Think there's a better chance of HD Semis this year now there's two channels.
Guess it depends whether they do the same opt-outs as they have in previous years. Those are usually done with SD EBU kit - and the Beeb may not want to do an SD/HD mix on an HD channel - though it would probably be within the quota.
I'd be less inclined to buy the Blu-ray just for the final (particularly as we don't get the Semifinals in HD in the UK historically), and you could get all three events onto two Blu-rays at around 20Mbs. (I think squeezing all three onto one BD50 would be pushing it though at 1080i)
I hope they use 3 discs like they do for the DVDs, ie. 3xBD50s - they said they want to distribute high quality - it could be the best quality Blu-ray and they could probably use around
42
Mbps average AVC (for video+audio) 1080/50i (if it was split equally on all 3 discs, which it might not be). Though they could probably reduce the bitrate a lot on the voting sections where they show the scoreboard.
Last edited by Neo on 28 January 2011 11:39pm - 2 times in total
I'd be less inclined to buy the Blu-ray just for the final (particularly as we don't get the Semifinals in HD in the UK historically), and you could get all three events onto two Blu-rays at around 20Mbs. (I think squeezing all three onto one BD50 would be pushing it though at 1080i)
I hope they use 3 discs like they do for the DVDs, ie. 3xBD50s - they said they want to distribute high quality - it could be the best quality Blu-ray and they could probably use around
42
Mbps average AVC (for video+audio) 1080/50i (if it was split equally on all 3 discs, which it might not be). Though they probably reduce the bitrate a lot on the voting sections where they show the scoreboard.
Hmm - I think I'd rather that they made a profit and did it for further years.
AIUI they only use ~34Mbs MPEG2 422 for the main EBU Eurovision satellite uplinks all HD broadcasters from the venue - so if the discs are mastered properly with optimised multiple pass encoding from HD Cam SR or similar quality master tapes - then 25Mbs H264 should match that quality and massively exceed the realtime <10Mbs we get on BBC HD? It would be great if the 5.1 audio was DTS HD HR (or MA if there is a PCM source) or at least 640kbps Dolby.
I think they key thing is to hope they don't do it as a single disc at <15Mbs with 256k AC3 5.1...
In my minds eye I have a BD50 with both semis on it (4 hours) and a second BD50 with the final on it (3 and a bit hours?)
Given that 3 discs will incurr more mastering costs and production costs than 2 - I think 2 might be the more cost effective...
Don't get me wrong - I'd love 3 discs and stupidly high bitrates (I'm a fan) - but equally I want them to continue doing this year on year and don't want them to decide it isn't cost effective after the first year.
This is of course IF they do it at all.
(And of course I'd love it if we also had switchable commentaries, lyric subtitles, all the preview videos and some other nice extras...)
Hmm - I think I'd rather that they made a profit and did it for further years.
AIUI they only use ~34Mbs MPEG2 422 for the main EBU Eurovision satellite uplinks all HD broadcasters from the venue - so if the discs are mastered properly with optimised multiple pass encoding from HD Cam SR or similar quality master tapes - then 25Mbs H264 should match that quality and massively exceed the realtime <10Mbs we get on BBC HD? It would be great if the 5.1 audio was DTS HD HR (or MA if there is a PCM source) or at least 640kbps Dolby.
I think they key thing is to hope they don't do it as a single disc at <15Mbs with 256k AC3 5.1...
In my minds eye I have a BD50 with both semis on it (4 hours) and a second BD50 with the final on it (3 and a bit hours?)
I agree that's more likely what they will do (even though I'd prefer 3 discs )
The last final was 3 hours 20 min (though they did show one song twice). The last few DVDs have said they are 485 minutes (ie. about 8 hours 5 min) in total. If they wanted the same runtime for the 2011 BD, they'd probably add all the extras (about 45 min if total=485 - though I think it's more like 60 min for extras) onto the disc with the final, making the runtime for the 2nd disc a bit over 4 hours .
Also, I'd think they'd be using 1920x1080 instead of 1440 of BBC HD so that would need higher bitrate too to avoid artefacts and keep full res.
Quote:
Given that 3 discs will incurr more mastering costs and production costs than 2 - I think 2 might be the more cost effective...
Don't get me wrong - I'd love 3 discs and stupidly high bitrates (I'm a fan) - but equally I want them to continue doing this year on year and don't want them to decide it isn't cost effective after the first year.
This is of course IF they do it at all.
(And of course I'd love it if we also had switchable commentaries, lyric subtitles, all the preview videos and some other nice extras...)
Yes, I agree. Though a lot of the cost might be in the licensing. If the cost of 3 discs per set did work out too high and 2 discs wasn't, they'll probably go for 2. Though for mastering, for quality, 3 discs might be easier to master if they/the authoring house were worried about artefacts in any sections (since they could just set the bitrate high and not really worry about checking for artefacts - ie. they might be able to author it faster (less time encoding=cheaper) and 3 discs would seem better to the consumer (eg. people pay extra for a title that says it has more discs than another release of the same title) - though cost (per unit/disc) is much more likely to be important to them than checking for artefacts in the encoding - so they'll likely set the average bitrate in the 20s and just encode it (for 2 discs). I agree, it should still be good quality though, but it might be
great
quality at higher bitrate (and more discs would allow for more extras without reducing quality). But you're right, if using 2 BD50s means they continue to release them each year instead of not doing, it's better with 2 and should still good quality.
Last edited by Neo on 29 January 2011 12:33pm - 21 times in total
(for video+audio) 1080/50i (if it was split equally on all 3 discs, which it might not be). Though they could probably reduce the bitrate a lot on the voting sections where they show the scoreboard.
