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Commentary: Year-End Studio Report Cards

Fri Dec 28, 2007 at 03:48 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: A long-time movie buff and video collector from laserdisc to DVD and beyond, Joshua Zyber is a veteran disc reviewer, and an enthusiastic supporter of all things High Definition. In his twice-monthly High-Def Digest column, Josh discusses a broad range of topics of interest to other early adopters.

By Joshua Zyber

As we move forward into the new year, it's time to look back fondly on all the exciting developments of the past 12 months. In the world of home video, 2007 was certainly a tumultuous year for the ongoing High Definition format war. Despite proclamations at the end of 2006 that the conflict would be wrapped up within a few months, both the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps remain as firmly entrenched in their positions as ever. In fact, if anything, the animosity between the two sides has only grown more bitter and vitriolic.

Big things happened in 2007, some positive and some negative for both sides. Each format saw the release of around 300 additional titles during the calendar year. Some studios made aggressive pushes for High Definition media, unleashing both major day-and-date new releases and prestigious catalog titles. Other studios seemed to back away from the table. One major player shocked the industry with an unexpected decision to drop one format entirely in favor of the other. Meanwhile, a company that was rumored last year to likewise change strategies wound up holding its ground. As if that weren't enough, yet another studio spent the better part of this last quarter mired in rumors that it was planning a shift of its own.

To bid farewell to the year that was, please join me as I look back at all of the major High Definition studios and hand out some year-end report cards, rating each on how well they've supported their chosen formats.

Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Encompassing the various divisions of the Disney empire, from Walt Disney and Pixar animation to the Touchtone and Miramax labels, Buena Vista released a little over 30 titles on Blu-ray in 2007. Among them were some day-and-date hits like Mel Gibson's controversial 'Apocalypto' and the inexplicably successful John Travota/Tim Allen biker comedy 'Wild Hogs', as well as a smattering of other live action catalog titles. As far as Disney's famed animation, all we saw were the recent digital entries 'Chicken Little' and 'Meet the Robinsons', but none of the classic traditional animation that fans are really waiting for.

Undoubtedly, Buena Vista's most important High-Def releases this year were the three 'Pirates of the Caribbean' blockbusters and a trio of Pixar animation discs: 'Cars', 'Ratatouille', and the 'Pixar Short Films Collection'. The studio wraps up the year with the outstanding 'Lost: The Complete Third Season' television series box set and the massively popular 'tweener TV movie 'High School Musical 2', both of which are sure to sell very well.

Buena Vista has a solid track record for quality, favoring AVC MPEG-4 video encoding and uncompressed PCM sound, though they did let a serious framing error slip though in their 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' disc (the studio recently announced a replacement program for affected copies). In the coming year, they should focus on releasing a broader selection of titles. They've got some tremendous movies in their catalog, from Disney and Pixar animation (let's see 'The Lion King' and 'Toy Story', please) to some great independent and foreign films from their various specialty labels. Not to mention that we still need the first two seasons of 'Lost', as well as some of their other great TV properties. Thus far, the studio still seems to be testing the High Definition waters and has been timid to unleash their most important titles. It's time to open that vault.

It would also be nice if they'd stop forcing numerous movie trailers at the start of all their discs. That's just annoying.
Grade: A-

Lionsgate Entertainment
At the end of 2006, rumors circulated that Lionsgate was on the brink of abandoning their Blu-ray exclusivity and releasing on HD DVD as well. That did not come to pass, and a year later the studio seems to be more gung-ho for Blu-ray than ever.

Lionsgate may not be one of the biggest players in Hollywood, but they do have some appealing titles in their catalog, mostly genre and cult fare. In 2007, they released just over 20 Blu-ray discs. Among them were some perennial favorites like 'First Blood', 'Basic Instinct', and 'Reservoir Dogs', as well as two seasons of the popular Showtime TV series 'Weeds' and a couple entries from the seemingly-endless 'Saw' horror franchise. Their biggest Blu-ray hit this year was easily the Jason Statham action flick 'Crank', a movie that lingered near the top of the High-Def sales lists for months.

Lionsgate has been hit-or-miss in video quality, and has spotty support for lossless or uncompressed audio. Some of their discs, like the major catalog release of 'Dirty Dancing', look just awful. In fact, other than 'Crank', I can't think of any other Lionsgate Blu-rays this year that could be described as having exceptional video or audio quality. Improving their video transfer and disc authoring process is absolutely their biggest area for improvement in the coming year.
Grade: C

Magnolia Home Entertainment
One of the few independent studios to embrace High-Def media in a significant way, Magnolia (a division of Mark Cuban's mini media empire) doesn't have a huge catalog, but has been daring enough to release titles on both Blu-ray and HD DVD. They didn't put out much in 2007, their most notable releases being the acclaimed documentary 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room' (Blu-ray | HD DVD) and the Korean cult monster movie 'The Host' (Blu-ray | HD DVD). Quality is a hit-or-miss affair, largely dependent on the condition of the material they're working with. They almost never offer lossless or uncompressed audio. However, they did knock out a nice transfer for 'The Host', and included PCM sound on the Blu-ray edition (the HD DVD unfortunately had no comparable lossless audio option). Their releases of the French actioner 'District B13' (Blu-ray | HD DVD) were flawed on both formats, including only English closed captions (spelling out all sound effects) to go along with the original French soundtrack.

Magnolia has been erratic in their support of both formats, sometimes delaying their releases on one side or the other for no discernable reason. They need to straighten out problems like that, and work on improving their quality. A more aggressive release slate would also be nice, but with their limited catalog I don't know how much more they can do in that regard.
Grade: C-

MGM Home Entertainment
I kind of feel bad for MGM. In 2006, the studio's Blu-ray support was tied up with Sony as home video distributor, and the discs they released suffered from the quality problems Sony was having at that time. MGM broke off the distribution deal with Sony at the end of last year and switched to Fox, only to have their Blu-ray slate pulled when Fox mysteriously disappeared from the High Definition format for a large chunk of the year (more on this below). As a result, they released a grand total of five Blu-ray discs in 2007, not counting the fact that their name technically appears on the packaging for 'Casino Royale'. Although that James Bond reboot was one of the biggest High-Def titles of the year, the picture was a co-production with Sony, which holds the distribution rights and takes most of the credit. Of the rest of MGM's titles, three were catalog releases: 'Hart's War', 'Hoosiers', and 'RoboCop', the latter two with middle-of-the-road video transfers. The others were new titles: the bizarre Kevin Costner psycho thriller 'Mr. Brooks' and the Werner Herzog war drama 'Rescue Dawn'. Both were box office disappointments, but at least featured better High-Def video transfers. On the plus side, MGM has provided lossless DTS-HD Master Audio (corresponding with new distributor Fox) on all releases this year.

Where should MGM go in 2008? With their distribution problems sorted out, the studio should begin a more aggressive release slate for titles from their still-impressive back catalog. Lest we forget, MGM still holds the rights to the first 20 James Bond films, among other desirable properties. Please, MGM, give us some of those.
Grade: C-

New Line Home Entertainment
Arriving late to the High Definition game, New Line will officially take the same format-neutral stance as parent company Warner Bros. However, the studio has made the frustrating decision to enforce region coding on Blu-ray and to stagger new releases on HD DVD until several months after the comparable DVD and Blu-ray (catalog titles will be released simultaneously). Their first High-Def title was 'Hairspray' on Blu-ray at the end of November, and they knocked it out of the park with stunning video and audio, plus a bunch of good bonus features. Ending the year are 'Rush Hour 3' on Blu-ray (HD DVD to follow later) and the dual-format bow of catalog release 'Pan's Labyrinth' (Blu-ray | HD DVD).

For 2008, I have four words for New Line: 'Lord of the Rings'. You know that fans are salivating for it. You held out on High-Def media too long. It's time to make a splash by jumping in whole-hog with the full Extended Editions and all the bonus features from those lovely DVD box sets. And drop that nonsense with the staggered format release schedules.
Grade: C (mainly due to lack of content released)

Paramount Home Entertainment and Dreamworks Home Entertainment
In August of 2007, Paramount delivered the most shocking development in the High Definition format war to date by dropping their prior stance of format neutrality to support HD DVD exclusively. Though they reportedly received financial incentives to do so, Paramount maintains that the production costs and infrastructure of both formats were their biggest concerns. In making this decision, they've brought Dreamworks Home Entertainment (whom they own and distribute) with them, and the two studios are so tied together that there's no sense in separating them for this discussion. Technically, the Dreamworks Animation division was spun off into its own separate entity back in 2004, and does not fall under the ownership of parent corporation Viacom; however, their home video products are also distributed by Paramount, and the three companies acted as a united front in 2007.

Before the switch, the studios released a solid but unremarkable assortment of content on both formats. Among them were a few big catalog movies like 'The Untouchables' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), and 'The Warriors' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), plus new releases such as 'Babel' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), 'Black Snake Moan' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), and 'Disturbia' (Blu-ray | HD DVD). All were decent titles but none quite broke any High Definition sales records. It wasn't until after the transition that Paramount and Dreamworks brought out the big guns, namely 'Transformers' and 'Shrek the Third', two of the biggest box office hits of the year, for which Paramount pulled out all the stops in terms of outstanding video, audio, and exclusive bonus features. Also notable is the impressive 10-disc box set release of the "Remastered" first season of 'Star Trek: The Original Series', which is available exclusively in DVD/HD DVD Combo format with no separate DVD-only release.

Paramount has largely done a very good job with the video and audio of their releases, with 'Dreamgirls' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), 'Flags of Our Fathers' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), and 'Shrek the Third' ranking as some of the best-looking High Definition movies of the year. Controversially, the studio has not yet embraced lossless audio to any significant degree, but has regardless pushed the bar for sound quality with high bit rate Dolby Digital Plus. Even without a lossless track, 'Transformers' took the prize for Best Audio Quality at the recent High-Def Disc Awards. At the end of the year, the studio also started a push for interactive picture-in-picture and web-enabled bonus features, something they will hopefully continue into the future.

