Is it just me, or are non HD movies getting worse in picture quality. I was just using my on demand feature to order Daybreakers; I selected regular instead of HD. However, the picture quality is all glitchy and crappy. I don't remember regular movies looking this bad in the past. It almost feels like they are intentionally making non HD worse just so people are more inclined to order HD. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but it does seem possible that in order to make HD look better it is easier just to make non HD look worse.
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That is an interesting conspiracy theory, but I believe you may be right.
I see a lot of a push to sell blue rays in shops around here, and almost no one ever buying.
Having compared the quality of the images, I see pretty little difference between a good DVD and a blue-ray. Except the grossly inflated price.
Now, we just can't let all that money wasted in developping and hyping this tech go to loss, can we ? If the new product where we have a better margin does not sell, let's denigrate the old one. This is a marketing strategy.
Just an hypothesis of course
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Sorry if this is a bit before your time, but fifteen years ago there was this awesome product called a VCR. These Movies were on VHS TAPE and the VCR industry said the VHS would last forever. Then they started selling DVD (which for decades had been a Japanese toy called LASERDISC - except they were the size of vinal records back at the beginning). Only there wasnt any interest in paying 30-50 dollars for a DVD movie and a thousand dollars for a DVD player when you could record TV on Tape. No one was buying. Then we noticed something about all the new VHS tapes on our Videoshelf (we had about 10 grand worth of video movies): Ants were eating the tape. They didnt touch the old tapes but the new stuff was a lower quality that Ants found nummy!
Bascally quality was dropped off in a program of Planned Obsolescence. Videotapes had a shelf life of two years after purchase.
Tape however had a full volume sound quality that could be heard on a low volume setting. By comparison DVDs can barely be heard when you increase the TV volume to full.
This was something I was more noticing with my cable company (most of you probably are americans and don't have Rogers as your cable provider), but when I go to rent movies on demand from the cable company they often give a choice between ordering an HD movie or regular movie. The HD movie costs about $2 more to rent than the regular. I usually get the regular because I didn't find the difference in picture quality significant enough to warrant spending an extra $2, but the last few movies I've order in non HD have had really shitty picture quality. I swear it didn't used to be like that.
I haven't really compared blue rays to dvd, but I could see the same issue happening with them as well.
Sneaky Jerks
Sorry if this is a bit before your time, but fifteen years ago there was this awesome product called a VCR. These Movies were on VHS TAPE and the VCR industry said the VHS would last forever. Then they started selling DVD (which for decades had been a Japanese toy called LASERDISC - except they were the size of vinal records back at the beginning). Only there wasnt any interest in paying 30-50 dollars for a DVD movie and a thousand dollars for a DVD player when you could record TV on Tape. No one was buying. Then we noticed something about all the new VHS tapes on our Videoshelf (we had about 10 grand worth of video movies): Ants were eating the tape. They didnt touch the old tapes but the new stuff was a lower quality that Ants found nummy!
Bascally quality was dropped off in a program of Planned Obsolescence. Videotapes had a shelf life of two years after purchase.
Tape however had a full volume sound quality that could be heard on a low volume setting. By comparison DVDs can barely be heard when you increase the TV volume to full.
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Sneaky Jerks
Sorry if this is a bit before your time, but fifteen years ago there was this awesome product called a VCR. These Movies were on VHS TAPE and the VCR industry said the VHS would last forever. Then they started selling DVD (which for decades had been a Japanese toy called LASERDISC - except they were the size of vinal records back at the beginning). Only there wasnt any interest in paying 30-50 dollars for a DVD movie and a thousand dollars for a DVD player when you could record TV on Tape. No one was buying. Then we noticed something about all the new VHS tapes on our Videoshelf (we had about 10 grand worth of video movies): Ants were eating the tape. They didnt touch the old tapes but the new stuff was a lower quality that Ants found nummy!
Bascally quality was dropped off in a program of Planned Obsolescence. Videotapes had a shelf life of two years after purchase.
Tape however had a full volume sound quality that could be heard on a low volume setting. By comparison DVDs can barely be heard when you increase the TV volume to full.
