I'm sure this kind of thing has been discussed here before but I just spent an hour going through old posts and can't find it.

I've bought myself a WD TV HD and I am slowly going about acquiring HD media for it. However, I have noticed a lot of scene releases for 720p material is actually only say 540 pixels high. Example. Now my question is, would I be better off just downloading the DVDr which I would assume would have the full DVD resolution of 576(?) pixels with a smaller file size. I say I assume, because I've never d/l'd DVDr's I've gone straight from XVid avi's to x264 HD rips.

Obviously the bitrate is higher on the "720p" copy and it has DTS sound which I may or may not be fussed about depending on the film, but what effect does this higher bit rate have on the quality of the picture?

I suppose I'm only interested from a theoretical point of view, because I don't think I'd be all that fussed about saving a gig or 2 of bandwidth, I'm just interested to know.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Linnets
I'm sure this kind of thing has been discussed here before but I just spent an hour going through old posts and can't find it.

I've bought myself a WD TV HD and I am slowly going about acquiring HD media for it. However, I have noticed a lot of scene releases for 720p material is actually only say 540 pixels high. Example.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Linnets
I'm sure this kind of thing has been discussed here before but I just spent an hour going through old posts and can't find it.

I've bought myself a WD TV HD and I am slowly going about acquiring HD media for it. However, I have noticed a lot of scene releases for 720p material is actually only say 540 pixels high. Example. Now my question is, would I be better off just downloading the DVDr which I would assume would have the full DVD resolution of 576(?) pixels with a smaller file size. I say I assume, because I've never d/l'd DVDr's I've gone straight from XVid avi's to x264 HD rips.

Obviously the bitrate is higher on the "720p" copy and it has DTS sound which I may or may not be fussed about depending on the film, but what effect does this higher bit rate have on the quality of the picture?

I suppose I'm only interested from a theoretical point of view, because I don't think I'd be all that fussed about saving a gig or 2 of bandwidth, I'm just interested to know.

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the aspect ratio has nothing to do with the visual quality of the film, it's all about bitrate/resolution as you assumed.

You have to remember while a dvd is 720x480 pixels (for ntsc) the higher bitrate 720p rips are 1280x720/540 so you're still gaining nearly twice the horizontal resolution over dvds, which with the higher bitrate resorts to a more scalable picture (due to the higher resolution) and less blocky/more 'clear' (due to the higher bitrates).

Unless you're watching it on a standard def set or something, stick with the hd rips, you're getting the best quality that way and storage is cheap now

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Cool, thanks for the reply. As it happens I am watching on a SD set, but working hard at being able to afford a HD one! And I thought I might as well d/l the HD stuff now rather than download the same stuff in SD then again in HD when I do finally get around to (can afford) buying a proper telly.

::EDIT::

What do scene rules say about cropping/resolutions on HD/BD rips? Why would you want to crop a 720 or 1080 rip to less than what the original disc was authored at?

Last edited by Linnets on 04-08-2009 at 11:34 PM

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quote:

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Originally posted by Linnets
Cool, thanks for the reply. As it happens I am watching on a SD set, but working hard at being able to afford a HD one! And I thought I might as well d/l the HD stuff now rather than download the same stuff in SD then again in HD when I do finally get around to (can afford) buying a proper telly.

::EDIT::

What do scene rules say about cropping/resolutions on HD/BD rips? Why would you want to crop a 720 or 1080 rip to less than what the original disc was authored at?

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Last edited by punzada on 04-09-2009 at 01:27 AM

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How is the video stream stored on blu-ray discs?
Say a movie with 2.35:1 at 1080p, is it 1980x1080 and all the pixels are used up, or is it 1980x840 and letterboxed to fill up the remaining pixels. I'm assuming the latter which seems kinda low-tech and backwards when they could probably use up the whole picture and add a flag to the video stream to make it play at the correct ar.

Also, rips should go by the horizontal res 1980/1280 instead, what with the cropping and shit, it would cause less confusion.

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quote:

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Originally posted by valvehead
How is the video stream stored on blu-ray discs?
Say a movie with 2.35:1 at 1080p, is it 1980x1080 and all the pixels are used up, or is it 1980x840 and letterboxed to fill up the remaining pixels. I'm assuming the latter which seems kinda low-tech and backwards when they could probably use up the whole picture and add a flag to the video stream to make it play at the correct ar.

Also, rips should go by the horizontal res 1980/1280 instead, what with the cropping and shit, it would cause less confusion.

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Last edited by Linnets on 04-13-2009 at 06:09 PM

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