Flaw in Ramer's "What Have We Learned So Far?" Logic

[Derb]

Originally Posted by Ruined

Yes we are as I already posted them, scroll up:

Flags of Our Fathers BD50/AVC vs. HD30/VC-1 (33gb vs 21gb)
http://www.mbmg.de/hd-discs/flagsofo...-vs-hd/01.html

The Prestige BD50/AVC vs. HD30/VC-1 (21gb vs 16gb)
http://www.mbmg.de/hd-discs/theprest...-vs-hd/01.html

And there is no significant difference.

Do we have video bitrate information? nope.

If you are suggesting that HD DVD uses less space & achieves the same/equal/par results your are correct. The only reason the BD of The Prestige uses more space is apparent. Anyone care for lossless?

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Derb

Do we have video bitrate information? nope.

The only reason the BD of The Prestige uses more space is apparent. Anyone care for lossless?

Uhh Derb... It is impossible for a video to take up more space and have average less bitrate than a smaller video. Do you know what bitrate is? Put simply, its the amount of space/bandwidth taken up per second. The space amounts listed above are NOT the total space including audio, they are the amounts of space taken up by the video transfer alone. So yes, despite the higher video bitrates/greater space taken up by the BD video transfers, no difference is seen! Diminishing returns. Although on an unrelated note to visual quality, on this release it would have been nice if Warner did put on a DD+5.1 1.5mbps English track alongside a DD5.1 384kbps French track instead of 4 DD5.1 640/448 tracks of every language known to man.

If you are suggesting that HD DVD uses less space & achieves the same/equal/par results your are correct.

Yes, thats exactly what I'm suggesting, and the crux of where Ramer turned wrong.

[Derb]

Originally Posted by Ruined

Uhh Derb... It is impossible for a video to take up more space and have average less bitrate than a smaller video. Do you know what bitrate is? Put simply, its the amount of space/bandwidth taken up per second. The space amounts listed above are NOT the total space including audio, they are the amounts of space taken up by the video transfer alone. So yes, despite the higher video bitrates/greater space taken up by the BD video transfers, no difference is seen! Diminishing returns. Although on an unrelated note to visual quality, on this release it would have been nice if Warner did put on a DD+ 1.5mbps track (and maybe a 384kbps track of some language other than english) instead of 4 DD5.1 640/448 tracks of every language known to man plus.

Alright thats cool. I didn't know you could separate video files, audio files, extras files, & menu files to extract the exact space/bandwidth of the disc. I knew bitrate was the measure of space being eaten up per/sec.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Derb

Alright thats cool. I didn't know you could separate video files, audio files, extras files, & menu files to extract the exact space/bandwidth of the disc. I knew bitrate was the measure of space being eaten up per/sec.

Ah okay, it sounded as if you thought bitrate and space were not correlated. Without aural cues it can be hard to decipher what posters mean at times.

And yes, many "utilities" are available for this purpose and others already

[Mr. Furious]

As someone who has yet to jump into the HD fray and can barely keep his mouth shut in regards to his opinions, I thought I'd throw in my $1.50.

I've been struggling with which HD format to purchase. I own an older 1080i set (Marantz P6111W CRT 61" RPTV) and I'm buying a Samsung 1080P 40" LCD this Christmas. So I've decided to purchase some HD format. Yet, I can't decide. HD-DVD gives me the option to play (at least on some movies) the SD version on my non-HD equipment. That'd be pretty nice for car trips, plane rides, and places I watch my movies where I can't have my full setup. On the other hand, Blu-Ray has some extremely attractive features and I'm a gamer (PS3?). Plus, as a PC guy who doesn't love 50GB of storage? But, Sony's intrusive DRM and past history of rootkits certainly doesn't endear them to me.

So where do I go? I honestly have been leaning towards Blu-Ray but now I'm less certain and I'm firmly back in the middle. It's not the $450 for the player I care about. It's the possibility of losing thousands of dollars worth of software if the format loses out and my player dies. Plus, I fully expect the market to create more flexibility for the winning format (more portable devices). I guess I will watch and wait and fling poo at the various companies. In my opinion, Sony is untrustworthy, unethical, and a lot of times downright anti-consumer. On the other hand, Toshiba sold us out to the Russians when they sold nuclear submarine propeller technology through one of their subsidiaries to them. I certainly have no love or trust for them and really am not interested in a Toshiba product.