For 2008: Time to start digging into that rich catalog of yours, Paramount. For a major studio, you barely released a measly 30 titles this year. Where are 'Chinatown', 'Apocalypse Now', and 'Grease', or the 'Godfather' and 'Indiana Jones' franchises? For that matter, where are 'Team America', 'The Truman Show', and 'Lemony Snickett', all of which you used to tease us with during those High Definition promos at the start of your discs? Stop holding back. It's time to up your game.
Grade: B+

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
The award for "Most Improved Studio" of 2007 goes to Sony, who completely turned around all the quality problems they experienced in 2006, and delivered over 70 titles on Blu-ray this year, most of them boasting quite impressive quality. To help make up for past transgressions, the studio even remastered 'The Fifth Element' with a significantly better video transfer, and offered buyers of the original disc a free mail-in exchange program. That's probably the classiest thing any High-Def studio did all year. Kudos to you, Sony.

Admittedly, the quality turnaround is largely attributable to the studio's conscious decision to focus mainly on releasing known "eye candy" titles, movies with attractive photography and high production values that have been recently mastered or remastered. Not all of these are particularly good movies, unfortunately. That's a real shame considering how many great films Sony holds in the Columbia and Sony Pictures Classics catalogs, material that deserves to be treated with the same attention and care they've been lavishing so far on marginal titles like 'Identity', 'The Replacement Killers', or 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'.

The studio did however put out a number of respectable movies, including acclaimed foreign-language films 'The Lives of Others', 'Curse of the Golden Flower', and 'Volver'. But their biggest releases of the year were of course 'Casino Royale' and the 'Spider-Man Trilogy', both sure-fire bestsellers. They've also finished off the year with a splendidly remastered edition of the Steven Spielberg classic 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', which features every major version of the movie and a bunch of nice bonus material. Hopefully that's a sign that the studio will continue to dig into their catalog and expand beyond the Playstation 3's gamer demographic they've been largely catering to so far.
Grade: A-

Starz Home Entertainment
Formerly known as Anchor Bay Entertainment, Starz had a rather small Blu-ray release slate in 2007, comprised of only nine titles, four of which were volumes of the 'Masters of Horror' Showtime TV series. The other releases were primarily safe bets such as 'Dawn of the Dead' (1978) and 'Evil Dead 2' that the studio had already released, and re-released, and re-re-released innumerable times on DVD to continually bilk fans for every last dollar. The technical quality of those discs was fine, considering the source of the material, but Starz really screwed up 'Halloween' (1978) by using a miscolored video master that undermined many of director John Carpenter's original artistic decisions.

What to do in 2008? Start releasing a better selection of titles (Anchor Bay had a huge catalog of interesting foreign and cult movies) and pay more attention to the quality of the transfers.
Grade: D+

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Here we go. The most disappointing High-Def studio of 2007 is unquestionably Fox. For a company sitting on such an amazing catalog of huge movies, major franchises, and outstanding television programming, the studio's Blu-ray support has been quite pathetic, primarily focused on low-interest films the likes of 'Chain Reaction' and 'Men of Honor' that would be lucky to sell a couple dozen copies on Blu-ray. Their habitual problems with announcing titles only to delay or cancel them were the joke of the High-Def community this year. In all, Fox barely released 30 titles in 2007. Their discs are some of the highest-priced in High Definition media, yet rarely carry over many bonus features from the original DVD editions and in too many cases have mediocre video transfers. On the other hand, at least they support lossless DTS-HD Master Audio on all discs.

For no clear reason, Fox completely ceased all Blu-ray releases in April of 2007 and didn't resume until six months later in October. Speculation has it that they were concerned about breaches in the format's AACS security encryption and were waiting for the added layer of BD+, but the company made no official statements about the reason for their shutdown (ironically, BD+ was cracked by hackers almost immediately after implementation -- Whoops!).

To give them credit, Fox returned from their sabbatical stronger than when they left. Their discs started including more bonus features, and they've recently put out some very desirable releases such as the 'Die Hard Collection', 'The Simpsons Movie', and 'Prison Break: Season One'.

Unfortunately, not everything has been peachy keen since their return. The company made two of the most frustrating decisions of the year. First, they've released the blockbuster 'Live Free or Die Hard' on Blu-ray only in its PG-13 theatrical cut, while an unrated edition is available on standard DVD. Even more perplexing than that, one of their most high profile catalog releases was '28 Days Later', a movie that was actually shot on Standard Definition video. The Blu-ray contains an upscaled Standard-Def transfer almost indistinguishable from the old DVD edition, and they have the gall to charge $39.98 for it!

To be blunt, Fox needs to clean up its act in 2008. They made a complete mess of things in 2007.
Grade: C-

Universal Studios Home Entertainment
As the biggest and most vocal HD DVD exclusive studio, Universal released over 80 titles on the format in 2007, which has been both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing for the obvious reason of putting a lot of content out there in High Definition. They've really run the gamut from blockbuster hits like 'Knocked Up' and 'The Bourne Ultimatum', to major TV properties 'Heroes' and 'Battlestar Galactica', to cult favorites such as 'The Big Lebowski' and 'Being John Malkovich'.

On the flip side of that, they've made a lot of frankly inexplicable choices in what to release. I'm talking about stuff like 'The Watcher' and 'Mercury Rising' that I can't imagine anyone being eager to purchase. Sometimes it really feels like the studio executives pinned a printed list of all their titles to a wall and have been throwing darts at it to decide what comes out on HD DVD next. Seriously, Universal, you're ending the year with 'Timecop'?

The other big problem is that in cranking out so many titles, Universal has been mainly recycling existing High Definition masters that were originally created for DVD downconversion, some of them quite old and nowhere near modern video transfer standards. While day-and-date stuff and those titles recently mastered or remastered usually looked pretty good, too many of the studio's catalog titles featured pronounced edge enhancement or noise reduction artifacts, like those in 'Liar Liar' and 'In Good Company'.

The studio also continues to use the DVD/HD DVD Combo format for all day-and-date releases, which is frustrating considering that a significant number of discs in that format wind up having glitchy playback problems. Their support for lossless Dolby TrueHD audio has been spotty, though they've done a pretty good job with high bit-rate Dolby Digital Plus, and have started including TrueHD on more titles toward year-end.

In 2008, Universal needs to put more focus on quality rather than quantity. They should take a closer look at the video masters in their archives before rushing them out to HD DVD, and start remastering titles when needed. I'd also like to see them dig a little deeper into their catalog for movies made prior to 1980. Give us some Hitchcock classics like 'Vertigo' and 'Psycho', please. And enough with the damn Combo discs. Those are more trouble than they're worth.
Grade: B+

Warner Home Video
Warner Bros. started out 2007 with a little movie called 'The Departed' (Blu-ray | HD DVD) that you may have heard of. After that came such low-profile releases as 'Happy Feet' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), '300' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), the 'Planet Earth' (Blu-ray | HD DVD) box set (distributed for BBC Video), 'The Ultimate Matrix Collection', the 'Harry Potter Years 1-5 Gift Set' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), and the 'Blade Runner Ultimate Collector's Edition' (Blu-ray | HD DVD) that has all 5 versions of the movie in High Definition! You know, just a bunch of rinky-dink stuff like that.

The only major studio still releasing on both next-gen formats, Warner issued almost 80 titles on each format in 2007, among them many of the best High Definition discs of the year. They've not only aggressively made High-Def new releases available day-and-date with standard DVD, but have dug deep into their catalog to pull out some fantastic material like 'Dog Day Afternoon' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), 'Rio Bravo' (Blu-ray | HD DVD), and five Stanley Kubrick classics including a beautiful presentation of '2001: A Space Odyssey' (Blu-ray | HD DVD). The studio has consistently strong video quality (favoring VC-1 encoding), almost always carries over all the DVD bonus features to both HD formats, and has pushed for innovation in web-enabled and picture-in-picture interactive content.

I do wish, however, that they'd beef up their audio support. The studio only offers a limited number of titles with either lossless Dolby TrueHD (on HD DVD) or uncompressed PCM (on Blu-ray), and usually defaults to Dolby Digital (BD) or Dolby Digital Plus (HD) at the low 640 kb/s bit rate, which is disappointing to say the least. They still have some titles exclusive to HD DVD (like that 'Matrix' box set) that have yet to make the transition to Blu-ray as well, and insist on using the damned Combo format for all day-and-date releases on HD DVD. These are all things that deserve fixing in the near future, preferably as soon as possible.

Warner has also been experiencing something of a bumpy ride in this last month, during which they've suffered unfortunate production glitches such as packaging HD DVD discs into some copies of the 'Harry Potter' Blu-ray box set, mis-pressing the wrong content onto the final disc in some copies of the 'Blade Runner' collection, and mistakenly encoding the 'Terminator 3' Blu-ray video at 1080i resolution. These were all clearly unintentional errors, and the company has been prompt in responding and taking steps to correct matters, but they are nonetheless a black mark on the firm's reputation.

