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Industry Agrees On Next Gen Unified DVD Standard
scsirob writes "According to this press release the DVD recording industry will end the DVD-RW/DVD+RW/DVD-RAM mess and standardise on a new technology called 'Blue Ray'. Blue lasers are used to record up to 27 GB on each side of the DVD. This initiative is backed by all major players in the industry. The article contains many technical details." Several other people noted that the BBC has coverage as well. Yah for non-company specific industry standards.
Linux only:
fixed sound crash, going around memset bug in glibc i586/i686
Wondering how a bug could exist in such a fundamental basic function such as memset, we contacted Heinous Turdballs of Linux fame, and he was kind enough to give a few minutes of his time.
Q: Thanks for your time in answering some questions for us
A: No problem. As you know, I am umemployed and have no life, which is of course how I got involved in Linux in the first place.
Q: OK, Mr. Turdballs. By the way, do you mind if I call you 'Dirty GNU Hippie'?
A: I would rather you didn't. I prefer the term 'Dirty Linux Hippie'. As you know, my ratty and nasty hairdo, my rancid steaming armpits and my putrid stench of body odor makes me qualified, I think.
Q: I quite agree. Can you tell us about the memset bug?
A: Sure. We dont really know who is responsible for the bug. We don't know who is making changes, why they make them, or when.
Q: Hmm.. sounds chaotic!
A: It sure is. But Linux is free!!! We are dirty smelly GNU hippies with natty greasy long hair, enjoying the FREE LOVE of GNU software!
Q: Come to think of it, Linux sure does crash alot.
A: Yeah, but that will be fixed in the service pack - er, I mean kernel release. We also have support for some new device drivers that came out 2 years ago. You just have to recompile your kernel with the correct command line switches, after configuring your make file and making the correct edits to /etc/fstab. By the way, if you screw that up, you are really fucked.
Q: Sounds good. So, how do you organize who is working on Linux?
A: Mostly we don't. We pretty much let anyone have at it with the code base. We figure at some point, someone who actually knows something about operating systems will do some work on it. It has to happen eventually, its like a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters. Literally.
Q: That's great. What normally happens?
A: Normally someone comes in and fucks everything up completely, but we don't know who they are because we never actually talk to anyone who is making changes to the code. We assume that if you are capable of signing up for a Hotmail account, you must be pretty good at computers and you should be a tech lead in a major open sores project.
Q: Open sores?
A: Yes, I am sure you have heard of it. Its free, therefore its good. Check out sourceforge.net, where bad project ideas go to a quiet and lonely death when the developers realize that 12 year old kids should not be SQA leads when they are constantly getting atomic wedgies because they wear shirts saying "Put Linux Anywhere".
Q: OK, Back to the topic. Whats a typical day in the life of a Linux developer?
A: Usually his mom wakes him up in time to catch the school bus, like 8:00. We encourage this because we want the developers to be well edumacted.
By the time he gets home at 2:00 (the Linux enthusiast does not participate in socalled "extra cirricular" activities, or worry about being "well rounded" and does not have a "social identity" or "play well with others") he has been beaten up a few times for wearing a "I GNU SPOCK" tshirt.
Then, to take out his frustration, he hammers away at the keyboard for a few hours. If the resultant code compiles, he will go ahead and check it in. Then mommy tucks him in for the night.
Q: Interesting. So who will be in charge of resolving the memset bug?
A: We have a nice prospect in mind. He has a strong background in manual labor and performing menial tasks. I'm not sure what his name is but he has a hotmail account, dAsUpAhZillAZ99@hotmail.com.
Q: Sounds great. I'm looking forward to it!
A: Just keep reading slashdot, where are the pimply nerds congregate. You may get assaulted by some homosexual linux zealots, but you will learn to like it.
Q: Sounds like fun!
A: Also hang out at sourceforge.net, where bad project ideas go to a quiet and lonely death among the other dirty GNU hippie projects.
Q: Thanks for your time!
A: Tell commander tuna taco I said I will pay in full after I get a real job. Then I will be back for another taco-snotting.
In addition, the adoption of a unique ID written on a Blu-ray Disc realizes high quality copyright protection functions.
:)
wonder how long it'll take for some 15-year-old to be tried as an adult and tossed in the pokey for cracking this one...
15 minutes.. a day maybe?
Isn't it wonderful... the second you buy something... then the "new standard" is released. Good thing this is going to take a while to get into anyone's price range
And I just bought a DVD+RW drive yesterday.
"There is no substitute for thinking" - Bjarne Stroustrup
www.lonseidman.com
In the main specifications only the mpeg-2 is specified as video-codec. Has anybody an idea why they don't implement mpeg-4?
... when will these things become afforable (and the discs $.5)?
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Cool. Now I can carry all my music in a lossless compression format or no compression at all :).
you shouldnt take my word on it but it may be, because they can have some kind of protection that is so cool they must standardize it because otherwise some manufacturer would be outside the happy bunch and that would be bad if you dont believe me dont but in the end i will be right
Caddies were there for stability not for protection.
...Doh! for all those who just bought the new iMacs with the DVD burners in them. Guess I know what my next upgrade will be.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
...VHS vs. Beta for the digital generation. Will this become another competition between a) a cheap standard with a large, established base of customers and b) an expensive standard with higher quality but no installed customer base?
My best friend was just telling me about how Blockbuster employees were smashing old VHS tapes with hammers instead of giving them away, just to keep the VHS/DVD market ratio more in favor of DVD. I wonder if they'll be doing the same thing for old DVD disks in favor of the new ones.