That all said, I will concur with what Ruined is saying in regards to Mr. Ramer's conclusions. "Correlation does not imply causation" is really the error being made here. Mr. Ramer states:

Third, the differences between the appearance of transfers compressed with the two CODECs are more noticeable on Blu-ray Disc than on HD DVD, suggesting once again that BD is more revealing.

Despite his ability to create statistical models that may very well represent his opinions (and those of others), there is no real analysis of the material they’re looking at. In order for this to carry any real scientific weight, he’d have to have better control over source material. As Ruin stated, showing today’s newest releases against older catalog releases is bound to affect the review. We would expect HD-DVD to do worse against Blu-Ray if the newest HD-DVD releases were catalog and the Blu-Ray releases were the newest blockbusters.

If I take Ruin’s comment on face value that the majority of the releases for HD-DVD in the last 6 months were from their catalog, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a flat or even diminishing linear regression in their review scores (all other variables aside). Indeed, that’s exactly what we did see.

While I honestly believe that Mr. Ramer is giving his honest opinion (questions of bias aside), his ratings and those of other people are going to be impacted by not only the media and CODEC, but also the source material. One only has to look at Standard Definition DVD to see the improvement that source material has had in that format over the last 10 years. I don’t believe Mr. Ramer is trying to “fool” anyone. I think what you’re witnessing is a misunderstanding of what his statistics are showing.

Largely, I think Mr. Ramer failed to prove anything meaningful in his article. While I applaud the obvious effort that went into it, I think he’s been ensnared by a failure to associate the contributing factors of source material, transfers, etc. There are just too many moving variables to reasonably make the conclusions he arrives at. Additionally, as someone who enjoys doing video capture and authoring on his PC, I can say that bit rate only plays one factor in quality and we shouldn’t be making that into the deciding factor. There is so much more to it. Unfortunately, this format war won’t be so easily decided by reviewing a few movies and stating that one format looks better based on those reviews.

As a side note, I believe many of you were a little too hard on Ruined. I like the fact that he’s openly declared his loyalties and made his arguments. It lets me know exactly where he stands. While we all know his bias, he has done a fine job of laying out the difficulties in Mr. Ramer’s arguments as well as defending his assertions. He also is not the owner/operator of the DVDFile and as such, I do not believe he should be held to the same standards we’d expect out of the front page of this site. That being said, his arguments do not discredit the possibility that Blu-Ray could ultimately be a better format, but they certainly do cast grave doubts on the conclusions of Mr. Ramer's article.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Ruined

If we are tracking video quality across formats, how about we include a plot of the age of the films on average and the budgets involved with said films? If you are going to claim your reviewing is unbiased and want to graph it, fine, but at least use films that have source material remotely in the same ballpark qualitywise.

You know, I noticed that Dan Ramer just posted about 5 reviews of the recent Warner 60s-80s catalog Kubrick and Twilight Zone titles. All of them he reviewed the HD DVD versions of (gave them medicore to good scores depending on the title) and then chose not to review the identical BD versions. Then for his BD reviews he did the Meet the Robinsons and Spiderman 3 which for obvious reasons have top notch video (they just came out). Wonder what that did for the cumulative review scores of each format? How come no equal BD review to bring parity to the numbers?

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by Ruined

You know, I noticed that Dan Ramer just posted about 5 reviews of the recent Warner 60s-80s catalog Kubrick and Twilight Zone titles. All of them he reviewed the HD DVD versions of (gave them medicore to good scores depending on the title) and then chose not to review the identical BD versions. Then for his BD reviews he did the Meet the Robinsons and Spiderman 3 which for obvious reasons have excellent video. Wonder what that did for the cumulative review scores of each format? How come no equal BD review to bring parity to the numbers?

Do we know whether he just didn't assign the same score for the hd-dvd to the bd side? It's possible he didn't need to review identical encodes. But you're right, his data would be skewed if he didn't issue the bd side the same values for the Warner titles.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by ganthc

Do we know whether he just didn't assign the same score for the hd-dvd to the bd side? It's possible he didn't need to review identical encodes. But you're right, his data would be skewed if he didn't issue the bd side the same values for the Warner titles.

Well, its obviously skewed anyway because over the course of his data being released the exclusive studios on BD were Sony, Fox, and Disney releasing mostly recent movies from the past few years vs. Universal on HD DVD releasing mostly older catalog titles. (Which is just a reflection of the strong points of said studios) This was the point of my first post in this thread.

However, what I just pointed out skews it even more, though.

