I used to seek out Superbit DVDs, prior to the entrance of the High Def formats. If I recall, a side-by-side of the video on a SB and a standard release did show improvement, but it could've just been better mastering, along with a higher bitrate. One thing absolutely without question is that the audio was a higher bitrate. If I recall, DTS was about 750 kbps, whereas Dolby Digital maxed at 448 kbps. This is part of why DTS sounded much better on DVD: It had much more encoding bit depth as Dolby, to cram 5.1 channels into. Superbit releases were practically a guarantee of better audio (I think there were only a couple of early SB releases that didn't have a DTS track), while finding DTS on a regular release was like searching for a needle in a haystack. Definitely NOT a gimmick.
DTS could go as high as 1.5Mb/s, and I agree, Superbit wasn't a gimmick or a scam. Some look really bad today though because of edge enhancement, and that is really visible on modern screens. Same goes for the Vista Series releases, like Tomb Stone Director's Cut. Great for the time, not necessarily great today.
I do not buy that DTS was inherently superior to DD. DD was more efficient than DTS. It was well known that DTS discs had their levels goosed, which gave the impression of "better" sound. True story: You may have heard of Gary Reber of Widescreen Review, who very strongly promoted DTS. A friend of mine, who was a projectionist, played a movie for Reber, switching between the DD soundtrack and the DTSC soundtrack without telling Reber which was which. Reber picked the DD track as sounding better.
@@RobertR3750 It depends where they using the full 1536kbps DTS or 750kbps as the original commentor suggested. If it's the former then it would be a true upgrade as DD wasn't efficient enough to make up that kind of difference. If it's the latter then that'd be a complete waste of time, honestly using the max 640kbps DD would likely sound better. Also remember DTS was made to compete with Dolby in theatres. In that scenario there's really no comparison as DD sucked maxing out at 384kbps I believe. In the home market though, higher bitrates made DTS less compelling & once DD+ came out DTS gave up on lossy codecs altogether.
@@MsMarco6 But a major promoter of DTS PICKED DD IN A BLIND COMPARISON IN A THEATER. That should tell you right there that the claim that DTS was superior is false.
@@RobertR3750 Yeah they picked it for one specific film. With no knowledge as to whether the mixes where identical or if there where any specific issues with those encodes. As you've mentioned yourself DTS tended to have differences in the levels especially the surrounds & often let bass get lower. If a theatre had poor surrounds or subwoofers that'd be enough to give the win to Dolby. DTS absolutely was superior in the theatre. It was literally created due to how poor Dolby Digitals theatre implementation was. Again as a format in general DD was better designed than DTS but it was greatly limited by the need to print it onto film stocks with the fairly primitive printing tech Dolby used (atleast compared to Sony's SDDS). Dolby's superior encoding could never be enough to make up for the sheer gulf in bitrate between them (384 vs 882). None of this matters now though as DD & DTS have both been phased out of theatres. And it barely mattered at the time as SDDS was better than both of them. But the majority of those at the time where certain that DTS offered the superior experience & a few anecdotal accounts to the contrary doesn't change that. Dolby severely limited their product by wanting it to integrate smoothly into existing Dolby Surround setups. By relying instead on newer CD based systems DTS lacked the same limitations & offered a superior system in the theatre. BUT ONLY IN THE THEATRE. In the home enviroment, the idea of DTS superiority was mostly marketing hype.
I Have the Panic Room and you can see it holds up to being closer to Blu-ray Quality not 4k obviously. The biggest reason it failed was simply most people didn't have newer equipment during the time period to accurately view to see the improvements. I played this on 4k TV and it was very good audio stood out more to.Good Video
They really should've included a 2nd disc with the extras on like 4k Blu-Rays do. I mean think about it, this product was targeted at enthusiasts but they're the ones most likely to care about the bonus features.
I have the Resident Evil Superbit DVD. One thing that I noticed, is that they upscaled to 1080p better than a regular DVD. At the time, they were a cheaper option to Blu-ray. However, DVD/Blu-ray players have greatly improved their upscale capability
i have 2. they are - Charlie's Angels Superbit Deluxe and Closer. for those who don't know, Superbit Deluxe editions had a second disc with all the bonus features minus the commentaries.
I used to have Das Boot Directors Cut Superbit DVD and the DTS track on it was really reference quality at the time. Nowadays upgraded to Blu-ray of course. "SuperBit" DVD is technically just a regular DVD, but they've left out all the extras to encode it at the maximum allowed bitrate of the DVD or as high as possible they can fit to the disc.
Yeah, I was given a copy one Christmas of Das Boot on superbit, (still have it) I had a good home theater speaker system at the time, Paradigm speakers with Marantz discreet amp and A/V decoder. Movie sounded great on that system. Had a Sony 36" XBR that could switch to letterbox for DVDs as well as HD from Satellite (Dish network). Sony video processing used DCR (Digital Reality Creation) that upscaled 480i to 960i and did an amazing job with standard def content. It could also show 720P or 1080i natively. Those were the mid 2000s as an early adopter. Now everything streams as HD and if it doesn't you notice right away.
I had never heard of them till you posted this! Well I got another Mystery box of DVD/Bluray yesterday and well well.. A unopened superbit panic room was in the box! Can’t wait to try it out.
I've put a Superbit and a regular DVD of the same film in my PC from curiosity and took screenshots and there was a noticeable difference in colour and quality. Having said that I couldn't say how noticeable it would be on an NTSC disc as I'm in the UK so PAL territory and we had higher resolution DVD's to start with so possible it would be more noticeable.