Even so, in my opinion, Warner Home Video easily qualifies as the best High Definition studio of the year, bar none. Some rumors have recently made the rounds that the company is considering dropping one format and declaring exclusivity to the other. Whether that exclusivity would favor Blu-ray or HD DVD depends on which rumor you believe, but Warner executives have so far denied any such plans. If such a thing were to happen, it would certainly be a tremendous loss to whichever side they abandoned.
Grade: A

The Weinstein Company Home Entertainment
Last and certainly least is The Weinstein Company (distributed via Genius Products), the worst High Definition studio of 2007. Technically HD DVD exclusive, the company released only 7 titles this year, the last back in June. They made no effort to issue new discs day-and-date with DVD and released mostly crappy movies (though I'll admit that 'Feast' is a fun guilty pleasure). They then acted surprised that their discs didn't sell and subsequently pulled up their stakes and vanished. Where are the 'Grindhouse' movies? Where is '1408'? Where's that 'Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair' consolidated edit they've been promising for ages? Nowhere to be found on High-Definition, that's where. Thanks for nothing, Weinstein.
Grade: F

That's it for the major labels. I want to wrap up by offering a shout-out to all the smaller independent studios that dipped their toes into the High Definition waters in 2007: Koch, Concert Hot Spot, and DVD International for all those scenery discs and the 'Digital Video Essentials' calibration tool; Razor Digital for the IMAX documentaries; Eagle Rock, Image, Interscope, and Rhino for the concert videos; FUNimation and Bandai Visual for the anime (though Bandai really needs to rethink its obscenely high prices); Opus Arte for bringing some opera to class up the joint; the porn studios for doing the opposite; and any other indies I've missed for giving it a go in 2007. We're still in the early stages of these High Definition formats, and the breadth of interesting content you bring helps enormously. Here's to more in 2008 and beyond!

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High-Def FAQ: Uncompressed vs. Lossless Audio

Fri Dec 07, 2007 at 06:43 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: As part of his twice-monthly column here at High-Def Digest, from time to time Josh Zyber answers frequently asked questions related to High-Definition and both Blu-ray on HD DVD. This week: Josh tackles the subjects of whether Uncompressed audio is better than Lossless, and what Dialogue Normalization really does to an audio signal.

By Joshua Zyber

A couple of months ago, I wrote a column called Blu-ray and HD DVD Audio Explained that spelled out the basic functions, features, and differences among the various audio formats available on both High-Def disc types. In it, I explained that uncompressed PCM audio (as found on many Blu-rays) is an exact replication of the studio master, encoded on disc without compression, and that the lossless audio formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio are also bit-for-bit identical to the studio master once decoded. Doing the math, that should mean that a lossless track is also identical to an uncompressed track. Indeed, that is the case. However, some confusion remains as to whether an uncompressed track is actually better than a lossless one.

Now that both High-Def formats have been available for over a year, and each has built up a catalog of hundreds of titles, we have several cases where two high-resolution audio tracks (one lossless and one uncompressed) can be directly compared for the same movie. Examples include Warner's dual-format releases of 'The Departed' and 'Troy: Director's Cut', which feature lossless TrueHD on HD DVD and uncompressed PCM on Blu-ray, or Sony's Blu-ray release of 'Ghost Rider' with both PCM and TrueHD on the same disc. Theoretically speaking, playing the same movie's soundtrack in both lossless and uncompressed encodings should sound absolutely identical, shouldn't it? Well, yes, except that sometimes there are extenuating circumstances that come into play, and indeed some listeners have tried comparing the soundtracks and claim to hear a difference between them.

So what would cause a lossless track to not be identical to an uncompressed track? To get to the bottom of this, let's first take a look at the ways in which each audio format is encoded.

Isn't All Compression Bad?

(Note: Please keep in mind that the following examples have been simplified for conceptual purposes, and are not intended to represent the actual mathematical workings of either digital audio encoding or lossless compression, both of which are more complicated than I can explain here. However, this should hopefully serve to illustrate the basic concept of how a digital file can be compressed without losing important data.)

Let's begin with uncompressed audio. A PCM track is an uncompressed digital format that is 100% bit-for-bit identical to the source fed into it. If the studio master is:

101011100100101100010111

Then the PCM track pressed onto the disc would be:

101011100100101100010111

Pretty straightforward, right? The problem when it comes to High-Def discs is that, since the PCM file is totally uncompressed, an entire movie soundtrack takes up a huge amount of disc space. With their greater storage capacity, Blu-ray discs may often have enough room for this, but space is generally more cramped on HD DVD. Even on Blu-ray, some studios prefer to use that extra space for other purposes.

On the other hand, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio are "lossless" compression formats. Although they're compressed to take up less disc space than a PCM track, once decoded they're also bit-for-bit identical to their sources. Think of this like a ZIP file that holds a PCM track. Once you unZIP the file, you get a 100% identical copy of the original PCM, without compromising any sound quality. What these formats do is drop certain data, and instead use flags to indicate that the empty spaces in the stream are meant to be filled with that data when decoded. As an example, let's pretend that we have a movie that's half sound and half complete silence. A PCM track might look like this:

101011100101000000000000

As you can see, all those 0s at the end are needlessly taking up space on the disc, literally for nothing but complete silence in this hypothetical scenario. To losslessly compress this, a TrueHD or Master Audio track might instead look like this:

1_1_111__1_1____________

By dropping the 0s, the lossless version takes up vastly less room, but when decoded those missing 0s are filled in and it looks like this again:

101011100101000000000000

Voila! A perfect reproduction of the source at less than half the disc space.

(Again, the above is a very simplified example of how lossless compression can be achieved. A real lossless audio algorithm doesn't just drop zeroes, but rather employs complex statistical models to analyze patterns in the data.)

Standard Dolby Digital, DTS, and (to a lesser extent) Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD High Resolution are all "lossy" compression formats. In the above scenario, they'd not only drop the 0s, but also drop some of the 1s that are deemed less critical to human hearing, under the belief that most people won't be able to hear the difference. The higher the bit rate, the less data is dropped. DD+ and DTS-HD HR are not only higher bit rate than old DD and DTS, but also more efficient at maintaining more of the data at lower bit rates. Still, they're not a perfect replication of the studio master the way that the PCM or TrueHD and Master Audio formats are.

Comparing Apples to Apples

Now that we've seen how lossless compression works, before we can legitimately compare a lossless track to an uncompressed track, we have to be sure that we're actually comparing the same thing. Over the past year, I've read countless discussion forum postings (and a few editorials from people who ought to know better) in which viewers have tried to compare the soundtracks of different movies to prove a point about one audio format being superior to another. The reasoning usually goes something like this: "The PCM track on 'Black Hawk Down' sounds better than the TrueHD track on 'Batman Begins', therefore PCM must be better than TrueHD."

Unfortunately, this entire argument is based on a huge logical fallacy. You can't compare the soundtracks of completely different movies and draw conclusions about the audio formats used on their video discs. Maybe 'Black Hawk Down' just has a better sound mix than 'Batman Begins'? By the same token, I could argue that the TrueHD track on 'Batman Begins' sounds a lot better than the PCM track on 'The Benchwarmers', so have I just proven that TrueHD is inherently superior to PCM, even though someone else just proved the opposite by picking different titles to compare? Of course not. The entire train of thought is hopelessly flawed.

If a person likes apples better than oranges, does that mean that the crate used to ship the apples is superior to the crate used to ship the oranges? For that matter, does this opinion really mean that apples are better than oranges, or just that this one person happens to prefer them? Likewise, is the 'Black Hawk Down' soundtrack actually superior to the one for 'Batman Begins', or is it just that someone likes that mix better?

To further complicate matters, even when you're trying to compare the same movie's soundtrack in its different formats, you may still not quite be comparing apples to apples if the two tracks aren't encoded at the same bit depth. While both Blu-ray and HD DVD are capable of utilizing lossless and/or uncompressed audio up to 24-bit resolution, studios may choose to encode at 16-bit resolution instead, depending on the bit depth of the original source or concerns about conserving bandwidth. For example, on that copy of 'Ghost Rider' with both TrueHD and PCM on the same disc, the TrueHD track is encoded at 20-bit resolution, while the PCM track is encoded at 16-bits. Even though it's the same movie soundtrack, and technically both audio formats are "bit-for-bit identical" to their respective sources, in this case the studio chose to use a downsampled source for the PCM option, which may affect the final audible outcome in TrueHD's favor.

When making conclusive claims about the technical merits of one audio format over another, it's critical to accurately take all these factors into account.

Dialogue Normalization – Benefit or Menace?

So let's say we pick a single movie with its soundtrack available at the same bit depth resolution in both uncompressed and lossless formats, like the 'Troy: Director's Cut'. Now we should finally have a case where playing the Blu-ray's PCM track and the HD DVD's TrueHD track back-to-back should sound instantly identical, right? Well, almost.

Now there's a new wrinkle to consider. Many Dolby audio tracks are encoded with a function called Dialnorm, which is short for Dialogue Normalization, a feature Dolby offers to set the default playback levels. The idea is to avoid having some discs start very loudly and others start very quietly when a receiver is set for the exact same volume. To do this, Dialnorm sets a default center of the soundtrack at a common average, using dialogue as a baseline. Therefore, the relative loudness of movie dialogue should be the same from one Dialnorm-encoded disc to another without a viewer needing to change the receiver volume from normal preferences.

There's been a certain level of hysteria about Dialnorm from members of the audiophile community, who misunderstand its purpose and functioning, and believe that it fundamentally alters the soundtracks encoded with it. In actuality, Dialnorm does not affect a movie soundtrack any more than raising or lowering the Volume setting on your receiver does. Contrary to common misconception, Dialnorm does not "boost" the dialogue relative to the rest of the sound mix, or in any way alter the track's dynamic range. A Dialnorm-encoded soundtrack has the exact same peaks and valleys as a soundtrack without Dialnorm; it's just that the Dialnorm track will contain an extra flag in the metadata telling the receiver to either increase or decrease its entire volume scale globally before playback, so that all movies start on the same scale. And it only does this once at the start of the movie; it does not cause fluctuations after the movie begins.

At any given volume setting on your receiver, a movie like 'Gosford Park' will deliver dialogue crisply and clearly, but the soundtrack won't get much louder, because that film is practically all dialogue. Switching to 'Jurassic Park' at the same setting, dialogue will come through just the same as it did for the last picture, until the dinosaur roars shake your house to pieces, because that movie has a lot of sound effects that are much louder relative to the dialogue. Dialnorm will not make 'Gosford Park' a house-shaking experience, or make 'Jurassic Park' any less of an auditory powerhouse. It just sets them both so that their dialogue is at the same loudness as one another.

