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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."
People never learn.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
sounds kind of like DAT to me.
never realy made it anywhere with the consumer, mostly due to anti-piracy measure that were built into the consumer grade units.
I think, given that DVD has been adopted so very quickly by so many people, there realy isnt to much chance of this taking over.
still it would be cool if you could record HDTV onto D-VHS and replay it at the same quality
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Why would someone go out and buy a new video tape player (and let's not say VCR, do you think they'd be recordable ;-), when we already have DVD? Because you could get the Brave New World of media coporation evil in a familiar form factor?
I can see it now... "Who needs the long-livedness, nearly random access, and large amounts of storage of DVDs when you could go back to tapes?" It'll be like nostalgia for vinyl, except without the hiss and pops.
DVHS is HD, DVD is not.
Q.
It'll be difficult to convince people to go out and buy VHS tapes now that DVD has already been billed as the 'totally better' replacement for tapes, even if D-VHS is better.
As for the media, how many people have bought a VHS player recently enough for it to have the "D-Theater" ability? People aren't going to go out and buy another VCR when they just shelled out 200$ or more on their DVD player.
remind me of the withering days of the casette where there were advanced features of seeking tracks and auto reverse play...
VHS recorders are less than $100 and I'm in serious doubt that anyone is going to pay extra for something they can already get from the DVD players and VHS recorders they already own...
The problem is that DVHS offers advantages only to people with HDTV. But right now that is a very small minority. DVD offered not only far superior picture quality to VHS, but also better sound and random access. DVHS loses that all important ability of random access and has for the regular viewer no advantage over DVD.
They were sold at appliance stores like Sears and Best for about a year. I don't know a single person who bought one. Consumers don't like artificially feature-crippled products.
I wish the new copy-protected "CDs" were as clearly labeled as CBS's old VCR. They would surely lose in the marketplace if labelled properly...
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
DVHS promises 4 hours/tape of HDTV or 50 hours/tape of regular TV.
For some people, the 50 hours/tape feature may be exciting. That's about 70 hours of TV if you cut out the commericals.
Personally, I think this will go the way of DAT. Digital audio tape was a cool idea, and is still used in niche markets, but with recordable CDs isn't terribly interesting to consumers. With consumer-grade recordable DVD just around the corner, there's no real market here for a new tape format.
Studios should be asking themselves, "who are your early adopters?"
;-)
DVD is too new for your average consumer to want to run out and buy a new player (even if it plays VHS too).
High-end videophiles will know better. Random access media has too much going for it in terms of non-linear content (think "the making of" and trailers) and fast search forward or back. They also know that tape involves more moving parts, and thus more wear.
So, they've got to be targeting the low-end videophiles who know just enough to be dangerous. Oddly enough, the vast majority of THAT market segment are college students or recent graduates, and would be the most likely to be turned off by the new copy-protection features!
Oh yeah, this is going to be lucky to go as far as DIVX (the DVD format, not the video codec) did.
That's nice. In the scheme of things, isn't everything supposed to be integrated back together? With all these new formats coming out, may of which are darn-near mirror images of other technologies, you need a player for this, a player for that, blah blah blah. Hell to you if you try to create an integrated player that handles them all, don't want to head down that DMCA strewn patent road.
:)
This one just strikes me as even more stupid, linear tape access to data of any format has all but been rid of because it's difficult to actively operate. Everything must be done sequentially, direct access is impossible. Of course, maybe if they have their way you will only be able to watch your DVD the way the director intended it, straight through, no skipping scenes. So I guess if that's the plan a tape makes sense.
I heard about this 3 years ago, when DVD was 1/10 what it is now, and I didn't think it would succeed then.
Let me see, even if it were not copy protected in new and interesting ways, its a tape, meaning you get the following lovely limitations:
* Minutes to Rewind and Fast Forward, certainly no useful "scene selection"
* Stretch, snap, oh dear.
* Yay, its magnetic. Degrades over time (much faster than an optical disk)
* Multiple versions of moive on one tape with seamless branching to let you watch either theatrical or directors cut.
So basically its backwards compatible with VHS.
hrm, anyone remember Philips DCC - the competitor to Sony minidisc from the early 90s. A tape format which played regular cassettes. (Basically, an inferior consumer DAT with extra copy protection and backwards compatibility).
Nope. Didn't think you would remember it!
Minidisc may not have set the world on fire (at least in the US) but its still here. People are used to the advantages of disk and solid state (flash memory) formats.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
What a crock. Don't waste your money investing in this one - FMDs and especially FMCs from Constellation 3D are the real future.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Call it what it really is, "Usage restriction", "Usage annoyance", "Copy prevention", "Copy annoyance", anything but "Copy protection", a newspeak word brought to you by the same people who made up the word "pirate", equating someone who copies bits without authorization to someone who robs, rapes, and murders on the high seas.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I can't see exactly who their target market is:
Videophiles who already have DVD (and perhaps even LD) might buy it if they're spendy people, but would they copy their DVD or LD onto D-VHS and suffer "degredation?"