I loved my Superbit dvds back in the day. I was more focused on the audio quality. To be fair though, I started noticing a pattern of them selecting movies that already sounded better than other movies in general. You could take any movie that was on superbit and watch it on the standard DVD release and it already was a superior mix 👌 So perhaps the real benefit of Superbit DVDs was their ability to pick out good sounding movies 😁
I forgot about these. I never got any of them myself because for me, dvds were more about the extras than the picture quality. In retrospect, however, I totally wish I would have picked up a few of them.
In the mid 90's I started getting into home theater. I remember trying couple of Superbit dvd's and I thought it was little clearer than the regular dvd's, what the Superbit dvd's stood out to me the most is their DTS audio mix. It was awesome, at that time I was running Onkyo and Yamaha both were Dolby Digital and DTS AVR"s 👍
I have a sizable collection of DVD and BluRays and they all look and sound amazing on my 1080p projector and 5.1 HTIB I’ve had since 2003. I’ve upgraded a lot over the 20+ years but I still use my DVDs and 1080p on a 105 inch screen is way better than the 4K projector trying to recreate an image from DVD.
There is nothing barebones about the case. that is a dope ass case. embossed logos, slip covers, inserts, that's more than what some blurays/ 4KBRs come with nowadays. lol
I have a small collection of these. I used to have quite a few of them when I made it a sport to find them at thrift stores. But some time ago I shed part of my collection when I realised that some of these releases were of films that I didn't even like. Now I only have Superbits of my favourite films: Lawrence of Arabia, Das Boot, Shakespeare in Love, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Gladiator, Godzilla, Johnny Mnemonic, Men in Black, The Patriot and Labyrinth. If I come across releases that I like then I will probably pick them up.🎉
Hi, great vid, in regards to bitrate, you dont need specialised equipment, I had the toshiba sd 330 if I remember correctly, and it had a bitrate counter. You either just pressed a button on the remote, or go into setup or display, and put bitrate counter on. Hope this helps
Not a scam with higher bitrates for better video and audio quality with DTS. It was sad to see DVD's released with mainly Dolby Digital later on. DTS on DVD was ridiculously impressive especially at full audio bitrate.
i found that "Superbit" technique is highly popular in bootleg market. in the late 2000's, tons of Chinese bootleg DVDs were sold on DVD-9, encoded from the bluray version, and sold without special features to maximize the space for enhanced image and audio quality. they sold the DVD using Blu-ray packaging, and some got the explanation on its back cover, about maximizing the DVD9 capacity for a better bitrate and overall image quality. i tried watching a bootleg "superbit" of Mission Impossible and compared it to the official release, and surprised that the fake one looks better albeit having no special features. those fake DVDs showed me that studios do not utilize DVD format's maximum capability 😂
One thing I like about the superbit dvd format is to watch the movie full screen without the black bars. I own a few here in The Netherlands, one movie Snatch is a very small resolution on our normal dvd print, on the superbit the movie is nice full screen. Other than that I think superbit was more than a lost format wich wasn't very intresting because all the movies were out there on normal dvd as well. The claim it was higher quality is something you can discuss on, for me personal I rip my movies with handbrake at 1200kbps and can't really see a difference with the original pressing. Claiming higher bitrate = better quality matters more for blue-ray .. for dvd the quality can't be any higher than 480P of 576p as we have in Europe wich is fine and watchable. Once you're in a movie the quality become less important.
The only Superbit DVD I still have is "Bram Stoker's Dracula" a movie from 1992. I also now have the HD 1080 & UHD Blu-Rays. I have a Panasonic DP-UB820 4K Blu-Ray player and a TCL 55R615 HDR TV. I found that the resolution didn't really seem to differ greatly between the each version! MAYBE some of this can be attributed to the film grain. They must have used a high-speed film stock. The grain is very apparent in darker scenes and some of the lighter scenes as well. I did notice some difference in the brightness/black levels though. The scene where Count Dracula encounters Meena on a London street in the daytime looks like it is daytime on the Superbit DVD but it (almost) looks like the late evening on the both Blu-Ray versions! I'll assume that the Blu-Ray versions did not have the same mastering as the DVD version.
I have about 20 of them I think. Das Boot is even on two discs. The whole idea of using two layers for just the movie, audio and subtitles was a great idea to me. Less compressing resulting in less artifacting.
I only just have one Superbit DVD and that's of the 2002 Spider-Man because it has an additional commentary track by Tobey MaGuire and Sam Raimi of which the first DVD release did not have, bought it used and hardly remember what the picture quality looks like.
Funny how getting the PAL DVD of a movie was rarely considered! At 24 or 25fps, it always makes more sense to go 720x576. But I"m diving into this - I've bought several versions of the Fawlty Towers DVD and am playing to make a video review of them, with pixel peeping (just a fun name for zooming in) and comparing the bitrates. Bitrates are totally just one dimension of a "good encoding" - if you live and breathe Handbrake, that's obvious.
