R&B Films to Exclude HD DVD for Future Releases

[seminole2001]

R&B Films to Exclude HD DVD for Future Releases

"Richard Casey of R&B Films (who have released Chronos and Nature's Beauty on both HD formats) has announced that "we are excluding HD-DVD with respect to our future releases" in a forum posting on blu-ray.com.

Richard said that this decision was made prior to Warner's decision announcement and he cited "experience with the HD-DVD audience and the abuse I took in the AVS Forum" as his motivation to drop HD DVD support.


Personally I am not surprised and look forward to discs that continue to push the limits from R&B Films."


Good job fan-boy's!! You just killed off another studio!

 

[diogen]

R&B Films published Nature's Journey on both, HD and BD.
According to Richard, the BD version got a lossless soundtrack and HD - a downconverted 48kHz one because of bandwidth constraints.
He describes the difference between the two very simple:

even my super non-adiophile girlfriend can easily hear difference between 48/16 and 96/24 on my car stereo systems.

Taken from here
If Natures Journey turns out to be better on Blu-ray than HDDVD, would that be enough - Page 12 - AVS Forum

After Amir showed him the the BD soundtrack of this title has no traces of any sound above 48 kHz, his posting marathon on AVS slowed down to a trickle.

Hearing what doesn't exist - that's his specialty.
Difference between lossless and uncompressed, 96kHz when there is nothing above 48kHz, jitter in packetized audio, etc.
Understandably, he gets a warm welcome on the BR gospel site.

He better make sure he doesn't get hit by the door on the way out...
Having such people as friends is more trouble than not having them as such...

Diogen.

 

[allargon]

If this is true, Rich is not at all an enthusiast like he claims to be.

He should make Ultimate Blu-Ray since the Blu-Ray camp still lacks a calibration disc to this day.

 

[diogen]

This discussion on AVS got some sort of resolution.
AVS Forum - View Single Post - How Will High Bit Rate VC-1 Compare to AVC
Says Richard:

Simply out, Amir measured a section of the DVD that uses an electronic instrument with a 24K "Decimation" or "Brick Wall" filter. Most electronic instruments are limited to 48K and they typically have a 24K "Cut Off" Filter. In addition, most "Ambient" sound libraries are limited to 48K. Had this title been done at 48/24 ... you would see roll-off sooner ... probably at around 20K.

Nature's Journey features a combination of Electronic Instruments, Ambient Library tracks, and Recorded Instruments. Everything was mastered at 96/24 but the "Decimation" filters are at 24K on the Electronic Instruments and the Library tracks are only at 48K. The regular percussion tracks and other live recorded sounds are at 96/24.

In other words, the mastering was done in 96kHz, there was just hardly anything but noise above 48kHz.
In video terms: take a DVD, add a couple high resolution pictures to it, upsample to 1080p and claim it's hidef.

96kHz vs. 48kHz got very unimportant one of a sudden. Bit depth is much more important. Needless to say, that's exactly what can't be measured by instruments...

Both have frequency response up to 24KHZ, seriously above the hearing range of all but a very few human beings.
...The details are more present, represented in higher resolution, in a 24 bit recording. A simple explanation, but for some ears (like mine) the difference is profound. Much more profound than the difference between 48k and 96k.

And as a parting remark, a quote from "the most outspoken and brilliant engineer I know"

This guy is brainwashed with all the standard mathematical sine wave "theory" that fails to explain why CD players...still sound like crap.

He promisses not to show up at AVS more often than once a month...

Diogen.

 

[JonUrban]

AVS forum - that place is brutal. Heavy handed. Not very friendly - like here!

 

[diogen]

AVS forum - that place is brutal. Heavy handed. Not very friendly - like here!

Yep... Is any "format war" forum friendly?

What was really surprising to me, is how fast (after Warner's announcement) the "mine is bigger and better" type of arguing transformed
into a pissing contest where it looks like the BD faithful can't get over their inferiority complex even in the face of such good news for them...

Looks like some of the "players" are in this game just for the fight...

Diogen.

 

[B.Greenway]

Richard said that this decision was made prior to Warner's decision announcement and he cited "experience with the HD-DVD audience and the abuse I took in the AVS Forum" as his motivation to drop HD DVD support.

Now thats what I call professionalism, drop an entire format and in doing so deny content to people who've never wronged you, all over what you deem "abuse" on the internet.

 

[allargon]

Yep... Is any "format war" forum friendly?

What was really surprising to me, is how fast (after Warner's announcement) the "mine is bigger and better" type of arguing transformed
into a pissing contest where it looks like the BD faithful can't get over their inferiority complex even in the face of such good news for them...

Looks like some of the "players" are in this game just for the fight...

Diogen.

I do remember him bitching about how he was going to use AVC for his next release rather than VC-1. I actually tried to defend him when he got attacked for not adding lossless audio to the HD DVD version. He said it wouldn't fit (bandwidth). No one could prove on a typical display that the BD of Nature's Journey looked any better than the HD DVD. A few people said on their 100" screens the BD looked "slightly" better but couldn't really tell. Even the screencaps posted weren't conclusive.

 

[diogen]

I do remember him bitching about how he was going to use AVC for his next release rather than VC-1.

He is trying to separate these two issues: codec and format (HD/BD).
He is repeating the standard statement (probably picked up from doom9) that VC-1 is good/better at low bitrates ("designed for storage limited HD DVD") and worse at moderate/high bitrates. He's planning to use AVC with minimum 32-36Mbps average bitrate in his titles going forward - when 18Mbps AVC couldn't beat 12Mbps VC-1 in Nature's Journey.

But hey, he ain't the first: if Bay can claim that he knows for a fact that his movies look better on Blu, why can't Richard say that he knows everything there is to know about codecs, right...?

Diogen.