This is relevant to our discussion because a Dolby TrueHD track encoded with Dialnorm may begin at a higher or lower starting volume than a PCM track without this feature, even though it's the same movie's soundtrack and the receiver is left at the same setting. There's a well-known principle in auditory research that has shown that listeners typically perceive a recording played back at a louder volume as better in quality than the same recording at a lower volume. That's because the louder the playback, the more pressure generated by its sound waves. At a difference of just a few decibels, the listener may not necessarily be able to tell that one track is being played louder than the other, but subtle sounds in the recording will suddenly start to vibrate their eardrums more forcefully. The result will be that the louder track seems to have more clarity, breadth, and "impact," when in fact the only real difference is that it's being played a little louder.

In order to properly compare the same soundtrack on two different audio formats, they must first be matched to the exact same volume, and this will require a sound level meter to measure precisely. Once that's been accomplished, the audible differences between an uncompressed encoding and a lossless one vanish. Being set for different starting volumes doesn't make one track better or worse in actual quality than another; they just need different volume settings on your receiver.

Does the Hardware Affect the Results?

One last factor to take into consideration: A lossless audio track is really only bit-for-bit identical to its source if it's been decoded and processed correctly. In my review of the Toshiba HD-XA2 HD DVD player, I noted a bug in its audio section that causes bass management for the multi-channel analog outputs to be applied inaccurately when the "Digital Out SPDIF" control is set for Bitstream rather than PCM. That player also seems to apply Dynamic Range Compression whether you want it or not unless all speakers are set to a Small size. Without the required workaround settings (SPDIF at "PCM" and all speakers Small) all movie soundtracks seem to be lacking bass over those audio connections.

If a viewer weren't aware of this problem, a first inclination might be to assume that the Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD audio formats used on HD DVD were poor quality. However, this is actually just a defect in one specific player, and not at all indicative of the audio formats themselves.

Similarly, although Fox Home Entertainment prefers to use DTS-HD Master Audio on its Blu-ray releases, at the present time there isn't much hardware that can decode the full lossless extension to the codec. Most currently-available Blu-ray disc players and A/V receivers instead extract the lossy DTS "core," so the majority of listeners aren't hearing the format to its fullest potential. That's not a knock against Master Audio, but rather a limitation imposed by the playback hardware.

What It Boils Down To

The number of new audio formats on Blu-ray and HD DVD have caused a great deal of consumer confusion, especially with three separate formats (PCM, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD Master Audio) all designed to accomplish the exact same goal -- a perfect replication of the movie's audio master. Apprehensions about lossless compression being inferior to an uncompressed version of the same soundtrack are not borne out by the facts. One methodology may have technical advantages over the other in terms of space savings, but the end result is the same whether the disc you buy has an uncompressed soundtrack or a lossless one. They're both equally good, so sit back and enjoy.

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Joshua Zyber's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this site, its owners or employees. To view a complete collection of Josh's commentaries for High-Def Digest, click here.

Commentary: Living in Fear of the Niche

Fri Nov 09, 2007 at 04:30 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

By Joshua Zyber

It should go without saying that we here at High-Def Digest believe that High Definition, in one form or another, is the way of the future. I have no doubt that some day our current classification of "HDTV" will be the minimum quality standard for all television broadcasts and home video products. Infomercials, religious programming, high school kids airing their homemade wrestling videos on obscure Public Access stations in the middle of the night -- everything will be High Definition. As technology moves forward, progress is inevitable. When that time comes, we'll all look back at Standard Definition NTSC or PAL with a sense of nostalgia and perhaps a twinge of embarrassment, the way we think of Black & White TVs now. Our grandkids will have no frame of reference when we tell them stories about watching television in the olden days at the turn of the century. How quaint it will all seem.

But we're not there yet, and it's going to be a while.

In the meantime, we have to deal with the High Definition format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD, each video disc format vying to establish itself as the next-generation successor to DVD. The fastest-growing, most popular consumer electronic product in history has been a tough act to follow, and the competition between these two adversaries has generated an enormous amount of corporate hype, controversy, and bitter infighting, all of which has spread right to the consumer sector. Not only do we have executives from multi-national electronics corporations and major Hollywood movie studios sniping at each other in tersely-worded press releases, now even the public has gotten involved, picking sides like fans of rival sports teams -- cheering on their favorite, organizing web campaigns to proselytize its benefits, and attacking anyone with an opposing viewpoint. It's not enough to buy your favorite movies in High Definition; you have to buy them on the right High Definition disc type. The fact that both formats are virtually identical in terms of quality and features doesn't seem to matter. If you're not a soldier out there fighting for your side in the format war, you must be the enemy.

As far as I'm concerned, the whole thing seems pretty silly. At the end of the day, I just want to watch movies in High Definition. Naturally, it would probably make life a lot easier and less confusing for everyone if all titles could be watched on a single format, but it didn't work out that way. As a result, I bought players of both types so that I can keep up with the broadest selection of content, and I don't regret it for a minute. So long as the movies keep coming, I'm glad to have both. To look at it a different way, the format war has actually been a tremendous benefit to consumers, forcing both sides to increase quality and drive down prices to stay competitive with one another. Imagine where we might be right now if one side had rolled over and played dead at the start of all this; we'd be stuck watching sub-par quality software on players starting at $1,500 MSRP, with nothing pushing that status to change.

Nonetheless, if you listen to the rhetoric, the format war has brought nothing but misery and suffering, and if dragged out any further can only serve to destroy our dreams of a High Definition future. The argument goes something like this: Consumers are so confused by the format war and afraid of picking the "losing" side that they won't buy either one until the whole mess is sorted out. If they don't buy either one, both sides lose, companies stop making them, and High Definition home video dies out entirely. This conclusion seems to be supported by the slow adoption rates both formats are currently facing, and it kind of sounds logical, doesn't it?

The problem is that this argument just doesn't ring true. While the format war has undoubtedly created some measure of concern and reluctance in the marketplace, it is simply not the biggest impediment to High Definition adoption. The real roadblock is consumer apathy. By and large, most people out there are happy with their DVD players, and don't understand all the fuss about High Definition. A significant number of them believe that DVDs are already High Definition and have no concept of why they should buy a new player for discs in different packaging. Yes, it's true that sales of HDTVs have soared over the last few years, but that has more to do with the size of the sets than anything else. Most people are impressed by a big screen, not the resolution or picture quality.

Let me relay a little story here. Recently, my wife and I were visiting some friends who'd bought a new plasma TV and were eager to show it off to us. Their 10 year-old son insisted that we watch 'Pirates of the Caribbean' on DVD with them. The set was a fairly large screen, certainly bigger than anything they'd ever owned before. However, they had not done anything that could remotely be called "calibration" with it. The brightness level was cranked up so high that there was no such thing as the color black on screen, just a milky gray. They'd only had the set for a few months and already developed burn-in marks from the letterbox bars on DVDs, and for some reason the picture pulsed every so often, filling the whole screen with nasty pixelation artifacts. As if that weren't enough, they had their DVD player connected by Composite Video cable, and set for 4:3 aspect ratio mode, so the 2.35:1 movie image on 'Pirates' was squished down into a tiny strip in the middle of the screen.

As a dyed-in-the-wool videophile, I naturally found the whole situation appalling, but as the movie started my wife gave me a dirty look that said, "Not one word. Keep your mouth shut and pretend to enjoy yourself!" Of course, she was right. Our friends were so proud of their new purchase that it would have been unbearably rude of me to criticize. After the seemingly-endless movie, I politely asked to use the DVD player remote for a minute to "tweak" a setting for them, during which I mercifully fixed the aspect ratio setting to 16:9 mode. I quickly checked a scene to verify that the change took, only to be greeted with the response that, "We don't see any difference." Indeed, they never noticed that there was any problem before, and were perfectly happy with the squished, stretched, and obviously distorted picture they'd been watching.

Is there a home theater fan reading this without a similar story? We've all faced it, the blank stare of indifference and the assumption that so long as the TV screen is big that everything on it must be High Definition. Out there in the general populace, there's no great consternation about the HD format war, because the vast majority of people are totally oblivious to it. They don't know the difference between Blu-ray and HD DVD, couldn't tell you what either one offers over standard DVD, and just plain don't care in any case. DVD is perfectly satisfying for them. High Definition is not a priority in their lives, and one side "winning" the format war is not going to drive them to buy it any more than they are now.

It's time to face the fact that we in the High Definition community are a specialized niche market. And honestly, there's nothing wrong with that. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard the complaint that one of these formats had better win quickly and take over the DVD market, or we'll be faced with just another Laserdisc situation all over again. The comment amuses me. Sure, Laserdisc was a niche format that never achieved mass market penetration in its day, but it also lasted for over 20 years as the highest quality home video format available at the time, and saw every major new movie released on it. I wish both Blu-ray and HD DVD that much success.

We've already overcome the biggest obstacle that made movie collecting on Laserdisc so difficult, its high prices. Thanks to the format war, we now have reasonably priced hardware and software on both HD DVD and Blu-ray. With Blu-ray players moving down to the $399 range and HD DVD players below $199, we can buy one of each for less than the price of a decent Laserdisc player back in the day. Although it can be argued that $600 is a lot of money in many aspects of life, the home theater hobby has never been cheap. I have a feeling that most reading this article spent more than that (perhaps significantly more) on their surround sound receiver or speakers.

Outside the confines of the boardrooms of the corporations making these products, what difference does it make to the rest of us as consumers whether these formats achieve mass market penetration? Is the fear that both formats will die if they don't take over from DVD? Even within the movie studios releasing these discs, I doubt anyone expects or wants High-Def media to fully replace DVD. The DVD format is cheap to produce and brings in a lot of money. These days, most movies earn more on DVD than they do in theaters. Why would anyone want to kill that cash cow? No, what the studios really want from High Definition is to supplement DVD income, not to merely replace it. Two revenue streams are better than one. The adoption rates for both Blu-ray and HD DVD have been slow, but they are growing, and it's perfectly conceivable that both will eventually be profitable enough to satisfy the movie studio accountants as to the viability of their investments.

