DVD-R VS HD VS Blu-ray Vs X264

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Originally Posted by hotshot6473

You have way more understanding then anybody so far in this thread. People need to realize the source is the most important thing and then what codec it is encoded with and then what settings are used to preserve the transparency to the source.

Overall people need to stop downloading DVDs and DVD sourced content if HD is available. And download size should not even factor into peoples minds if the quality is good with the price of HDDs these days

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it took you 4 posts before adding any value to this thread. before that you were just talking shit.


obviously the best quality is going to be downloading full blu-rays which are about 25gb+ in size which is unacceptable to most torrenters who are doing this to save money, not spend more and more money on hard drives. a perfectly acceptable compromise can be achieved with x264 rips of blu-rays.

also, more pixels doesn't necessarily mean better quality, just as more mp on a camera doesn't necessarily mean better quality. it just means a bigger picture, that is all.

I'm looking at getting a bluray and projector. Can someone show me where I can learn how to properly burn for the bluray? It is new to me :/

LOL more than half the people posting in this thread dont seem to know the first thing about picture quality.

There are two things you have to consider, standard definition and high def.

SD:
Obviously a DVDR would be the best quality, since its an exact replica of the original source. After that comes encodes, generally SD encodes are mostly xvid, though there are some P2P/home encodes that you can get in x264. GENERALLY, the rule of thumb is, the greater the filesize, the better quality (larger filesize usually represents a higher bitrate etc)

HD:
With HD, obviously a full bluray is the best quality, again since they are exact replicas of the original source (but ridiculus in filesize). After that comes your encodes, two types, 1080p and 720p. You have to understand that higher resolution (1080p) isnt ALWAYS better than 720p, its just more pixels. Again, you have to consider the bitrate (which usually can be judged from the filesize), the higher the better. With HD rips, you have to consider both resolution and bitrate to find the best rip. And you'll find that HD rips are always encoded using the x264 codec.

When downloading, you need to consider the following:
1) Are you going to be viewing your films on a HDTV or not?
2) What is your harddrive capacity and/or bandwidth limitations? Obviously if you have a bandwith limit, or are low on hdd space (and cant afford a new one), you may have to form a compromise).

Me, I generally go for HD movies, roughly 4-5gb 720p for your average movie and 8-10gb for action movies which i KNOW are brilliant and worth getting in the best quality.

Hope that clears things up.

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Originally Posted by Cradle

LOL more than half the people posting in this thread dont seem to know the first thing about picture quality.

There are two things you have to consider, standard definition and high def.

SD:
Obviously a DVDR would be the best quality, since its an exact replica of the original source. After that comes encodes, generally SD encodes are mostly xvid, though there are some P2P/home encodes that you can get in x264. GENERALLY, the rule of thumb is, the greater the filesize, the better quality (larger filesize usually represents a higher bitrate etc)

HD:
With HD, obviously a full bluray is the best quality, again since they are exact replicas of the original source (but ridiculus in filesize). After that comes your encodes, two types, 1080p and 720p. You have to understand that higher resolution (1080p) isnt ALWAYS better than 720p, its just more pixels. Again, you have to consider the bitrate (which usually can be judged from the filesize), the higher the better. With HD rips, you have to consider both resolution and bitrate to find the best rip. And you'll find that HD rips are always encoded using the x264 codec.

When downloading, you need to consider the following:
1) Are you going to be viewing your films on a HDTV or not?
2) What is your harddrive capacity and/or bandwidth limitations? Obviously if you have a bandwith limit, or are low on hdd space (and cant afford a new one), you may have to form a compromise).

Me, I generally go for HD movies, roughly 4-5gb 720p for your average movie and 8-10gb for action movies which i KNOW are brilliant and worth getting in the best quality.

Hope that clears things up.

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excelent post!! i prefer also 720p rips!!
but in your post say that hdrips can be only x264 encodes!! correct me if i am wrong, but there are xvid rips as well (so called afr's, aprox 2 Gb in size, released by p2p groups like prodj, dzone3 and others)

Hmm Ive never downloaded those P2P rips myself, but I was always under the impression that they were SD encodes from a bluray source, and hence not actually high definition.

Cradle can you give an example of a 720p encode with greater bitrate than the 1080p encode? I would like to check something

VHS ftw.

I generally prefer HD WMVs for their compatibility. I stream my stuff to an XBOX 360 and it only retains 5.1 audio for wma in the wmv container, which is important to me. But, there are only a couple of groups that rip to VC1 and about as many places to find them.

I don't have a media player yet or a htpc, but I'm going to grab a WDTV Live asap. Then, it'll be x264 all the way.

i don't own any HD equipment so i mostly download xvid rips (preferably AFR or good P2P/homemade releases) and DVDRs for my favorite films.

well, i could download x264 rips but i really dislike the fact that they're not readable on any standard dvd player, unlike xvid and DVDs.

that said, i happen to get 720p releases for my "movies of the evening": the quality is quite good (even though my 22" screen is not HD) and i can always grab a xvid or DVDR version of the film if i really like it.

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Originally Posted by TrollinThunder

VHS ftw.

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rofl - I agree :whistling