T2 Extreme DVD @ 1440x816 Resolution

[Bing Fung]

I just picked up this DVD and I have to say, I was pretty floored by the recommended PC specifications required to play the Hi-definition transfer on your PC at 1080p.

This is what is stated on the box:

Recommended System Requirements for DVD-ROM "T2: High-Definition"

-Windows XP Professional
-Windows Media Player 9 Series
-512 MB RAM
-3 GHz Processor
-128 MB/3D Video Card
-24 Bit 96 KHz Multi Channel Sound card
-Mouse, Speakers,/Headphones
-Network connection of at least 56.6 kbps
-Recommended display (1600x1200)

Now if that isn't a PC killer, I don't know what is... :LOL:

Anyway, Hi-def looks beautiful to say the least. There is such a clarity to the image its stunning. Its not always like "Wow, I'm looking through a window" but it is pretty darn nice. Its the small details you notice like the screen door behind the the T-1000 (Chapter 11, T-100 visits the Voights), or the details and clarity in the faces of Arni and Sarah in the station wagon (Chapter 37, Detailed Files to CH40, No Problemo), There was one scene particularly where it was so clear, you could see the hair on Sarah's arms (Chapter 47, Nuclear Nightmare), this could not be seen at all on my XBR.

I played the T2 High-Def PC version in parallel to the T2 Ultimate edition & the Extreme Disk 1 (High-Def mastered) in both my desktop PC, my Dell 8500 notebook and my 36" XBR. I ran all 3 disks in parallel. While the differences were not as great from my Desktop to my notebook, it still was readily apperent. It was dramatic when compared to my XBR.

The desktop ran flawless as I suspect it has the speed for smooth playback. The Notebook was pretty good, but there was the odd times there was a slight studder during a scene change or a system buffer flush, nothing too annoying, definately watchable 8) However I suspect the soundcard in the Dell is not up to the required 24 bit 96 KHz sample rate as the sound level was very low, I had to turn up the volume to maximum just to hear someting and there was some odd low level squeaking coming through the system, it sounded like the noise floor of the DVD rom motor or something... wierd.

One other bad(Good?) issue with High Def DVd's is you could clearly see during the Semi Truck chase scene that a stunt double was riding the Harley bike for Arnold. In the Ultimate edition you could sort of make out the stunt double, however in the Hi-def, there is no mistake :P It certainly takes a bit of time to scroll through the chapters.

Anyway, this is a must see if you have a system that can run it. I can't wait to put this up on a projector at work or on my buddy Cams DLP.

If I was to choose what it looked best on I would say for image clarity the notebook, for the fine pitched LCD screen and the straight Digital (DVI) connection. The 21" Sony CRT looked more film like, and the color/tone was excellently accurate, however the LCD just had a crispness that suited the Hi-def transfer.




Bing

[Bing Fung]

I changed my mind, upon more demos, the LCD panel on the Dell, really looks much better than the 21" Sony. It's the fine pixel pitch that makes it so much clearer with out any blockyness. I really wished I could show you guys as it is startling how crisp and clear it is. You can just resolve more detail in the combination of pixel pitch and pure digital image.

My digital camera can't seem to capture the quality of the image, however I suppose these are better than nothing. The details seem lost as well there is more red than in actual. The skin tones seem over saturated in the snapshots.

Click on images for full size.










Bing

[SiliGoose]

Cool, Bing.

I'm pretty disappointed at how this is being marketed. This is, IMO, a landmark DVD release yet the marketing I've seen totally ignores the High-def version. They say "from a high-def master" but that's not the same thing.




-Sili

[Bing Fung]

I hear you on the promotion of it Sili. When I first seen it on the shelf, I passed it over thinking "as if I need another T2 disk". It wasn't until I was talking about this with a co-worker that he told me about the Hidef 1080P version for the PC only, and that a monster of a PC was required to run it. I dropped everything I was doing and headed out to FutureShop to get it :LOL:


So you are right....




Bing

[JonMarsh]

Well, the number of folks who have PC's with WM9 setup and the necessary power is probably not very high. My desktop will run the 720P WM9 just fine, so I'm hoping it will cope with this OK, too, though I haven't had time to pick it up yet. It's on my list. My bedroom HTPC should be able to manage it, too- seems like 2100 plus Athon's do OK, where 2.6 GHz P4's are required. Difference in floating point performance? Could be.

Note, this T2 release is from a brand new 1080P high def master, newer even than the one used for the VHS-D Theater 1080i release. So the DVD quality is top flight, but the WM9, from screen shot's I've see, does go the extra mile. OTOH, you're not going to be able to take a picture with a digital camera and capture the effect- most digital camera's are only 8 bits per color channel, and it's easy to lose some of that dynamic range when trying to take a picture of a display... then there's the resolution thing, most folks would have to scroll considerably on their desktop display.

I think this is kind of cool, though I'm skeptical still that Microsoft will make any commerical headway with this format. I'll buy them, though- but we all know I'm a weirdo. I'm curious to see how it "downscales" to 1280X720; I expect that will be video card dependent. The Geforce's do nice downscaling, so my NV17 based bedroom system may be interesting on this disk.