The video game market has survived and thrived for many years despite the presence of multiple formats. Why can't the High Definition market do the same? Peaceful coexistence should be possible. The split in studio support means that neither format will have 100% of movies that any given customer may want, but by the same token each video game console has its own highly-desirable exclusive titles. Hard core gamers buy every console, while casual gamers look at the selection available and pick the format that has more titles appealing to their taste. The same rationale applies here. If you need to have every movie in High Definition, it will be worth your time to buy both Blu-ray and HD DVD players. If that's not an option, look through the following lists and decide which one offers more of what you personally like:

Blu-ray Historical Release List
Blu-ray Upcoming Release List

HD DVD Historical Release List
HD DVD Upcoming Release List

Both formats already have hundreds of titles available, across a wide variety of genres: drama, comedy, action, family, classics, science fiction, Western, horror, and everything in between, with plenty more aggressively slated for future release. Even if you can't necessarily get every single movie you want on one format, surely no matter which one you pick will supply plenty of content to keep you busy. And if that's just not satisfying enough, what's the alternative? Stick with regular DVD and stay limited to blurry Standard Definition forever? Where's the benefit in that?

Loudmouth pundits will whine that the format war has been a miserable disaster that will doom High Definition to remain a niche, a scenario they want you to fear as the worst of all possible outcomes. That's a load of bunk and I don't buy it for a second. If the movies keep coming at reasonable prices (those who feel High-Def media prices are unreasonable clearly never bought a $125 Laserdisc "Special Edition"), why should anyone not specifically employed by one of these companies be upset that their format is just a niche? These products are meant to be enjoyed, not to have their weekly sales statistics scrutinized with ruthless obsession. Are we so insecure that we need mainstream popularity to validate our hobby? Are we in this because we love movies, or because we want to boast of owning the latest "hot" new toy?

I'm in it for the movies, in the best quality I can get them. I believe that High Definition is the future, that it will eventually take over as the default standard for all home video. But that time hasn't come yet, and for now we're in a niche market. Mass popularity or not, High Definition quality is here right now. It's available, it's affordable, and I'll gladly take it on whichever formats give it to me.

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Joshua Zyber's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this site, its owners or employees. To view a complete collection of Josh's commentaries for High-Def Digest, click here.

Commentary: Specs vs. Reality

Fri Oct 26, 2007 at 04:22 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: A long-time movie buff and collector of discs from laserdisc to DVD, Joshua Zyber is a veteran disc reviewer, and an enthusiastic supporter of all things High Definition. In his twice-monthly High-Def Digest column, Josh discusses a broad range of topics of interest to other early adopters.

By Joshua Zyber

One of the inevitable side effects of the High Definition revolution is that the advanced video and audio technology used in the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats tends to bring out the know-it-all tech geek in home theater fans. Sometimes this can be a great benefit, when knowledgeable users band together to analyze specific technical deficiencies that have occurred and share their feedback with the parties responsible, hopefully leading to improvements in the future. We've seen some of this at various points during the format war. Early Blu-ray releases such as 'The Fifth Element' exhibited obvious visual deficiencies due to weak source materials and poor digital compression encoding. Likewise, HD DVD catalog titles from Universal have been hit-or-miss in quality, many of them recycled from dated and problematic video masters (like 'In Good Company', with its ghastly edge enhancement artifacts). Reviews published on this site and others were negative, and buyers voiced their displeasure to the studios, eventually resulting in improved mastering on subsequent releases. 'The Fifth Element' was even remastered in significantly better quality as a direct result of owner feedback. That wouldn't have happened had no one spoken up about it.

Generally speaking, the High Definition studios, knowing the intense scrutiny their work is placed under, have maintained a much higher standard of quality on recent releases (with some notable exceptions, of course). Just imagine what might have happened had the public been apathetic and merely accepted whatever shoddy treatment they were handed. In this case, the voice of the people resulted in a better end product for everyone to enjoy.

Unfortunately, the above example is a best case scenario. On the flip side of that coin, we have countless cases of agenda-driven individuals attempting to use a partial understanding of technical matters as a bludgeon in arguments supposedly "proving" the superiority of one format over the other. Anyone who's spent time browsing home theater discussion forums has suffered through an endless string of debates about how the HD DVD format "sucks" because its discs can only store 30 gb of content, while Blu-ray discs can store up to 50 gb, and therefore must be amazingly superior. Never mind that HD DVD has time and again proven capable of delivering exceptional picture and sound quality, plus copious bonus material, easily equaling even the best available on Blu-ray. At the same time, there are others who point to the occasional Blu-ray encoded with MPEG-2 compression as being "unacceptable", even though MPEG-2 can certainly achieve excellent results when given enough room to breathe (witness 'Black Hawk Down'). To some people, the actual quality presented to them is irrelevant if they don't like the sound of the specs on paper.

This "specs above all else" mentality has reared its ugly head again recently with the release of 'Transformers' on HD DVD, a title that delivers stunning video and audio, as well as a number of innovative interactive features. What could possibly be the problem here? Well, the soundtrack is only encoded in Dolby Digital Plus format, not a lossless codec such as Dolby TrueHD or an uncompressed one like PCM. In his review of the disc for this site, our Peter Bracke gave the DD+ track a perfect "5" for audio quality and said of it that, "Directionality, imaging, accuracy of localized effects, and the sheer depth of the soundfield are all fantastic stuff." Nonetheless, in the minds of many, this disc is a huge failure, and its soundtrack a pathetic disgrace for not including a TrueHD or PCM option.

I should mention at this point that at least one working Hollywood sound mixer has voiced his opinion that, when played back on his professional dubbing stage, well-mastered Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks encoded at the high 1.5 Mb/s bit rate that Paramount uses can be audibly transparent to the studio masters, when tested on movies that he mixed himself and would presumably know better than anyone else. But what use is the informed opinion of an expert in the field when it's easier to just point to the specs list on the back of a disc's packaging to make conclusive statements about matters of quality? In the forum on this site, a number of readers have made proclamations such as, "Compressed audio is just not acceptable these days" and "Whether you can tell the difference or not is irrelevant."

The disc's audio being indistinguishable from its studio master is "irrelevant"? Even with just a Dolby Digital Plus track, the 'Transformers' disc rated the highest score for audio quality that we can give. What more could we demand from it? It's absolutely terrific, but it's just not absolutely terrific enough if the packaging doesn't have a listing for TrueHD or PCM, even when it's likely impossible for human ears to tell the difference? What kind of argument is that?

The lossy compressed audio formats offered by Dolby and DTS use perceptual encoding techniques to filter out data from the studio masters in order to conserve disc space. The intent of perceptual encoding is that the data removed should consist mainly of either frequencies beyond the range of human hearing or frequencies that would normally be masked by other frequencies in the track anyway. With the most heavily compressed formats, including basic Dolby Digital and DTS (the standards on regular DVD), often additional frequencies within the range of hearing are affected, and this has resulted in much variability in sound quality. However, Dolby Digital Plus, especially the 1.5 Mb/s variety found on a disc like the 'Transformers' HD DVD, uses much more efficient encoding techniques at a very high bit rate. The people who actually make these movie soundtracks have found it pretty impressive, and yet average home listeners seem to believe with absolute certainty that the home theater speakers in their living rooms would be capable of resolving with precision the mathematical difference between a high bit rate Dolby Digital Plus track and a lossless one, and that their golden audiophile ears would also be capable of discerning it. Personally, I would like to put these people to a properly-controlled blind test, where all of the audio levels have been carefully matched to the same volume, and then see how well their hearing fares.

I would not claim that all DD+ tracks are flawless or transparent to their masters; it does take some effort to encode them properly. But to dismiss the format out of hand simply because the soundtrack isn't labeled as lossless or uncompressed demonstrates an ignorance of the technology being used. If the audio codec alone were the only important criteria in sound quality, how could it be that a disc like 'Dinosaur' with a 48 kHz / 24-bit PCM 5.1 track would sound so underwhelming? With specs like those, why isn't that disc a spectacular audio showcase? Somehow I doubt you'll find too many critical listeners who would ever claim that 'Dinosaur' sounds better than 'Transformers', but based on the specs, shouldn't it? Perhaps it's time we all realize that there's more to quality than the specs can tell us.

Yet we see the same thinking applied to matters of video. How many more arguments must there be about the different video compression codecs? Proponents on one side proclaim the infallible superiority of VC-1 above all other options, while those opposed insist that VC-1 is garbage and only AVC MPEG-4 is any good. Both camps attempt to prove their point by capturing screen shots on their computers, which they run through Photoshop to crop, zoom, filter, and distort in all manner of convoluted ways in order to locate individual errant pixels, completely invisible to the naked eye in the normal course of movie watching, and heartily declare their victory in the debate.

The truth of the matter is that all video compression codecs have the same purpose, to accurately represent the source using a fraction of the storage space. In the hands of a good operator, both VC-1 and AVC are more than capable of achieving this goal. Even the dated MPEG-2 codec has been known to deliver excellent results (owners of the now-defunct D-Theater tape format sure didn't seem to have any problem with it). There are plenty of examples of "reference quality" transfers using any of the above, from 'King Kong' (VC-1) to 'Final Fantasy' (AVC) to 'Kingdom of Heaven' (MPEG-2). In all cases, the skill of the compressionist and the quality of the work is more important than the codec used to get there.