4th Edition! I said it here, folks!
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This was something I was more noticing with my cable company (most of you probably are americans and don't have Rogers as your cable provider), but when I go to rent movies on demand from the cable company they often give a choice between ordering an HD movie or regular movie. The HD movie costs about $2 more to rent than the regular. I usually get the regular because I didn't find the difference in picture quality significant enough to warrant spending an extra $2, but the last few movies I've order in non HD have had really s#@!ty picture quality. I swear it didn't used to be like that.
I haven't really compared blue rays to dvd, but I could see the same issue happening with them as well.
I can tell you what your cable company are up to. They rent bandwidth on the fiberoptic cable. By reducing the bandwidth (degrading signal quality) for cheaper Video) they can save money and make more from those in the shift and squeeze more cheap shyt in on the same cable.
I suggest that you write a letter to your telecommunications Authority and point out that they have reduced signal quality of regular video cable.
Tape however had a full volume sound quality that could be heard on a low volume setting. By comparison DVDs can barely be heard when you increase the TV volume to full.
I think you're doing it wrong, then. Analogue, magnetic tape almost always has a lower signal-to-noise ratio, while digital audio can be amplified without increasing the background hum. If by "full volume sound" you meant that it was washier and never surround sound, then sure. But the lack of "fullness" you describe might just be higher fidelity.
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Tape however had a full volume sound quality that could be heard on a low volume setting. By comparison DVDs can barely be heard when you increase the TV volume to full.I think you're doing it wrong, then. Analogue, magnetic tape almost always has a lower signal-to-noise ratio, while digital audio can be amplified without increasing the background hum. If by "full volume sound" you meant that it was washier and never surround sound, then sure. But the lack of "fullness" you describe might just be higher fidelity.
Im talking lack of volume...could bearly hear the DVD from the opposite side of the room at full TV volume (31 Bars). VHS cassette: 4 bars and it is audible.
Im talking lack of volume...could bearly hear the DVD from the opposite side of the room at full TV volume (31 Bars). VHS cassette: 4 bars and it is audible.
Did you have the DVD audio settings on stereo or one of the 5.1 surround options? If the latter, the DVD player was probably only sending the tv 2/5 of the total volume output, since it thought the tv had 5 speakers. Any professionally authored DVD should have had its audio set with a baseline of 0db. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that any magnetic analog recording has either higher volume or better fidelity than either a digital or physical analog signal, all things being equal.
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Is it just me, or are non HD movies getting worse in picture quality. I was just using my on demand feature to order Daybreakers; I selected regular instead of HD. However, the picture quality is all glitchy and crappy. I don't remember regular movies looking this bad in the past. It almost feels like they are intentionally making non HD worse just so people are more inclined to order HD. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but it does seem possible that in order to make HD look better it is easier just to make non HD look worse.
It's absolutely true. If you've purchased any standard def content from at least a year ago, play it in VLC and bring up the activity window. The framerate, video size, and bit rate are all decent. Now take a look at the same film available for purchase today in standard def and the numbers are all exceptionally lower. Netflix and iTunes pull the same stunt with video previews, obviously to lure you to purchase the HD version. Not a big deal if you don't want the SD version anyway, but still a little devious, IMHO.
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Am I the only one here that notices a significant difference between SD and HD?
With My 48" 1080p Sony Bravia, I notice a significant difference between 480i DVD and a 1080P Blu-ray on my PS3, it is such a huge difference that It hurts now to watch 480i. Though it is less of a difference I also notice a difference between the 720p HD movies I rent from Apple Itunes and a 1080p Blu-ray, though most of the difference is in the sound quality, with the blu-ray having significant better sound quality.
I hear people all the time saying that they don't notice, I just don't see it. The quality is better, if you don't see it, it is either your video sound equipment or just your imagination.
Currently I have my Apple TV connected to a 480i Tube TV with component cables at our hotel room, to watch TV shows I added to the apple TV before I shipped all my stuff off to Texas, and damn it hurts going back to SD.