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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."
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
Except for, presumably, being writable on a standard consumer-level system rather than requiring an MPEG-2 encoder and DVD burner?
That will be where its value comes in -- as a way of consumers making their own recordings in digital format.
Si
Coming soon - pyrogyra
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
They only need to come up with a bulletproof enough CSS2+supermegaextra copy prevention system first.
And then have it broken in 3 days by a kid half my age from a country with no electricity.