[rixrex]

Ramer's work is pretty typical of some of the scientific-technocrats who believe that miniscule variations in video or sound quality will cause the general buying public to march in lock-step to their opines. These types, present company excluded of course, never learn from the history of commercial marketing and the forces that drive consumerism. In fact, they often seem unaware that such exists, just as Sony seemed to be in their ignoring the RCA execs understanding of the US market in the late 1970s.

Any scientist or doctorate in any field of study would tell you that a study like his is so flawed that it could never be presented as a factual exercise for publication in serious texts. In comparisons of technology that have varied processes to achieve same results, empirical methodology requires, as much as is possible, that the exact same source material be used for legitimate comparison. He didn't do this, even though he could have.

A study that offers comparisons of differing source materials, regardless of technological measuring accuracy, can easily be taken as an attempt to promote a personal bias, regardless of claims by the proponent of non-bias.

How do you think anyone who works as an ad exec or a marketing analyst would have done a study of this nature? Would they have chosen only themselves as the participant, and then chosen differing source materials, and then relied upon tiny technological differences imperceptible by the consumer they are trying to attract? Of course not!

There would be the exact same source material, and there would be dozens if not hundreds of participants, and there would be a series of questions for the participants to answer regarding their viewing experience, ease of operation and understanding, and regarding their purchasing habits and purchasing power. That would be the scientific evidence necessary for the marketing execs to make their decisions.

And that's why 30 yrs ago, the RCA marketers were right and the Sony technocrats were wrong, and the same thing will happen again unless they get their head out of the sand and do the kind of studies and strategy that will assure positive results in the marketplace. It won't happen by saying, Oh, this format has a dozen more pixels of resolution and a couple more frequencies of audio than that one. ( I exaggerated for effect)

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by Ruined

Ramer might as well have said Blu-Ray is better "because it goes to 11," because that makes just about as much sense as what he did write.

Peace...

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by Taxi

First, I think you need to go look up what "vested interest" means. Ramer's statements that you quoted do not contradict.

I agree, do a degree. I don't think Mr Ramer will benefit financially from promoting Blu-Ray (I don't know for sure but I'm willing to give him this) but his statements, as quoted by Ruined on the previous page, don't really work well. On one hand, he expresses his hope Blu-Ray wins yet on the other he claims to not be biased against HD DVD. If he's wanting to be viewed as objective, his position has to remain format neutral. Otherwise, he'll always be viewed as biased in favor of his personal preference.

Peace...

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by tomdkat

I agree, do a degree. I don't think Mr Ramer will benefit financially from promoting Blu-Ray (I don't know for sure but I'm willing to give him this) but his statements, as quoted by Ruined on the previous page, don't really work well. On one hand, he expresses his hope Blu-Ray wins yet on the other he claims to not be biased against HD DVD. If he's wanting to be viewed as objective, his position has to remain format neutral. Otherwise, he'll always be viewed as biased in favor of his personal preference.

Peace...

Interesting. So by this example we could also say that since the 80-90% of the media folks vote Democrat, that they can't be non-biased when reporting about conservatives? Or are we to assume that there may be some hints of bias, but that they do strive to get both sides and to be neutral in reporting?

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. If Ramer has said he wants bd to win, then there will obviously be pro-bd articles from him. The question is whether he is anti-hd-dvd though.

[Taxi]

Originally Posted by ganthc

Interesting. So by this example we could also say that since the 80-90% of the media folks vote Democrat, that they can't be non-biased when reporting about conservatives? Or are we to assume that there may be some hints of bias, but that they do strive to get both sides and to be neutral in reporting?

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. If Ramer has said he wants bd to win, then there will obviously be pro-bd articles from him. The question is whether he is anti-hd-dvd though.

Yes, exactly, thank you.

I've talked with Dan a few times in email, and I think I know him well enough to say that even though he may say he wants Blu-Ray to "win", he's also passionate enough about home theater to give his honest opinion when he writes about it.

[Ruined]

IMO, in all aspects of life when you have interest in something there will always be bias. If you are not a car nut and go to Jifffy Lube, you probably could care less what oil they changed your car with. But if you are big into cars, you will probably hope they use Castrol (or whatever your brand is). Maybe you won't care enough to not get your oil changed there, but you might still be a bit ticked in your mind if they don't give you that option. Did I mention my real life profession is being a psychologist?