Initial sacrifice of karma: Yah? That's not very emphatic. Do you mean yay! That would indicate rejoycing over a good thing.
Anyway, this is definetly a good thing for movies because... er... actually, I'm not sure what else can be fit on there. Perhaps more "control your own fate" type things like in those GI Joe books I read a long time ago.
Games could definetly take advantage of this (FF games could get really huge, and no 3 disc sets, although they sometimes give you nice indicators of how far you are in the game).
Maybe we'll start to see the games combined with the movies? Like you buy Gold Finger and it comes with 007 on it already? It seems like a logical leep - you get people to buy two products at once.
How much are these babies anyway? I didn't see any price tags, but I'm assuming they'd be quite a chunk of change righ now.
</rambling>
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
They're going to have to push this thing really hard, IMO, if they expect it to grab. 27GB just isn't enough of a jump over 8.5 to make it worthwhile, except as a niche data storage medium.
No, a single sided (n-layer is okay) disc is going to have to be able to do a solid 4 hours of full-rate 1080p to take hold. This might do 3 hours, with no room for extras.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Provided there is ever a way to record these on your own like a regular CD (without spending thousands, that is), these could be excellent for archival purposes.
Currently, my only solution for backups of my drives are other drives. Sure, tapes work, but they take far too long. Being able to dump the essentials from my hard drive (being a 3D designer, that's easily 30 gigs of textures, models, etc) onto one disc would be a lifesaver.
Let's just hope these things aren't so crippled by the time we get them that their apparent benefits aren't overshadowed by idiotic "protection" schemes.
Either way, I think that whoever is first to get a really high-capacity (tens of GB) consumer-level removable optical storage format on the market will be the one who defines the new standard, unless the later competitor is a lot cheaper or better.
...open source programmers less like poor lusers? Not likely :)
No you didn't.
Already people are complaing about this new technology. I see comments along like "I just bought a DVD-R only yesterday!", and "We'll have to upgrade all our DVD players!"
Stop being so negative. You would prefer we were all using steel wire or wax cylinders instead? Either way, people will start buying these Blu-Ray drives & disks, and then a year or so down the line, the luminous didks will start to appear, and we'll hear the same comments all over again! Just stop it, please, it's called progress!
Curious by its absence is any mention of DRM. Since I doubt that this new format will lack DRM, I would assume this ommision is because this new format will be locked down tighter than the Windows XP sourcecode repository against the states' representatives.
What do you want to bet this time the "CSS" is designed so that it cannot be brute-forced, and that the manufacturer keys are better locked down?
Lastly, I see lots of discusson on the Matsushita site about digital video, but none about raw data storage - I hope they didn't make the same mistake the CD folks did and not consider data storage up front.
www.eFax.com are spammers
At least it's a standard... like death and taxes.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Maybe, but CD/DVDs still scratch so easy..I dont get it, I have a film on DVD I watch a lot, its only ever taken out of its box carefully, played, and put back in its box carefully, yet is got tons of tiny scratches.
Caddy's/Protective Casings are a great idea - look at the minidisc format - those discs last forever!
I just hope hardware manufacturers don't make the "mistake" of forgetting to add support for all the older formats (down to old-fashioned CDs), otherwise they will alienate customers.
Yes, the existing base of DVDs isn't as big as, say the existing one of vinyl discs when CDs came out, but it does add several bases to it (CDs, and all the DVD formats (screw laserdiscs, though).
From a customer point of view, the ideal hardware will be one that can play ANY digital disc.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
Errr, how about a standard war between a high quality standard that gets there first, is expensive and has a major problem - not making greater than 1 hour tapes, I mean media, and a johnny come lately standard that is cheaper, because it's supported by many manufacturers, lower quality but stores more tv programs, I mean data.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
"(it's basically quicktime)"
NOT.
Explain, o wizard, just why the hell Apple can't release QT6, which is most certainly ready to be released and has been announced as such?
Answer: Because it has MPEG-4 support and Apple does not own the rights to MPEG-4.
You *COULD'VE* looked this up.
Further, MS has no more rights to MPEG-4 than does Apple.
Just to let you know.. your copy'n'paste massacre doesn't wide my page a single bit..
OK, part of me is joyful of the fact that we'll have better DVD recording technology soon.
But what about CSS? Surely, this would be the time for the industry to settle on some other, more cumbersome and perhaps lossy, encryption technology. The DVD player in my living room most likely won't be able to play these DVD discs. So if there is a new standard out there there will be new opportunities for this kind of crap. I am particularly wondering about this:
"In addition, the adoption of a unique ID written on a Blu-ray Disc realizes high quality copyright protection functions."
So now we're not able to play a disc because the original and the copy don't have the same ID written?
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
Amen!
"It is possible for the Blu-ray Disc to record digital high definition broadcasting while maintaining high quality and other data simultaneously with video data if they are received together. In addition, the adoption of a unique ID written on a Blu-ray Disc realizes high quality copyright protection functions."
For those who bought either DVD-R(W) or DVD+RW nothing changes. Todays players (standalone and DVD-ROMs) can play your discs fine. DVD-R plays everywhere, I have found no player, where it doesn't work.
;-)
;-) They will have full world-wide control over the format, things like region-protection will probably be better enforced, because of their monopoly in the market.
;-) And the DVR-A-03 is very cheap too.
...
