38 replies to this topic

[DaDude]

Apparently you guys don't care about quality loss, but I do. Even if it's just a little, I don't like it. That's one of the reasons why I'd rather buy a movie on Blu-ray and why I upgrade some of my DVD movies to Blu-ray. I want to watch my movies and shows in the best quality I can.

And my friend, if you're insisting that DVD is out and h264 is in, you're wrong. BLU-RAY is the new thing!! And as far as I'm concerned, all Blu-ray players play DVDs. So as long as Blu-ray players are around, then my DVDs are playable.

So, if you want to "get with the times," then ditch h254 and buy Blu-ray instead.

[DaDude]

BudMan, on 26 January 2013 - 07:29, said:

Stand alone players for DVD are old school

My friend, everything today is old school. You buy one thing and few months later, something new comes out which renders your item obsolete, or "old school." And like I said, the new thing today is Blu-ray, not h264. Blu-ray delivers the BEST 1080p picture and audio quality. So, buy Blu-ray and ditch h264.

And I don't buy standalone players anymore. All my standalone players are my older players that I bought over a decade ago. Apparently, DVD players don't break down as easily as VCRs, so while all of my VCRs are gone, all my DVD players are still alive... even my 15 year old Sony DVD player.

[Ryano121]

Dude Blu-ray is not the new thing today. It's only a matter of time until all media is digital on a hard drive on some server somewhere. It won't be too long until all physical media is obsolete.

After all what are the benefits of having Blu-ray over all your movies in a digital format on your computer hooked up to your TV? There isn't one. Not sure why you are moaning that digital formats provide worse quality than Blu-ray, because they simply don't. After all Blu-ray is just a DVD with a bigger capacity that allows for larger digital files (meaning better quality) to be put on them

[DaDude]

Ryano121, on 26 January 2013 - 15:48, said:

Dude Blu-ray is not the new thing today. It's only a matter of time until all media is digital on a hard drive on some server somewhere. It won't be too long until all physical media is obsolete.

After all what are the benefits of having Blu-ray over all your movies in a digital format on your computer hooked up to your TV? There isn't one. Not sure why you are moaning that digital formats provide worse quality than Blu-ray, because they simply don't. After all Blu-ray is just a DVD with a bigger capacity that allows for larger digital files (meaning better quality) to be put on them

Physical media will not die. Blu-ray sales keep rising, which means it's a very successful format. Just because a few of you go all-digital, it doesn't mean everyone else it doing the same. And it's hard to go all digital because it makes it easy for people to copy and share files with others. With Blu-ray and DVDs, the formats are encrypted to prevent such a thing.

And people told me not to hook up a computer to the TV. Everyone told me to buy a media player instead. To be honest, a computer makes more sense because you can always install softwares to play any type of video file you want.

And yes, converting any file to another format will also result in quality loss, maybe not noticeable to you, but it's there. Just like MP3 files have lower quality than CDs.. yet people dance away listening to MP3s on their Ipod. Most people don't care, but many audiophiles will not listen to MP3s, only CDs, because CDs sound significantly better!

[Ryano121]

No, CD's are not better quality than all MP3's. The problem is that there are a load of bad quality <100kbps MP3's out there that yes do sound awful. Better so many now are 320kpbs+ which sound considerably better than any CD will.

Not sure who told you not to connect your computer up to you TV, but all I can say is they obviously don't know what they are talking about.

Its hard to go all digital because of all the sharing? No, thats what makes it so easy!!

No physical media will never die completely, but it will get closer and closer. Blu-ray sales may be on a slight increase in sales, but not even close to the increase in digital sales or the uptake in streaming services like Netflix. Add to that the slump in DVD sales and physical media is on the downturn. Thats not the case for digital though. Not saying its all a good thing, but its happening.

[DaDude]

Ryano121, on 26 January 2013 - 16:29, said:

No, CD's are not better quality than all MP3's. The problem is that there are a load of bad quality <100kbps MP3's out there that yes do sound awful. Better so many now are 320kpbs+ which sound considerably better than any CD will.

Actually, there is still some quality loss. I used to not be able to hear the difference, but I finally got convinced when I spoke to a few audiophile nuts. They made me listen to the difference on their high-end equipment and you can notice it when listening there. But on the average equipment that non-audiophile nuts own, you really can't hear the difference. And believe me, I call them "audiophile nuts" because they can hear the difference so well that they swear LPs sound better than CDs and MP3s that they actually still buy them.

