Don't forget Sound
Why does Sound Matter?
I can't believe you asked that. Try this: Watch your favorite movie with the sound off. Now is it important? You bet your ears it is! Without Sound, movies and Television would be pointless when you can't hear the dialog or special effects. Also don't forget the musical score. You could probably lip read your way through a teenage slasher movie, but you would be laughing instead of at the edge of your seat. This is because there is no building music. What would JAWS be without John Williams...DAAA DA DAAA DA. you get the point.
So this page is dedicated to explaining yet another advantage of Multichannel sound and advanced Codecs that are offered only on Bluray Disc...NOT DVD! (Sorry HD-DVD fans, I know you supported them as well though sacrificed sound for video in some cases, but, let's face it, it's dead now.)
HISTORY Lesson:
First we started out with 2 channel..Makes sense, we have two ears.
Then we added a subwoofer for deep frequency or BASS. You know Boom BOOM sound effects.
Then came Quad and Dolby Surround and Dolby Pro Logic.
Here's where it got interesting. Wives everywhere were divorcing their husbands because they kept adding speakers and asking for their own "Theater ROOM". But here's why. As humans, yes we only have two ears, but there is a phenomenom known as "Psychacoustics" that engineers tapped into. Basically, even though we only have two ears, we perceive sound from different areas based on reflection and our brain fills in the gaps to make a complete and surrounding experience.
Go outside for once and listen to the street or nature. When a car honks or a bird chirps, what do you do? You naturally look to see where the sound is coming from, but you can hear it all around you.
That is the Center Speaker-The focal point of the dialogue and action. The other speakers fill in the experience. The Sub helps you Feel it!
Make sense?
Lets continue to how sound has improved with Bluray...
Why DVD stinks compared to Bluray
DVD was another adaptation of video formats that allowed for random navigation of content. It's major limitation is it's capacity. That means you only have a certain amount of space to write both the movie and any sort of audio. See this chart below.
Parameters | Blu-ray | DVD |
| Storage capacity | 25GB (single-layer) 50GB (dual-layer) | 4.7GB (single-layer) 8.5GB (dual-layer) |
| Laser wavelength | 405nm (blue laser) | 650nm (red laser) |
| Numerical aperture (NA) | 0.85 | 0.60 |
| Disc diameter Disc thickness | 120mm 1.2mm | 120mm 1.2mm |
| Protection layer Hard coating | 0.1mm Yes | 0.6mm No |
| Track pitch | 0.32µm | 0.74µm |
| Data transfer rate (data) Data transfer rate (video/audio) | 36.0Mbps (1x) 54.0Mbps (1.5x) | 11.08Mbps (1x) 10.08Mbps (<1x) |
| Video resolution (max) Video bit rate (max) | 1920×1080 (1080p) 40.0Mbps | 720×480/720×576 (480i/576i) 9.8Mbps |
| Video codecs | MPEG-2 MPEG-4 AVC SMPTE VC-1 | MPEG-2 - - |
| Audio codecs | Linear PCM Dolby Digital Dolby Digital Plus Dolby TrueHD DTS Digital Surround DTS-HD | Linear PCM Dolby Digital DTS Digital Surround - - - |
| Interactivity | BD-J | DVD-Video |
courtesy of Blu-ray FAQ
What this means is that Bluray can fit 4-5 times the information that a DVD can. And it ain't just video folks. Look at the bit rates. This means the rate at which they can record information from the master, or the original production of the movie is greater, so you actually get a better copy of the original master because the bit rate support to record it is higher.
Wh Wh What???
(Beginner's analogy) Basically, you have water flowing out of a hose-that's the original signal. If you have a smaller funnel (DVD) it lessens the amount of water pouring out the other side, so you don't get as much water (data) and the rest is wasted as it backflows and spills over. Bluray is like adding a larger funnel with a bigger hole, now you can get more water and much less is wasted. (The studio's still protect the master so you will probably never get an exact replication, but the Bluray masters I've seen next to the orginal are pretty darn close.
Now, because you have more space, the audio can also be recorded at higher bit rates and not only that, you can have multiple audio streams. Either way, you get higher quality audio that opens up more sound effects and efficiency of those speakers around you. They are getting more information as well.
With DVD, you just had a compressed version of Dolby Digital or DTS on the disc. Now you can have LPCM, Dolby True HD or DTS HD Master Audio.DVD doesn't even have capacity to store advanced audio codecs, much less higher quality layers of existing audio without sacrificing somewhere else.
Bottom line, Movie studios and electronics companies are working together to bring you into the action. Bluray has the capacity to do that and lets you choose from various layers, to hear which one you think sounds the best. All you do is select the "audio" setup in most discs to choose. You can even do this while watching the movie.
Sony even has an "audio" button on their BD players that you can press and cycle through without interrupting the video. Pretty neat.
If you've seen the Streaming vs. Owning page-this is another issue with streaming until they have the bandwidth to send both HD video and audio to your system. BD has it NOW!
Return to home or click to another HD educational page above.
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