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Copy-Protected Digital VHS
DragonMagic writes: "BBC carries this story regarding the comeback, certain studios hope, of the video tape against the dominating sales of the DVD. Fox, Universal, Dreamworks SKG and Artisan Entertainment are releasing a series of blockbuster movies onto the format D-VHS, developed by JVC. DVHS offers High Definition TV technology and the possibility of copy prevention, and is able to play old VHS tapes as well."
DVD does not offer HDTV resolution. The widescreen modes can play on a HDTV screen and give you pretty good quality, but it's not as good as HD.
The ideal format would be a DVD-style disk with blue lasers, and a writable/rewritable format available at the launch date. You just know they'll bungle it, but.... But if they had that, it would have enough storage space to do HDTV resolution video while being a nice optical medium. If they delivered writable/rewritable features with it, you could use it to record stuff.
This format would best be introduced in 3-5 years. People will have already converted their collections over to DVD and be looking for new media purchases, HDTV will be more available, and the hardware to make it usable as a substitute for a VCR will be there, too.
The main reason why the DVD format does the NTSC/PAL encoding is to make the player simpler, BTW. That, and good 24fps to 60fps conversion is a pain in the rear to do right in cheap hardware. With an HDTV-format DVD, they might do things the right way.
Gentoo Sucks
Interesting bits:
Video on D-VHS tapes is uncompressed, so it's enormous. A 75GB hard disk would only hold around 30 minutes of the video, according to company officials, making the trading of HD content over the Internet impossible. D-VHS can record and play back up to four hours of video in high definition mode -- up to 1,080 lines per screen width, or more than double the resolution of DVD,
And:
The HDCP system can't be broken, however, because only high definition sets will have the HDCP decoder, according to Dan McCarron, national product specialist in JVC's color TV division.
Heh, "can't be broken". Well, we'll just have to wait and see.
Personally, they can do whatever the hell they want. If they want to make it too hard for me to watch movies, then I won't. No skin off my back.
-Mike
High end DVD players with progressive scan outputs will give you a better picture on a HDTV set, but no, it is not a HDTV picture. I think that DVD's best output is 480p; compared with HDTV at 720p or 1080i.
The problem is that DVDs are currently too small to hold and entire movie at HDTV resolution. There are efforts underway to create a new, next generation HD-DVD player that would use blue or purple lasers that would allow for smaller pits on the disc, and therefore greater storage capacity, but for now these are in the prototyping stage only, and aren't expected to come to market for another 4-6 years or so.
D-VHS, on the other hand, will support HDTV resolutions, and will allow you to record a HDTV signal. There may or may not exist ulterior motives on the studios part to get people to buy into D-VHS, but unfortunately for now, of you want to record or view HDTV quality movies, D-VHS is your only alternative.