Joe Six-Pack is not going to pay $2k when he can get a normal VHS and DVD and still have enough left over to buy 600 sixes of Bud.
About the only market I can see is people who want to tape off their satellite dish and keep it all digital, instead of having to have programs littering their Tivo.
But the price is gonna have to come way down (est. 3 years) before the mass market does that. And what do you want to bet by that time there will be some sort of "copy protection" on satellite signals to prevent it?
The only place I could see this being of any use at all is in video studios for technophobes, where the ease of queing up tape would be handy. Compared to a hard-drive based non-linear editing suite, though, this is a short trip to hell.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
It's an underhanded, but unmistakably capitalist, tactic. Leaving you the only option in a market driven society: vote with your dollars and they'll soon leave this intentionally crummy product for dead.
A good article regarding the concept of planned obsolescence.
Guvegrra?
See The DCC Faq for comparanda:
And of course it included SCMS.
People like DVDs because you don't have to rewind them, you can jump directly to a particular scene (which is, I know, just another way of saying you don't have to rewind them), and they have the same familiar size and shape that CDs have. The hilarious part is that D-VHS is targetting the high-end consumer with titles like X-Men, Independence Day, Die Hard, U-571 and Terminator 1 and 2 - all of them eye candy that, while they may look good on HDTV, are mass-market films.
According to the article, the cost for one of these new D-VCRs is $1,995!!!! Why would I pay $1,995 to get a new VCR when I can pay $200 to $500 to get a DVD Player???? This is insane. This will never take off. The price is too high for my budget. Also, why would I want to buy a digit VCR that only plays Prerecorded D-VHS tapes? You can play regular tape, and I bet you can record like a normal VCR, but I noticed that the article doesn't mention that this new VCR can record Digital quality signals and maintain the digital quality. Why would I want to pay $1,995 and not get the ability to record digital? I think this will be another DIVX.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
This is probably going to end up like LaserDisks. It'll be the high-end format that home-theater people are going to use instead of DVDs. And then they'll come out with blue-laser DVDs after DVDs are at 99% acceptance so that people can buy new stuff AGAIN.
Now the question I'd love to see answered is weather you can tape OTA HDTV programming on these new D-VHS VCRs. That might make HDTV *gasp* useful!
Gentoo Sucks
So with yet another video media coming out, it occurs to me to ask what the ideal media would be? Is it DVD, or is there a need for something better? Does DVD really offer HDTV resolution?
Personally, I see several shortcomings in the current DVD format:
* NTSC/PAL-based encoding. Rubbish. The disc should be encoded with however many frames per second the original media used. The players can then convert to NTSC/PAL, or they can put out a native signal for multisync TVs. Then each frame on the disc is one original frame from the film.
* Size limitations. If we're creating a new format, we can use newer technology to get a lot more data on the discs.
* Region coding/content coding. Well, this won't go away, but it certainly belongs on a wish list.
First, DVD fans shouldn't be the least bit worried.
Secondly you can find the release in full here.
This new VHS has the potential to hold up to 28Mbps (Megabits per second) of High Definition signal. This surpasses the defacto standard of 18Mbps, and that's certainly a good thing. The main difference between these tapes and DVD is that yes, even though DVD is great, it can't do high definition. It just takes up too much space. So in that regard, these D-VHS tapes have the one-up.
However, D-VHS (they're going to market it as D-Theater) will still need to be rewound. You still won't be able to have commentaries. You still won't be able to have multiple angles, seamless branching, or menus.
They will still wear out over time.
While I'm positive they will be gorgeous when they are debuted tomorrow for the press, the fact remains that tapes are tapes and by definition they disintigrate over the years.
The real question is that there have been at least half a dozen High Definition DVD formats proposed and yet no one will stand behind them. Of course JVC did invent VHS to start with and that's a good point, but this Beta-like (or 8-track like if you prefer) alternative to a digital medium already has its days numbered with very (VERY) few players, all priced just below $2000 and the fact that consumers will be confused yet again by even more techno mumbo-jumbo.
Lastly, I think the fact that even though the first few movies will be your basic blockbusters (The first two Terminators, U-571, X-Men, Independence Day, et al), I'm glad to see that Warner Bros (who coincidentally were the first to back DVD) and Columbia TriStar aren't getting in this race.
But wben they get around to it, there'll be HD-DVDs too, either using mpg4 compression (should get size down to normal DVD-9), or using blue lasers. Either way you'll need a new player just like this over standard VHS, and personally I think people are more interested in that. They only need to come up with a bulletproof enough CSS2+supermegaextra copy prevention system first.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I remember this from a few years ago, and even then it was expensive. It is a technology that nobody was interested in, and probably still aren't. I remember someting about the system being able to record 8-streams simultaneously (so 8 different tv channels, although at lower quality I would assume). The system did seem quite good as (A) it was recordable (unlike DVD), (B)it was backwards compatible. However I think the 8-stream system was crippled (guess who wanted this), and there was no support for the system. I don't think this has much chance this time round: I mean normal VHS recorders are dirt cheap.