To the future: This new format is a next generation format. 27GB per layer is a very cool capacity. Combined with MPEG2 and AC3 whole seasons of 'startrek' may be on one disc. But on the other hand: have you looked at the sizes of DVDs lately: they are big like nearly 9GB. Viewed at 27GB from this side it's actually small. It's the bare minimum
The physical problems with DVDs are scratches. The more capacity there is on the disc the more problems you get.
What I like about this announcement is that all major players are on the list, this is positive: nobody will have choose the "better" format, this is also the negative thing
To those who need DVD-R right now, nothing has changed, buy a player, I've seen discs as cheap as $3
For those who want a DVD-video recorder: WAIT for this new format, this will really enhance the VCR experiance: direct access and capacity
are blockbuster employees retarded? why wouldn't they just steal the tapes and sell them on ebay? They can't be making that much money. last time I checked, they where getting just above minimum wage. There is nothing wrong with stealing if the company is just going to destroy the product anyway.
I bet one of these wiz bang blank disks will cost as much as a hard drive when they first hit the market. I am really getting sick of this type of technology. I want something with no moving parts.
Will the industry introduce new annoying concepts which will keep me from making my backup copy? How much time will hackers need to crack it? How much will the industry whine about these hackers?
Or is this just a try to make movies even LARGER so cable and DSL users can't share movies in high quality anymore? (ever downloaded a 27 gig file?)
I expect they'd have to. But don't count on your bright shiny new DVD player you just bought to work with 27G/side disks. Assuming this becomes a reality (hopefully faster than IBM rolls out stuff.)
Personnally I'd love one just for backups, I wonder how stable the media will be.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I thought we were still waiting for a "current" standard to be decided. Or did that happen while I was sleeping? If so, what was the decision? :-)
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
In the press release, they make mention of provisions for a unique ID (aka: a serial number) on each disc to help curb/stop piracy.. this, to me, is the media's biggest problem. I imagine that unlike CSS (which the studio's botched) they'll do the smart thing and use the unique ID to somehow watermark the data and/or video content of these new discs. Some might see this as good (if the studio's actually do the logical thing and allow fair use copying again, unlike DVD), but I can see a situation where the studio's turn this around and use it to track down offenders for individual prosecution. (Something that I've never seen them do, but when you've got these kinds of smoking guns (the watermark being found in some DiVX ripped copy on the net), you gotta wonder if they can really contain themselves from blasting people into the afterlife with their "lawyer death ray"...)
Otherwise I love the technology, I've been hearing about blue-laser technology and optical discs since I was a kid (I'm in my mid-20's now), it's good to see it finally coming of age.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
The new format, the Blu-ray Disc, will store more than 13 hours of film, compared with the current limit of 133 minutes, - It is expected to come into its own as more viewers become able to record TV shows on DVD machines.
I wonder if this is just for the media alone. Maybe the standard being agreed to is similar to layer 0 of the OSI model that you see in networking, the physical media.
Which would leave DRM to be decided later.
right now, I do not know who I would trust to manage my digital rights. [smile]
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I wonder what pressure caused this voluntary unification to take place?
Normally when a company has large commercial sucess with a proprietary format, it simply "goes with it" and the competition be damned. Perhaps the sucess of each of these formats was far less than expected, forcing this collaboration.
Certainly it will mean cheaper media and drives for everyone, less consumer confusion and A Better Ride®.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
What wrong with going after criminals?
As long as I can use it for legal causes like backup thats ok.
Piracy just drives up the prices so I really hope they hunt down offenders.
cant be done...
Let's see press 1 million copies of that same movie. Now we make a master and press the living crap out of that. this digital watermark id? a new master must be created for every pressing.
so we just made that $19.95 dvd cost $199.95. now noone will buy them and this watermarking fails a horrible miserable death.
they cannot do it, it's impossible to make each disc 100% unique when you are trying to make mass quantities unless you are willing to spend enormous amounts of money and make production take months instead of weeks.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In addition, the adoption of a unique ID written on a Blu-ray Disc realizes high quality copyright protection functions.
I assume this to mean that it'll employ the next generation of CSS encryption. For one thing, MPAA and friends have probably learned their lesson: don't roll your own stream cipher. For another, it's now legal to export products using 128-bit encryption from the United States; the regulations in effect when DVD CSS was standardized permitted only 40-bit.
Or is this just a try to make movies even LARGER so cable and DSL users can't share movies in high quality anymore?
At a point, the detail becomes so fine that the human eye can't distinguish it. XviD (a fork of the last free DivX 4 release) attempts to find that point.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Yeah but this is definately a process they can automate-- if they can take the time to generate a Unique ID, they can certainly take the additional few minutes to encode the movie/video/audio with a watermark of some sort. Realize that they won't be re-encoding the content (MPEG2 compression is quite time consuming, if this were the case I'd agree with you), but watermarking content should be quite fast. All they need to do is change their production methodologies and ramp up, and they'll probably be able to churn out discs with 100% unique content at nearly the same price as current DVD movies...
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
1: Hmmm... Maybe 10? :)
2: Most are already dead
Red Hat Linux binaries and source still fit on one DVD, some versions of Slackware fit on a CD-ROM, an LFS install can be squeezed into 8 MB, and floppyfw (Linux for a dedicated packet-filtering firewall) fits on a 1.4 MB floppy.
Will I retire or break 10K?
if you dont watermark the entire video content then ther is no reason to watermark the disc at all.
Remember this is from the people that believe in their soul that DeCSS is the sole cause of DVD pirating. Ignore the fact that you can't pirate copy a dvd with DeCSS, you have to do a bit for bit copy of the DVD (which is easier with a dvd duplicator).
so if they do what you mention, then that is great! it won't hinder the flow of video footage on the internet underground and will make the new format a failure in the general public and MPAA's eyes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The spec for the Blu-ray thingie does include a
protective cover, according to the matsushita
press release. Me wonders, why no MPEG4, only 2,
though?
