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It's a very clever idea but 2 of the layers either have to be DVD or HD-DVD. That means you'll either end up with a shitty DVD transfer or a shitty HD-DVD transfer. There is no magic bullet providing superior performance for both, at least until a quad layer disc appears. Anyway, Blu-Ray has its own virtually identical solution too. http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/press/2004/bd- dvd.html

2) You can write a HD-DVD format filesystem to DVD.

Both formats have a largely similar software stack, including what video formats they support. [As an aside this is what makes the "format war" all the more perplexing since they're virtually identical except for the physical aspect]. If you were mastering HD content and it all fit onto a DVD, then there is nothing to stop you writing it to a DVD from a suitably equipped BD/DVD-+RW burner. After all, video formats such as H264 / MPEG-4 AVC are not tied to the disc capacity. I have no idea if such things as BD/DVD writer combos exist yet but sooner or later they will.

All in all I have absolutely no urge to root for either side except pragmatism. Blu-Ray offers more capacity but the reader heads are apparently more finnicky to make. HD-DVD offers simplicity but lower storage capacity. Both use blue laser diodes and are subject to virtually identical production costs. Otherwise they're much of a muchness. What drives me to think Blu-Ray will win is simply because there are something like 500,000 PS3s in the world and the figure is expanding faster per month than the entire HD-DVD user base.

I believe that the only way HD-DVD can win is if Microsoft integrate the HD-DVD into their XBox 360. But I suspect they daren't do that unless they want to end up in the same boat as Sony - production issues, higher costs. If such an upgraded 360 did appear I expect that the current "premium" model will become the "core" and the new premium will sport an internal HD-DVD player + HDMI, Wi-fi, 60Gb hd and the other bits and pieces to bring themselves into line with the PS3. But if they leave it too long, HD-DVD will be dead and buried and it will be a waste of time to even bother. Perhaps that's why they're sitting on the fence at the moment.

If someone told you that the PSP is a portable gaming device, shoot these people. The PSP is not a portable gaming device, it is really a convergent portable entertainment device.

Right, because the history of convergent entertainment devices is long and illustrious. They would be fools to not want some of this action.

And going with a brand new disk standard that nobody has and nobody sells as a medium for selling movies? It's a brilliant maneuver from some of the industry's best minds.

I should say that the Sony reps I've worked with about other things have been completely with it and didn't lose sight of reality. So what happened to this guy?

... and JVC makes Blueray-discs that have a normal DVD layer as well and can be read in normal DVD-players. Backwards compatible manufacturing exists for HD-DVD as well, but until quite recently it didn't for Blueray, which was seen as negative.

link

JVC sells a LCoS TV. They call it D-ILA

You can find them all over. What's so difficult?

the ibm pc110 started it all back in the mid-90's. i have one actually. it's tiny, a pain in the ass to type on until you're used to it and terribly underpowered. i can imagine one of these things being more powerful, but even smaller? speaking from esperience, it'd make it useless to most every user (though i do admit, the server room maintenance idea was good). that's why i've been keeping my eye on similarly powerful machines of a usable size.

the sony vaio u-101 is the brand new update to the vaio u series. most notably to the speed and memory enhancements it adds a lay-flat design and a display that rotated to landscape with the push of a button which is nice for reading e-books or any long document.

and my favorite the jvc interlink mp-xp7230. also the latest in it's series. it's much larger than the vulcan and u-101 placing it at the smallest end of the sub-notebook category rather than a real mini-pc. i've used one of these and typing isn't even an issue. the pointing decive is a tried and true, blue, rubber nipple in the center of the keyboard with laptop-style mouse buttons along with a touch pad below the keyboard. no proprietary mega ports here. everything is seperate so there's no need for an expensive port replicator or converter dongle which we will all eventually loose.

both of these devices have been mentioned before and linux runs perfectly on both aside from some yet to be reproduced proprietary features you'll never miss anyway. and for those of you worried about jvc's first forray into this area, i can tell you it ran rock solid both on and off ac power for three months wile the friend i borrowed it from was away at basic training.

if the ink weren't still wet on my mortgage papers, i'd sure as hell have a jvc interlink mp-xp7230, fully expanded with an external cd-rw/dvd-rom.

Yes, that's right. 1280x1024. On a movie-sized screen. That's why it looks bad.

Would people be so hip on digital cinema if they knew it had less resolution than an average conference room LCD projector? If they knew they could go to an electronics store and buy an HDTV monitor for a couple of thousand dollars that has more resolution (1920x1080) than the much-hyped digital cinema?

TI did their first theatrical demos of DLP more than five years ago. It was 1280x1024 then, and it's 1280x1024 now. They've had half a decade -- a lifetime in the electronics business -- to increase the resolution, and they have not done it. Will they ever? Who knows?

Further more, who cares? There are two competing technologies that are up and coming and will soon overtake it.

