Eric wrote:Ehwmatt wrote:Didn't we determine that this isn't truly a Blu-Ray, but an upconvert of the base Manila DVD? Just a warning to those considering forking $30 over.
Yeah..and honestly Blu-ray players up-convert anyway.
***Caution. Technical discussion coming***
Let me clarify something slightly. A DVD player can upconvert to whatever your tv will handle. So can a BluRay player. It's MUCH more complicated than that, however. The clarity of video is simply dependent on two things. The first is how clear the camera is shooting (in laymans terms, an HD camera gives you more lines of resolution than a VHS camera). The Manilla show was shot with a RED camera, which will display a sharper image than ANY television set you can buy. Basic lesson: the camera was VERY sharp.
The second point is how much data you are writing onto the disc. This is simply a case of numbers. The more data you write per frame of video, the clearer the image is (up to the point of exceeding what the camera recorded to begin with). The higher the number, the more detail. Your video encoding is down to how many megabytes/second are being thrown at your television set. The only difference between a Blu-Ray player and a DVD player is that the Blu-Ray player can handle more data coming at it every second. Your dvd holds roughly 5gb of data. Your Blu-Ray holds 25+gb of data. Spread that out over the course of a two hour movie, and obviously, the Blu-Ray has more data per frame of video --> clearer image. If you are putting out images at 8Mbps/sec (DVD) vs. 25Mbps/sec (Blu-Ray), you are going to see a LOT of detail in the Blu-Ray that the dvd simply doesn't have the bitrate to handle. It's that simple.
On the subject of upconverting...your dvd (if short enough for optimal quality without compression to fit on a disc) is encoded at whatever number of lines of resolution that the camera recorded. If it was recorded on an older format, you don't have nearly the number of lines of resolution that a current television set will handle to work with. The dvd (and Blu-Ray player) can attempt to fill in the missing gaps, aka upconvert , if you want it to do so. With movies, there is no need to do such IF the film was encoded to a high enough level (aka enough data/frame on the disc). At the moment, that means Blu-Ray. You can encode a Blu-Ray to play at full 1080p. You can't upconvert beyond what your tv set will allow, so if the movie is encoded at 1080p, there is no upconverting going on when you are playing a movie. Remember, Hollywood films were shot to be played on a 70-foot wide movie screen. Your tv is nowhere near that big. That means the movies have been DOWNCONVERTED so you can play them. That means there is detail on the image that you'll never see because the technology won't support that much data/frame to show it. The Manilla show is the same way. It was recorded at a higher level than current technology can display at full resolution.
Now, you can record an upconverted dvd onto a BluRay, which apparently is what was done with Manilla. Will it look a little bit better? Yes. Is it full BluRay quality? No. Is it full quality the original film was shot with? Not even close. Presuming the original edit of the concert was done in full quality, that means there is a RED and Blu-Ray version out there. Will it be released? Who knows.
so, to wrap up....
can a BluRay player or a dvd player upconvert? Yes
does a BluRay player need to upconvert if you have a BluRay movie? No, as long as the program was recorded in 1080p (or whatever maximum resolution your tv will support).
There are a couple of caveats to this, but that's video technology in a nutshell.