Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
...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.
HDTV.
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
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.
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
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
For those buying, pick up the the player, the recorder, the DVD playable media, and the recordable media and pay for the transactions in cash. Give no identifying information.
The unique IDs are still present, but are now meaningless unless they can be traced back through a single internet userid to an actual individual. Then they can be used as evidence when a search warrant is executed, and the equipment is matched to the compromised unique IDs.
Mixmaster remailers and mail to news gateways, or non-centralized P2P strongly encrypted data streams may be the order of the day for those wishing to share copies of movies. In the P2P model though, you _could_ end up sharing your movie with someone who works for the MPAA, and then an encrypted P2P path won't necessarily help you. The mixmaster path might still work.
All the industry needs to do is successfully track and prosecute a few individuals (who weren't careful enough) in the first year after releasing the new watermarked media and equipment, make sure the cases are publicized widely, and they'll have successfully generated the public feeling of caution and fear that will keep _most_ people honest. Then they only need to make sure one or two instances get prosecuted/publicized per year as a public "reminder" that it doesn't pay to screw with the MPAA.
Am I happy about this? No... It casts a chilling effect on people who really _do_ want to use stuff fairly within the concept of "fair use" such as making personal backups, or using pieces of media for educational purposes.
And frankly, if the industry can't make their content interesting enough that a majority of people want to rush right out and buy it, then they should just admit that their stuff is priced too high to spark interest, or that they need to pay more attention to the quality.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I don't expect them to listen to me at all.
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
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/em8470seri
http://investor.indigovision.com/indigovisio
http://www.lsilogic.com/products/c
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
Because MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 have two very different design purposes.
MPEG-2 was developed for highest quality video. On the consumer end, DVDs use bitrates around 8-10Mbps and on the professional end MPEG-2 4:2:2 is something huge like 45Mbps. The compression makes it more managable but it's really just a cursory thing, throw away redundant frame area, etc.
Now on the other hand MPEG-4 was developed for highest possible compression. Your basic DivX file is around 1Mbps or so and looks pretty darn good. But the compression doesn't ramp up...I think it tops out at around 4Mbps. That's probably sufficient for most consumer applications but the professionals need more.
MPEG-4 will continue to be the format of choice for streaming video or other things where bandwidth cost and availablity is the main issue. But MPEG-2 will continue to be the choice in closed systems like cable networks, tv studios, digital theaters, etc.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
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
I would certainly take this with a grain of salt. While we all WOW to the capacity it is still to be seen when _recorders_ for this format will show up. Please also note that only at the end of the article they mention the "future" use for data. On the other side count the number of appearances for "brodcasting...video compression....copyright protection....". So I wouldn't hold my breath to wait for the next burner to save my dear pr0n^H^H^H^H data on such a disk.
/.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
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