DVD-A in denial?

The reason you may not ever see a DVD-A hybrid disk is that the prime motive to adopt DVD-A was to avoid paying Sony/Phlips royalties for the CD format. In a few years the patent expires so you never know what will happen if the DVD-A format is still around.

Richard.

 

I believe the patent has already expired. I could be wrong, but I'll confirm later.

- Gabe

 

You could be right. But does Sony/Philips have a patent on the Red Book hybrid concept? I just don't know.

 

Money/Politics and we get screwed.

 

Make your own DVD-A's for $500

Mastering them just got cheaper.


http://www.minnetonkaaudio.com/News.htm#Steel

 

Other than the video clips, how does this differ from production of an SACD surround-mix product?

 

A *huge number*? Such as?

 

er..who decides what the 'best sounding' format is?

 

In an ideal world, the consumer would make that decision, KA.

Meaning that I would HOPE the consumer decides which format sounds the best by trusting his own ears. Still, there will be many who will buy what they're told to buy.

 

Okey-doke.

 

ACK!

And if you are a vinylphile, *triple ack*.

How would you separate the two? If someone said that they had heard format 1 and format 2, and thought format 2 sounded better, but you were sure format 1 sounded better, would you assume that they were just parrotting the company line?

It's very much akin to equating popularity with quality. Do folks who buy a hit album do so because they actually like the artist's work, or the songs they've heard from said album, or is it because they have been 'told to' like them?

 

SH, your profile says you don't want to be emailed via the board But you can
just send your email to me :

[email protected]

 

Separate the two what? Ears? With a brain, I'd hope, that can think clearly enough to make individual preferences not biased by externals - such as folks parrotting a company line (be it analog, DSD or PCM), or by others insisting that one format can be proven better than another. I know of just such an instance as you describe. There is an individual who posts regularly to this forum who insists format 2 (PCM) is better than format 1 (analog). What I assume about him/her is that he/she is not comfortable with the idea that some folks might not necessarily agree with him/her - or worse.

I guess that depends on how much of an independent thinker one is. Peer group pressure and the herd mentality are certainly quite prominent in American social traditions. Most folks smell with their nose and run with their feet, but I have to be different: my feet smell and my nose runs. Go figure.

 

Okay, here is a list of production considerations with DVD-A that are not needed or cared about in SACD production. I'm sure there are some I'm missing.

- How should my on-screen menu function?
+ Animated?
+ Static?
+ Straightforward to use or hopelessly artsy-fartsy?
- Do I include an annoying splash screen?
+ Does my annoying splash screen include audio/video or simply video?
- How many times should I make the user hit play before the disc begins?
- Should the disc autoplay or default to the top menu?
- Should I include a separate stereo mix?
+ What is the resolution/bit-rate going to be?
- Should I include a surround mix?
+ What is the resolution/bit-rate going to be for front left/center/front right channels?
+ What is the resolution/bit-rate going to be for back left/LFE/back right channels?
+ That's right, you can have differing levels of resolutoin in those two sets of channels.
- Should I have "group 1" contain the surround tracks (semi-standard) or do something devious like have group 1 contain the stereo tracks?
- Should I have "group 2" contain the stereo tracks (semi-standard) or do something devious like have group 2 contain the surround tracks?
- Should I make the MLP tracks the default or do something devious like make the DTS tracks the default?
- What am I going to do about backwards compatibility for regular DVD players?
+ Include Dolby Digital track?
+ Include DTS track?
+ Include PCM track?
- Do I want to include bonus video material?
- Do I want to include other visual elements, such as lyrics?
- Should I "do the right thing" and make it dual sided for the best in user-friendliness? (stereo/multi-channel)

There are too many permutations, and I feel this has been DVD-A's greatest weakness. There is major lack of standardization. There has been a move within the industry to script some standards, but ultimately these will be optional. An open platform may have seemed glamorous at first, but this has come back to bite DVD-A hard.

All this may make it sound like I'm anti-DVD-A, but I'm not. I love the format and think it sounds spectacular. That last bit is the most important. The hurdles may be annoying but once you get there I feel it is well worth the trip.

 

I do not feel the need to choose sides and am content with my decision that there are positive things to say about the two formats. I do think DVD-A has gotten a bad rap (much of it deservedly, to be sure) but I have a tendency to root for the underdog. Therefore I do find myself siding with DVD-A much of the time. But in the end, I don't care terribly much which format (if either) emerges victorious. Either way, we end up with a format that greatly surpasses the performance of old-fashioned redbook and comes tantalizingly close to sweet, sweet analog.

 

The DTS Corporation's DVD-A Team's failed effort with the Queen multi-channel tells us a lot about these probems. As Steve Hoffman would likely instruct us, what we want at the core is the very best hi resolution presentation of the Stereo mix. Instead we got two very questionable efforts to make a new multi-channel mix with the stereo derived therefrom. The authoring is defective and causes many DVD-A players to hang up between tracks. Navigation is not rational. And most DVD-A disks don't currently start to play when inserted but require most DVD-A players to turn on the TV to navigate through till it is instructed to play one of the several options.

 

Let's be accurate here:

The stereo mix on the Queen disc is not derived from the multi-channel mix. It is the original mix. Whether one prefers it to Steve's or anybody elses mastering is up to the listening, but it IS the original mix at 24/96.

Also, aparently, new DVD-A's will be two sided with a stereo side and a multichannel side. The stereo side will have a 24/96 track compatible with any DVD player as well as an optional 24/192 track specifically for DVD-A's. You won't need to use a menu to play the stereo side.


On a semi related note, my Marantz SACD player won't play the stereo track of Cheap Thrillls. I hope I can find a workaround as I'm dying to hear this.


- Gabe

 

I guess I read the Sound and Vision Queen review concerning the stereo mix wrong. I gave back my DVD-A player because it would not switch between formats properly.

 

The two groups of people who buy using their ears , versus those who buy 'what they are told to'

Not knowing which individual you ar referring to, I can only say that he or she should recognize that *preference* is, as some have put it, 'sacrosanct'. Some people simply prefer the sound of vinyl over that of CD. Thre's really not much to argue there. Of course, if technical claims are made for the media, one can compare the measurable reality with the claim. There are always still some underlying assumptions -- e.g., that a higher S/N is 'better' than a lower one. Some of the assumptions are controversial, some not. Also, some consumers might find they *prefer* the *sound* of a compenent that has worse 'specs'...and there's no arguing with that *preference*, really. It's like telling someone they shouldn't like a certain color.

However, even audiophiles do not always make their purchases based solely on what is audible. The look of a component, its reputation, its price, are among the factors that can and do come into consideration. This doen't necessarily make the purchaser a sheep.

I still don't see how you'd be able to separate the two types of person in a reliable manner.

 

OK, I see where you are coming from (though it may not be where SH was coming from) -- the multiplicity of choices available to DVD-A project managers. Some of hese *aren't* different from SACD, though -- e.g. inclusion of surround mix, a stereo PCM layer, default choices, etc..

I was talking about the putting the music onto a disc, period -- I was of course well aware that the video side of DVD-A is 'extra'.

 

That, at least, is what they tell us... ;>

 

er..the Queen disc offers the original stereo version as well, in DVD-A.

 

Which player was this?

I've had no problem on the player end with the two I've tried (JVC and Toshiba) -- btu some disc are authored better than others. The worst is the Al Green Greatest Hits DVD-A, whose DVD-A menus simply do not work on my player -- but I can access all he versions by manually toggling through them using the remote.

Note too that some (all?) DVD-A players (like the Toshibas) require you to specify a 'default' playback format -- DVD-V (Dolby Digital/DTS) or DVD-A.