Same goes for home theater. If you are interested in a particular technical part of it, you will be biased towards your preference. Whether its DD vs DTS, SACD vs DVD-Audio, or in this case BD vs HD DVD. Now I'm not saying Dan Ramer is as biased as Bill Hunt, because there is a Grand Canyon's worth of distance between them. However, based on his statements he does prefer Blu-Ray, which biases him towards that format as he prefers it and hopes that it wins (per his own statement). Is that bias strong enough to significantly influence his reviews and/or columns? Maybe, maybe not - regardless though that bias still exists in his mind. Perhaps most importantly, based on observations/arguments I've made in this thread about ages/budgets of exclusive films to each format along with hard evidence I've offered (A/B screengrabs of higher vs. lower bitrate on the same title), I think its pretty clear he did not do anything remotely approaching a "fair and balanced" study here nor do his results mean much as a result. Was his BD-favoring result due to his bias? Would he have attempted a different method that did not favor BD & its more recent exclusive movies if he did not wish BD would win? Who knows. But either way, his method has proven to be flawed as are his results.

[Taxi]

Originally Posted by Ruined

I think its pretty clear he did not do anything remotely approaching a "fair and balanced" study here nor do his results mean much as a result. Was his BD-favoring result due to his bias? Would he have attempted a different method that did not favor BD & its more recent exclusive movies if he did not wish BD would win? Who knows. But either way, his method is flawed as are his results.

Using your own logic then, Ruined, could it not be said that, given your own admitted bias toward HD-DVD, your conclusions of Ramer's work are equally flawed?

This is where I think your argument breaks down.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Taxi

Using your own logic then, Ruined, could it not be said that, given your own admitted bias toward HD-DVD, your conclusions of Ramer's work are equally flawed?

This is where I think your argument breaks down.

I didn't claim I was doing a scientific study or analysis, Taxi. I was just pointing out where I felt his study is completely off target and presented evidence to back up my points.

Of course you have to take my obvious bias into account when reading my replies. But even with that bias, I think most would be hard pressed to shoot down my points as they are quite logical and have evidence to back them where there is no counter-evidence to be found (no one to date has been able to capture a series of screenshots where it is demonstrated BD is significantly better than HD DVD due to space concerns despite multiple versions and different encodes of titles by dual-format studios like the formerly dual-format studio Paramount; and it is obvious BD had more recent, big-budget titles than HD DVD did over the time period of his study - that is evident simply by looking at a title listing for each format).

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by ganthc

Interesting. So by this example we could also say that since the 80-90% of the media folks vote Democrat, that they can't be non-biased when reporting about conservatives?

If they want to be viewed as being "objective", they shouldn't make their personal political views known since that will always cloud the perception of their objectivity. A media commentatory who is a Democrat will always have someone question their comments about any conservative simply by virtue of being a Democrat. Why else would Mr Ramer feel the need to stated he's got no vested interest in Blu-Ray? Why the need to "defend" himself if he was already viewed as being objective in his commentary, if that's his intention?

Now, the most important part of my point is the word "view". One's ability to be objective can be overshadowed by their perceived objectivity which can be directly influenced by knowledge of their personal views. Ruined is known to be a strong HD DVD advocate yet some will think he's some kind of HD DVD "shill" such that his comments about Blu-Ray will be discounted and sometimes without even being considered or analyzed. There are tons of things I think Ruined is wrong about and other things I think he's right on the money about BUT since he's such a vocal HD DVD advocate, that alone discounts his comments to some degree to some people and that's before they even attempt to understand what he has written. If Ruined wanted to be viewed more as an objective HD commentator, he would tone done his public HD DVD advocacy.

Or are we to assume that there may be some hints of bias, but that they do strive to get both sides and to be neutral in reporting?

If the objectivity of the person is proven such that their perception is being a source of objective analysis and commentary, there's no need to assume any kind of bias since you know you're getting a non-biased view. If Mr Ramer doesn't intend to be viewed as an objective commentator on this stuff, that's fine and people should realize that when they read his articles and he shouldn't feel any need to justify, defend, or explain himself since he's just giving his opinion. If he does intend to be viewed as objective commentator, comments he makes describing his preference for one entity over another will also be challenged and viewed as being tainted with bias.

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. If Ramer has said he wants bd to win, then there will obviously be pro-bd articles from him. The question is whether he is anti-hd-dvd though.

It's all good. I honestly think the "outcry" over Mr Ramer's comments is over the top but what can I say, this is the Internet. As for him being "anti-HD DVD", isn't he already that if he's pro Blu-Ray? I mean if he truly wasn't, wouldn't he be pro-dual format or pro "HD movies on optical disc" or format agnostic?

Peace...