While random access is very nice and tapes wear much more out than DVDs, people that want the best video quality will have to use tapes. DVHS features much higher bitrates than DVDs and is able to support HDTV resolutions.
I think DVHS has a chance for a while in the high-end videophile segment. Videophile tend to collect movies and do not really play them that often because they had that many tapes/discs. Also the wearout problem isn't that bad because DVHS is digital and it will take a long time before the error correction couldn't correct all the bit errors.
Also making a DVHS release is very likely much cheaper than a DVD release. You don't need expensive mastering and glassmasters to make a DVHS master. Because of that DVHS release could be profitable even if a low volume is sold. The only thing that is really needed for a good HDTV DVHS release is a high resolution digital transfer and a mpeg-2 encode of that transfer. For most movies that may get a DVHS release the transfer is already existant because it was made for HDTV broadcasting, professional digital video project for cinemas or because the movie made completely digital. Then you just need a cheap mpeg encode.
Jan
I doubt MPAA even in all their power can stop that... and that will be a killer appliance. Publicly availible codecs are around, no more VCD mpg1 or SVCD mpg2, DVD-on-a-cd mpg4.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Has anyone brought this up? Barring the copyright problems, this stacks up against the TiVo in most ways.
It may have more success as a way to time shift, and thus replace the conventional VHSR in the house, but because it's 2 years *after* TiVo, I wouldn't expect it to take off at all.
If this had been released 3 years ago (Possible! Sony had Digital8 around that time) and could record digitally onto standard VHS tapes and had a Firewire port for streaming of data around a Firewire network...
Heck, if they added that feature right now, I bet there would be a niche market for it!
Still, they should have released this product three years ago...
GPL Deconstructed
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
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/d970601
This capability would be trivial to add -- they're just mpeg files on your hard drive after all. Someone in the business will probably do it one day. Then the lawsuits will begin and it'd be tied up in court longer than any of us will be around.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yup, DVD currently isn't HDTV, but its not tied to any particular video standard. It handles NTSC and PAL just fine right now[*].
;)
Larger DVD sizes are in the pipeline. HDTV support was always planned for the future. See google for linkage, or old slahdot stories on bigger DVD sizes.
Of course, you'll have to buy a new player
[*] yes, the disk *is* encoded differently, but most players can convert on the fly, so you'll usually never notice unless you get a cheapo player (more likely in the US that you get one that doesn't support PAL than the reverse in Europe)
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
I'd love to insert the picture here, but it would be of a mangled tape. I don't think I've seen or heard of a DVD destroying a disk, yet. Know of one? Pass it along and I'll avoid the mfr. VHS is too problematic.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hmm, $2000 USD.
/that/ great, yeesh).
:`( :`( :`( :`( (if you've ever had to manage one in which NOTHING automaticaly detects anything else, you would cry too. I have to manualy select the friggin audio decompression method on my stand alone DVD player for crying out loud!)
Heh.
How about a complete computer with a DVD drive on it and a (resonably) high quality video out card (I do believe that they should be able to do HDTV resolutions, not like HDTV is
In fact computers are EASIER to play DVDs on then a regular stand alone DVD player is.
Hmm.
Mabye that would be ONE good thing about these D-VHS systems, FINALY being able to use the as a passthrough! Star topologies SO suck for A/V equipment.
I just open my computers DVD-ROM drive up, pop in a DVD, close the tray, and walla, the movie starts to play! Yaah.
10-15 seconds, slow tray.
bleh.
That is the ONE thing that I seriously miss about VHS, the ability to have EVERYTHING running through the VCR. Perferably in a nice serial method. Nintendo to Cable Box, Cable Box to VCR, VCR to TV. Yah. Since my standalone DVD player DOES NOT HAVE A FRIGGIN OFF SWITCH on the remote control, anytime the TV is tuned to the DVD player's inpt channel I get that blue APEX DVD screen, ickies! Not fun.
Ah, of course the sound system doesn't help things any, hehe. Damnit I wish that somebody would invent a single *High Quality* wire that transfered over both video and {2,4,5}.1 surround sound data. Man that would rock. Alot. Seriously. Hell make it all digital too, hehe, I'm willing to pay for an A/D converter in each seperate device (uh, lets see, Speakers, TV, thats it. ^-^ ) in exchange for the convience of just ONE CORD between devices!
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Why would JVC develop a new digital video standard based on magnetic tapes? Does anyone else suspect it has something to do with JVC's aging patents on VHS and S-VHS?
Even if other people don't care for random access, other people don't have DVHS players, but they do have DVD players wether they be in their Playstation2, PC, or standalone set-top-box.
DVD is here to stay.
You may wonder why anyone would launch a new tape format in 2002; but D-VHS has actually been around for several years.
If you can read Japanese you can read the press release for the launch of Hitachi's first D-VHS machine in August 1998 here; otherwise you might like to take a look at this press release from 1999 which announces the first HD consumer VCR, which used D-VHS and was manufactured by Panasonic.
When D-VHS kit was first being developed it was all but impossible for consumers to record to DVD, so D-VHS looked like it might have a future. But DVD recording technology started to become affordable very soon after, so I guess by the time the manufacturers were ready to really push D-VHS in the West it was a non-starter.