The early cr-recorders used cartridges. So did most of the Bernoulii-type MO disks. People didn't like the cartridges.
Best Slashdot Co
Alot of companies forget when they introduce a new technology, that it is better to agree on the standard that is going to be used and to compete on the final hardware. Good examples here are the GSM-standard and VHS-standard. There are competitors of these standards, and sometimes they are even technically better, but companies or countries investing in these rival technologies have found they lost money. This was only because the winning technology was backed broader and offered more services. (yes VHS offered a premium service that some other didn't, Pr0n).
Use Adsense for Charity
This sort of feature would scream class-action lawsuit. I can't see my wedding video, nor loan it to a friend to watch. I can't watch my legal backup of this film I bought. I can't watch my archive of news clips I had for my interactive project, nor play my interactive project on a player apart from the one in my PC. and so on...
And the movie will stil be cracked, even if it is cracked by someone recording the output of the video on the computer monitor and skipping the entire "crack the CD" phase.
Why didn't they just jumped over a couple of generations to the X-Ray Disk?
Possible advantages are:
- Unbelievable data storage capacity (X-Rays wavelength is around 1/10000 of the one for blue light - this means 10000 times more data or 200TB per side).
- X-Ray Disk is a cooler sounding name.
- X-Ray Disk players would be almost impossible to steal (they would weight a ton, most of it being the lead anti-radiation protection)
Does nobody realize that all of Asia uses Beta? Quit with the VHS v. Beta argument, it's baloney.
must... stay... awake...
So it triples DVD capacity. Two hours of HDTV content sounds nice, but why mpg2? I already see chips coming out for mpg4 encoding/decoding at reasonable prices in large quantities, it shouldn't be that far off.
e s. htmn plc/i v_rns/1868432o nsumer/dvr_time shift/domino_popupwin.html
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Personally I think the only reason they're waiting for these DVDs is because they're afraid of mpeg4 players. But they're coming anyway, and I dare to say that a mpg4 normal DVD (9gb) is better than these mpg2 superDVDs (27gb). Of course the DVD industry is seeing what the CD industry already has. People will pay for a cd "full" of wav files but not one with 1/10th fileed with mp3s, nor 10x the price for 10 times the mp3s, so we need to fill the 27gb disk with something. If it was 270gb they'd fill it with uncompressed avi and say it's soooo much better.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Wonderful. So I suppose you'll be required to pay credit for the DVD, not cash, so you can be tracked later? Might as well force you to present valid picture ID to purchase the disc. And if you choose to sell the disc later, what happens if the purchaser decides to use it illegally? So will you have to register with the government as a DVD Distributor? After all, the anti-gun lobby in the USA tries to do the same things for transactions involving guns. So are DVDs as dangerous as firearms? It sure sounds like it.
This kind of Orwellian nonsense rarely happens, at least in the USA. Gun laws are one exception. I suspect it's simply because there's a line (public safety, or waste of tax dollars, etc.) that hasn't been crossed for most consumer purchases, even when they cost some corporation some money. The average American citizenry, taken as a whole, doesn't vote with their dollars and ballots for this kind of nonsense, even when corporations do, and in the end, it's the government, NOT the corporations, that do the arresting. Enough stories of this sort of nonsense get around, the government HAS to pull back, despite what some MPAA lawyers want.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
company that makes fmd
The technology to make far larger storage on the same physical size disk exists for at least three years now, or longer, I can't remember.
The technology is called FMD, Fluorescent Multi-layer Disc.
One can guess at the reason this is not marketed yet, but I think a combination of big-industry interest in current disc technology and capital is the answer.
This tech is some years old now, probably a 12cm disc could hold 1 Terabyte or more with current state of the art tech, but I don't think you will see Sony, Philips and the others agreeing on a standard for that size, no, on a lowly 27 GB...
-------------------------------------------------
UNIX isn't dead, it just sme
"An easy to use optical disc cartridge protects the optical disc's recording and playback phase from dust and fingerprints."
I've been wanting a large capacity non-magnetic media in a case for years. Jaz disks are still buggy in my opinion and I see them die all of the time. With this, since it is totally non-contact, should be much more reliable.
The casual coppier who rips a DVD, converts it to divx:-) and sends it off to the world is not really the concern of the big studios. They want to own the Asian market, and right now it's owned by the bulk-coppiers.
;-)
Of course, all a unique ID gets them is to know where the bulk coppier in question got the first DVD. I can see it now: "yup, we're certain that Mr. Smith bought this DVD with a stolen credit card from Amazon and had it shipped to a field in Thailand. We'll get right on it!"
At one of my forays to Fry's to purchase an X-box, they not only took my money, but also entered the serial number of the box into their system. Since this was paid for by a credit card, they have all the info necessary to track the item back to me.
Now I understand paying with cash can help solve the above problem, but if resellers are forced to track the serial numbers, they will -- no matter now many John Smith 123 Main St USA they have in their database.
Considering how things are going with IP and the draconian measures being taken, I would not doubt that blanks and drives, when they become available, must be sold as a traceable item.
If the whole thing is too onerous, simply making the players/recorders "call home" a'la TiVo would serve the same purpose.