The first is D-ILA from JVC, a reflective technology that has better coverage and more contrast (and no moving parts, unlike DLP). Kodak is using D-ILA in their attempt to build a digital projection system. It's already up to 2K resolution and should hit 4K by the end of this year. Secondly, there is laser projection, which is difficult to find details about online, but promises to also deliver far better resolution than DLP.

So I'd say that resolution most certainly is a problem, and one that hopefully will be solved before too long, thanks to some good old fashioned competition. Take that, TI!

Here is a link to the product page in English in case you can't read Japanese

Well that page was spectacularly useless.

For an English-language press release try: here instead.
(and dont forget to notice the big bold capped FOR THE JAPANESE MARKET ONLY)

The decks have IEEE1394(Firewire) interfaces, and have a raw-data mode typically used for recording encrypted data from satellite broadcasts, so it will be trivial to write drivers to allow data storage and retrieval.

Now, I said "cheap" in the subject -- $1000 is already not bad for a 44GB media size, but if D-VHS takes off in the consumer market the prices will plummet!

Here's wishing it'd happen soon...

- Peter

D-VHS has a maximum data rate of nearly 30Mbps.

Ok.. a couple things you forgot to mention.

1) D-VHS is cheap to record to, DVD is not. At least for the time being that is. I happen to own a , and can make perfect quality duplicates from my satilite dish, for little more than the cost of a tape.

2) It does not cost $2000. Not even close. In fact, when I bought my deck 2 years ago, I paid $300, as long as I subscribed to a year of sattilite TV (which by the way, I am still using).
I'm sure this technology can be made cheaper if you get rid of the sattilite reciever.

3) Tapes are still here. Yes, they will be done with within the next 5 to 7 years. I have a collection of over 200 VHS tapes, and replacing them all with DVD's is not an option (I don't run a software monopoly). Sure, I will probably never buy another tape in my life, but I still need something to watch them on. Granted, not everyone wants or needs a new VCR, so I can understand if they don't want one.

4) THIS IS NOT MEANT TO REPLACE DVD!!! This is meant for an alternative for people who don't want to abandon thier massive tape collection (well, they can keep thier VCR and buy a DVD player, but face it, can the average person hook both up at the same time?) and at the same time want high-quality movies. Also, this makes a good "middle-step" for those who don't want to dive into DVD recorders (and who would until a real universal standard is reached?).

Just some replies to "random museings" (sic.)

Sorry, just found a better link.

This JVC press release, dated 3rd July 1998, announces that the D-VHS format has been finalised for HD. There's also some technical descriptions of the format and the two modes: HS and LS (basically, high quality or long play).

A press-release-looking document on the D-VHS specs is at http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/products/vcr/D -VHS-e.html
It looks like the first idea behind these units were to record digital satellite links in DSRs (Digital Satellite Recorders). Here's another press release from 1997:
http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/D-VHS/d970601e .html

A press-release-looking document on the D-VHS specs is at http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/products/vcr/D -VHS-e.html
It looks like the first idea behind these units were to record digital satellite links in DSRs (Digital Satellite Recorders). Here's another press release from 1997:
http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/D-VHS/d970601e .html

Calculating it out, that's about 100GB/hr. If in fact that's the spec, then the four-hour capacity gives you 400GB, not 600 as some have stated here.

It seems to me that JVC may now be implementing the HS standard, as well as an on-the-fly MPEG-2 encoder, HDCP copy protection mechanism and DVI connector. I won't jump into the debate about the security of HDCP, but recent history suggests its future looks bleak.

Of course, it's all vaporware until it's sitting in your living room.

o 3.5 hrs (28.2Mbps, HD mode)

o 7 hrs (14.1Mbps, STD mode)

o 14~49 hrs (7~2Mbps, LP mode)

--Nicholas

If you want documentation, go to the library and look up an issue from the 1980s of a major city's newspaper, and turn to the movies section. You'll see ads for movies being shown in 70mm.

Also go to the IMDb and look at the "technical specs" section for some big-budget action movie made in the late 1970s or 1980s. You'll see that even though the movie was filmed in 35mm, it will have 70mm blow-up listed as one of the print formats.

Now, as to your remark about the resolution of film being cut by "at least half" because of shutter-gate error, that's just bull. Modern cameras have extremely precise movements that are rock-steady, even at high frame rates. Projectors exist that are capable of delivering the same rock-steadiness, but some theater chains (*cough* AMC *cough*) are too cheap to install such projectors, so you are getting a little of that. It doesn't magically cut the resolution in half, though.

And yes, thankfully there is at least one company that is working on higher resolution video projectors. JVC's D-ILA technology is competing with TI's DLP, and it's currently winning in terms of resolution. It's not LCD, but you're right, the resolution is now up to about 2000x1500. Hopefully they will continue to increase it.

Yes, Lucas & co. could use non-square pixels, but they aren't. The camera was designed to shoot at 16:9 aspect ratio with square pixels, so they would have to use an anamorphic lens to squeeze the image. I guess they decided it wasn't worth it. (Many cinematographers prefer the look of spherical lenses over anamorphic ones, anyway.)