any comment on Superbit DVD's?

Tom · Joined: 01 Aug 2007 Posts: 3

is there anyway to findout what bit rate the movie has been compressed in
(prior to purchase)?

Archived from group: alt>home-theater>misc

JGM · Joined: 01 Aug 2007 Posts: 10

Tom wrote:

>is there anyway to findout what bit rate the movie has been compressed in
>(prior to purchase)?

This is basically a meaningless question, because the video quality is
dependent on things beyond the bitrate, such as codec quality and on-the-fly
bit allocation choices made by the compressionist.

You can assume that a single disc with a bunch of video special features and
multiple soundtracks (especially DTS plus other soundtracks) has fewer bits
allocated to video than it might otherwise have. This is the basic idea behind
Superbit, by the way, but lack of features does not necessarily mean it will
look better.

Note also that the supposed advantages of Superbit transfers have made their
way into many non-SB mainstream releases. For example the Star Trek: The
Motion Picture release of last year is reported to have total bitrates
consistently above 9Mb/s, which implies a video bitrate *above* what any
Superbit disc (which by definition include DTS soundtracks) can support.

JGM