I am thinking of going blu-ray and start collecting movies.I have a hd-dvd player and was thinking of backing up the blu-ray movies to dual layer dvd's for the time being.I do not wish to buy a blu-ray standalone untill the bugs are sorted out including the profile mess.Also here in Australia our Blu-ray players are not up to the same models in the U.S. We are way behind.
My question is:-
Will the dual layer dvd disc play in hi def and the sound will be hi def digital.I understand there will be compression but is the sound and video better than dvd.
Also what is the current best method to backup Blu-ray to dual layer dvd.
Thanks for any info or help

Please read the stickies/FAQ first!

I have been looking thru facts etc but have not found any answers to the questions I have asked.
I am asking for some insight to the actual quality of audio and video and for play back on a hd-dvd player of a dual layer dvd.

Hi Denass,

You can make a backup of Blu-ray to dual layer DVDs with no compression and no loss of video and audio quality. However you need a Blu-ray player to playback. Your HD DVD player CAN NOT play Blu-ray.

Here's the guide in case you missed it: Blu-ray to DVD guide

Hope this helps.

I don't mean to hijack if I have...

I am interested in Blu-Ray or HD-DVD to standard def DVD9 back up method. No menu, no extras, just one DD5.1 audio and an English sub-title. Similar to DVDshrink's re-author method. The idea is to create a SUPERBIT type movie, letting upconverting players do the job.

Has anyone tried the above?

I haven't tried it like the one you mentioned surfw5. But wouldn't it defeat the purpose of hidef blu-ray if you "shrink" the video quality?

Yes, there is no doubt the hi-def quality is noticeable versus the upconverted sd dvd...

However, I have a few SUPERBITS that are quite impressive when played on a LG with mediatek chipset! As in, good enuff, hi-enuff for moi

I am guessing that I would need at least two dual layer disks to back up a blu-ray/hddvd movie ?

I would imagine the decoding/shrinking video quality process would be very time consuming. I've tried only eliminating the menus, keeping one audio stream and one subtitles (usually english) and without decoding the video, that can take an hour or longer if it's a 2+ hours movie.

Depends on the movie. A 2+ hours movie like Live Free or Die Hard or Pirates of the Caribbean for example, the main movie itself in blu-ray format m2ts is about 35-42GB. Delete all audio and subtitle keeping only one English DD5.1 it still around 30-ish gigs. Not even a single BD-R will fit. So 30GB-ish will need 4 dual layer dvds, maybe 5. And that's only DD5.1, if you want to keep DTS-HD Master Audio for your high end sound system, that's another story, add around 4-6GB more.

Which is why keeping the hi-def format in DVD9 is

I was just exploring the possiblity of having a backup better than the standard def version...boosting from 5-6mbps to 8-10

I suppose the procedure would be demuxing the video and feed it to an encoder like the famous HC via a simple Avisynth script...remux back with Muxman..

Hi Surfw5
I am thinking along the same lines as you.
I will buying the bluray discs then downscale to dvd9.
I dont want to buy a bluray player until they have a finalised profile player thats stable and the price down somewhat.
I think some here have downsized to dvd9 but trying to get feedback.
Then there is the other option of saving to HDD on puter and playing back from that too.But I would prefer the dvd9 solution at the moment.

Even if you burn to dvd9 you need a blu-ray player to playback. It can NOT play on DVD player (or upconverter dvd player).

...but on a puter.

I have a Toshiba HD-XA2 and since I have component video on my TV (no HDMI) I have to burn my DVD's to to Dual Layer DVD+R's at DVD-9 quality in order to remove the HDCP issues with component video...if I had HDMI I wouldn't have to go through this.

Anyway, I burned the SUPERBIT version of The Patriot and lemme tell ya, I had a hard time convincing myself that I need to go out and buy a Bluray player. The REON upscaling chip made that movie look like HD media. I'm so glad I found this forum!

Yes but can you find SUPERBIT for new releases?