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.

Comments

These could be excellent backup devices.

[thesolo]

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.

Re:Just mpeg-2?

[TechnoVooDooDaddy]

i'm finding it a common misperception that mpeg-4 is automatically assumed to be "better" than mpeg-2. mpeg-2 works really well in situations where broadcast quality (or better) video is needed, and space isn't necessarily a limiting factor. A bitrate of 4mb per second and judicious use of the AFF (advanced field frame) tech will get you amazing quality video and sound. Mpeg-4 comes into it's own and is useful in situations where space is an issue. 27G (per side?) is more than enough for a movie, or two... with a lot of extras thrown in.

as my daddy use to say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Digital Rights Management is present

[kris_lang]

Actually, the press release directly addresses the issue of Digital Rights Management. To quote:

"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."

This is positive news ...

[FonkiE]

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.

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 ;-) 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.

To those who need DVD-R right now, nothing has changed, buy a player, I've seen discs as cheap as $3 ;-) And the DVR-A-03 is very cheap too.

For those who want a DVD-video recorder: WAIT for this new format, this will really enhance the VCR experiance: direct access and capacity ...

Re:This is positive news ...

[dy_dx]

contrary to the knee-jerk "big companies are out to get me" reflex, they are NOT trying to give you a fragile format to take your money.

in fact almost every aspect of how CD/DVD's work is designed to improve performance in the face of scratch/dust distortion.

the reason that the pitted layer is on the far side of the disc from the lense is specifically so that dust particles and scratches on the plastic surface are effectively ignored by the optics (outside of the laser's/lenses' depth of focus).

the CIRC (cross-interleaved reed-solomon coding) error control scheme is designed very specifically to correct for burst errors caused by continous physical damage to the disc (i.e. a scratch). the math these things use is pretty nuts (i was amazed to find out that my discman uses abstract algebra). they can completely correct something like a 3800 bit burst of errors and an audio CD can conceal a 13000 bit error burst easily (even using a cheap n' easy concealment technique like sample-and-hold).

the only reason CD's don't do better than this is because further error protection would take up even more data space. would you rather never hear a skip on your 35 minute CD or hear occasional distortion on your 74 minute CD...or would you rather shrink the feature size for bigger capacity and pay for it with hugely more complicated and expensive optics and feedback control?

everything is a trade-off in engineering design. the CD standard made their design choices to improve performance/price though, not to feed the industrial monster by reselling CD's.

It'll have next-gen CSS

[yerricde]

From the article:

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.

FMD: upto 200GB on dvd-like disc, so..

[mysty]

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...

Re:At any given bitrate, mpeg4 is better...

[Zathrus]

You make good points about MPEG-2 vs 4 and the trade-offs, but you're (pseudo) incorrect about it not having enough storage capacity.

27 GB at HDTV resolution gives you nearly 2.5 hours of video (note that HDTV tops out at approx. 22 Mbps as I recall). 27 GB/22 Mbps = 9818 seconds or 2.7 hours (don't forget to convert bytes to bits, and I'm assuming base 10 for giga/mega, not base 2).

So yeah, the longer movies such as LotR, Lawrence of Arabia, etc. would be a bit squeezed for space. Until you consider that that was for a single layer disk. The spec allows for dual layer disks with a capacity around 50 GB. That's... adequate. If you STILL run into space issues, shunt all the extra features onto a second disk. And that'll happen, because no matter how much space is available, you'll still want more.

Re:Return Of Q&A with Heinous Turdballs!

[Juggler cant juggle]

LOL! And it's all true aswell!