It's also more important than the bit rate. As far as I'm concerned, Sony's decision to incorporate a bit rate meter in their PS3 Blu-ray player is one of the worst things to have ever happened to the home theater hobby. Because of that one seemingly-innocuous and frequently-inaccurate data display, now just about anyone, no matter how technologically ignorant, can believe themselves to be experts in the field of video reproduction, based on nothing more than whether their bit rate meters read a high number or a low one -- as if that number were even relevant. The whole point of video compression is to squeeze a High Definition picture into as little space as possible. A compressionist who's maintained a high-quality picture with a low bit rate has done an excellent job, but that's a point lost on most consumers, who assume that a good picture needs a high bit rate, regardless of what they actually see on their TV screens. The bit rate alone is a meaningless statistic and says nothing about the quality of the compression work. It is equally possible to create a lousy video image with a high bit rate, or a great image with a low bit rate, depending on the complexity of the content and how well the work is done. I found it extremely amusing to read complaints about the low bit rate used on 'TMNT', a disc with a razor sharp and amazingly detailed picture that some owners nonetheless decried as "soft" against the evidence their own eyes gave them, for no reason other than an ill-founded assumption that the picture would have been even sharper if the bit rate meter spiked a little higher. How would they know? Have they compared it against the studio master?

This misconception has reached such heights of absurdity that certain viewers have started petitions demanding that Warner Bros. stop using the same video encodes on HD DVD and Blu-ray, and instead "maximize" the bit rates on their Blu-ray releases if the extra disc space is available. But for what purpose? Video compression doesn't work on a linear scale. Using advanced codecs like VC-1 and AVC, there are diminishing returns above a certain point, and throwing more bits at a picture that doesn't require them accomplishes nothing more than to make the meter number go up. As time goes on, compression tools and techniques become more efficient, requiring even less space to achieve visual transparency to the original master. Warner Bros. has many times over demonstrated outstanding results within the 30 gb limit of HD DVD, even on very long films such as the 'Troy: Director's Cut', a movie that runs 3 1/2 hours and yet fits comfortably on a 30 gb disc with beautiful picture quality, despite also squeezing in a lossless Dolby TrueHD audio track and a bunch of supplements. So what if the Blu-ray edition has an extra 20 gb of space available? Are we watching the movie or watching the bit rate meter? If there were no bit rate meter, would anyone have a legitimate basis to complain?

Back when they were supporting both High-Def formats, Paramount actually did what these users are demanding. They authored every movie separately for HD DVD and Blu-ray, each maximized to its format's potential. And what were the results? The same movie looked visibly identical on the bit rate maximized Blu-ray as it did on the lower bit rate HD DVD. Once again, the quality of the compression trumped other considerations regarding tech specs or bit rate.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to imply that all HD DVDs and Blu-rays are perfect now. Video artifacts do occur, and the studios have been known to rest on their laurels and allow shoddy work to slip through. Sometimes disc space really does strain the limits of what a studio wants to include on a High-Def title. It's important to scrutinize their results, lest we return to a state where the original 'Fifth Element' Blu-ray is considered acceptable. But it's equally important to understand what we're actually looking at. Many times, the "artifacts" picked apart by viewers have nothing to do with video compression or encoding whatsoever, but rather are issues found in the source, such as natural film grain, which isn't a flaw at all. Yes, a soft picture can be the result of poor compression or excessive filtering, but it can also be the result of soft focus photography. A heavily-grainy image could be overcompressed, or it could be stylistically intentional. Not every movie is photographed to look exactly the same as every other, and even within a film certain shots or scenes may look different than others. We must understand what a movie is supposed to look like before we can judge how well a video disc reproduces it. Being moderately proficient at manipulating still images in Photoshop does not necessarily qualify someone as an expert in the art of filmmaking.

I'm not suggesting that viewers should relax their standards or accept substandard quality as "good enough" when it's really not, but the technical specs alone simply do not tell the whole story, and over-emphasizing them is a matter of misplaced priorities. We should judge these discs by the actual quality they deliver, not by misleading statistics like the bit rate or the specs listing on the packaging. Surely, that can't be too much to ask.

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High-Def FAQ: Blu-ray and HD DVD Audio Explained

Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 04:37 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber (all tags)

Editor's Note: As part of his twice-monthly column here at High-Def Digest, from time to time, Josh Zyber answers frequently asked questions related to High-Definition and both Blu-ray on HD DVD. This week: Josh provides a comprehensive rundown of all the audio formats currently available on next-gen disc.

Commentary by Joshua Zyber

If there's one request we get here at High-Def Digest more than any other, it's to help readers sort through all the confusion swirling around the new audio formats that come on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. It seems that most early adopters can easily identify the benefit of a High Definition picture over Standard-Def DVD, but making sense of the difference between Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD, or PCM and TrueHD is a lot harder to get a good grasp on. It doesn't help that the companies who designed these sound formats (Dolby and DTS) haven't always been clear in their labeling or naming conventions.

A Quick Recap of the DVD Situation

On Standard-Def DVD, there are essentially only two competing sound formats to choose from: Dolby Digital or DTS. Both can accommodate movie soundtracks from monaural 1.0 to multi-channel 5.1, and in some cases add a matrixed center back channel as well (DTS also offers a discrete 6.1 option on selected titles). A small number of discs (mostly music concerts) may provide 2-channel PCM audio, but those are few and far between. As a rule of thumb, it's Dolby or DTS. The DVD spec requires all discs to contain either a Dolby Digital or PCM soundtrack as the base standard (pretty much everyone uses Dolby), and all DVD players are required to decode both. DTS is optional, and is generally considered (fairly or not) an added-value feature. Though it hasn't always panned out that way in actual practice, there is a perception in the DVD marketplace that DTS is the "better" sound option that will provide greater fidelity to the source. Sometimes that's true and sometimes not, but that's a discussion topic for another day. The reality of the situation is that both Dolby Digital and DTS are capable of delivering very good, sometimes even exceptional sound quality on DVD.

Both Dolby Digital and DTS are "lossy" compression codecs. Before making it to disc, each format selectively filters out data from the studio's digital audio master using perceptual encoding techniques. In theory, the data removed should consist mainly of either frequencies beyond the range of human hearing or frequencies that would normally be masked by other frequencies in the track anyway. If done properly, the end result should sound seamless to the listener. But if done poorly or over-compressed, the audio may lose fidelity.

Standard Dolby Digital can be encoded in a variety of bit rates, the most common being 192 kb/s (reserved for 1.0 or 2.0 soundtracks and generally poor fidelity), 384 kb/s (OK quality), and the maximum 448 kb/s (used on the majority of DVD 5.1 soundtracks). DTS has two bit rate encoding options: the commonly used 754 kb/s or a rarely offered high rate of 1.5 Mb/s. Within each format, the higher the bit rate means the less compression needed and the less data removed from the master. However, it also means that the audio track takes up more disc space, which can eat into the bit rate allocated to video quality. Also note that Dolby and DTS use entirely different compression techniques, and their bit rate numbers are not directly comparable to one another. While a 448 kb/s Dolby track is better than a 384 kb/s Dolby track, a 754 kb/s DTS track is not necessarily better than a 448 kb/s Dolby track just because the number is larger. Dolby uses more efficient compression techniques than DTS and can usually achieve results at 448 kb/s comparable to DTS at 754 kb/s.

Now on to the High-Def Formats

The advent of Blu-ray and HD DVD has brought a dramatic increase in picture quality from Standard Definition to High Definition. Along with that has come an expectation for an attendant boost in audio quality. When there's so much more disc space available on an HD DVD or a Blu-ray, why should we be limited to the heavily-compressed sound formats we got on DVD? High Definition video deserves High Definition audio to go with it.

Jumping into the fray once more are Dolby and DTS. Each company has developed a line-up of brand new sound formats to go with the new disc types, using advanced forms of audio compression to deliver high quality to the home listener, quality sometimes matching that of the studio master itself. On some discs we even have the option of raw PCM with no compression at all. But we haven't just been given one new codec choice per company. No, that would be too simple. Now we have a whole host of confusing new options. To help straighten out this tangled mess, let's break things out by High-Def disc format and take a look at what each supports.

Blu-ray discs can provide their movie soundtracks in any of the following formats:

Dolby Digital
What it is: The audio format familiar from DVD, Dolby Digital (sometimes known as AC-3) is one of the base standards of Blu-ray. It works basically the same way that it worked on DVD in configurations from 1.0 to 5.1, though it does offer a higher maximum bit rate of 640 kb/s (which is considered audibly indistinguishable from Dolby Digital Plus at the same rate).
Level of support: Full support for Dolby Digital is mandatory in all Blu-ray disc players.
Examples of discs that use it: Almost all Blu-ray discs from Sony, Warner Bros., Paramount, and Lionsgate, among others.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - Using an SPDIF connection, the Dolby Digital bitstream is sent directly to your receiver for decoding, converting to analog, and amplifying to your speakers.
HDMI - Depending on the setting chosen in your Blu-ray disc player, the HDMI output can be used to transmit the Dolby Digital bitstream to be decoded in the receiver, or the player itself can perform the decoding to a PCM signal and transmit instead in that form. The receiver will still be needed for digital-to-analog conversion and amplification.
Multi-channel analog - With the analog connections, the player itself must decode the Dolby Digital bitstream and convert it from digital to analog. This will then be passed to the receiver for amplification. In this case, calibration adjustments such as speaker sizes and channel levels should be entered into the Blu-ray disc player's setup menus, not the A/V receiver's. The quality of the resulting sound will vary depending on whether the Digital-to-Analog (DAC) components in the player are as good as those in the receiver. If the receiver has superior DACs, a digital connection (either SPDIF or HDMI) will be preferred.

DTS
What it is: Sometimes referred to as DTS Encore (though DTS themselves don't seem to use that name anymore), this sound format is another familiar holdover from standard DVD. Blu-ray, however, more ably supports the codec at its higher 1.5 Mb/s bit rate.
Level of support: All Blu-ray disc players are required to support the transmission of a DTS bitstream over a digital connection and internal decoding up to at least 2 channels. Most players (other than early models such as the Samsung BD-P1000) will decode internally to 5.1.
Examples of discs that use it: 'Terminator 2', 'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider'.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - The DTS bitstream will be sent to your receiver for decoding and processing.
HDMI - As with Dolby Digital, the HDMI connection can carry the raw DTS bitstream for decoding in the receiver, or the player may decode it to PCM first.
Multi-channel analog - The Blu-ray disc player will decode the DTS bitstream (only 2 channel decoding is required, but most players will do 5.1) and convert it to analog, after which it will be sent to the receiver for amplification. Once again, the final sound quality will depend on how well the audio components in the disc player compare to those in the receiver.

