"Fake" BluRays vs Real BluRays

[samircreep]

So i noticed that in Dhaka they've started selling these fake bluray discs for 300tk that play on normal dvd players. i have a bluray player and original bluray discs. i was wondering whether it's actually worth buying any of these fake discs. Is the picture quality really bluray standard? Will all the extras come with the fake discs as well? or are they just selling basically normal dvds as blurays and overcharging?

Does anyone have experience reagrding this matter?

[ammark]

Yesterday my friend shows me a nice 100+ movie collection on his laptop that his elder brother bought for Tk.5000 from some guy who downloaded the movies. They're all Blu-Ray Disc rips (mkv files) that can be downloaded from torrents, each about 4-8 GBs in size (the size of 1-2 DVD discs).

The only way you'll know if your "Blu Ray DVDs" are HD is if you see codec information on VLC Player and see whether the resolution is high and is at 1280x544 pixels or something high like this. These will most likely not have the extra media and features as on original Blu Ray discs. Further I wont be surprised if the downloaded ones Audio is limited to 2.1 or 5.1 channel sound, whereas original Blu Rays may even support up to 7.2 Channel sound.

- at least thats what I think, someone else correct me if I'm wrong.

[goru]

If it plays on a normal DVD player, then it's just a DVD (720x480p/i, NTSC) or even worse... a VCD. It could be a very high bitrate DVD video stream... I'd consider 8Mbps a high bitrate for 480p, but most DVD's have a video bitrate of 5-6Mbps. My guess is that these are just DVDs reencoded from Blu-Ray sources, which they think somehow gives them the license to call them "Blu-Ray movies".

A true Blu-Ray HD video would be 1080p (1920x1088, with last 8 bits flagged as "invalid"), and, IMO, for decent quality it needs to be at least 40Mbps (for comparison, broadcast 1080i HD video in the US is capped at 19.2Mbps... but usually varies from 12-17Mbps). Your standard DVD player can neither read BD, nor handle 1080p (or even 720p) video.

[ammark]

^^^ Thanks for the info.

My mistake: I took my resolution info from a 30MB sample clip of the Bourne Identity 720p HDVDrip torrent download. Its widescreen at 1280x544. VLC shows streamrate around 5Mb/s.

I stand corrected.

[Hatebreed]

Blu-ray rips are basically compressed, low-res, low-bitrate versions of the real thing that doesn't give you the same visual fidelity, lossless audio and true surround sound.

That's not to say I don't download movies or they look crap unless it's on Blu-ray. But there are some movies that you just have to watch Blu-ray, namely Sunshine, The Dark Knight, Star Trek and more recently, Avatar.

[Nasif]

Just imagine what would happen if Bangla movies get BD release! LOL.

To appreciate bluray you will have to watch it with the right equipment. Playing bd on your pc or 20-30" tv is useless. You need screens bigger than 50" to appreciate the visual fidelity. And also at bare minimum DTS or Dolby Digital surround sound.

First bluray I bought was Spiderman 3; wasn't as impressed with the quality. But my second one was Prince Caspian; and that just blew me away. The visuals of the island, when the children arrive in Naria, right on beach was just mind blowing. Stuffed up on quite a bit of bd during last years Black Friday. Will get Avatar when the special edition comes out during holiday season.

All those so called Netflix "HD" and online hd source is a sham in the name of HD. Thats one of the reason bluray is taking longer to gain mass market. How can you stream 30-50mbps HD video online? That translates to roughly to 3.5 to 6 MB per second download speed. Normal household downstream is no where near that rate. May be someday, but we are not in the Star Trek age yet.

Back to the topic; no DVDs won't read bluray. Physically impossible, need blue-violet laser. Bluray downgraded to dvd won't be any better than dvd version (it could be worse if compression wasn't done with care).

[Ashfaq]

DVDs use Red LASER and BD Use Rule-upper frequency LASER. As Nasif vai said, Blue Ray Disk can not be played in a DVD player

[samircreep]

So wait, if i have it right, you guys are basically saying these are the same as normal dvds, with just cosmetic differences?

[Nafi]

I miss beta max