And I can't say I'm surprised the major studios are looking at it - for the time being at least, no-one's hacked the copy protection, which is more than can be said for DVDs!
Hooray, I get to pay $2000 so that movie studios can prevent me from copying movies!!!
What a bargain.
High def my ass
I'm not a media empire mogul, but why waste time and money on something so risky? Why not capitalize on the success of DVDs and come out with DVD 2.0?
DVD 2.0: A new format of DVD that supports HDTV but fixes that pesky "weak encryption" problem of original DVDs. Ultimately, it won't stop people from ripping them, but it should slow them down (look at Xbox DVDs for example). And the best part? Everyone has to buy a new DVD player (backwards compatible to DVD 1.0 of course), and they have to re-purchase their favorite DVDs encoded for HDTV! [Yes, this sucks, but it would make the most sense from an execs point of view].
Gag, I think I'll sell my TV and move to Montana...
"He was a wise man who invented beer." -- Plato
Does this digital format remove the problems inherent in tape stretch? If not, count me out.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
How many of you wont touch a DVD because you can't rewind it -- or fast forward?
Or you hate digital artifacts showing up at random times in your picture. I don't *want* the screen to turn into a bunch of big ugly squares in the middle of a scene, and go to rewind it and have to try and guess by the stills how far back I overshot, and then sit through 10 minutes to get back to where I was, only to have it kalidescope out on the next scene.
It is definitely a niche market thing, but are there really ten thousand suckers ready to pony up the big bucks to see Ahnold say "Hasta La Vista Baby" in HD? I somehow doubt that these tapes will show up at Wal-Mart for $6.44 each. And what "videophile" is going to forgo all the lovely extras that come on a DVD over a video tape. (Play with or without subtitles, commentaries, etc)
Last point is that this format really eats storage requirements (I seem to recall 75 gigs per hour from somewhere) so it just won't be very efficient to transfer the content (assuming that it can be legally accomplished) to that newfangled networked media server that we were going to use in place of separate CD and DVD players with each TV.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
I buy a lot of DVDs. I mainly buy them because I think they're an excellent value. For the most part I pay just under $20 for new releases, sometimes less. In fact I've bought more DVDs than CDs. And with LD and VHS I was never really motivated to buy much. But lately the studios have been releasing some great special editions of various movies such as Holy Grail, Shrek, Star Trek The Motion Picture and so on with tons of extras for really good prices. I'm happy to spend my money on things like that.
Even if I did find pirated movies, how much would I save? And what would the quality be like? In the case of some bootlegs, I've heard they're pretty poor. About the only reason I'd ever go for pirated DVDs is if its something I just can't get here legally. And if George would just release his movies on DVD, I'd never even have to think about it.
Personally I think a lot of people are more like me than the handful of pirates the studios are so worried about. The studios are making a ton of money on DVD, probably with the addition of DVD they're now making more on home video sales than ever before. If they continue to provide quality products at reasonable prices, they got nothing to worry about. Besides, those determined to steal it will find a way, they always have before.
Whoever is thinking to bring this to the consumer market should be taken out and whipped, then relocated to the mailroom.
My bigger concern is that I've never had any of my 300+ DVDs jam, tear, stretch, or drop out. I've had 6 that were poorly burned on manufacture and had to be exchanged. I sure can't say the same for my VHS and SVHS tapes.
"But it's digital", some might say. Digital tapes are still subject to the problems. When I consider the number of bad DLT and 8mm tapes I've encountered over the past few years, there is no way I'd ever consider buying a movie on tape again.
As to handling HD formats, I'll just wait for next-gen DVD to deal with that. As the cheapest HDTV I've seen that is "good enough" to justify the upgrade is about $4000 beyond what I'm willing to pay, it'll be a while before it concerns me at all.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"Copyright infringers", "Unauthorized duplicators", stuff like that.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
This is a good thing for a few reasons and bad for a few more.
1. Don't panic about the copy protection stuff, DVD has copy protection too ya know (barely). People are starting to find out macrovision and are starting to get very pissed off at copy protection once they run into it. They find out that they can't run their DVD player into their shitty TV through their VCR because the VCR is crippled and macrovision kicks in. Needless to say they aren't happy campers.
2. This is NOT aimed at regular consumers right now. People already don't like having to buy DVD players to get something new, they would shit a brick if they had to buy a new $2000 or even $200 machine just to play movies after they just got their nice new POS $75 Apex so no one will accept it.
3. Think DAT. No one uses it to distribute music but it does still have a lot of uses. Have you ever seen true 1080i HDTV? Probably not. It looks incredible. It blows everything away. Grainless, perfectly smooth, HDTV that was 1080i the whole way through (not upconverted) is an experience that you won't forget. HDTV doesn't really have any standard way of being transported. There needs to be something there, even if it isn't going to be distributed to the masses. Distribution is a the biggest problem for HDTV right now. People want it but no one will give it to them, except HBO and Showtime off of DirectTV and Dish Network.
