Blu-ray is to DVD as SACD was to CD: Better, but not enough better?

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

The SACD is a "super" CD, it sounds better, offers multichannel, high-resolution sound, and hybrid SACDs are backwards compatible with CD players. Sony initially pushed SACD as a CD replacement and the market yawned. OK, but you would have thought that audiophiles would have, en mass, supported SACD, especially after so many of them bashed CD for its harsh digital sound. SACDs, at least ones sourced from high quality recordings, really do sound better than CD (but a crappy original recording, remastered to SACD, still sounds crappy). No, just a small segment of the audiophile market embraced SACD, why, I'm still not sure.

So my question is, now with the distraction of the HD DVD/Blu-ray format war finally out of the way, why would the market embrace Blu-ray, which is merely a "super" DVD? Yes, the format can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc, offers 1080i/p resolution, and a host of other features that, for the most part, no one cares about. My videophile pals tell me that Blu-ray's superior picture quality won't be all that visible to most people with 50 inch or smaller displays (especially when their DVDs are upconverted to 1080i/p). Hell, most people are pretty happy with DVDs and already think DVDs are HD.

I also think that the problem for both SACD and Blu-ray is that the new and improved discs looked almost identical to the older format. There's no perceived difference between the physical appearance of a SACD and a CD, or a Blu-ray and DVD disc. When CDs were introduced, the sonic differences between LPs and CDs was obvious, plus the difference in the way the played was likewise unsubtle. CDs also looked way cooler than LPs. The same benefits to the consumer were apparent during the transition from VHS tape to DVD. Consumer didn't have to be "educated," and once prices came down on DVD, the vast majority of VHS holdouts jumped on the DVD bandwagon.

With HD DVD out of the picture, I have no doubt Blu-ray will do better, but it will grow far more slowly than DVD did. Blu-ray will likely remain a niche format, while the market for downloads gains more and more momentum. DVD sales, already past their peak will continue to decline.

[Leria]

Blu-Ray is going to be the next big thing in backing up computer data and for photographic fanatics like myself whose collections of pictures already take up the whole of 100 or so DVD's, once the burners come down in price and come out.

[filmfan214]

Steve, I think you're probably right. And it's too bad, because I would like to be able to buy some hi def movies and feel good about it...but I'm not sure I can.

Leria, I'm not sure I agree that Blu-Ray will be the next big thing in backing up data. I think external hard drives (increasingly solid-state drives) will be better.

[quality4me]

Blu ray isn't the next big thing, it's an area for you to waste your money before the next big thing comes. Get real people, you really don't need blu-ray unless you have a 50inch plus 1080P TV. I'm buying DVD's for 6-10 dollars right now and upconverting them with my ps3 to 1080i on a 42" tv, from 15 feet away you show me the difference. And I paid $700 a year ago for my 1080i/720p Westinghouse LCD. People are paying way more then me, for what? Ohh yeah and not to mention my 450 dvd's arent obsolete now..

[Fantastipotamus]

I think you're on to something about the physical format not being a departure from DVD's being a hurdle that Sony has to overcome.

I will say two things though:
1) I think the untrained eye will be better at perceiving the difference between Blu-ray and DVD, while the untrained ear would be less likely to perceive the real difference between SACD/DVD-Audio vs. regular CD's. As an example, if you were to watch a regular DVD (even through a '1080i upconverting dvd player') on a big screen HDTV -- whether a $700 couple-year-old model or a new one, and then watch the same movie on the same TV in Blu-ray, the difference will be.. well, as clear as day. However, if the same thing were done with a SACD to CD comparison, the difference may not feel as tangible to as many people.

2) How quickly Blu-ray grows is directly dependent on where Sony decides to price it's discs and players. If it wants to cover more ground quicker, it's my feeling they should keep the player range in the $200-600 range, and bring the discs in at $20 each (to compete with DVD's). If you keep the players in the $300-900 range, and keep the discs at $35 (a 75% price premium), it's going to take off slower.

Obviously Sony needs to make the money back, as the BRD/HDDVD battle cost both sides a lot of money in signing studios, development, advertising, etc, but it's my feeling that if they really want this to become the next 'standard', they're going to need to get a lot of people onboard more quickly.