The next step is to tie the consumer's identification in a traceable manner. The only way to do that is to tie the consumer to the serial numbers. That way they can know what we record, and possibly what we watch.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
...at the expense of being a computationally much heavier (faster CPU/bigger chip) algorithm than mpeg2. The advantages (disk space) is obvious, and the disadvantages (die R&D, die cost) aren't that big, at least not compared to developing and deploying a new laser technology, most other disadvantages (heat, power usage, chip size) are quite irrelevant for a non-portable player. 27gb will not be enough for long movies (Gladiator, Schindler's List, LotR) in HDTV resolution, even without extras. Also mpeg4 encoding/decoding to be of great value for e.g. a DVD/PVR combo.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I agree, look at APEX, they make some very acceptible dvd players but most people buy them as a second player due to there cost, and the fact that other industry players would not (at least at the begining) support VCD, SVCD, or MP3 on their players (like a Panasonic A-115). Once the big corp's like Sony, Panasonic and the like droped the ball, APEX swoops in and steals a market niche. The one who will win the market is the one who gives the consumer what they want.
I will bend your mind with my spoon
You're right. And the reason you're right is hard disks. People are going to use very large hard drives instead of these flimsy DRM-hindered discs to store their next-gen video media -- using the consumers CODEC of choice, whichever one the consumer wants to use at a given time. The 40 GB hard drive I can get for $75 (today) is a much better choice than any 27 GB, low-transfer rate, MPAA-approved, new-player-required-to-buy disc medium which only exists in a press release. Hard drives are the answer.
Sorry, I have to disagree with YOU.
How do you explain the ZIP phenomenon? Here we have a company (Iomega) that wasn't any of the "usual suspects". They created a product that ended up as a huge success even though it was completely closed and proprietary.
Ultimately, Iomega failed because they coasted on their initial success far too long but even today you'll find ZIP drives as options on every desktop and most laptops from major hardware manufacturers. There were even some programs released with ZIP disks as a choice of installation media.
Cringley once wrote an article (I can't seem to find it at the moment) that talked about the 10x factor. If something is 10x better or 10x cheaper than existing alternatices, consumers will flock to it.
I think Cringley hit the nail right on the head. ZIP drives came out right at a time where computer manufacturers were waffling on the subject of increasing floppy capacity. CD recordables were too new and expensive and no one needed THAT much storage. 100MB was perfect and fairly resonable.
FMD easily exceeds the 10x factor. They will be the next Iomega if they can ever produce an actual product. It won't matter what the major players decide to do. People will all buy FDM drives and figure out a way to play video from that. Or they will make dual-use drives. Or people will have one FDM drive and one DVD drive just like most modern systems have one DVD drive and one CD-RW drive.
27GB is nice, but it's not 10x better or 10x cheaper than existing options. People will gradually adopt them but the market is still up for grabs to anyone who can make the 10x factor.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
There's some real danger here. If they're changing the track format, it requires a new player. This means that they have the opportunity to select a new codec as well. Will the standard codec for the next generation of optical video discs be Windows Media? If so, the free world is truly f**ked.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Methinks we have here the candidate for the biggest distributing computing effort ever to be undertaken.
Brute-force encryption cracking using distributed computing methods relies on known plaintext (i.e. the message starts with "The secret message is:"), known ciphertext, and known algorithm. If the drive itself (as opposed to software) performs the decryption (to avoid the Xing leak that opened the DeCSS floodgates), it won't be easy to discover the encryption algorithm, as the CPS-2 Shock team found. Besides, d.net still hasn't broken 64-bit encryption, and at this rate, it'll take until the heat death of the universe to brute-force 128-bit.
Will I retire or break 10K?
My understanding was that MPEG2 has following
properties:
* Its still operates on fixed-size rectangular
block in a musguided attempt to ease the
hardware implementation (Not sure about the size
for MPEG, but JPEG's is 8x8. You've all seen 'pixellated' JPEGs that happen because of
this at high compression ratios)
* it is based on a conventional FFT
whereas MPEG4 was a 'container spec' with extensible codec, where the default codec
is already wavelet-based and does not require
fixed rectangular areas. If this is so, MPEG4
should be superior to MPEG2 in all instances.
From an article at Maccentral:
Nine of the world's largest electronics companies have taken a joint step towards commercialization of a next-generation optical disk system and with it raised the possibility of a new format battle.
(...)
Four of DVD's main backers -- Mitsubishi Electric Corp., AOL Time Warner Inc., Victor Co. of Japan (JVC) and Toshiba Corp.-- are absent from the initial Blu-ray disk consortium.
Toshiba's absence is the most significant. The company is chair of the DVD Forum, the industry group that promotes DVD and handles development of new DVD formats, and has publicly stated that it intends to propose its prototype blue-laser optical-disk format to the organization as a next-generation DVD format. It's absence from the Blu-ray disk group raises the possibility that a format battle, just like the one that took place before the industry settled on DVD, may be about to begin again.
"We are not in that discussion group," said Midori Suzuki, a spokeswoman for Toshiba. "For the next-generation blue-laser optical disk, we will keep proposing a standard to the DVD Forum."
Can't be done.... Now we make a master and press the living crap out of that. this digital watermark id? a new master must be created for every pressing.
Imagine how it could work, rather than stating it can't. You are probably right (probably) about not being feasable to make each set of content unique. (But don't assume.)
Assuming you are right, one way it could work is thus. The content is not watermarked, as recorded on the disk. The bits on each disk are identical. But the hardware that plays it will only extract, even at some low level, watermarked data. That is, as the data comes off the disk, the drive watermarks it, even before it ever leaves the drive mechanism and hits your ide cable.