3. Video production work will get a giant kick out of this, and thus it will be easier to get actual HD broadcasts.
4. Movie theatres could use this it is in such high resolution, cameras could tape to it for local TV stations, it will be adopted, but not by consumers that is for sure.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Supposedly they're rolling out in 2003. I don't know how long they've been around. I presume they've encountered some obstacles along the way, probably involving bleaching of the dyes.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
What you do is develop a media disc with two areas for data. The first part of the data is used to store the codec relavent to decoding the media that would then be recorded on the rest of the disc. You have a player that can load the codec off of the disc on the fly and use that codec to play back the media.
;-) encoded video. Fine load the codec on the codec track dump your encoded media on the other track, and suddenly you've got the ability to play a lot more content at the sacrifice of some compression artifacting.
So you start off with something the size of a DVD let's say. But you want to be able to use Divx
It seems silly to me to tie the nature of the video's encoding to the media it comes on. If you have an intelligent generalized player, you should be able to play just about anything that's within the capabilities of the hardware.
The media involved should be a disc to provide random access. Optical is ideal because it last a hell of a lot longer than tape. Capacity should be ludicrously huge but affordable. The current price point of DVD's seems pretty reasonable, so maximize the capacity that would be cost effective at that price.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The quality loss is an analog problem, not a digital one. 1's and 0's don't magically disappear time after time, and I'm sure there's plenty of redundancy built in to help with this. Ask anyone with a DAT if their master being played 1000 times has changed sound quality.
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
That is a feature.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Great, another video format. S or Super VHS is a better quality vhs format that apeared 10 years ago. Its still around (sort of) as its good for editing. It required more expensive tapes and never took off.
However People WILL want more resolutions when HDTV is more prevalent. The tape has 2 things going against it
1) DVD's are cheaper to make than tapes. Much like CDs and audio tapes.
2) DVD momentum.
although they should be able to use better codecs with dvd's it brings up the backward compatability problems..
I don't think most people miss the other junk on the DVDs (angles? commentary etc.....)
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.
Glad to see someone pushing D-VHS.
:)
I don't think it's going to go mainstream for pre-recorded stuff (except possibly HDTV), but I think it's very promising as a recordable media.
The main advantage over the myriad of recordable DVD wannabees (appart from the fact that the recordable DVD standards war is putting everyone off) is the high capacity of D-VHS.
HDTV is one application of that high capacity, sure, but the important one is being able to record several hours of TV on one tape.
No-one cares that they have to change DVD's to watch the next movie, but you want to be able to record more than that while you're out....
I *want* D-VHS to succeed. Mainly for selfish reasons: I want D-VHS deck prices to come down to a price I can afford
-roy
While 2000 bucks sounds like a lot to watch videos, it sounds like a decent price for a backup medium. Depending on the cost of media, of course. This could actually do well as a dual purpose machine: HD video player and all-purpose tape backup unit.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
if they want to stop the sales of DVD the answer is simple ...
bring back betamax!
bring back betamax!
bring back betamax!
L-A-M-E
Ah, the huge storage capacity of FMDs may be great for the hard-core videophile, but I think for the vast majority of consumers the FMC is the better option.
Everyone knows the advantages of optical discs over magnetic tapes (instant seek, no stretching, no magnetic degradation), but few have considered the advantages tapes have over discs. Picking up where you left off is a trivial matter with tape, wheras with disc your player has to be configured to store that data, and you can't transfer it. Tapes are also much more durable mechanically because they're encased - there's no delicate surface to avoid scratching, you don't have to worry about them breaking if you flex them too much or accidentally step on them, instead of delicately handling it by the edges to place in the tray you just pop it in the slot, and you can leave them lying around without worrying about dust.
In other words, tapes are very kid-friendly, while CDs, DVDs, and FMDs most certainly are not. I don't know what the ratio of kid's DVD titles to VHS titles are, but I'll bet it's low relative to the regular market. It's too bad no one considered that. But FMCs are cards - so long as you protect the media (sliding window? scratch resistant?) they can be as durable as tapes, plus they would be smaller and you could seek quickly through them. If you included some way to record small amounts of data on the card (like a magnetic stripe) you could also store small variables like the time index of where you left off last time, or user preferences for languages, etc. So long as FMCs could store the 15-30gb of data needed for a 2hr movie at HDTV quality (initial versions are expected to be 10gb, but can be pushed much higher) you could have a video player option suitable for the whole family and for the forseeable future of TV technology.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
HDTV aside, this has absolutely 0 value over DVD.
1)No random access. Now you're gonna have to start rewinding your movies (again)
2)Do you really think the consumer-level D-VHS "VCRs" are going to have recording ability?
3)Tapes stretch, break, become mangled, and start to lose their magnetic abilities after a while, especially if the tape is used often. I've got movies on VHS that I've had for years, and they're rapidly losing their picture and sound quality. Just because the images will be stored on the tape digitally doesn't mean that the tape itself won't go bad (stretch, mangle, get "eaten" by the player, etc.) after a while.
Of course, it's in the studio's best interest if the tapes go bad after a while, 'cause then you've got to buy them all over again.