Do you remember the dvd recording software? Depending of the size of the movie would determine the quality of the bit rate quality. For example if the movie you’re trying to copy wouldn’t fit or the quality would be subpar due to the size, you had the option of leaving out the DTS or Dolby soundtracks. Or even the subtitles and even leave the foreign language soundtracks to make more space for quality image. You could select all the translations into other languages except for English. You could also leave out the extras and bonus stuff. I think this company was taking advantage of these features to give you the best visual/audio experience possible. I remember that removing the dts English track was usually enough since it was usually a bigger file than the Dolby one. Which sucked because as you said dts was superior
I have a few superbit DVD's . Spiderman and Spiderman 2 , Panic Room and a few more. It depends on your playback equipment too. I have a 75' inch calibrated LG nanocell and one of Sony's high end upscaled Blu Ray players. The DVD playback is stunning . You can see the difference in superbit DVD's . So it's not a scam .
I love finding out about another form of media that I was unfamiliar with. I already love DVD collecting. I’ll be keeping an eye out for these. I’m surprised I’ve never seen one up until now.
I remember there being some other higher definition DVDs than the regular ones. My DVD player can play them (most DVD players can't play them), but I don't have any of them. They all came in black cases and they cost about twice the price as regular DVDs. I think they were a bit like VHS vs. SVHS.
Never heard of it. But I can see the relevance. If u ever used copy software back in the day, u could custom set the compression ratio of the original disc. If you went too far, you could really tell the difference. There is so much on a DVD that is needless once you start stripping it down. Nicevid 👍
Anchor Bay did the same with DiViMax on a bunch of titles. Short for Digital Video to the Max. A good healthy bitrate is always a plus for maintaining grain that would usually encode as digital noise on most DVDs. Fog is usually awful as well. While DVD had a 10 Mbps max bitrate and MPEG2 had its limitations. Using all that you can would always guarantee better results. Even if incremental in some cases.
I think the Superbit of Panic Room has been the only possibility for all these years. I have that, Das Boot, Desperado (signed by Danny Trejo), Heavy Metal and did have Lawrence of Arabia until the 4k came out.
I don't think they were a gimmick. They were just new advances in technology before bluray or Hd-dvd came out I think. Higher bitrate recordings = better pic and sound.
The DVD Standard is based on a strict standard with very little choices to go across them. As the bitrate is strictly limited you can use raise by a small amount. and you can tune the encoder (what happened with new software updates or new available software, so it benefited all releases. additionally you can drop extra audio tracks and get more bitrate at that way. So no, it's not scam (besides the resolution), but you have just the choice to reduce the available play length of a double layer dvd and raise the bitrate as high as possible. Using DTS as extra audio track "wastes" constantly 768 kbit/s. DTS without AC3 is not possible on DVD, so you "waste" another 448 kbits (together 1/10th of what is the maximum bitrate of a dvd). Without having touched a superbit dvd at any time, I would say the mastering was more on point. That's also the case why DTS sounds often better. The compression is very similar, there wouldn't be a difference noticeable. But if you master them differently, or the encoder adds more bass, the result sound different, that's all. Without a doubt a cool collectors item. If I would be able to fetch some, I would do it without thinking about it and love them before having them 🙂
I have collected a number of them about 30 with Gattaca being a favorite Mainly collected them at time to get the DTS soundtrack. I do miss them not putting DTS on DVDs now even if it was compressed
I had the one for The Who's Tommy movie. Audio was the big appeal to me cause it had the original mid 70's 5.0 audio track. I was disappointed that it didn't have the extras UK and European DVD's of Tommy The Movie had but I thought having the original surround audio mix and transfer quality made up for it and the extras were all findable on TH-cam.
I don't recall any claims back then of them being higher resolution, that would break DVD specs and not work on DVD players 🤷♂️ they're just regular ass DVDs optimized for picture and audio quality.
They are and they are not. My understanding is that Superbit maximize the use of the disc space where as regular dvds compressed every to cram as much as they could on a disc. Less compression equals better quality so even with the same master source, these would look better than a regular dvd so it isn't a scam in that way. It's the same reason why later dvds looked better than earlier ones - earlier usually used dvd5 where later used dvd9 so there was more room and less compression. But the scam is that this is a choice by the studios as they could have made 2 disc sets instead of cramming onto 1 dvd, etc in order to give you better quality right from the start. It isn't some new technology otherwise there would have been compatibility issues - they just found a fix to a problem they created. That's the scam.
I have a release of "The House by the Cemetary" from the Netherlands that's supposed to be an ULTRABIT. I always thought it was SUPERBIT, but I guess I was mistaken.
The "Mastered in 4K" definitely felt like an attempt to replicate the idea of Superbit but with blu-ray. Those are much more rare than Superbit though: only a few were released for a very short time.
I will admit I'm somewhat biased towards older technology, so that may influence my opinion. However, overall picture quality is better on an HD format unless the transfer they used was complete garbage. For me, I do like the grittiness of Superbit and regular DVD. It makes catalog films look like what I saw growing up and that holds weight with me. But for generalized overall picture quality, while I like Superbit, an HD source will look better.
Excellent and honest opinion. Yes, Blu Ray is better than DVD, but DVD still has it's backbone and merit for just the enjoyment alone for collecting physical media. Never give up collecting physical media. Whichever format.
Collecting dvd,i 'm done with dvd,i only collect blu-ray and 4k.I don't spend any money on a single dvd anymore,because what is the point if you have so much better options
@@tim3172 It's about keeping physical media. Full stop. This does not only mean your movies. Documentaries, even important Web finds that no longer exist that were downloaded and burnt to DVD-R. We are not talking about 'quality' and HD here. It's about history. It's about the future, where everything will eventually be only available through streaming and what we are fed through that system of control. I still have VHS, 4 players and a ton of DVD and Blu's. A library of physical media. I am happy with this.
