Much like Toshiba’s launch of the HD DVD format, the launch of Sony’s Blu-ray format is off to a tepid start.

Sony did good by launching more Blu-ray titles than were HD DVD titles available at the HD DVD launch. But the problem is that some of the BD launch titles are not all stellar releases. The video quality is quite variable. Some titles look excellent while others aren’t that great. Perhaps it’s because Sony chose to use the MPEG2 format instead of VC1 or MPEG4, which take up far less space, allowing an HD movie to fit a lot nicer into 25GB than MPEG2 does. That’s a theory anyway, and that problem should be solved by late summer when Sony expects to release dual-layer discs which should give plenty of space for an MPEG2 encoded movie. BTW, Bill Hunt has this to say (see link below) about MPEG2 versus VC1. “I’ve been told that one of the chief advantages of using MPEG-2 over VC1, at least in the near term, is that it’s easier to encode quickly in high quality. A good MPEG-2 encoding can be done in, say, two passes, whereas VC1 right now can take as many as five or six passes to achieve high quality. Still, that will certainly change over time as the VC1 compression software gets better.” Just an interesting little factoid.

The Samsung DVD player seems to have problems with the HDMI output. (See Bill Hunt’s site The Digital Bits, and his My Two Cents section for more. It seems that the Samsung puts out quite a good image on the component video outputs, but that the HDMI output has bad colour and is fuzzy. No word if this is an isolated case or if this is something common to all Samsung players.) But on the whole it seems to be a decent player. audio|video Revolution sums up its review of the player by saying “The Samsung BD-P1000 is far from perfect, but it works a heck of a lot better than the two Toshiba offerings.”

So all in all, I have to say I’m somewhat disappointed by the launch of Blu-ray. Sony could have done a better job with its first batch of titles. It also really should have had a BD player available at launch. After all, even though BD is supported by many manufacturers, BD still is Sony’s baby. Samsung’s player, while decent, still has rough edges.

So now the second blue laser disc format limps onto the scene.

* sigh *

Blu-ray bows to small sales, little fanfare

Ooops, I almost forgot. Projector Central has a few notes about the BD launch too, mostly just giving a super-quick rundown of some of the launch titles.

Initial Notes on the Samsung Blu-ray’s DVD Player