Also, forget any extra features like you'd have on DVD. It will be back to "dump a telecine of the lo-con print to tape, stick a few trailers on the front, and then go manufacture a few thousand."
I just wish that companies would put at least as much effort into their new movies as they put into their failed copy protection/digital limitations systems. I mean, what is the percentage of worthwhile movies that came out in the last two years? 10% ?
--Jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
If it goes out through standard Cable/Antenna coax, split video/audio, S-Video, you can copy or digitize it.
Do folks need super audio/video? Or just a different format which doesn't wear out just as fast.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
No.
Okay, I think this one is going to tank harder than the hindenburg grafted to the side of the titanic grafted to the side of the world trade center, but _only_ in the consumer market.
Think of video houses and TV broadcasting outfits. I don't know about elsewhere, but in Canada all radio stations (and presumably, tv ones) are required to keep a running log of everything they produce, for one month. This must be quite prohibitively expensive for the 'little guys'.
Remember backup, too. I've often wanted to back up onto a nice roomy VHS casette! This could finally spell the end of those proprietary cart drives we've seen so many of these past years.
Also, remember, that this medium is less linear than vanilla VHS (vVHS?). The tape itself hasn't become any longer, so ffwd/rew would occur much more quickly (subjectively speaking).
This could've been an interesting technology had it been introduced five years ago.
- undoware.ca
It's not completely clear in the press release, but the only full resolution material that will playback on these machines will be prerecorded tapes released by the studios.
You thought you could just record HighDef off the air and time shift it? Not a chance. You can record in VHS mode and a reduced bit rate digital mode, but not in full High Def.
The Content owners need "protection" you know? I was almost expecting to see that use would require you to plug a phone in so that the machine could call back to JVC and report back.
Yeah, it's kinda related, but most floppy drives suck and most floppies are cheapo Taiwanese that aren't meant to last.
When's the last time you saw a giant tape spool in a mainframe facility? Or a tape backup used on servers? Thought so...
Nope. All DVDs are red-laser, which is great when you realize that CDs were IR-laser. Blue-laser storage hasn't made it out of the research labs yet.
Gentoo Sucks
APEX AD-1500. $79 at Circuit City. Plays DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, CD, CD-R, CD-RW. Plays VCD, SVCD, MP3, XVCD.
Upgradeable with a freely available ROM image to set region to zero and to disable Macrovision.
These D-VHS schmucks *really* have nothing to offer.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Here's why I'll never get a machine that plays this format:
BE KIND, REWIND
-- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
Red hot poker up the rump for the rest of us...
I do like the idea of DVHS, but the sole problem is this: If the tape is damaged (all tape media has a tendacy to stretch with every play, and can sometimes be damaged by drops or heat), which in digital as opposed to analog, can render the tape completely unplayable... Analog would show it as a momentary video glitch, nothing worse than that...
Of course that allows the movie industry a shot at something they really can't do with DVD: Planned obsolescence... DVDs don't degrade as easily over the years as DVHS obviously will, and their plans for copy protection naturally means that the majority of buyers will come back time and time again to buy a fresh copy...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
This format is currently very limited. They have built-in copy protection to limit what you can record and make copies of.
But, it is also not possible to record most HD material with these VCR's today. It can only record via the copy protected firewire port. But, none of currently available set top boxes have firewire output. They only have component video output.
Also, because of the copy protection, it's not clear if they will 'allow' you to copy channels like HBO-HD, or other 'premium' content.
These issues need to be resolved before this technology is going anywhere.
I have to agree, a good HD-TV with a good source, is like looking through a window.
Reference, please.
2 00 1/2_19_25.html
Here:
http://www.dvdfile.com/news/views/editors_desk/
Search for "2View" on this page
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
If you're going to load and arbitrary codec onto the disc, you're opening up a whole new can of worms. DivX ;-) is a processor-intensive codec, requiring (wild guess here) at least a Celeron-400 to decode at anything like realtime.
;-) onto a DVD and playing it on your computer is perfectly feasible. But there's no way to make the player forwardly upgradeable. The big reason they're all so damned cheap is because the only processing power needed is an MPEG-2 decoder chip.
Wait, you want to use dedicated hardware to speed up the process? Sorry, can't use arbitrary codecs with hardwired logic.
Do you really want to buy a disc and have it say "Requires a 450-MFLOP DVD Player" on it?
Toasting DivX
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The concept of D-VHS seems like taking a step back in technology. Now that we have a great format like DVD (allowing for extras, multiple soundtracks, Dolby/DTS 5.1 sound, etc. etc) why would you want to go back to VHS? Sure, there is a potential for higher quality.
The concept of high definition DVD is around the corner. In theory, the players would cost around the same (as D-VHS or any DVD Progressive Scan) and the discs would cost around the same as DVDs now. Plus you get all the bonuses of the DVD format.
I don't think D-VHS will take off, especially now that people are just waking up to DVD.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Why is animation encoded like everything else?
;-). There's just not that much information there, people!
