A Closer Look At D-VHS At DVDfile.com

great throwdini writes: "Peter M. Bracke of DVDfile.com has written a more thoughtful piece on D-VHS (mentioned in the Slashdot article, Copy-Protected Digital VHS) based on his impressions of a press demonstration. Says Fox's VP of Marketing, Peter Staddon, 'If we thought it (D-VHS) was going to kill DVD, we wouldn't be doing it.' Peter has even put together a nice little factsheet on the format. Encryption may be absent on D-VHS tapes, but it looks like the practice of region coding may continue."

Comments

But it's still a tape format, correct?

[MBCook]

D-VHS may be superior, but it's still a magnetic tape format, like VHS is, correct? One of the things that I like about DVD is that no matter how many times I play a movie, it will never wear out. I'm sure we've all expirenced haveing an audio or video tape lose quality from overplaying. CDs and DVDs don't have this problem, so why would I want one? The DVD format could just be amended, like audio CDs/computer CD hybrids (CD-XA?) were ammended to the origional audio CD format. Plus if this is indeed a tape format, then you don't get that great near instant seek of DVDs. Is there anything to prevent these tapes from degrading?

All I can say is that I never watched movies much. I don't like going to the theater for a large variety of reasons. I did watch movies on VHS (sometimes) but I found it somewhat inconvient. Having to rewind, the slow fast-forward, the bad picture quality you can get (especialy when paused). But when DVD came along, I fell in love with movies again. The quality is fantastic (and I'm using a PS2 to play them on a 27" analogue sony TV, so it's not like I'm useing $50,000 worth of equiptment). I like being able to jump anywhere in the movie, how the screen is crystal clear when the movie is paused. I love how I can watch movies on the road with my laptop and all the interesting extra features that can be added to DVDs (deleted scenes, little almost "pop-up-video-esque" info like on the Akira DVD, etc). D-VHS may look good, but it seems to me that it might end up as just another laserdisc. Used by moviephiles, but not by the public at large. Maybe it will even become the Betamax to DVD's VHS, a different format that's good, and is used, but not as much. It will be interesting to see.

As for the here and now, I see three problems: first and formost, I don't have $2000 to blow on something that I can't rent movies for at my local blockbuster. Second, DVDs already have a huge install base and are a goliath to go up against. And third, very few people (remember that /.ers are disperportionatly techy) have HDTVs. So for someone with only a normal, analogue TV like me, would I see any benifit over DVD?

Just some random museings.

Ready... Set... Moderate!!!

Re:Need more information...

[Murdock037]

Of course it's compatible with your Betamax tapes. In five years, they'll be interchangable when it comes to propping up table legs and such.

DVD can be done today

[OYAHHH]

Forget D-VHS or whatever it is called...

The box manufacturers could make a DVD system today that would store enough data to record a movie and all the associated goodies in HDTV.

All they gotta do is make a plastic shell (which represents one movie for instance) that holds two or three (ever how many it takes) DVDs that hold the data.

Then they build a DVD player that swallows that shell, reads the first DVD and plays it until it detects it is within lets say a minute of finishing the first half of the movie. The DVD player then buffers the last minute or so in RAM.

Then using the same technology that allows for CDROM switching in, lets say, car stereos the DVD player switches to the second DVD and buffers in the first minute of it as well.

With the last minute off the first disc buffered in and the first minute off the second disc buffered in there is no reason why a smooth transition couldn't be made and no glitches appear in the movie.

It's a fairly simple proposition, somebody just needs to sit down and do it.

I cannot remember the guy's name at Sony (I think it was the President, CEO, or whatever they got) who came up with the shirt pocket size diskette, the walkman, etc. but that's the kinda person who needs to get the ball really rolling.

Not some pinheads who cannot see past the end of their rich, conceited, lazy noses.

Thanks for listening

It's true: 17 USC 1201(k)

[yerricde]

I doubt its true but someone once told me that VCR's with RCA inputs had [to] include a macrovision chip to scramble the signal.

It's true. Page 4 of this LoC document states that the DMCA requires new VCRs manufactured or sold in the United States to respond to automatic gain control and four-line colorstripe copy protection; both techniques are used in the Macrovision system. The relevant statute is 17 USC 1201(k).