[potestasx]

I think that the problem is indeed the average consumer's little- or no-perceived difference in picture quality. The picture size does make a difference, but so does the distance from which you sit from the screen and the quality of the TV. HDTVs are definitely becoming more and more ubiquitous, but a majority of them that are "compatible" with 1080i/p signals have fewer than 1080 rows of pixels. So, if you take a TV that is not full HD (sub 1920x1080), and sit at a distance far beyond the "recommended" viewing range(1.5x-2x the diagonal screen size), then sure, there's not going to be a lick of difference. Besides that, there are so few movies that are worth getting in HD. I'm not about to spend an extra $15-20 for The Simpsons movie in HD, nor something like Old School. I don't see much outside of action or CGI movies that really would be worthwhile getting in an HD format.

[MasterKenobo]

Watching DVDs upscaled to 1080p is cool but is not as good as Blu Ray for two reasons.

The picture IS better.

The sound is better. You can CLEARLY hear what people are saying even in a film like Miami Vice where the characters mumble like hell.

[Johnny Mac 7]

I have observed what I consider to be an interesting phenomena which I don't recall has been addressed before. Once a movie has begun and you are drawn in to the events taking place, if the picture and sound quality isn't distracting, you don't notice the quality but just go with the flow. Many DVDs give you this quality of experience. Also, the closer the camera is to the subject the less higher resolution is noticeable. This is easily seen watching a college or NFL football game. I have recorded a game broadcast in HD onto a DVD and during playback when the camera is on a player or small group of players it's hard to see the difference, but when they show the whole field you definitely can see the difference. The advertising for HD discs say they have up to 6 times the resolution (or quality) of standard definition DVDs. Most people don't see it. It may look 2 times as good in the best case scenario. For most people sound is even less of an issue if an issue at all. What I'm wondering is will the movie studios stoop to lowering the quality of regular DVDs so that Bluray will look even better?

[jscott418]

OK, we are willing to watch a movie on a iPod and yet we have to have Blue Ray and a 10 ft screen to watch a sitcom? Come on, I really don't think everybody can afford or can notice the HD improvements. Best thing we could have done was to keep the 4:3 ratio and just add digital tuners, for those who cannot afford a $2000 TV. As a person who has worked in video production. I think the focus has been too much on resolution and screen size. This does not indicate quality all the time. I have seen very poor quality LCD and plasma screens which tout 1080P and look worse then my old CRT RCA. Blue Ray is no good to anybody if you cannot see the difference because of a crappy TV. Its just like the audiophile audio CD's. Unless you have the whole package (Amplifier,CD Player,Speakers) you will never notice the quality.

[Sugith]

When I was a young audiophile, good sound was a niche market. With the preponderance of MP3 files being the new state of sound for the public, it remains a niche market. Good video remains a niche market.

In order for Blu Ray to be widely adopted studios would have to stop releasing DVD's. CD holdouts had to finally buy a player when they realized they would no longer be able to get new releases unless they had a CD player.

The vast majority of people with HDTV's do not have HD cable or satellite boxes so they do not even know what HD looks like! They just equate wide screen with HD. That's a qualitative difference they CAN see. I don't see them switching to Blu-Ray when they think they already have HD--even though it isn't HD!

[Steven H. Taylor]

I think a considerable part of the audiophile community embraced SACD. Why not all? Perhaps because the 'format war' with DVD-Audio did not have as clear-cut an end as Blu-ray Disc vs HD-DVD (although I think it's fair to say DVD-Audio is to SACD what HD-DVD is to BD).

What continues to puzzle me is why a significant part of the audiophile community never embraced discrete multichannel audio, instead sticking to inferior stereo sound.

[Wes#1]

I believe it is all about SELLING. Some formats never grow because nobody pushes it on the sales floor; nor do they educate the public. Why buy what you don't see, or hear, or understand? And I'm not talking about seeing or hearing a DIFFERENCE; I mean the stores don't use the odd formats as their main demos. SACD, LaserDisc... sure you encountered them, but it was only playing in a handful of stores, and only on one display. And advertising was negligible.

Now take Blu-ray. Every studio is behind it, cranking out discs (unlike SACD or LaserDIsc), and every major big-box electronics store (including Wal-mart and your local Blockbuster) tout Blu-ray and have prominent displays in your face. THAT will make the difference that SACD (and 'ol LD) sadly never had.

It's all about selling. From studio, to manufacturer, to retailer. THEY can make it work.

[johnnysocko]

I agree with the author in that adoption of clearly better formats of audio being shunned is inexplicable, yet understandable.

The majority of my collection is not new material, mostly stuff I got hooked on in my youth, and I have already bought it at least twice; LP to cassette to CD on some of my favourites. As an audiophile, I want the best, but I have my spending limits.

