tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2102140696733915266.post7333519441199693835..comments2022-07-19T22:02:31.990-07:00Comments on Raj's Technology Blog: The Truth about Upconverting DVD PlayersRajhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12335870770974724672noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2102140696733915266.post-41698165761795246302010-04-01T12:13:37.303-07:002010-04-01T12:13:37.303-07:00I know this is months after your comment, but late...I know this is months after your comment, but later is better than never :-)<br /><br />I'm usually interested in fidelity when it comes to video. I don't mind compression and loss in my audio; I'm no expert, and I don't have any kind of sound systems capable of high fidelity playback.<br /><br />All of the content we consume at home that can be stored for later is already compressed; cable TV, OTA digital, and DVD are all based on MPEG2 standards. Blu-ray supports MPEG2 compression in addition to H.264 and Microsoft's VC-1. Nothing comes down the pipes fully uncompressed.<br /><br />So, in the interest of fidelity, I never re-encode any of the above formats. If I rip a DVD, I leave it in the original MPEG-PS format. If I record OTA HD or things from my cable box, I leave them in MPEG-TS. If I were to rip a Blu-Ray (haven't done this one yet), I'd leave it in H.264 or whatever.<br /><br />You gain fidelity and save time not having to re-encode. The tradeoff is of course more intensive space requirements.<br /><br />For my money though, having the original quality material is worth the cost of a few terabyte sized drives. The things go for around $100 these days, so I deem it worthwhile to pay up for storage to get full quality video.<br /><br />That's my two cents.Rajhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12335870770974724672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2102140696733915266.post-37931150996618681742009-11-14T10:34:04.113-08:002009-11-14T10:34:04.113-08:00Excellent advice Raj! You are spot on with your d...Excellent advice Raj! You are spot on with your data too, good to know I'm not the only one out there wondering why this is such a convoluted topic.<br /><br />A more personally interesting topic, once yours is understood, is what is the best way to STORE that data? I have ripped most of our DVD's (the lifespan of an unscratched DVD is short in our household w/ three young boys) and have played around w/ both X264/AAC (more CPU intensive for playback) and Mpeg4@Xvid (not quite as good, but DivX is probably more pervasive these days than x264) encoding.<br /><br />But I don't want to wish I'd chosen a different encoding algorithm down the line (still happy about ripping my CD's to MP3s, but of course it would have been better to wait until AAC).<br /><br />So to limit the amount of interpolation, you want to use a sane compression algorithm - less lossy means less "interpolation" in the end. For DVD's - maybe just leave them MPEG2, which is STILL compressed, and not too bad overall if you think about it). And Blueray, ugh, gonna need more harddrive space...<br /> <br /><br />Thoughts?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13521783497165633746noreply@blogger.com