially, I would assume, early adopters of HD DVD/BD) do have very good setups and CAN tell the difference. I know I can with my Paradigm Studios and a Pioneer Elite 74 receiver.
And as walk2k said - you can't compare bitrates between different codecs. DD+ is better than plain DD. Arguing against that is no different than the people who argue that HD DVD/BD aren't necessary because "Unless you have a really large TV, you can't tell the difference between HD DVD/BD and regular DVD."
According to wikipedia..... lol
Whoa!
Ben...sticking up for HD DVD? Color me impressed...
In any case it is yet another weak week. Next week will be interesting, although I am looking foward to the week of May 29th even more so, a lot of good Universal movies are coming then.
Bit-rates can be misleading if you are talking about 2 different codecs, for sure.
MPEG2 looks like (poopie) at the same bit-rates where MPEG4 (AVC & VC-1) look terrific.
Also where do you get off saying The Fountain is the most important release?! (I know this is opinion...)
Having only the most bare-bones DVD release, of questionable audio and video quality... THE ROAD WARRIOR is obviously the best and most important release this week! =)
"The movie might not be that great, but it does include both a PCM 48kHz/16-Bit/4.6mbps) and Dolby TrueHD (48kHz/16-bit) sound track."
This, in a nutshell, exemplifies the mentality of a LOT of anti-HD-DVD, Blu-ray fanboys.
Why not hold Sony to a higher standard by demanding they release better movies instead of agreeing to buy craptacular films that look and sound great?