Best regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Bing Fung]

Hey Jon, I didn't expect the camera to capture the subtle nuances of the actual screen, however I didn't expect the color to be so oversaturated. I think it is also partly due to the room being totally dark thus causing the CCD to oversaturate the image. I noticed if I have at least one light on it creates a much better picture of the sceren. That and the 8bit color mode you mention

Well, I connected it up to a Sharp LCD projector with Dalite screen at work that is only capable of SXGA (1024x768 ). While it looked nice , it certainly did not have the fine detail of the 1440x816, and lacked the overall clarity. Still it looked OK so I guess the down conversion was adequate, though clearly the details were lost.

I'll be re-visiting my friend Cam with the Sharp 9000 DLP projector and Stewart Flimscreen Firehawk. It's capable of 1280x720 resolution, so although the Notebook will still have to down convert from 1440x816, We are really looking forward to seeing it on his system. His HTPC is only a 1 GHz P3/128MB Radeon 9500Pro.

My notebook is a 2.4 GHZ with only a 64 MB video card, and it plays it relatively smooth with only the odd skips, that 2.6 you mention Jon is probably correct.

everyone was pretty impressed with how good it looked on the .17mm LCD at 1440x816 Now if only it were about 8 feet bigger

I question the the high system requirements however, I think Microsoft should have made it a bit more accessable to the general computing populace. It seems some SW otimizations should be in order so it can run with lower system requirements.




Bing

[Trevor Schell]

Sounds great Bing!,,
I guess I may be a little disappointed on the 2.2Ghz speed though. Maybe!




Trevor
My HomeTheater S.E.
Sonically Enhanced
C5

[Bing Fung]

You could always play it on Blue Zone, however you would miss seeing it on the supersharp, fine pixel pitch, LCD monitor in all it's digital glory.... Heh, I love saying that :LOL:

You may as well get the disk to watch and try in your 2.2Ghz, it would probably would run just as well as mine, not perfect, but definitely watchable.

It still looks awesome on the 21" Sony, just not as crisp.




Bing

[JonMarsh]

The system requirements are not at all out of line, when you consider that you're decoding purely in software on a codec which has higher data compression than MPEG. To do MPEG 2 transport stream decoding purely in software requires comparable hardware, even with YUV unpacking and idct done in the video card.

Reportedly, video cards and STB chipsets are close to release which will have hardware support for WM9- that should ease things a bit. But the onerous DRM management included with the current disk is another serious obstacle- playback license issues 5 days at a time? Basically, they can withdraw your ablity to view the disk at any time... that's not cool, for something you've paid for.

Regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Bing Fung]

I guess when you put it that way it seems resonable, decoding/encoding always takes a ton of CPU power in software.

Who is onboard to making these hardware decoding cards?

The licensing issue is a pain to be sure. When I set my Intervideo player up, I could not obtain a license for quite a few hours, as I suspect the servers were getting hammered.




Bing

[Claude D D]

I couldn't get it to play smooth on my pc (1.8Ghz P4,Ati Raddon 7500 64Mb video card,512GB ram)Dropped quite a few frames,very jerky.Geeez 15 months ago this was a pretty rockin' computer now it seems like a slug.Does anyone have any suggestions?Do you think going to a 128MB Raddon 9700 would help?

[JonMarsh]

Unfortunately, what you need is more CPU oomph. The video card should be a reasonable one (10 bit DAC's good), with 64MB of RAM, but processor is the key. Apparently the faster "plain" floating point of the Athlon's helps, so that 2100+ CPU's work about as well as P4 2.4GHz.

If you have the correct socket (478 pin), you should be able to upgrade your CPU- 400 MHz FSB 2.6 GHz CPU's from Central Computer in the Bay area are about $225, which is reasonable compared with the price of a good video card. Your Radeon 7500 isn't a screamer for games, but for DVD and MPEG it's got what it takes.

Regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Claude D D]

Yeah,I guess a faster processor is in order.The media player 9 codec is like mpeg2,it likes a lot of processor power.

[Bing Fung]

I discovered that the T2 Hi-Def DVD-ROM decodes at 1440x816 and then scales to your desktop resolution. This seemingly takes less processing power as it does not have to decode at the highest resolution. Scaling takes less power than decoding so you could also try lowering the resolution of your desktop. I know that may defeat the purpose of the high resolution display, but it still does look pretty good.

I connected my notebook to my 15" LCD monitor with a max resolution of 1024x768, and the scaling actually looked very nice at that resolution. The sharpness was still there so Jon maybe correct in that the Nvidia scales nicely. It didn't however look as good on the 1024x768 projector, however there are many factors that may have affected that like, size of magnification, llamp burn time of the LCD...etc

My desktop PC is normally set to 1600x1200 which you would think would be enough for the upconversion of the 1080p (1920x1080) image, however I noticed there was a lot less aliasing on the Sony 21" CRT when I set my desktop to 1920x1440 resolution. The CRT actually took on the clarity of my LCD on the i8500. I speculate that the scaling has more lines of resolution to work with at 1920x1440, thus it can replicate the tighter pixel pitch of the LCD monitor, leveling the playing field (just guessing).