@@vanstraelend The point is physical media itself. While we now live in a world of streaming, these objects will become less and less. At the moment we have boutique labels to satisfy this. But in the not too distant future these will disappear. Stock up on players though because they will not last forever either. 4K is not the jump from VHS to DVD from DVD to Blu-ray. It's minimal. And when 8K comes? Are you going to make the leap?
Sony had Superbit and Anchor Bay had DiviMax. MY opinion is that they're a LITTLE bit better than the standard DVDs. I still have about a dozen left and no plans to upgrade them to BD (4K yes, if at all).
Not a scam. No one could have forseen Blu Ray. It was just such a brief period in time. Until the Heavy Metal 4K came out, Superbit was thr only way to get Heavy Metal 2. Regular DVD is around 480P. I imagine Superbit was around 720P. Yeah, Superbits are in silver. I worked at Sears in electronics at the time.
Im amazed. Im gonna try to write this comment without sarcasm but i fear i will fail. You uploaded a video questioning whether SuperBit dvds had a higher 'Bitrate'. The video is TWELVE minutes long. You have NO REAL IDEA if they are a higher bitrate! Because you wouldn't download a 1 mb executable called mediainfo. You then talk about the DVD covers. Honestly im amazed.
Never heard about super bit dvd, i wish production of dvd stopped 10 years ago,blu-ray and 4K are much better ,but blocked by dvd.What is the point of dvd sold new in stores in 2024? I don't get it,blu-ray is already ancient at this point😆
I never bothered getting into Blu-Ray. I knew it was obsolete as soon as it arrived with how things were going. Plus I got fed up after buying a particular movie on VHS, then Directors Cut VHS, then widescreen VHS then DVD, then Superbit DVD...
@@jabezhane You voluntarily bought the same movie 5 times and the problem is the... company offering that to you? And... not your lack of self-control?
I'm working on the calibration videos. I had some issues with filming the actual calibration dubto low light quality. I'll get it sorted and posted eventually. I'm just trying to keep the content flow consistent.
I had at least 10 of these discs. They were a DVD placebo from Sony. The only thing they are great for these days is door stops. I don't buy movies because I like the packaging. Waste of my money when they were popular.
I mean it could be both a gimmick and actually better... you'd have to do some comparisons with other contemporary DVD copies to really know though and even if there is a difference it might be kinda minimal. Do wish they'd thought about whether people would want tiny postage stamp movie posters inside a giant metallic border as cover art after the novelty of the format wore off though
I believe I own all the domestic releases. Almost 60 in total. Sony later released "Mastered in 4K" blurays which also bumped up the bitrate. I notice subtle improvments in both of these format enhancements.
I think conversation around dvd at this point is pretty much nonsensical.one has to look at numbers and specs as well as storage space and compression.and that's not even taking into account the source limitations of the time.seffice to say,there is just no comparison between where we are now and then.one also needs to understand that most dvds were simply vhs analog just ported over onto a digital SD disc.so understanding that then tell you that having Slightly more breathing room on a disc and calling it super bit,would at that resolution make at best a negligible difference in quality at that resolution. And depending on the size then being blown up to may even yield worse viewing results. Other than storage and lifespan dvd was not really a measurable upgrade from anything previously
Here in Europe we had a few different types of packaging for Superbit releases but I think I know which one you are referring to. Most later Superbits were released with a case that looked similar to the American one. But a number of early Superbits were released in a special case with sort of a slipcover that had a window that showed the disc. I have a few of them but they weren't very common.
My only problem with Superbit DVDs was the fact the storage on the disc for the movie left no room for extras. It DOES provide a better picture and, depending on your equipment, can look HD.
I used to seek out Superbit DVDs, prior to the entrance of the High Def formats. If I recall, a side-by-side of the video on a SB and a standard release did show improvement, but it could've just been better mastering, along with a higher bitrate. One thing absolutely without question is that the audio was a higher bitrate. If I recall, DTS was about 750 kbps, whereas Dolby Digital maxed at 448 kbps. This is part of why DTS sounded much better on DVD: It had much more encoding bit depth as Dolby, to cram 5.1 channels into. Superbit releases were practically a guarantee of better audio (I think there were only a couple of early SB releases that didn't have a DTS track), while finding DTS on a regular release was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Definitely NOT a gimmick.
DTS could go as high as 1.5Mb/s, and I agree, Superbit wasn't a gimmick or a scam. Some look really bad today though because of edge enhancement, and that is really visible on modern screens. Same goes for the Vista Series releases, like Tomb Stone Director's Cut. Great for the time, not necessarily great today.
I do not buy that DTS was inherently superior to DD. DD was more efficient than DTS. It was well known that DTS discs had their levels goosed, which gave the impression of "better" sound. True story: You may have heard of Gary Reber of Widescreen Review, who very strongly promoted DTS. A friend of mine, who was a projectionist, played a movie for Reber, switching between the DD soundtrack and the DTSC soundtrack without telling Reber which was which. Reber picked the DD track as sounding better.
@@RobertR3750 It depends where they using the full 1536kbps DTS or 750kbps as the original commentor suggested.
If it's the former then it would be a true upgrade as DD wasn't efficient enough to make up that kind of difference.
If it's the latter then that'd be a complete waste of time, honestly using the max 640kbps DD would likely sound better.
