http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/ Engadget HD Comments for Disney to finally unleash a few classics on Blu-ray http://www.engadgethd.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadgethd.com en-us Copyright 2009 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 28th 2008 7:27PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 28th 2008 9:48PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 28th 2008 7:40PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 28th 2008 8:05PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 28th 2008 8:14PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Even if it's only a niche market, say 5% of sales, the formats of digi vs blu aren't likely to be so different that it would cost a whole lot of money to author a blu ray, and since they'd make money, there's no reason not to.

Not to mention the fact that a very, very small percentage of people have bandwidth that approaches enough to pull down a blu ray quality movie in under a day, let alone the space on their machines to run it all. We're talking about 50 gigs here, sometimes more. Unless they decide to cut some "fat" off the content, and that's just impolite. I didn't buy a blu ray player for 1080p video, I bought it for lossless audio. I know very few of us exist, but damnit, we're growing. A movie could be 3 fucking D 2040p and would still be gay as aids without surround sound.

Blu ray will not lose to digi downloads. Some other physical format may come out, but it'll be a long time before wideband is widespread enough to bring digi to the forefront. But by then, who knows what'll happen... If everyone has 50mbps connections, IPTV will likely replace sattelite and cable, flying monkeys will dominate society, and trueHD will be beamed right into my ears, eliminating my need for any form of social contact]]>Aug 28th 2008 8:28PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 28th 2008 9:15PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/
Transmitting two hours of full-rate DTS takes less than 1G. "CD" 5.1 quality lossless sound compressed using FLAC or something similar takes around 2-2.5G. And, obviously, if you go 24bit/96kHz, you're looking at around 5-6Gb for lossless audio (sticking with 5.1) This is, of course, if lossless is what you absolutely must definitely have, at some level good compression is indistinguishable from lossless to virtually every human ear.

What am I trying, badly, to say? Well, let's go top of the line. Let's say 7.1 "lossless" 24 bit 96kHz audio is absolutely necessary and non-negotiable. You're talking about 7G of data (for two hours.) The video part of the movie itself, compressed using H.264 is going to weight in at around 7-8G. So it's an increase, but it's questionable whether a technology that's capable of streaming 7-8G of video data is going to start choking at the seams or become significantly more expensive if it has to less than double that. In other words, there's no reason why digital downloads shouldn't incorporate excellent audio as an option. Especially as 7Gb is an absolute upper limit, realistically we're not talking about anywhere close to that for audio indistinguishable from that quality.

This is especially true if it's a selling point. If people can select "Low, Medium, High, Superhigh" quality for the video, and "Stereo, Regular 5.1, HQ5.1, HQ7.1" for the audio, with different prices for each, then theoretically a movie download service has the capability to aim at different price brackets depending on budget and convenience.

Which in turn gives you another good reason why downloads are likely to be successful once user-friendly models that overcome the limitations of DRM are worked out (Netflix coming very close right now.) They offer the opportunity to overcome the limitations of physical media. Want to know why everyone felt it necessary to go blue-violet laser for the HD disc formats? It wasn't that you can't fit two hours of decent (albeit not "lossless") sound and video on a two-layer red-laser disc. But, of course, a single disk has to work in multiple markets. And everyone wants a commentary track or two. And, of course, the format needs to be better than DVD in more respects than quality (though they screwed that one up.) In comparison, a digital download only has to involve the content the user actually wants to see and hear at the precise moment they're watching it.

Blu-ray (and HD DVD, and CBHD, et al) all have to cater for every single possible combination of use scenarios. Which also means there's little opportunity to differentiate on price or convenience.

It's hard to be sure what's going to happen right now until digital downloads start to shake themselves out into a user friendly pattern. But it's far from inconceivable that they'll find some aspect of Blu-ray is impossible to displace. If Blu-ray remains a niche format, then the more convenient downloads are over BD, the more likely it is that the latter format will simply disappear. I've already said I think it's going to happen anyway, unless the Blu-ray standard is overhauled (and the Blutards stop living in denial, refusing to countenance the idea that BD isn't going to be some massively popular format in two years.) Downloads do not preclude high quality audio any more than they preclude high quality video. With significant advantages over old-fashioned disc-based media, they stand more than a fair chance of beating discs if the price model is right and if they ensure there are no good reasons to prefer physical discs.]]>Aug 29th 2008 9:04AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 28th 2008 9:12PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/
I'd really love to seen Lion King and Aladdin as well. ]]>Aug 28th 2008 10:46PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/
These titles are the golden Disney classics in the Platinum line, they do not include the Toy Story or Pixar series or other films like Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, or The Black Hole and the hundreds of other Disney films. So when you "yawn" at "just" 5 titles, Patrick, that certainly is not all that Disney is going to be releasing and it is certainly an increase in what they released for dvd!]]>Aug 29th 2008 12:13AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 29th 2008 9:13AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 29th 2008 12:19PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 29th 2008 5:22PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 29th 2008 11:56PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Aug 31st 2008 6:04PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/28/disney-to-finally-unleash-a-few-classics-on-blu-ray/Sep 8th 2008 8:45AM