According to FilmMixer (pro film mixer for 20 years on films like We are Soldiers, etc) who is an insider at AVS, stated that the difference with 1.5mbps DD+ and lossless is so close that 99% of the people couldn't tell the difference between it and the master. Most of the difference people hear when comparing them are either; a) They are comparing it to Warner DD+ which is only 640kbps BECAUSE of BD's limits for DD at 640kbps, as they just port the HD DVD version to BD to save cost, or b) Because the recording levels are higher which makes it "appear" better because it is louder with the lossless encoding when not adjusting for the volume differences in how they were recorded.
BD was designed with that extra storage space BECAUSE it originated as a recording tech before AVC (mpeg4) or VC-1 came along. It was designed for the space/bandwidth hog MPEG2. They also wanted to avoid licensing of the HD audio codecs and opted to use the space/bandwidth hog uncompressed LPCM too.
THIS is the reason it came with the higher space/bandwidth in the spec. It NEEDED it for how they planned to do video & sound with it.
By the way, when the TL HD51 disc comes and possibly the DL HD34 they will get an automatic
bandwidth increase just because the data is closer together on the 17GB per layer. It has 13.33% more density so it will pick up a 13.33% increase in bandwidth just because of this.