Dolby Digital Plus
What it is: An enhancement over standard Dolby Digital, DD+ offers higher bit rates and more efficient compression, resulting in improved sound quality. It can also support movie soundtracks up to 7.1 discrete channels (though honestly, the vast majority of Hollywood movies are only mixed for 5.1). On Blu-ray, DD+ is encoded as an extension to a "core" Dolby Digital AC-3 track.
Level of support: Unfortunately, DD+ is optional on the Blu-ray format, and not all disc players are required to support it. Many players will simply read the 640 kb/s core and disregard the extension. As a result, most movie studios prefer to use either basic Dolby Digital AC-3 or some of the other advanced formats.
Examples of discs that use it: 'A View from Space with Heavenly Music' claims a DD+ track, assuming that the packaging and menus aren't just mislabeled.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - SPDIF cannot carry a full DD+ signal. If you use this connection method, the player will limit output to the Dolby Digital AC-3 core.
HDMI - If the player does not support DD+, it will simply extract the AC-3 core, in which case see the Dolby Digital listing above. Some players may decode the DD+ to PCM and transmit it over HDMI (any version). Other players will instead choose to transmit the DD+ bitstream to a receiver for decoding, but this requires HDMI 1.3 connections on both ends of the chain.
Multi-channel analog - Either the Blu-ray player will extract and decode the AC-3 core, or (on some models) will decode the full DD+ and convert it to analog.

DTS-HD High Resolution
What it is: Similar to Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD High Resolution is an enhancement over standard DTS that offers higher bit rates and better compression. DTS-HD HR is also encoded as an extension to a "core" DTS track. (Note that DTS-HD HR is sometimes referred to as just "DTS-HD", which can be confusing and possibly misleading).
Level of support: Since this codec is also optional on Blu-ray, many players will only extract the 1.5 Mb/s DTS core and ignore the extension.
Examples of discs that use it: 'Basic Instinct', 'Total Recall'.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - Because SPDIF cannot transmit a full DTS-HD HR signal, the player will extract the DTS core and send the bitstream for that instead.
HDMI - If the player does not support DTS-HD HR, it will extract the DTS core, replicating the DTS listing above. Some players may decode the DTS-HD HR to PCM and transmit it over any version of HDMI. Other players will instead transmit the DTS-HD HR bitstream to a receiver for decoding (this requires HDMI 1.3).
Multi-channel analog - Either the Blu-ray player will extract and decode the DTS core, or (on some models) will decode the full DTS-HD HR and convert it to analog.

PCM
What it is: A PCM track is an exact replication of the studio master, encoded on disc without compression. The benefit to this is that it maintains the purity of the source without any loss of fidelity that may come from compression. The downside is that an uncompressed audio track takes up a tremendous amount of disc space, which may (especially on single-layer BD25 discs) negatively affect the video quality of the movie. While the Blu-ray format is capable of utilizing PCM audio up to 24-bit resolution, studios may choose to encode at 16-bit resolution instead, depending on the bit depth of the original source or concerns about conserving bandwidth (downsampling a 24-bit master to 16 bits is technically not the same thing as compression).
Level of support: All Blu-ray disc players are required to support PCM audio.
Examples of discs that use it: Almost all discs from Sony and Disney, as well as selected titles from Lionsgate and other studios.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - SPDIF does not have enough bandwidth to carry a full 5.1 PCM signal, so the audio track will be downgraded to 2 channels only. This is generally an undesirable result.
HDMI - A PCM track can be transmitted in full quality over any version of HDMI and delivered to the receiver for D-to-A conversion and amplification.
Multi-channel analog - In this case, the player converts the PCM to analog and sends it to the receiver for amplification. The quality of the DACs in the player will determine the final audio quality. If the disc player has inferior DACs to the receiver, an HDMI connection is preferred.

Dolby TrueHD
What it is: Dolby TrueHD is a "lossless" compression codec. Although it is compressed to take up less disc space than a PCM track, once decoded it is bit-for-bit identical to the studio master (at either 16-bit or 24-bit resolution, at the discretion of the studio). It may help to think of it like a ZIP file that holds a PCM track. Once you unZIP the file, you get a 100% identical copy of the original PCM, without compromising any sound quality.
Level of support: TrueHD is an optional format on Blu-ray. And since TrueHD is not built in a core+extension configuration, Blu-ray discs that contain a TrueHD track are also required to contain a standard Dolby Digital AC-3 track for compatibility with players that don't support TrueHD.
Examples of discs that use it: 'Ghost Rider', 'The Fifth Element' (Remastered).
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - SPDIF cannot carry a TrueHD signal. If using this connection type, the player will automatically revert to playing back the standard Dolby Digital AC-3 track instead.
HDMI - If the player does not support TrueHD, it will revert to the standard Dolby Digital track. Some players may decode the TrueHD to PCM and transmit it over any version of HDMI. Other players will instead transmit the TrueHD bitstream to a receiver for decoding (HDMI 1.3 required).
Multi-channel analog - Either the Blu-ray player will decode the standard Dolby Digital track, or (on some models) will decode the TrueHD and convert it to analog.

DTS-HD Master Audio
What it is: Another lossless audio codec similar to Dolby TrueHD. The difference between the two is that DTS-HD MA is built in a core+extension configuration (just like DTS-HD HR). Although a DTS-HD MA track takes up more disc space than a TrueHD track, it does not require a secondary standard track for backwards compatibility. Since both DTS-HD MA and TrueHD are lossless, they are both 100% identical in quality to the studio master, and hence identical in quality to each other.
Level of support: Like DTS-HD HR, Master Audio is optional on the Blu-ray format. If the player does not support DTS-HD MA, it can extract the standard DTS core.
Examples of discs that use it: Almost all titles from Fox Home Entertainment.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - SPDIF cannot carry a DTS-HD MA signal. When using this connection type, the player will extract the standard DTS core instead and transmit that as a bitstream.
HDMI - If the player does not support DTS-HD MA, it will extract the DTS core. Some players may decode the DTS-HD MA to PCM and transmit it over any version of HDMI. Other players will instead transmit the DTS-HD MA bitstream to a receiver for decoding (HDMI 1.3 required).
Multi-channel analog - Either the Blu-ray player will decode the standard DTS core, or (on some models) will decode the DTS-HD MA and convert it to analog.

At the time of this writing, only one Blu-ray disc player (the Samsung BD-P1400) supports the transmission of a DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream over HDMI 1.3. No current Blu-ray disc players will yet decode the DTS-HD MA track to PCM internally. All other players are limited to extraction of the standard DTS core. This situation is expected to change in the near future as more player models are released, and manufacturers issue firmware updates to existing players.

HD DVD discs can provide their movie soundtracks in any of the following formats:

Dolby Digital
What it is: All HD DVD players are required to support standard Dolby Digital AC-3 up to 448 kb/s (the same maximum bit rate as used on DVD). However, they're also required to support the advanced Dolby Digital Plus (see next listing), and for movie soundtracks that's what almost all studios have gone with instead.
Level of support: Mandatory.
Examples of discs that use it: Dolby Digital is commonly used on the bonus features on most HD DVDs. To my knowledge, no discs have used this format for the feature soundtrack.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - The Dolby Digital bitstream would be transmitted to a receiver for decoding and processing.
HDMI - Depending on the HD DVD player settings, the Dolby Digital can be transmitted as a bitstream or decoded to PCM first.
Multi-channel analog - In this method, the player decodes the Dolby Digital internally and converts it to analog.

DTS
What it is: As with Blu-ray, the legacy DTS format familiar from DVD is available as an option on HD DVD, encoded at the higher 1.5 Mb/s bit rate.
Level of support: All HD DVD players are required to support DTS.
Examples of discs that use it: 'The Chronicles of Riddick', 'Sleepy Hollow'.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - The bitstream is transmitted to a receiver.
HDMI - Either the raw bitstream is sent to the receiver, or the player decodes to PCM first.
Multi-channel analog - The player decodes the DTS internally and converts it to analog.

PCM
What it is: While all HD DVD players support uncompressed multi-channel PCM, and the internal decoding of all Dolby and DTS formats is converted to PCM, movie discs with PCM appear to be limited to 2-channel audio. Whether this is a requirement of the HD DVD format itself or a choice of the disc authors is not clear. In any case, due to the enormous amount of disc space required, PCM is not a very popular option on HD DVD.
Level of support: Mandatory.
Examples of discs that use it: 'Chronos', 'Moonlight Jellyfish' (a Japanese film included as a pack-in item with the Toshiba HD-XA1 player released in that country).
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - SPDIF can carry 2-channel PCM just fine and send it to the receiver for D-to-A conversion and amplification, but cannot carry more than 2 channels.
HDMI - HDMI likewise will transmit the PCM to a receiver for D-to-A and amplification.
Multi-channel analog - The PCM will be converted to analog and then sent to the receiver to be amplified.

Dolby Digital Plus
What it is: DD+ is the base standard audio format for HD DVD. Unlike its application on Blu-ray, DD+ on HD DVD does not utilize a core+extension configuration. The format can be encoded at bit rates of 640 kb/s (considered equivalent to Blu-ray's use of standard Dolby Digital at that same rate) or 1.5 Mb/s. However, note that although the latter version of DD+ shares a similar bit rate as standard DTS, this does not mean that these two are equivalent to one another. DD+ uses better encoding and more efficient compression to provide improved quality at the same rate. At least one professional Hollywood sound mixer has described Dolby Digital Plus at 1.5 Mb/s as audibly transparent to the studio master.
Level of support: All players are required to support Dolby Digital Plus.
Examples of discs that use it: Almost all domestic HD DVD releases. Discs from Warner Bros. default to the lower 640 kb/s rate, while those from Universal and Paramount tend to favor the higher 1.5 Mb/s (with some exceptions).
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - SPDIF cannot transmit DD+ in full quality. When using this connection method, the player will decode the DD+ and then transcode it to either standard Dolby Digital AC-3 or sometimes even DTS (depending on player model).
HDMI - Almost all HD DVD players decode the DD+ track internally to PCM for transmission over HDMI. Some may transmit the DD+ bitstream to a receiver instead (HDMI 1.3 required).
Multi-channel analog - In this case, the player decodes the DD+ track and converts it to analog. The quality of the DACs in the player will determine the resulting sound quality.