Also remember DTS was made to compete with Dolby in theatres.
In that scenario there's really no comparison as DD sucked maxing out at 384kbps I believe.
In the home market though, higher bitrates made DTS less compelling & once DD+ came out DTS gave up on lossy codecs altogether.
@@MsMarco6 But a major promoter of DTS PICKED DD IN A BLIND COMPARISON IN A THEATER. That should tell you right there that the claim that DTS was superior is false.
@@RobertR3750 Yeah they picked it for one specific film. With no knowledge as to whether the mixes where identical or if there where any specific issues with those encodes.
As you've mentioned yourself DTS tended to have differences in the levels especially the surrounds & often let bass get lower.
If a theatre had poor surrounds or subwoofers that'd be enough to give the win to Dolby.
DTS absolutely was superior in the theatre.
It was literally created due to how poor Dolby Digitals theatre implementation was.
Again as a format in general DD was better designed than DTS but it was greatly limited by the need to print it onto film stocks with the fairly primitive printing tech Dolby used (atleast compared to Sony's SDDS).
Dolby's superior encoding could never be enough to make up for the sheer gulf in bitrate between them (384 vs 882).
None of this matters now though as DD & DTS have both been phased out of theatres.
And it barely mattered at the time as SDDS was better than both of them.
But the majority of those at the time where certain that DTS offered the superior experience & a few anecdotal accounts to the contrary doesn't change that.
Dolby severely limited their product by wanting it to integrate smoothly into existing Dolby Surround setups.
By relying instead on newer CD based systems DTS lacked the same limitations & offered a superior system in the theatre.
BUT ONLY IN THE THEATRE.
In the home enviroment, the idea of DTS superiority was mostly marketing hype.
I Have the Panic Room and you can see it holds up to being closer to Blu-ray Quality not 4k obviously. The biggest reason it failed was simply most people didn't have newer equipment during the time period to accurately view to see the improvements. I played this on 4k TV and it was very good audio stood out more to.Good Video
They really should've included a 2nd disc with the extras on like 4k Blu-Rays do.
I mean think about it, this product was targeted at enthusiasts but they're the ones most likely to care about the bonus features.
I have the Resident Evil Superbit DVD. One thing that I noticed, is that they upscaled to 1080p better than a regular DVD. At the time, they were a cheaper option to Blu-ray. However, DVD/Blu-ray players have greatly improved their upscale capability
I still have my Superbit of The Fifth Element
So do I. It's great.
Me too. Need to compare it to my 4k disc!
@JamboLinnman
Same, Fifth Element was the only SuperBit DVD I ever bought and still have it. I put it in my 4K case.
i have 2. they are - Charlie's Angels Superbit Deluxe and Closer.
for those who don't know, Superbit Deluxe editions had a second disc with all the bonus features minus the commentaries.
I used to have Das Boot Directors Cut Superbit DVD and the DTS track on it was really reference quality at the time. Nowadays upgraded to Blu-ray of course. "SuperBit" DVD is technically just a regular DVD, but they've left out all the extras to encode it at the maximum allowed bitrate of the DVD or as high as possible they can fit to the disc.
Yeah, I was given a copy one Christmas of Das Boot on superbit, (still have it) I had a good home theater speaker system at the time, Paradigm speakers with Marantz discreet amp and A/V decoder. Movie sounded great on that system. Had a Sony 36" XBR that could switch to letterbox for DVDs as well as HD from Satellite (Dish network). Sony video processing used DCR (Digital Reality Creation) that upscaled 480i to 960i and did an amazing job with standard def content. It could also show 720P or 1080i natively. Those were the mid 2000s as an early adopter. Now everything streams as HD and if it doesn't you notice right away.
I had never heard of them till you posted this! Well I got another Mystery box of DVD/Bluray yesterday and well well.. A unopened superbit panic room was in the box! Can’t wait to try it out.
I've put a Superbit and a regular DVD of the same film in my PC from curiosity and took screenshots and there was a noticeable difference in colour and quality. Having said that I couldn't say how noticeable it would be on an NTSC disc as I'm in the UK so PAL territory and we had higher resolution DVD's to start with so possible it would be more noticeable.
I loved my Superbit dvds back in the day. I was more focused on the audio quality. To be fair though, I started noticing a pattern of them selecting movies that already sounded better than other movies in general. You could take any movie that was on superbit and watch it on the standard DVD release and it already was a superior mix 👌 So perhaps the real benefit of Superbit DVDs was their ability to pick out good sounding movies 😁
I still have my dvd superbit collection, I don’t think it’s a scam. I remember that DTS trailer was played at General Cinemas theaters.
I forgot about these. I never got any of them myself because for me, dvds were more about the extras than the picture quality. In retrospect, however, I totally wish I would have picked up a few of them.
In the mid 90's I started getting into home theater. I remember trying couple of Superbit dvd's and I thought it was little clearer than the regular dvd's, what the Superbit dvd's stood out to me the most is their DTS audio mix. It was awesome, at that time I was running Onkyo and Yamaha both were Dolby Digital and DTS AVR"s 👍
I saw these about 20 years ago in Best Buy and still have my copy of Heavy Metal.
I have a sizable collection of DVD and BluRays and they all look and sound amazing on my 1080p projector and 5.1 HTIB I’ve had since 2003. I’ve upgraded a lot over the 20+ years but I still use my DVDs and 1080p on a 105 inch screen is way better than the 4K projector trying to recreate an image from DVD.