It works kind of how CD Audio and CD Data are different. Data is recorded on the disk differently from "a movie". You must issue one command to the drive mechanism to read sectors of data. You issue different commands to the drive to start the streaming transfer of "a movie". The streaming movie comes out of the drive watermarked with the disk's unique id.
This is just one hypothetical scenerio. I'm sure clever slashdotters could imagine other horrors that these terrorists could embed into our drives.
He who controls the hardware, controls the universe! -- Maud Dibb (or something like that)
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
I'm sure that if there's a crack to make a copy to an unprotected medium, someone will take two players, apply the same crack, and find the difference of the output. This would then be the unique watermark. Remove watermark. Spread untracable copy. What did I miss?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So you go to Blockbuster and rent the DVD. (Hopefully before it gets all scratched). Pirate and distribute that. Do you think Blockbuster will keep track of which stores the thousands of copies it buys goes to?
-- I am the real Anonymous Coward. All others are imposters.
/.ers. What about HDTV? Current DVD media is not big enough to hold a feature length movie in high definition. With 27Gb that will be possible.
But, will Hollywood let it? They don't want you to be able to buy a HD-DVD - play it back on you 50" plasma + home theater and never go to the movie house. They don't want you to take that same HD-DVD and make 50 copies for your friends. They don't want you to copy the DVD to your PC and share it with the world on the Internet. You can bet they won't let HD enter this media. And that's too bad because what else are you going to put on your Scream XI DVD?
True there is already D-VHS. But who wants to mess with the size of tapes with no random access! Besides, I've heard they movie studios are trying to kill D-VHS too.
-spitzcor
Rip the original, post anonymously. Then burn a copy of your disc, toss the original.
"Your honor, I downloaded it from the net, just like everyone else".
Bryan
From the article: Licensing is expected to start around spring 2002.
At the speed of these industries, expect to see these on shelves in time for next Christmas...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Zip is not a good example. Look around you and most people don't own a zip-drive. (at least not here in The Netherlands and what I have seen of western-europe) Everybody still has and uses a floppy drive for smaller sized files. For bigger files I use a cd-burner.
Zip drives have now lost to cd-r and cd-rw. Why? You can use them anywhere and they store enough. The 10 time factor is probably correct, but the simple fact that you can share a burned cd with all and a zip disk with some made cd-r the standard to win. You have to add the factor that you need somebody to share it with. If you have a standard that is 10 times better and supported by all, then you win. If you're just 10 times better but there is a competitor that comes close enough and is supported by all. You loose.
Use Adsense for Charity
In plaintext for the paranoid http://www.matsushita.co.jp/corp/news/official.da
This is a Cartel of Nine companies, it may be "an open standard" but we will have to wait and see how free (as in freedom not cost) it is.
The Register is also carrying this story
Easy to use disc cartridge:
An easy to use optical disc cartridge protects the optical disc's recording and playback phase from dust and fingerprints.
From the Press Release:
Cartridge dimension:
Approximately 129 x 131 x 7mm
For those of you who aren't that metric savvy, that's a hair taller, a hair narrower, and a hair thinner than the standard jewel case all CDs come in.
--Xandu
That would be a very good thing if it were possible. If individual infringers were caught, then the studios would no longer have an excuse for attacking fair uses.
It won't happen, though, since these things will almost certainly be for sale at retail stores in exchange for anonymous cash.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You weren't paying attention. You are talking about the situation today and that's not the same as when ZIP drives were released.
ZIP drives came out when CD-R drives cost $500 and media was expensive and was read-only because CD-RW drives didn't even exist. If you had files larger than 1.44MB that you needed to work with, here were your choices:
1) Use PKZIP to segment the file onto a pile of floppy disks. If you make changes to the file then you have to delete the archive and recreate it.
2) Spent a fortune on a CD burner and media and then find yourself burning CDs with 30MB or so on them at $5/each then throwing them away because the data changed and had to be reburned.
3) Save it to a ZIP.
Plus ZIP drives were external so if you had to take the file somewhere that a ZIP drive wasn't installed you just took the drive with you.
Of course ZIP had a small window in history where it was significant, but rather than build on that Iomega coasted and was left in the dust. That's why no one has a ZIP drive today.
Look at SuperDrives (120MB discs that fit into the same size as a regular 1.44MB floppy). They were superior to ZIP. It had slightly bigger capacity and people could get SuperDrives as a replacement to their floppy drive without losing a drive bay or floppy compatibility. Compaq for about a year was offering SuperDrives standard on their Deskpro line.
So why didn't SuperDrive beat ZIP? Because it wasn't first to market with the 10x advantage. All SuperDrive offered was marginal improvement to what ZIP offered. So no one adopted them. And of course, CD-R/RW eventually took over both.
If someone released a drive today that could store the equivalent of 100 CD's just like ZIP could store the equivalent of 100 floppies...that drive would be a success. 80GB on a single disc? Everyone would buy one. The issue of sharing is moot because of external drives. You would initially carry the drive around with you but since everyone would be wanting the new drive the problem goes away.
Just like CD-RW, which you conveniently forget to mention. You can take a CD-R nearly anywhere and read it but I dare you to try that with a CD-RW. It's only now that computers are starting to come with multiread CDs or CD-RW drives to access them. And now we have to content with CD-RW and CD-RW HighSpeed.
I stand by my argument. First to market with 10x advantage will take over and any problems with support and compatibility will work themselves out in due time.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
They're avoiding that matter entirely and jumping ahead to agree on the "next" format. Rather than quibble, the newer one will override the need to fret over the lower density format. It looks like the major players did something right for a change and chose to cooperate. I'll believe it when I see it.