I miss the old albums for their art and tangibility, but life moves on. I think when there is a superior new, downloadable format, that can be re-downloaded or converted when an even better method of coding comes along, we will all get onboard. Until then, I'd rather spend my money on some quality speakers now that will still be able to reproduce sound excellently in the future. Look at my favorites, the Klipshorns, sixty years later, I can play mp3 tracks through them, and though the format is inferior to CD's, and mp3's surely aren't my goto format, the music sounds better than some crap young people are hooking their ipods to. I bought mine 20 years ago, in cash, so for now, my advice is wait, buy some good gear you can afford, and wait it out.

The market dictates what manufacturers produce. I liked DVD audio, but it's not the future. It's on the right track, but I'm not going to spend buku dolares on another laserdisc and its appropriate media just to have to upgrade later, again.

I'll wait for the downloads in lossless, drm free, buy once for a lifetime tracks and albums.

Oh crap, must of fell off into a dream there for a second.!!!

[minimalist]

Downloads are so ridiculously overhyped. They have so many hurdles to overcome before they could even begin to become mainstream (DRM issues, a dozen or so competing proprietary formats tied to proprietary hardware, bandwidth issues, storage issues, etc). Plus movie companies are clearly holding back their titles for fear of cannibalizing their other methods of distribution. Not one download site breaks the 1000 movie barrier. Most have less than 500. Netflix has 90,000.

Video is not audio. People will spend 2000 dollars on TV's and then buy crappy Home theater in a box for 400 dollars, receiver included.

Upscaling DVD players look alright but they certainly don't look anywhere near a real HD picture. Plus you are giving people far too much credit. They buy 1080 p LCD's all the time even though they probably can;t see the difference between 720 and 1080 on many of them. All they see is 1080 p and assume it must be better. As soon as blu-ray players gets below 200 dollars you will see mainstream adoption because DVD players will be relegated to the unlit back corners of the Best Buy showrooms.... just like VCR's are today.

[RGBA]

Well... at least Nine Inch Nails will be releasing a blu-ray disc containing a 24-bit/96kHz stereo mix of their new album (Ghosts) on May 1st! Yes for me!

[tim platts]

As a recent convert to HD with a new 46" LCD Samsung TV I say there is an amazing difference between upconverted DVDs and BluRay. Even upconverted DVDs are only as good as the initial resolution. The 1080p BluRay picture has better contrast ratio and can be almost three dimensional in the best sources - the detail is much sharper, the color is richer and the sound is also better.

[Pixelstuff]

Well I've always thought the movie industry said we were buying the license to play a movie not he movie it self. So for the movies I already purchased on DVD, I'm still waiting for a free HD download or cheap Bluray upgrade to the movies I already bought on standard DVD.

[will2416]

I have to agree on one point at least: I compared Pearl Harbor on DVD with my repurchased version on Blu-Ray. My Oppo DVD/Onkyo TX-NR905 upscale the regular DVD wonderfully to my 55" Sony full HD RP TV. So I watch the scene of the bombing of battleship row on DVD and then on Blu-ray. I saw virtually no difference. Not only was the resolution virtually the same, but even a jerkyness (forgot the geek word for this phenomenon) which was very apparent on the DVD version was even noticable on the Blu-ray version. The soundtrack is in 5.1 DD/DTS so now improvement to any type of 7.1 lossless attempted there either. It seems as if no remastering of the film was even attempted; the version you get on DVD is the version you get on Blu-ray. Same data, different medium. Blu-ray is in its infancy and films are only starting to come. Remember when DVD first came and the majority of the few films available were older with very few brand new titles? Another point: compare one of your first DVDs from the mid 90's to one of your latest purchases. Notice any aud/vid difference? I sure do! Same thing with CDs. Listen to a CD you bought in the late 80's and listen to a new CD. The sound quality is worlds apart. The data put on the discs is constantly refined and improved. So let's not count out Blu-ray just yet before it's even learned to walk and talk and lets all give it full support now that this stupid (forgot the profane word for this phenomenon) format war is finally over. One final question to the forum: Has anyone heard of the next gen technology that could replace Blu-ray? Realistically and within the next few years? (Not nanotech and deep future stuff). My personal speculation about the future? All of us whom have over the years spent thousand upon thousands of dollars on medium (VHS, CD, DVD, Blu-ray) and all the equipment to play it will have worthless crap in thier homes when everything becomes availabe via on-demand services, both at home and mobile.