DTS-HD High Resolution
What it is: DTS-HD HR works on HD DVD just as it does on Blu-ray, in a core+extension configuration.
Level of support: DTS-HD HR is optional on HD DVD. Players that don't support it can extract the standard DTS core.
Examples of discs that use it: 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' claims a "DTS-HD" track, which is presumably DTS-HD High Resolution, unless the packaging and menus are mislabeled.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - SPDIF cannot transmit DTS-HD HR in full quality. The player will extract the standard DTS core for transmission as a bitstream.
HDMI - If the player does not support DTS-HD HR, it will extract the DTS core. Some players may decode the DTS-HD HR to PCM and transmit it over any version of HDMI. Other players may instead transmit the DTS-HD HR bitstream to a receiver for decoding (HDMI 1.3 required).
Multi-channel analog - Either the HD DVD player will extract and decode the DTS core, or (on some models) will decode the full DTS-HD HR and convert it to analog.

Dolby TrueHD
What it is: Once decoded, the lossless Dolby TrueHD format is bit-for-bit identical to the studio master (at either 16-bits or 24-bits, at the discretion of the studio).
Level of support: Support for TrueHD up to at least 2 channels is mandatory on all HD DVD players, but the majority will support it all the way to 5.1. Because there are rare cases of disc players that limit TrueHD to 2 channels (such as the LG model BH100), discs with TrueHD tracks must also contain a Dolby Digital Plus track for 5.1 compatibility.
Examples of discs that use it: '300', 'Superman Returns'.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - SPDIF cannot transmit TrueHD in full quality. When using this connection method, the player will decode the TrueHD and then transcode it to either standard Dolby Digital AC-3 or possibly DTS (depending on player model).
HDMI - Almost all HD DVD players decode the TrueHD track internally to PCM for transmission over HDMI. Some may transmit the TrueHD bitstream to a receiver instead (HDMI 1.3 required).
Multi-channel analog - The player will decode the TrueHD track and convert it to analog.

DTS-HD Master Audio
What it is: The other losslessly compressed format, DTS-HD Master Audio is also bit-for-bit identical to the studio master once decoded (and hence identical to Dolby TrueHD, assuming an equal bit depth is used). DTS-HD MA works in a core+extension configuration.
Level of support: Since the DTS-HD MA format is optional on HD DVD, players that don't support it will extract the standard DTS core.
Examples of discs that use it: Almost all HD DVDs released by Studio Canal in Europe.
How to get it:

Toslink or Coaxial SPDIF - SPDIF cannot transmit DTS-HD MA in full quality. The player will extract the standard DTS core for transmission as a bitstream.
HDMI - If the player does not support DTS-HD MA, it will extract the DTS core. Some players may decode the DTS-HD MA to PCM and transmit it over any version of HDMI. Other players may instead transmit the DTS-HD MA bitstream to a receiver for decoding (HDMI 1.3 required).
Multi-channel analog - Either the HD DVD player will extract and decode the DTS core, or (on some models) will decode the full DTS-HD MA and convert it to analog.

At the time of this writing, no HD DVD players will decode either a DTS-HD High Resolution or a DTS-HD Master Audio audio track. The players are limited to extracting the DTS cores, or (on selected player models) may be able to transmit the codec bitstream to a receiver using HDMI 1.3. Support for these DTS formats will hopefully expand with future player models or firmware updates to existing models.

An Exhausting List

I believe that covers all the bases for audio options a viewer is likely to run into on either HD DVD or Blu-ray. The purpose of this list is to explain the basic workings of each sound format offered on High-Def discs. I will save the arguments over whether lossless formats are really as good as uncompressed formats, debates on the importance or relevance of bit rate numbers, concerns about bit depth, and the controversy about Dolby's "Dialog Normalization" function for another day.

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Joshua Zyber's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this site, its owners or employees. To view a complete collection of Josh's commentaries for High-Def Digest, click here.

Commentary: Combo Discs - What Went Wrong?

Fri Sep 14, 2007 at 05:49 PM ET
Tags: Joshua Zyber, Combo Discs (all tags)

By Joshua Zyber

Although it may be one of the greater issues of contention among HD DVD buyers, in principle I have no objection to the Combo format, those discs with a primary HD DVD version on one side and a Standard-Def DVD on the other. Some owners think they're great. Many outright hate them. To me, they just seem mostly redundant. In some ways, I like the idea of having the movie in regular DVD format so that I can watch it in a portable DVD player when traveling, or loan it to a friend not yet equipped for High Definition. But realistically, how often do I need the disc for either of those purposes? Hardly ever. Frankly, when I buy an HD DVD, I want to watch it in High Definition on my home theater screen. That's kind of the point, isn't it?

Still, the idea of the Combo disc doesn't offend me as it does some. I mainly just ignore the DVD side. I've heard complaints from people upset that the dual-sided configuration prevents artwork from being screened onto the top surface of the disc. To me, that seems a little silly. The disc is going to spend most of its time either resting inside the HD DVD case or spinning inside an HD DVD player. Opening up the case to look at the disc itself isn't something I'm going to do often. On the other hand, as a collector who has often complained about ugly case cover art (and been called petty for it), I can sympathize with the desire for nit-picky perfection even in so minor a concern.

Of course, that's not the main argument against the Combo format. The larger issue is that the studios that use them (Warner Bros. and Universal) charge extra for them, considering the regular DVD edition on the flip-side of the disc to be a premium feature worthy of a higher price tag. For HD DVD fans, this especially stings in the case of Warner, who will simultaneously release a cheaper Blu-ray edition of the same movie, with the same quality and the same features, just lacking the redundant DVD copy. It feels like they're pushing dual-format owners to buy the Blu-ray version, and sticking a big middle finger in the air to exclusive HD DVD supporters.


A collection of recent HD DVD/DVD Combo releases from Warner and Universal.

The studios will tell you that their marketing research indicates that consumers are very concerned about backwards compatibility and are willing to pay a little extra for that peace of mind. Let's be very clear about this, Combo discs were never really intended as a bonus feature for HD DVD owners. The real point and purpose of a Combo disc is to lure new buyers to the format. The reasoning goes something like this: If you can convince the average movie buyer to "future-proof" their collection by purchasing Combo discs to watch even on their standard DVD players, eventually the person will have enough discs with HD DVD content on them that they'll want an HD DVD player to start using the discs to their fullest potential, and from there will start collecting other HD DVDs as well.

There is some logic in such a "Trojan Horse" strategy, and in fact it's similar to the way Sony markets its Playstation 3 console (if you give video game players Blu-ray capability in the console they were going to buy for games anyway, many will also purchase some Blu-ray movies to watch on it). The ploy has worked to some extent for Blu-ray, yet hasn't had nearly as much success for HD DVD.

In order for a Trojan Horse to work, you have to get the Horse into people's homes in the first place. Sony was clever enough to not give consumers a choice in the matter. Every PS3 has Blu-ray capability. They didn't release a cheaper model without Blu-ray and a more expensive model with it, thus pushing many people to the more affordable option. No, if you want a PS3, you get Blu-ray automatically. That isn't the case for Combo discs. As it stands, average movie collectors are faced with the choice of buying a standard DVD version of the movie that they can watch in their regular DVD players for $20 (street prices, not MSRP), or a Combo disc that includes an extra HD DVD side they can't yet use for $30 or more. It's an easy decision for most.

But what about all that marketing research claiming that people wouldn't mind paying extra to future-proof their movie collections? Frankly, what people say in a focus group isn't always how they act in real life. When presented the option with a series of leading questions, Combo discs probably looked pretty appealing. When standing in a store and seeing the price disparity in action, however, the wallet pulls in another direction.

For the Combo strategy to have any chance with real consumers, the discs would have to be priced the same as regular DVDs, or the studios would have to discontinue DVD-only discs altogether, and only issue Combos for new releases, priced attractively. Now that would certainly get HD DVD into people's homes and start the Trojan Horse effect working. Clearly, that isn't likely to happen anytime soon. For one thing, Combo discs are more expensive to manufacture, both in terms of having to author all of the HD DVD content as well as the physical reproduction of the dual-sided discs. For another, even if a studio were willing to subsidize that cost, the HD DVD and Combo disc production lines are currently not ready to handle the volume necessary to cover the entire DVD run for a new title. More facilities would have to be converted to Combo production, which would again be a big expense. Perhaps an even bigger hurdle, how would you market these Combo-exclusive titles? In standard DVD keepcases and artwork to appeal to DVD buyers, or in HD DVD cases as they're sold now? Would the same disc have to be sold in both types of case? How long would that last? Any of these scenarios would only succeed in confusing and annoying at least one portion of the buying market, not to mention retailers who have to stock the discs on store shelves.

So where does that leave us now? To whom do Combo discs currently appeal? Average movie buyers have continued to stick with the more affordable DVD-only option, a complete failure of the Trojan Horse plan. HD DVD buyers are upset that they're being forced to pay extra for a "feature" they will rarely (if ever) use. And those who support both HD DVD and Blu-ray would just as soon buy the Blu-ray that's $5 cheaper with the same quality and features. Combo discs put HD DVD in a no-win situation.

Worse than that, the damn discs don't even work half the time! Just the other night, I sat down to watch my recently-purchased HD DVD copy of '