I have to admit, this HD-DVD has been like Crack for me as I can't stop watching it over and over.

Check out my thread with WM9 Hi-Def demos, the Coral Reef one is stunning, but takes mega HP to decode at 1080p native.




Bing

[Chris D]

Bing likes to watch crack!

:smackbutt:

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I need to try out this HD WM9 stuff on my PC. but it's going to take me forever to download the demo clips since I'm stuck with a dial-up connection for now. And my computer's only just over a year old, but it looks like my then top-end system of 64MB NVIDIA video card and 2.2GHz processor may not be enough for true performance. Scary!




CHRIS
Luke: "Hey, I'm not such a bad pilot myself, you know"

[Bing Fung]

:rofl: I suppose if it's the opposite gender of crack :LOL:




Bing

[Trevor Schell]

Better get 'cracking' Bing!!




Trevor
My HomeTheater S.E.
Sonically Enhanced
C5

[Andrew Pratt]

these play fine on my 2.4 ghz notebook (32 meg ATI 7500)

[Chris D]

After days and days of downloading overnight on a dial-up connection, I've watched 4 or 5 of these. They're great! I am getting a few hiccups in the video with hesistation on my setup I mentioned above, so I'll have to try it with other programs closed. The picture isn't quite spectacular on my 19" screen as I would have hoped, so I'm going to have to wait until I finish my theater to appreciate the quality on a large display!




CHRIS
Luke: "Hey, I'm not such a bad pilot myself, you know"

[Bing Fung]

You know what Chris? I was mildly impressed with the HD on my PC monitor at first until you compare it to the regular DVD. There seems to be something in the conscious level that expects or demands that level of clarity. It's as if when you first see it, it's the norm, however when you look backward, its as if you are looking at VHS after viewing DVD.

I compared the HD-DVD T2 to the regular DVD and the regular is fuzzy compared to the HD one. Even the HD mastered, regular DVD included with the Extreme set looked fuzzy, although you could still more detail compared to the Untimate version, still it was fuzzy.


The CRT does look prety clean and I can tell it is a HD feed, however wit the LCD on my notebook, there is no mistake, at times it is so sharp and detailed, a person would do almost anyting to see more.

The Coral reef looks great on my 21 Sony CRT, but it is utterly spectacular on the LCD. I suspect this is based on a combination of the fine pixel pitch and no signal degredation of a digital panel.




Bing

[Jon]

I still haven't bought a copy of T2 yet, but I think I have been convinced that I should buy this one

[Bing Fung]

It certainly is a good looking picture in High -Def




Bing

[jomos]

PLs help

Hi,
I just got the t2 extreme dvd, and i played it using my windows (xp professional, powerdvd 6.0, windows media player 10 ), the whole disc paused (playing extremely unsmoothly) frequently while playing.

i m using a athlon 1.0Ghz processor.

Is it true that if i play the disc in a dvd-machine instead of on computer, i will not encounter this serious problem but i cannot view the movie at HIGH DEFINITION??

is that the high definition feature that causes the unsmoothly playing of the dvd? if yes, can i try to turn off the high difinition feature on my windows?

pls help me. :cry:

[Chris D]

Hi, jomos, and welcome to the Guide! :banana: Yes, if you read our discussion above and the verbage on the DVD case itself, you'll notice that a much faster processor is required to play WMV-HD. There are currently no actual DVD players that I'm aware of that have WMV-HD capability, so you'll only be able to play the high-def material from a computer. Your DVD player will only read the standard definition information. Sorry!

[jomos]

Your DVD player will only read the standard definition information

Do you mean that i can still play the disc in a dvd-machine (but with non-high definition)??

i dont care whether it is in high-definition or not, i now just want to watch the disc SMOOTHLY. ops:

[Shane Martin]

Do you mean that i can still play the disc in a dvd-machine (but with non-high definition)??

Yes. Your PC just doesn't have enough horsepower to playback the HD version.

[Gordon Moore]

Do you mean that i can still play the disc in a dvd-machine (but with non-high definition)??

As Shane said....YES....but you could get the Ultimate Edition which is very good, has way more features and could be found used at a better price I imagine. This version was really to promote and premiere Microsofts WMV-HD content. If you like features then look for the U.E.

If you want to watch this on your PC in HD (which you can't) get the EE. If you don't care about features get the one you can at the best price possible (likely the EE).

[jomos]

about the extreme dvd i mentioned above, there is a folder called video_ts
but any movies inside this folder are NOT the main film. HOW COME?? the largest one (.vob) is only 24 minutes in length (1 gb in size). BUT THE WHOLE DVD IS 7.66G. Can anyone teach me how to locate the main film file??

can anyone tell me whether each one of the disc is about 7G?? becoz i think that the one i m holding is only DISC 2 ...