Damn it, there should be some kind of codec optimized for lines-and-shapes. True, adding another codec to every DVD player in the world is an utter nightmare in the making, but even for Futurama/Family Guy/Simpsons/Daria/etc rips on IRC, it's plain stupid to be distributing them in RealMedia or DivX
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Seriously, MPEG-4 eats so much processing power, it would be practically impossible to encode it at any reasonable rate with... well, with just about any hardware currently available for reasonable prices... and even decoding it requires the power of a Celeron-400. What makes you think it's smarter to make a standalone box than to just use your computer?
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What? You mean there is no such thing as an HDTV resolution camera. Then what is the point of buying a HDTV if there is no such thing as camera that can take a picture for it?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
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.
Do you honestly really think that D-VHS players would let you record HDTV broadcasts right off the air?
Any supposed benefit about being able to record HDTV signals does not exist; copy "protection" will kill any chance this thing has of surviving.
Except for the fact that tapes degrade over time, especially after multiple playings.
the "move wont fit on one DVD" problem is not a real problem.. I have a 2 disc Laserdisc movie, and it's no problem at all to get up every 45 minutes and flip it over or change it. anyone that would have a problem with that needs to get phycological help as to why they are that lazy.
They dont want to release 1080i material for many reasons...you end up with a super resolution copy of their "masterpiece" that you can make very acceptable copies of and sell or give away on the black market... (they know that is what you are itching to do...they know it!) Second the demand for true HDTV programming is not there. Only silly people with tens of thousands of dollard to burn have a true HDTV monitor, and those buying now are opting for the sub HDTV sets that are only 720p capable... (NOTE everything at BestBuy is the lower quality except for the 13,909.99 plasma unit.) not even 10% of the public has adopted HDTV and some of the recent polls I have read in widescreen magazine says that the fact is not going to change soon. HTDV is still obsenely overpriced, and the general videophile would rather buy a good progressive scan capable LCD projector for less than 1/3 the price of a true HDTV plasma display and get a 10 foot wide cinema in their home plus an awesome audio system.
Sorry, HDTV is pretty much dead until the manufacturers get their heads out of their asses and start making the products at sane prices, and finally the mass adoption will not happen until cable tv starts supporting it, and NONE of the catv companies plan on supporting it for the next 5 years.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The movie companies got burned with DVDs because they were usable on people's computers. They won't make that mistake again. If a D-VHS tape drive is even released for computers, it will be incompatable with D-VHS movies. They will probably be programmed to automatically reject D-VHS movies, or will only be able to read and write in a different format.
Almost three years ago I bought this D-VHS recorder/sattillite reciever. We only got one D-VHS tape with it (it felt much higher quality than a standard VHS tape or even a S-VHS tape), and I quickly filled it up Southpark episodes (it was good at the time). Since the tape records the exact MPEG2 bitstream (or so it claims) going into the receiver, the picture quality on the tape was identical to what we saw. This also meant, however that when the sattilite lost its signal (due to tree branches blowing into the dish's line-of-sight), you would get the same annoying picture dropout (which is of course, expected). If it wasn't for me being able to get this for dirt cheap, I never would have bought it, but nevertheless I get a really good quality VCR with it.
Basically, my point is this is nothing new. It costs significantly less than a DVD burner, offers just as good picture quality (as long as your material is high quality), and allows you to have near-perfect digital duplicates of your source. If only the SCMS didn't hinder it's abilites, I think this would have been a good in-between step for people who want high-quaility copies without shelling out DVD-burner cash.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Currently, the limit for DVD discs is around 17 GB, assuming dual-sided double-layed discs with single-depth pits.
The development of variable-depth pits may allow 40 GB DVD discs, but more likely is the development of blue-spectrum laser reading, which may increase the maximum limit of disc storage on a double-sided dual-layer DVD disc to around 51 GB. That is more than enough for a full 1080i-resolution 16:9 aspect ratio HDTV movie. We may just see such HD-DVD discs by 2005.
While DVD today is not yet capable of supporting the full 1080i resolution 16:9 aspect ratio HDTV, two technical improvements may make it possible:
1. Variable-depth pits. Instead of all the pits on an optical recording all being of the same depth, we can change the depth of the pits to dramatically increase storage capacity without having to use more exotic laser designs.
2. Blue laser readers. Because the blue-light spectrum of these new lasers are much shorter than those of current red lasers, this means we can pack in the pits on the disc surface much more densely.
In short, we may see by 2004 HD-DVD discs storing as much as 70 GB for a dual-sided dual-layer disc. That is far more than enough for HDTV movies using the USA standard.
All the deliberate disadvantages of DVD combined with the relatively short life-span of magnetic media (already some of my old VHS tapes are deteriorated to the point of being unviewable)? I'll pass, thanks.
Yes, I know that digitally encoding the tapes will help them survive a bit longer (since you don't have to rely on signal quality as much), but even then that life-span is a drop in the bucket compared to even analog laserdiscs.
Heh, "can't be broken". Well, we'll just have to wait and see.
DHCP is signal encryption to the screen. All those fancy plasma screens with the firewire interface may have had you thinking "cool, now I can watch my mini-DV camcorder directly on my HDTV without ever doing an analog conversion!"
