[MPlayer-users] [OT] AC3 vs. DTS

[Alexander Roalter]

Rich Felker wrote:
> You already answered the question about what the problem is: 4 stereo
> tracks, 1 5.1 ac3 track, and 1 DTS track. Change that to 1 5.1 ac3
> track and nothing else and you'll have no problem with space.

That's the deal if you're into the plain vanilla disc thingo, but for me 
this simply doesn't do the thing - at least I won't be willing to pay 
this amount of money for it.

>>2-Disc is no problem with mplayer. Dump the tracks beforehand, cat'em 
>>together and you don't have any flicker/click or something else in the 
>>transition, especially with part 2 & 3, where the break is not that well 
>>placed as in the first part with a fade to black. On the 2nd, you even 
>>hear it on the soundtrack, the 2nd disc starts with a sound fading out!
>>
>>All you need is ~20 GB of free space, and you can watch the movie in one 
>>rush.
> 
> 
> ROTFL! I'm supposed to dump 20 gigs to hdd every time I want to watch
> a movie? This is the most ridiculous suggestion I've seen on this list
> in a long time..

Everyone caring for some showmanship who presents a movie to an audience 
would easily use such measures. In theatres movies nowadays are also put 
together to fit on the platter and not having to switch projectors every 
20 minutes, so this also costs some time prior to the presentation. Then 
you format the movie to the right aspect ratio, set the beamer for the 
right presentation (so that scope movies really get the biggest picture, 
everything else is crap, since Scope is the biggest picture in theaters, 
whilst flat academy is somewhat smaller). This combined with the right 
ambience can make the difference between watching a movie and having an 
overwhelming experience. Check for the presentation manual for 
"Ben-Hur", there goes a long list of DOs and DON'Ts

> There's already a proper solution. It's called ripping the whole thing
> to a 1.4gig mpeg4 file, at same or better quality than the original
> dvd. However the point is that DVDs are stupidly mastered, and that
> still stands.

Now how would you get a better quality in a mpeg4-file with data from 
original dvds?

For the future I'm still waiting for the next big thing, since I'm not 
that happy with the heavily protected new HD formats. I still want to be 
able to play them via the same measures I already do, with the 
possibility to crop opened super35-movies back to cinemascope (e.g. 
Shadow of the Vampire") and presenting the movies with different aspect 
ratios with always the same height, but different widths. No player 
software (except for mplayer) can do this right now, and I really hope 
this will be the case for the upcoming HD formats, too.

cheers,
Alex