Where's HP in all this? Weren't they making their own stuff, or were they using someone else's?
Yeah, the press release says licensing begins in the spring, but when will we actually see product? No mention of this is made. Good thing I read this today - I was just about to upgrade my early-2nd generation home player, and I'm wondering if I should put that off for 6 months, or not.
Also, will it be backwards compatible? Again, no mention in the press release.
kodak has been working on the mighty blue ray lasers for some time now. i remember about ten years ago on bloomberg tv's macintosh oriented show discussion on the implementation of bluelight lasers. that was in the days of four speed cd rom being the fast optical drive on the market. not that anyone will read this.
It ramps out at around 4Mbps for a standard TV signal because there's very little more to encode, have you *looked* at a video at 4Mbps? A HDTV version (about 6x the pixels) would use 6x the bitrate (the maximum setting is 6Mbps at the moment, but that doesn't have anything to do with the actual encoding algorithm, it's just a noumber set as an upper limit on a scale because 99.999% don't need any more than that at the moment.)
Broadcast production have a different set of requirements, they'd rather compress it as little as at all possible (for editing, archival purposes), and they don't want to deal with multiple formats. They just want a line to go camera -> editing -> sender (oversimplified) without hassle or loss of quality. This goes for TV studios and also for digital theaters.
Contrary to your +5, Insigtful I think the cable companies would like to give you 100 channels instead of 25, or PPV, or broadband.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...a single one of these replacing an entire Beowulf cluster of CD drives.
Oh goody.. not only is their watermarking algorithm available in every $100 device, it is vulnerable to a simple firmware patch
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
So much porn..... aghghghghghghgh.
I did not know that. The fact won't make my American friends regret kicking themselves for buying a BetaMax in the 1980's, but it's certainly food for thought. Thanks.
The fud is being thrown around today quite heavily. First of all those of you pissing your pants putting your DVD collection up on E-bay, your fear is 100% unfounded. This format is for HIGH DEFINITION video. Period. They are not gonna piss away regular dvd video on it, it has too much potential. Need I remind you that HD penitration is less than 10% maybe even 5%. Joe Sixpack who just picked up his Omni DVD player at Wal-Mart for 100 bucks is not going to buy this.
2. The caddy situation. The reason its in a caddy is stated "protection from dust and fingerprints". If you ever used DVD-RAM you'll understand this is a BENEFIT. DVD-RAM is absurdly sensitive to dust, scratches, fingerprints, etc. and after it reaches a certain level of any of those you either have to clean it or buy a NEW one. If your good and don't throw the shit around you won't have to buy another ever. (DVD-RAM has RW abality for up to 500,000 times)
So CHILL on the FUD PLEASE. We won't see this available for computers till summer. Probably in the $3000 range with media at $30-75. Set top boxes for video will be fall of 2003, don't forget they got DVHS on the way so it could be even longer. DVHS is dependant upon more studios coming on board, but I digress.
Please don't think that this going to take over the optical market the day it hits shelves. CDRs probably have another 2yrs at most in them. DVD-R/RW/+RW/RAM another 3-4 yrs.
Any errors were made on purpose.
DLF
with the SkipDoctor. In fact you can repair them up to 100 times each. This has saved me many times. Must be play-side damage, though.
Er... 27GBx2x2= 108GB. Not quite 18GBx10 (which is still kinda rare), but pretty close. Plus is has the familiarity (sp?) factor- "oh, same disc, more space!" or something like that. What feature(s) are going to make the millions or installed users of DVD going to switch to FMD? Remember, these are Joe 6Packs, not the average /.er who will hack the machines to make their 10's or 100's of DVDs work on a new machine. (Now I may be missing a bunch about FMD, I know little about it, so all my arguments may be moot. If so, forgive me- only so many hours/day.)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Isn't the banding together of the most powerful industry leaders to create and distribute a technology with low internal license fees to the patent holders involved and high barriers to entry for new companies actionable under the Antitrust laws? It gives an unfair advantage that does not benefit the consumer. I can't imaging the cost for an outside company to license this technology to produce the new discs in light of the worldwide fees tacked onto current media to offset piracy. And these don't go to the artists, but the organizations set up to protect the artists, so it would seem that this should be actionable as well. If you have a litigious industry, just help them along. :-)
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Bluray? Darnit! I got a DVD player because I wanted more clarity!
/pun
It might pay to put all the oldies on such a disk and reclaim the spectrum of all oldies stations.
You are confusing broadcast standards with recording standards.
Asia uses a mix of NTSC (Japan, S. Korea) and PAL (rest of Asia) for broadcast.
Commercial (news, etc) recording is done mostly in Beta everywhere. (Better quality)
I watched as beta tapes disappeared from video stores in Japan through the late 80's.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Q
Gotta wonder what's going on over at Toshiba... Why didn't they commit to the standard along with everyone else? Seems like they've been somewhere outside the DVD group for awhile now, but I have to wonder if they're going to try moving forward with a spec of their own. Anyone know what's up with them?
Dave Haas
Chief Operating Officer
PopCap Games
Blu-ray may not be 10x the capacity of existing DVD-RAM/RW but it's probably close enough: 27GB versus 4.7GB. Cringley's 10x rule assumes similar pricing for the competing technologies. Blu-ray is evolutionary rather than revolutionary and will have similar costs to existing technology. OTOH FMD may be more than 10x the capacity but it almost certainly be significantly more expensive. Finally, industry support seems to be behind Blu-ray rather than FMD.