Ryano121, on 26 January 2013 - 16:29, said:

Not sure who told you not to connect your computer up to you TV, but all I can say is they obviously don't know what they are talking about.

I'm glad I can just do that because I have a laptop and a PC in port on my TV. I can just hook it up and enjoy the files. I know that there are some cheap media players that people referred me to, but after reading those reviews at Amazon, I can see that they are problematic and I'll just get what I pay for. In short, they're cheap for a reason. If I want something good and problem-free, I need to spend a couple of hundred dollars. At least a laptop is guaranteed to play ANY digital file without any issue. If I do encounter a problem, I can simply install a better software. A laptop is the most future-proof route than a digital media player, since a media player is limited.

Ryano121, on 26 January 2013 - 16:29, said:

Its hard to go all digital because of all the sharing? No, thats what makes it so easy!!

Easy for you, but hard for the studios financially since people are not obtaining their movies legally. That is why studios are fighting to keep physical media alive.

Ryano121, on 26 January 2013 - 16:29, said:

No physical media will never die completely, but it will get closer and closer. Blu-ray sales may be on a slight increase in sales, but not even close to the increase in digital sales or the uptake in streaming services like Netflix. Add to that the slump in DVD sales and physical media is on the downturn. Thats not the case for digital though. Not saying its all a good thing, but its happening.

What about 3D Blu-ray? Seems like that's another new thing and what has made my 2D HDTV and 2D Blu-ray player obsolete. If anything, 3D Blu-ray and 3D TVs are going to take over, not digital files. Frankly, the thought of 3D home entertainment makes me sick, but it's the new fad that I've been hearing about a lot lately!

[DaDude]

By the way, I need clarification here. Since you guys are telling me to ditch DVDs and go all-digital, does that mean I should not buy DVDs anymore? There are many DVDs out there (and more to come) that you can't find anywhere else. So, does that mean I should not buy them? Or are guys saying that it's ok to buy them, but just rip and convert them to h264?

[Ryano121]

Definitely keep buying DVD's. They're not anywhere near gone yet and they are much cheaper at the moment. But yeah when you buy them, rip them to your computer using a good codec, and you should end up with your own home media centre if you hook it up to your tv.

Thats pretty much what I have going on at the moment. Bought a 2TB drive and everytime I buy a new DVD I rip it and shove it on their. I still buy a lot of cheap DVDs and the 2tb drive is pretty much full already, so I may have to buy another in the near future. It makes it so much easier for me though. Instead of trawling through all by discs. I just browse my whole library on my computer and hit play. I wouldn't say they are full HD quality, but thats only because they are DVDs. They still look the same coming out of my tv as they would playing on my dvd player.

[DaDude]

Good, that puts me more at ease. I'm a big classic movie and TV show fan and they're getting harder to find nowadays. It's a miracle that a lot of them made it to DVD, but sadly, I don't think they would get released on any other format, physical or digital.

[A Geek Of All]

My bad, the software I posted Is not free.

On Edit - This Is the software I use.
http://www.alloksoft...fast_joiner.htm

[+BudMan]

Just at a complete loss to how you think a conversion means loss of quality - comes down to how your converting it.. That dvd of your yours is just digital file on a optical media vs a digital file on a hdd or a ssd, or a br or a compact flash or whatever the next form of storage is.

You do understand that some of your BR are in h264 - br players must support 3 format h262 mpeg2, and h264 mpeg4 and smpte VC-1 and the producer of the br can use which ever one they want. If they go the mpeg4 avc or VC-1 route they can get about twice the run time on the same br single layer 25GB bd-rom.

I understand what your doing, I understand the recording to the dvd of your input, and even keeping this copy as backup. What I don't understand is the re burning to disk again.. When you could just use the digtial media file on larger storage and access it like a library vs having to swap in disks back and forth.

Your like the guy that didn't want to get away from floppy and go hard when hard could store so much more! You have everything arranged in your stacks and stacks of floppies and could not understand that its much easier to just put all those files on 1 disk vs many and be able to access anything instant.

