In reply to:
A corporation's drive to give Joe Average Consumer what he wants will always leave those of us who notice what is left out disappointed. Our perception is a curse, I tell you!
Crunched some numbers here...
We know that CD Audio is uncompressed (1:1)... 747MB or so for 74 mins:
44100 x 2 channels x 2 (16 bit) x 60 secs/min x 74 mins) = 783,216,000 bytes
783,216,000 bytes / 1024 = 764859 KB
712,828 KB / 1024 = 747 MB
Whereas if a DVD of the same length was to be uncompressed, it would require (for the video bitstream only):
720 w x 486 h x 3 channels (YUV) x 29.97 fps x 60 x 74 = 139,688,203,968 bytes (130GB)... add a multichannel audio track in, and assume that there are VERY few 74 minute movies, and you see just HOW much video has been compressed to fit on a 4.7GB DVD, over 30:1...
I will admit that very few video formats are 4:4:4 colour space (DV is 4:1:1, BetaSX is 4:2:2) but for illustration purposes -
this is the "high-quality" format we're buying $10,000 televisions to watch?
Bren R.
