blu-ray: are old films a ripoff?

jackieb

Fliss_M wrote: »

If you can. Go back and look at the % mark up of VHS on DVD. I suspect it was the same. the older the film, the bigger the %. Prices will come down. I remember when DVD took off, mum got me 2 new film vids for xmas as they cost her £20 rather then £50 for the dvd. And am sure new releases on blu ray started out at £25, there about £20 now.

I remember when films on video cost about £40, and to rent one was a fiver. This was in the very early 80s. I think the first time I bought a pre-recorded video cassette was in 1985 when they came down in price a good bit. Our video recorder cost my parents about £600 back in 1981.

Strider590

Most Film has to be compressed for DVD, so the blu-ray equivalent is simply less compressed = better quality.

donnajunkie

i got terminator 2 on blu ray a couple of months ago and it is no better than the dvd version. i feel ripped off coz it doesnt even have any extras and i see now that they have released a new version with extras. i wonder if the picture is any better on the newer release?

aliEnRIK

proper film shot in analogue is shot to such a high standard that even blurays dont make the most of them. So old films can infact look absolutely amazing (And still not at their BEST yet)
Theyre actually squeezed DOWN to fit on blurays and dvds
There are however some very dodgy blurays which are in fact upscaled dvds (POORLY upscaled at that). Now they ARE takin the p*ss

donnajunkie

whats with the various video formats on blu ray? i know there is something called vc1 and there is the more familiar mpeg2. i am sure i have seen at least one other as well.

aliEnRIK

Theres different ways of encoding. I forgets the various formats now but 99% of all releases are now the same high standard

donnajunkie

which are the best and which are the worst. i am curious because i thought mpeg2 wasnt meant to be particularly great so was surprised when i saw a blu ray was mpeg2.

aliEnRIK

"Modern releases are now often encoded in either MPEG-4, AVC or VC-1, allowing film studios to place all content on one disc, reducing costs and improving ease of use. Using these codecs will also free many GBs of space for storage of bonus content in HD 1080i/p as opposed to the SD content typically used for most titles."

Out of intrigue, what was the mpeg2 one?

donnajunkie

it is son of rambow. its an ok film but not as good as it looks in the trailer. it does have extras and all on the one disc.

Lum

donnajunkie wrote: »

which are the best and which are the worst. i am curious because i thought mpeg2 wasnt meant to be particularly great so was surprised when i saw a blu ray was mpeg2.

There is VC1, there is also MPEG4, which is also known as both AVC and H.264. I guess they also support MPEG2 since every bluray player out there can also play DVDs.

So we have MPEG4 and VC1, and why not? It's always been the case that certain types of files respond better to certain compression algorithms (either becoming smaller or looking better) so if you allow for both it gives more options.

There's nothing wrong with MPEG2. It's perfectly possible to have 1080p material compressed using MPEG2 rather than MPEG4, it'll just take up a lot more space, and at 25gig for a single-layer bluray disc, space most likely isn't a problem if the program is short.