This is the point I have been trying to make the whole thread. Your file is digital on your DVD or on your BR, I am just suggesting that store then on one big disk vs a bunch of little ones. As to the container your mpeg be it 2 or 4 file is in -- how does that change the quality?? It DOESN'T unless you tell it to - if you want to continue to use mpeg 2 --- go for it. You just might want to put it in a different container - say mkv vs some container meant to be understood by standalone players.

The container can store the video or audio streams in whatever format or quality you desire. Now myself change over to mpeg4 vs mpeg2 because its a more efficient compression format. You do understand that mpeg2 is lossy compression as well.. mpeg4 is just more efficient at it than that older format.

If you loosing quality in converting the stream from mpeg2 to mpeg4 it in how your doing the conversion and what settings you pick for the new file. Sure if you pick a lower bitrate its quite possible to see loss of quality, not the process in general or the new format that is causing the loss in quality.

btw: I am a huge fan of the classics myself. I have few jack benny and burns and allen and some abbot and costello dvds I picked up on the bargin bin at walmart. Have then sitting here on my desk waiting to be ripped.. Because I sure an the hell am not going to go looking for these disks when I want to play them. Get up off my couch find the things, open up the container and then put them in some player then back to the couch, etc. When I can simply browse my library and click play on the file I want to watch

And I have a growing collection of humphrey bogart films, some of which are not that good of quality because they were ripped from vhs copies that were recorded off tv. So yes I would be happy to pick them up in a remastered br if it was available, etc. But then I would rip it and put in my library for ease of access.

edit: Its been mentioned already I do believe but makemkv is one example of just changing the container. It pulls the mpeg2 stream and audio streams from your dvd and puts then in the mkv container. It doesn't alter the streams in anyway. Just puts them in a different container. If you think there is loss of quality in that process your not understanding the process.

[Javik]

When rippers know what they're doing the quality loss is minimal. Nowadays things like episodes of the simpsons are being packed into MP4 files of less than 100MB yet they're superior quality to the old 170MB odd AVI files. Blu Rays are nice, but I the quality of the vast majority of HD rips to be perfectly fine.

[HoochieMamma]

http://www.freemake....ideo_converter/

This is all you need to do all of your steps and you can keep the file format the same. Not sure if it re-encodes though but virtual dub can do that for you if your really into it,

[+BudMan]

So to my point of keeping up with the current standards

http://www.itu.int/n...es/2013/01.aspx
---
New video codec to ease pressure on global networks
Successor to award-winning standard to unleash new innovation

Geneva, 25 January 2013 – A new video coding standard building on the PrimeTime Emmy award winning ITU-T H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC was agreed by ITU members today.

The new codec will considerably ease the burden on global networks where, by some estimates, video accounts for more than half of bandwidth use. The new standard, known informally as ‘High Efficiency Video Coding’ (HEVC) will need only half the bit rate of its predecessor, ITU-T H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10 ‘Advanced Video Coding’ (AVC), which currently accounts for over 80 per cent of all web video. HEVC will unleash a new phase of innovation in video production spanning the whole ICT spectrum, from mobile devices through to Ultra-High Definition TV.
---

They have just approved h265, but you want to stay with h262 don't you But if your about quality?? The new 265 includes 8k UHD, I would think you would be all over that ****? 8192x4320, how is that going to compare to your 720x480 DVD format or maybe your using pal 720x576?

[DaDude]

I'm at a complete loss on how you think there is no quality loss. Any type of digital to digital conversion results in quality loss. It may be an unnoticeable, faint quality loss, but it's there. Even when studios take a film and convert it to DVD (or Blu-ray, for that matter), there is quality loss during the conversion. They try to do things in the best way possible during the transfer process to minimize the quality loss as best as they can, but the quality loss is there.

If you want to talk about no quality loss on h264, then the film needs to be transferred from the original negatives, not from the DVD.

Here's what I'm trying to say...

A film transferred to h264 could look just as good as DVDs (mpeg 2). I'm not denying that.

But a film transferred to Film, then to Mpeg2 and transferred AGAIN to h264.... then h264 will look worse than the mpeg file. I'm not saying h264 is worse than Mpeg2. I'm saying the conversion from film to digital and then to digital AGAIN is what results in the quality loss. Heck, even taking an Mpeg 2 file and re-encoding it to Mpeg 2 results in quality loss, which is my main reason for starting this thread which has now gone insanely off-topic thanks to a certain troll that I will not mention by name.