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."

Comments

Re:What is the ideal media?

[cmowire]

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.