Neil Young Archives - Behind the scenes of the Technology Pt. 2
- Kris Kunz
Most design workflows would insist on designing the Blu-ray (HD) version first and then simplify what you have to create the DVD (SD) version, but when design for the Blu-ray version of the Neil Young Archives Vol.1 began, the DVD version was almost complete.
The reason why it had been done in the reverse order was out of necessity not negligence. We were pioneers often operating in the dark working to create something that had no precedent.
From the beginning of the Archive’s design Neil Young and Shakey Pictures had always intended on releasing the set on an HD optical disc format. When design began, both Blu-Ray and HD DVD had already completed and released their respective specifications and both claimed playback ability of two channel 24-bit/192 kHz audio. All of the other benefits of the two formats were of course beneficial in their various ways, but audio was the primary concern for Neil Young. Once the possibility of having such high quality audio accessibel from a disc looked to be near, the choice was obvious for them.
But it was yet unknown which format, HD DVD or Blu-ray would be accepted as the consumer standard.
(Part 1 can be found here)