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by tomdkat

It's all good. I honestly think the "outcry" over Mr Ramer's comments is over the top but what can I say, this is the Internet. As for him being "anti-HD DVD", isn't he already that if he's pro Blu-Ray? I mean if he truly wasn't, wouldn't he be pro-dual format or pro "HD movies on optical disc" or format agnostic?

Peace...

Good point. I guess I figured you could be pro-bd but not necessarily anti-hd-dvd. I don't truly consider myself anti-hd-dvd (more like anti-hd-dvd fanboyism), but I do lean heavily towards blu-ray. However, I would sooner have hd-dvd win than to see HDM not be successful.

I think Ruined has made some fair criticisms of the article. But I don't know if I can say that Ramer is necessarily anti-hd-dvd just because he favors bd. And thus, I don't know if I would be ready to say he was not able to be objective, if not flawed in his analysis.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by ganthc

Good point. I guess I figured you could be pro-bd but not necessarily anti-hd-dvd. I don't truly consider myself anti-hd-dvd (more like anti-hd-dvd fanboyism), but I do lean heavily towards blu-ray. However, I would sooner have hd-dvd win than to see HDM not be successful.

For the record, I don't consider "fanboyism" to be part of the format war discussion we're having. I actually had ANY kind of fanboyism regardless, I mean irregardless, of it being in support of something I'm in favor of or not. With regard to being pro-[this] and not anti-[that], unless you're in favor of both co-existing, even though you prefer one to the other, you've got to be anti-[the other]. Otherwise, you're more format neutral with a preference of one format.

I think Ruined has made some fair criticisms of the article. But I don't know if I can say that Ramer is necessarily anti-hd-dvd just because he favors bd. And thus, I don't know if I would be ready to say he was not able to be objective, if not flawed in his analysis.

I can't comment on this since, to be honest, I never even heard of Mr Ramer until this thread.

Peace...

[Ruined]

http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?opt...=6382&Itemid=3

Wow. Now there is now way I can actually take Ramer seriously ever again. (not that I did after he wrote the flawed article, but...) The best transfer I've ever seen on HDM EVER (even if you don't agree with that, this is definitely the reference HD DVD disc now) he just remarked was "pretty good." Either he is biased or his equipment is miscalibrated, because Shrek the Third is the best transfer I've seen bar none and I have 100+ HD DVDs. Ridiculous to say the least, he is starting to sound like an early Bill Hunt - before Hunt started his BD propaganda rants, though maybe that is next for Ramer! No Dan, the supplements dont look better than the main feature. Time to get the ISF guy out to house to recalibrate your display.

Here is an unbiased, quality review for those interested from the HiDefDigest site that has proved far more balanced in its news and reviews than the BD-slanted frontpage of DVDfile:
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1139/shrekthethird.html

Originally Posted by HighDefDigest

The Video: Sizing Up the Picture

Man, I'm getting really spoiled. Only just last week, I had the pleasure to review two CGI animated titles, 'Cars' and 'Ratatouille,' both from Pixar and both boasting what I thought were absolute five-star transfers. Although I still think that the Pixar team is untouchable in terms of the visual wit and stylistic brilliance they bring to their best animated features, 'Shrek the Third' on HD DVD proves that no one studio has a monopoly on fantastic high-def video presentations -- 'Shrek the Third' looks every bit as good as the best animated titles I've seen on either next-gen format.

A direct digital-to-digital presentation, DreamWorks offers up a 1080/VC-1 encode in the film's original 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio. Unlike a string of more recent animated films that have attempted to simulate a more "film-like" look (making background elements appear out of focus, adding grain, etc.), DreamWorks goes the opposite route, with everything appearing so incredibly sharp that it's almost creepy. 'Shrek the Third' is incredibly dimensional, and is about as close to 3-D as you're going to get without a pair of red and blue glasses. The level of detail and fine textures can be astounding, and just about any scene in the film is easily demo material.

The rest of the presentation is just as impressive. Colors are bold (particularly the striking icky green of ogre skin, and the fiery purples and oranges of the dragon) but never oversaturated. The image also avoids an over-processed look, with well-modulated contrast across the entire grayscale and deep, rich blacks that are free of heavy crush. I detected no problems with compression or other artifacts, and edge enhancement appears to be completely absent.
Simply put, this HD DVD edition of 'Shrek the Third' boasts a marvelous transfer that easily holds it own with the best animated presentations I've seen so far on high-def. That's high praise indeed.

"Pretty good" my foot. What kind of prizes did they give away at that BD festival again Dan?

[Sehnzeleid]

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