Nope. That interface will carry an encrypted signal from your receiver/tape deck directly to the screen, with no possibility of tapping into a decrypted signal, anywhere.
If they use military grade encryption (which they might, now that export restrictions have eased) this will take years, perhaps decades to reverse engineer. Not to easy, buggy POS CSS was. What is more, they might even use publicly available, well tested and thoroughly peer-reviewed algorithms to encrypt the signal with very large
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Sure it does. Think of the video rental retailler. They have to buy most VHS tapes at upwards of $100, while they get the DVDs for the same price that consumers do. On top of that, there seem to be some VHS tapes that are never sold to the general public, yet are finding a way to DVD because they're so cheap to produce.
Of course you're probably talking about the $35 DVDs as opposed to the $5 to $20 DVDs that I tend to get.
A new cassete digital format designed to compete with the digital disc, which impliments such restrictive copy protection any fan of the media will avoid it like the plague.
Did'nt they already try this with DAT? Did'nt it fail?
The Internet is generally stupid
current TV resolutions and VHS are fine with me.
I saw the first HDTV at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) convention more than 10 years ago. Then it looked truly wonderful. This was before all the standards wars and the Japanese manufacturers had some truly great looking pictures and frame rates.
All of the compromises to achieve the current 'standard' have resulted in a significantly worse looking picture than the first ones I saw which were amazingly lifelike.
But more importantly, the Nazi tactics of the MPAA and the studios to reduce and/or eliminate my my rights will keep me away. I'm already voting with my wallet by the fact that I do not and will not own any DVD's or a DVD player until the DMCA and DeCSS issues are resolved to be in line with the Constitution and the laws of the United States.
My next purchase will be a Tivo and that should take care of me for a long time to come.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
Magnetic media
Little studio support In fact, the only benefit is that it has support for HDTV, and that's really only of interest to NTSC users - here in Europe, where the higher res (than NTSC, not than HDTV) PAL is dominant and televisions tend to be smaller, HDTV is nowhere to be seen, and things are likely to stay that way for quite a while.
I forsee this being as popular as Philips CD-I at the best.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
The cheapest ones are being sold at $600 now, the better ones (format, speed) at $800, expected to drop bigtime during the year. I know also there exists some standalone recorders in the $1000-2000 range. All with all the advantages of DVDs over tapes, so this $2000 unit isn't going to be big. Ever. Not to mention the possibility of players starting to play ISO mpg4 streams, which gives CD-Rs the advantages of DVDs today.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If they replace mpeg2 with mpeg4, the 1:6 pixel increase should be set off by a 6:1 compression increase. Note that with normal videos today being 5-8 gb, often including multiple sound tracks including director's cut and different languages, none of which would increase in size, so presumably even less than 6:1 compression should still allow a normal feature film (1,5-2,5hrs) on a single side, dual-layer DVD (DVD-9).
If somebody wants to compare this to the (bad or good) divx DVDrips they've seen, note that
a) 9gb = 13 700mb cds.
b) No resize filter
c) No mpeg2 artifacts from DVD compression
The "bad" points:
a) You need a new player. Making a mpeg4 HDTV-capable decoder probably isn't too cheap either
b) There is no incentive to make DVDs better. DVDs have no real competition.
c) The DVD industry would rather wait for blue lasers, DVDs that can store more, than introduce mpeg4 decoding capability in players.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Let me quote a couple things:
_ 11 12_2001_2010.html
The VW2010 is capable of simultaneously encoding and decoding in MPEG-1, 2, 4 with interlaced, full-screen (D1) resolution. The VW2010 will be available in the 1st Quarter of 2002 with a list price of $35 in quantities of 10,000.
http://www.vwebcorp.com/mall/c110/s3066/News/PR
Oh, and in case you didn't know, D1: 720x480 @ 30fps for NTSC, 720x576 @ 25 fps for PAL.
Throw this in bed with a DVD+RW burner, and you got a standalone killer mpeg4 recorder and DVD player that blows everything else away.
And yes, I'd use my computer to encode, I'd be happy with just a regular DVD player and a mpeg4 decoder in the standalone player, hey I'm even happy watching it on my 19" monitor too. But not everybody wants to have a computer churning all the time, not all have a 19" screen.
Frankly, a standalone player like that is something I could consider buying for my parents, and trust me that's a whole lot bigger marked...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If D-VHS is marketed as yet another example of digital media crippleware, it will be "coming soon to a landfill near you."
There were usage restrictions on laserdisks. You could still encode macrovision in a laserdisk. And there never was a way to copy a laserdisk at all, because nobody ever came out with a consumer-grade laserdisk player.
My point is, there will be a new format that succeeds DVDs that will take over for movie distribution to HDTV enabled people. But that won't happen for a while. So in the meantime, home theater nuts will buy D-VHS decks and tapes, which will be all obseleted by the DVD successor format.
Gentoo Sucks
Linear vs. random access won't make a difference in this respect. The player can simply say, "oh, you didn't rewind, let me help you...."