There is nothing barebones about the case. that is a dope ass case. embossed logos, slip covers, inserts, that's more than what some blurays/ 4KBRs come with nowadays. lol
I remember importing Superbits exclusive to Japan. Those were the days.
Good review, I have a bunch, I enjoy them.
I have a small collection of these. I used to have quite a few of them when I made it a sport to find them at thrift stores. But some time ago I shed part of my collection when I realised that some of these releases were of films that I didn't even like. Now I only have Superbits of my favourite films: Lawrence of Arabia, Das Boot, Shakespeare in Love, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Gladiator, Godzilla, Johnny Mnemonic, Men in Black, The Patriot and Labyrinth. If I come across releases that I like then I will probably pick them up.🎉
Hi, great vid, in regards to bitrate, you dont need specialised equipment, I had the toshiba sd 330 if I remember correctly, and it had a bitrate counter. You either just pressed a button on the remote, or go into setup or display, and put bitrate counter on.
Hope this helps
Not a scam with higher bitrates for better video and audio quality with DTS. It was sad to see DVD's released with mainly Dolby Digital later on. DTS on DVD was ridiculously impressive especially at full audio bitrate.
i found that "Superbit" technique is highly popular in bootleg market. in the late 2000's, tons of Chinese bootleg DVDs were sold on DVD-9, encoded from the bluray version, and sold without special features to maximize the space for enhanced image and audio quality. they sold the DVD using Blu-ray packaging, and some got the explanation on its back cover, about maximizing the DVD9 capacity for a better bitrate and overall image quality. i tried watching a bootleg "superbit" of Mission Impossible and compared it to the official release, and surprised that the fake one looks better albeit having no special features.
those fake DVDs showed me that studios do not utilize DVD format's maximum capability 😂
One thing I like about the superbit dvd format is to watch the movie full screen without the black bars.
I own a few here in The Netherlands, one movie Snatch is a very small resolution on our normal dvd print, on the superbit the movie is nice full screen.
Other than that I think superbit was more than a lost format wich wasn't very intresting because all the movies were out there on normal dvd as well.
The claim it was higher quality is something you can discuss on, for me personal I rip my movies with handbrake at 1200kbps and can't really see a difference with the original pressing.
Claiming higher bitrate = better quality matters more for blue-ray .. for dvd the quality can't be any higher than 480P of 576p as we have in Europe wich is fine and watchable.
Once you're in a movie the quality become less important.
Great video! I found a superbit movie at a thrift store today and had never heard of the format. Looking forward to do a comparison when I get home.
Hope you enjoy it!
Always a bonus when I find them in bulk dvd lots
The only Superbit DVD I still have is "Bram Stoker's Dracula" a movie from 1992. I also now have the HD 1080 & UHD Blu-Rays. I have a Panasonic DP-UB820 4K Blu-Ray player and a TCL 55R615 HDR TV. I found that the resolution didn't really seem to differ greatly between the each version!
MAYBE some of this can be attributed to the film grain. They must have used a high-speed film stock. The grain is very apparent in darker scenes and some of the lighter scenes as well.
I did notice some difference in the brightness/black levels though. The scene where Count Dracula encounters Meena on a London street in the daytime looks like it is daytime on the Superbit DVD but it (almost) looks like the late evening on the both Blu-Ray versions!
I'll assume that the Blu-Ray versions did not have the same mastering as the DVD version.
I went the #Retrotech direction of backward and forward as I collect Laser Disc lol
I have about 20 of them I think.
Das Boot is even on two discs.
The whole idea of using two layers for just the movie, audio and subtitles was a great idea to me.
Less compressing resulting in less artifacting.
I only just have one Superbit DVD and that's of the 2002 Spider-Man because it has an additional commentary track by Tobey MaGuire and Sam Raimi of which the first DVD release did not have, bought it used and hardly remember what the picture quality looks like.
Funny how getting the PAL DVD of a movie was rarely considered! At 24 or 25fps, it always makes more sense to go 720x576. But I"m diving into this - I've bought several versions of the Fawlty Towers DVD and am playing to make a video review of them, with pixel peeping (just a fun name for zooming in) and comparing the bitrates. Bitrates are totally just one dimension of a "good encoding" - if you live and breathe Handbrake, that's obvious.
Do you remember the dvd recording software? Depending of the size of the movie would determine the quality of the bit rate quality. For example if the movie you’re trying to copy wouldn’t fit or the quality would be subpar due to the size, you had the option of leaving out the DTS or Dolby soundtracks. Or even the subtitles and even leave the foreign language soundtracks to make more space for quality image. You could select all the translations into other languages except for English. You could also leave out the extras and bonus stuff. I think this company was taking advantage of these features to give you the best visual/audio experience possible. I remember that removing the dts English track was usually enough since it was usually a bigger file than the Dolby one. Which sucked because as you said dts was superior
I have a few superbit DVD's . Spiderman and Spiderman 2 , Panic Room and a few more. It depends on your playback equipment too. I have a 75' inch calibrated LG nanocell and one of Sony's high end upscaled Blu Ray players. The DVD playback is stunning . You can see the difference in superbit DVD's . So it's not a scam .
I love finding out about another form of media that I was unfamiliar with. I already love DVD collecting. I’ll be keeping an eye out for these. I’m surprised I’ve never seen one up until now.