I'm sure lots of you in recording will know what a pain in the ass it is to master your own DVD movie right now. This is step forward where we will nolonger have a DVD-RAM drive for data storage, a DVD-r drive for data transport and a DVD-Video capable (read hell of expensive) drive for video. I can finally see the DVD-R market take off now.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
But if the watermarking is irreversible (which, really, is the entire goal of watermarking content) then as soon as that footage hits the internet, they can (and likely will try) to track down whomever bought the disc in question (thus enters the unique ID, identifying beyond a shadow of a doubt who bought the disc, and whom to prosecute).
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Ok, I looked at the [xvid] site briefly and I can't find what you are referring to here.
I was referring to the perceptual coding in DivX.
But, uh... in exactly what circumstances? Because I can assure you that while you may not be able to distinguish between detail on a 21" monitor, put the same image(s) on a 90" front projection system and they'll SCREAM at you.
In that case, XviD users will just have to conduct tests with real projectors in order to find the right bitrate and make a suitable compression preset. What is the resolution of the existing film architecture again?
Will I retire or break 10K?
It won't happen, though, since these things will almost certainly be for sale at retail stores in exchange for anonymous cash.
Of course it's this type of thinking that will have the *AAs lobbying congress to do away with anonymous cash because it makes the pirates... err i mean terrorists win.
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
Hmm.. Blu Ray.. how can we change this into an acronym that rolls off the tongue easily?
How about.. BVD's: BluRay Versatile Discs (-: Will that be boxers or briefs?
They should've named it something without a bloody hyphen in it's name "Blu-ray" - I hate hyphenated words - drives me ape-bannanas!
This is also corrupting our kiddies' spelling abilities. Why not Blueray? Maybe they thought Blu-loo is a good toilet product and want to imitate/emulate it?
Imagine how much CowboyNeil you can fit on one of these new discs!!
so buy with cash fool!
and don't get all paranoid on me. Cash isn't going anywhere.
besides. the content industry is NOT interested in prosecuting individual pirates. It'd be too much of a public relations nightmare. They go after people who facilitate piracy. (Napster, the DeCSS kid etc.)
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
This only works if not ONE SINGLE DISC is stolen or misplaced...
Do a google search before posting.
You know, I would be satisfied with a writeable GD-ROM (1.2 GB). DivX ;) movies typically take up 2 CDs, so if Sega were to open it up and make GD-RW an option I think it would become more popular than any DVD format, simply because it's lacking that terrible DRM feature.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
"Cartridge dimension: Approximately 129 x 131 x 7mm"
I guess the different physical format means:- I can't burn any disc that can be used in my home CD or DVD player, regardless of encoding format
- I can't use one drive to access BlueRay and standard DVD/CD discs
Shucks.Not Found
The requested URL
We Pro-media types use Betacam (much faster tape speed)- not Betamax
First Betamax, then Betacam, then cam the
hi-band version Betacam SP.
The latest iterations Betacam SX and Digital Betacam all can trace their roots to the early
days of Sony Betamax but Betamax has now pretty
much disappeared.
You're half right--
1) True, the genie is literally out of the bottle once a disc is stolen or misplaced.
2) False, they can still track down non-stolen or misplaced copies to the source to prosecute those distributing pirated copies (or, less illegal, people who do what the studios don't WANT you to do, rip the movie, but for fair-use purposes (a backup, part of it used in a school report, etc)).
Just because someone breaks into your house doesn't mean you put the baseball bat down once they've touched your prized vase-- the MPAA certainly has many more fish to fry than a lost/stolen copy that lead to pirating a movie on the internet.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Using his idea, I'd presume that the algorithm would be implemented in some sort of hardware (a chip on the board inside the drive, for a PC), not part of the firmware. The studios are no doubt livid (no pun intended) over DeCSS, so I really wouldn't put it past them to think of every angle...
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
For those who want a DVD-video recorder: WAIT for this new format, this will really enhance the VCR experiance: direct access and capacity ...
How would this new DVD format be superior to using hard drives in TiVo-like devices? When the first "Blue Ray" drive hits the market (with its 27 GB per side capacity), I bet it will cost three times as much as a 130 GB hard drive, and have much slower read/write speeds.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
(Ultima Weapon)
"Blue Ray"
(animation lasting 2 minutes, culminating in energy beam being shot from Ultima's mouth)
99999 99999 99999
hehe
PS feel free to substitute "9999 9999 9999 9999" if you are a ff geek who doesn't hold with all that modern stuff...
graspee
2002-02-19 17:23:16 Next Generation DVD Standard (articles,hardware) (rejected)
...
Then, 30 minutes later
True enough. However, I have noticed that pirated copies often come from a single source as once it has been ripped and starts making the rounds through KaZaa, Morpheus, etc. there is no reason for a second party to rip it.
Do a google search before posting.
This'll never get read, but.. The issue is probably not _all_ data gets watermarked. Applications would not work well if their binary data is suddenly pseudo-randomly corrupted. This implies that there is some way to turn the chip off, and _this_ is usually a function of the embedded processor and it's (don't blink) firmware.
As for the actual algorithm.. who cares? If you really want to, you can reverse engineer most chips. It does take a determined adversary and some fairly pricey (100k+) equipment, though.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
All of asia does not in fact use beta, WE use VHS and have been seen the middle to late 80's. Please research your comments before making blanket generalizations.
Cree Research makes 'em.
Pretty nifty site.
Perfect for recorded full-motion holography with 6 track surround sound. Luv it.