Another awesome video, man. Love how you always find unique things to discuss. Keep up the excellent work, man!
Glad you enjoy it!
Simple and plain. I like it.
I got a few of them. Dracula, Das Boat and Gladiator. Was fun at the time.
I remember there being some other higher definition DVDs than the regular ones. My DVD player can play them (most DVD players can't play them), but I don't have any of them. They all came in black cases and they cost about twice the price as regular DVDs. I think they were a bit like VHS vs. SVHS.
Never heard of it. But I can see the relevance. If u ever used copy software back in the day, u could custom set the compression ratio of the original disc. If you went too far, you could really tell the difference. There is so much on a DVD that is needless once you start stripping it down. Nicevid 👍
Anchor Bay did the same with DiViMax on a bunch of titles. Short for Digital Video to the Max. A good healthy bitrate is always a plus for maintaining grain that would usually encode as digital noise on most DVDs. Fog is usually awful as well.
While DVD had a 10 Mbps max bitrate and MPEG2 had its limitations. Using all that you can would always guarantee better results. Even if incremental in some cases.
They're not higher resolution, just extra bitrate to fill the disc without extras.
I think the Superbit of Panic Room has been the only possibility for all these years. I have that, Das Boot, Desperado (signed by Danny Trejo), Heavy Metal and did have Lawrence of Arabia until the 4k came out.
I don't think they were a gimmick. They were just new advances in technology before bluray or Hd-dvd came out I think. Higher bitrate recordings = better pic and sound.
The DVD Standard is based on a strict standard with very little choices to go across them. As the bitrate is strictly limited you can use raise by a small amount. and you can tune the encoder (what happened with new software updates or new available software, so it benefited all releases. additionally you can drop extra audio tracks and get more bitrate at that way.
So no, it's not scam (besides the resolution), but you have just the choice to reduce the available play length of a double layer dvd and raise the bitrate as high as possible.
Using DTS as extra audio track "wastes" constantly 768 kbit/s. DTS without AC3 is not possible on DVD, so you "waste" another 448 kbits (together 1/10th of what is the maximum bitrate of a dvd).
Without having touched a superbit dvd at any time, I would say the mastering was more on point. That's also the case why DTS sounds often better. The compression is very similar, there wouldn't be a difference noticeable. But if you master them differently, or the encoder adds more bass, the result sound different, that's all.
Without a doubt a cool collectors item. If I would be able to fetch some, I would do it without thinking about it and love them before having them 🙂
I have collected a number of them about 30 with Gattaca being a favorite Mainly collected them at time to get the DTS soundtrack. I do miss them not putting DTS on DVDs now even if it was compressed
I had the one for The Who's Tommy movie. Audio was the big appeal to me cause it had the original mid 70's 5.0 audio track. I was disappointed that it didn't have the extras UK and European DVD's of Tommy The Movie had but I thought having the original surround audio mix and transfer quality made up for it and the extras were all findable on TH-cam.
I don't recall any claims back then of them being higher resolution, that would break DVD specs and not work on DVD players 🤷♂️ they're just regular ass DVDs optimized for picture and audio quality.
They are and they are not. My understanding is that Superbit maximize the use of the disc space where as regular dvds compressed every to cram as much as they could on a disc. Less compression equals better quality so even with the same master source, these would look better than a regular dvd so it isn't a scam in that way. It's the same reason why later dvds looked better than earlier ones - earlier usually used dvd5 where later used dvd9 so there was more room and less compression. But the scam is that this is a choice by the studios as they could have made 2 disc sets instead of cramming onto 1 dvd, etc in order to give you better quality right from the start. It isn't some new technology otherwise there would have been compatibility issues - they just found a fix to a problem they created. That's the scam.
Still have my Superbit copy of Vampires with the slip.
Yeah I think I got one of those.. those were the days
I have a release of "The House by the Cemetary" from the Netherlands that's supposed to be an ULTRABIT. I always thought it was SUPERBIT, but I guess I was mistaken.
I haven't thought about my superbit version of Charlies Angels for years, not sure what happened to it. But it can't get close to my 4k version
I had a few of these back in the day. They definitely had better PQ. Sony again did something similar later with their “Mastered in 4K” BD series.
My Ghostbusters Blu-ray is 'mastered in 4k' 👍
The "Mastered in 4K" definitely felt like an attempt to replicate the idea of Superbit but with blu-ray. Those are much more rare than Superbit though: only a few were released for a very short time.
Do these super bit DVDs look any better than say a regular DVD version ❓ How about against a blue ray, or HD DVD ❓
I will admit I'm somewhat biased towards older technology, so that may influence my opinion. However, overall picture quality is better on an HD format unless the transfer they used was complete garbage. For me, I do like the grittiness of Superbit and regular DVD. It makes catalog films look like what I saw growing up and that holds weight with me. But for generalized overall picture quality, while I like Superbit, an HD source will look better.
Excellent and honest opinion. Yes, Blu Ray is better than DVD, but DVD still has it's backbone and merit for just the enjoyment alone for collecting physical media. Never give up collecting physical media. Whichever format.
Collecting dvd,i 'm done with dvd,i only collect blu-ray and 4k.I don't spend any money on a single dvd anymore,because what is the point if you have so much better options
it's = it is
Collecting 480P coasters is silly.
@@tim3172 It's about keeping physical media. Full stop. This does not only mean your movies. Documentaries, even important Web finds that no longer exist that were downloaded and burnt to DVD-R. We are not talking about 'quality' and HD here. It's about history. It's about the future, where everything will eventually be only available through streaming and what we are fed through that system of control. I still have VHS, 4 players and a ton of DVD and Blu's. A library of physical media. I am happy with this.
@@vanstraelend The point is physical media itself. While we now live in a world of streaming, these objects will become less and less. At the moment we have boutique labels to satisfy this. But in the not too distant future these will disappear. Stock up on players though because they will not last forever either. 4K is not the jump from VHS to DVD from DVD to Blu-ray. It's minimal. And when 8K comes? Are you going to make the leap?
Sony had Superbit and Anchor Bay had DiviMax. MY opinion is that they're a LITTLE bit better than the standard DVDs. I still have about a dozen left and no plans to upgrade them to BD (4K yes, if at all).
Not a scam. No one could have forseen Blu Ray. It was just such a brief period in time. Until the Heavy Metal 4K came out, Superbit was thr only way to get Heavy Metal 2. Regular DVD is around 480P. I imagine Superbit was around 720P. Yeah, Superbits are in silver. I worked at Sears in electronics at the time.
It's actually 480i, it's just displayed at 480p.
@@Halalmeat5000rh My bad. It's been years since I sold electronics.
@@douglasbriel6103 No hard feelings, just honesty.
@@Halalmeat5000rh I want to be corrected when I am wrong. It's all good. Old man memory isn't what it used to be.
I have around 10 superbit dvds they do have a bit better quality then regular DVDs but not as good as bluray or HD DVDs they are cool to collect .
Im amazed. Im gonna try to write this comment without sarcasm but i fear i will fail.
You uploaded a video questioning whether SuperBit dvds had a higher 'Bitrate'.
The video is TWELVE minutes long.
You have NO REAL IDEA if they are a higher bitrate!
Because you wouldn't download a 1 mb executable called mediainfo.
You then talk about the DVD covers.
Honestly im amazed.
Never heard about super bit dvd, i wish production of dvd stopped 10 years ago,blu-ray and 4K are much better ,but blocked by dvd.What is the point of dvd sold new in stores in 2024? I don't get it,blu-ray is already ancient at this point😆
I never bothered getting into Blu-Ray. I knew it was obsolete as soon as it arrived with how things were going. Plus I got fed up after buying a particular movie on VHS, then Directors Cut VHS, then widescreen VHS then DVD, then Superbit DVD...
@@jabezhane You voluntarily bought the same movie 5 times and the problem is the... company offering that to you? And... not your lack of self-control?
@@tim3172 No that's what you could have done by the time Blu Ray arrived. Personally I'll stick with streaming for 90% of my needs.
Obsolete? Blu-ray’s have been sold for 18 years. That’s an adult ago.
Interesting…didn’t even know this format existed. How about more projector calibration videos?!
I'm working on the calibration videos. I had some issues with filming the actual calibration dubto low light quality. I'll get it sorted and posted eventually. I'm just trying to keep the content flow consistent.
@@2ndHandHomeTheater appreciate it!
I had at least 10 of these discs. They were a DVD placebo from Sony. The only thing they are great for these days is door stops. I don't buy movies because I like the packaging. Waste of my money when they were popular.
I mean it could be both a gimmick and actually better... you'd have to do some comparisons with other contemporary DVD copies to really know though and even if there is a difference it might be kinda minimal. Do wish they'd thought about whether people would want tiny postage stamp movie posters inside a giant metallic border as cover art after the novelty of the format wore off though
"I don't have equipment to measure bitrates and file sizes."
You don't have... a computer with a DVD-ROM drive and MakeMKV, which is free?
shame you did not run them through a PC dvd drive to find out.
I believe I own all the domestic releases. Almost 60 in total. Sony later released "Mastered in 4K" blurays which also bumped up the bitrate. I notice subtle improvments in both of these format enhancements.
Lawrence of Arabia as far as standard DVD is concerned is the best version.
I think conversation around dvd at this point is pretty much nonsensical.one has to look at numbers and specs as well as storage space and compression.and that's not even taking into account the source limitations of the time.seffice to say,there is just no comparison between where we are now and then.one also needs to understand that most dvds were simply vhs analog just ported over onto a digital SD disc.so understanding that then tell you that having Slightly more breathing room on a disc and calling it super bit,would at that resolution make at best a negligible difference in quality at that resolution. And depending on the size then being blown up to may even yield worse viewing results. Other than storage and lifespan dvd was not really a measurable upgrade from anything previously
IMHO, the European packagings of the superbit DVDs were way cooler than those.
Here in Europe we had a few different types of packaging for Superbit releases but I think I know which one you are referring to. Most later Superbits were released with a case that looked similar to the American one. But a number of early Superbits were released in a special case with sort of a slipcover that had a window that showed the disc. I have a few of them but they weren't very common.
I miss watching p*rn DVDs that has multiple angle.. 😇
If you don't have the equipment to look at the bit-rate etc, then does that mean that you are making these youtube video's on a potato?
My only problem with Superbit DVDs was the fact the storage on the disc for the movie left no room for extras. It DOES provide a better picture and, depending on your equipment, can look HD.
But that was the whole point.... You still had the standard version with extras that you only ever watched once.
They could have easily added a second disc like many DVD releases with all the extras on it. Not just a bare bones release with the "best quality".
@@gregsmith9183 Thing is most "collectors" would have that version already.