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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.
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?
And I just bought a DVD+RW drive yesterday.
"There is no substitute for thinking" - Bjarne Stroustrup
Royalty payments.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Well, with 27GB, I don't see anyone needing MPEG-4, really... besides, it seems to me there are as many disparate ways to do MPEG-4 and cousins as there are ways to record a DVD-size disc.
What gets me is that it seems we'll be needing a new round of DVD players just to play the damned things. Why no backwards compatibility? It seems to me nobody decided to create a "next-generation CD" that was completely unplayable on any current CD player.
...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."
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.
As far as players go, don't forget VCD, SVCD, MP3, and of course good ole' CD (DA).
Seriously though - I doubt that this will make a dent in the market now. People have spent a lot of money on their current DVD system, by the time that most people are ready to go back out and spend again 27GB will probably seem quite small. I can see this as a physical computer data storage format more than anything as DVD never quite took off in that arena.
BTW, has anybody been keeping up WRT to the artists suing the RIAA and individual labels over royalties from streaming media/mp3s. From what I read in the NYT (free registration req.), an artist/band will make $0.01 for every 4 songs of theirs that I download. The artists are saying that if they are not going to make any money off of their music being online, then they will just release it online for free to begin with.
Anyways, I was just checking with if anybody else read this. Can anybody help me with my Interest Rate Swaps homework. It's due later today and I'm stuck.
Keeping
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.
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.
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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
Actually, while you're right for the most part in what you say, I've read (both in stories here on /. and elsewhere) that MPEG-4, at the bitrates used by MPEG-2, outperforms MPEG-2. MPEG-4 though was designed for streaming (internet based) media, not the kind of stuff you'd see on DVD/Blu-ray discs.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
No kidding, this is the one thing that's really been a let-down about DVD-- no support for *true* HDTV. We'll all be re-buying our DVD libraries when the new TV standard takes hold in a few years...
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
"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
To the companie's credit, their press release never says this is a "next-generation DVD". It's just a high capacity optical disc which will be used to store video. Just like DVD's were never meant to be a "next gen LaserDisc", these discs are their own format. They don't even have the same form factor as DVD's since they are encased in a cartridge like the old MO drives that NeXT used.
The reason they didn't even try to make them backwards compatable is that the technology is entirely dependent on using blue lasers for reading, something which current DVD's don't have. So they would have had to sacrifice most, if not all, of the increased density to make them readable in current DVD players. And if they did that, who would care? Sometimes backwards compatability has to be dropped if you want an increase in performance. Now, whether or not consumers will see "Blue-ray" as being good enough to justify dropping DVD's remains to be seen.
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®.
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I'm assuming the 'unique ID' is written to a normally non-writable part of the disc (for Blu-ray writers/burners), so yes, this is part of it I imagine (the player/reader would validate that this unique ID existed and was properly initialized). The other side of it that I can see is media watermarking using the 'unique ID' as a key to encrypt/mark with. Watermarking, if done properly (and I'm not claiming to be an expert), would be irreversable and potentially trackable (ie: Joe Nobody buys 'The Fifth Element' on a shiny new Blu-Ray disc from his local Fred Meyer/Hastings/Sam Goody. Joe Nobody rips the movie and encodes it into a semi-high quality DiVX (or some other format, VCD, etc). The watermark survives the recompression, but Joe Nobody doesn't know this and distributes it on Gnutella/FreeNet/eDonkey2000. MPAA Lawyer downloads enough of the movie off of one of these file sharing utilities and uses an application to 1) extract the watermark, 2) correlate the watermark with the store the disc was sold at and 3) identify the individual to whom the disc was sold. MPAA lawyer dispatches law enforcement to Joe Nobody's place of residence.).
It's disconcerting, to say the least. And this is definately an all-new format, nothing in the press release or BBC article seem to indicate that the discs will work in existing DVD drives, so this is the studios/MPAA's "second chance" to get copy protection implemented correctly.. I'm sure after the DeCSS beating they got, they're definately looking at every possibility they have...
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
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.
agreed, it does seem a little strange not to include MPEG4 - you could conceivably use it for interactive menus if nothing else - and that means authoring with standard tools. Not many people seem to realise that the current DVD-Video standard also fully supports MPEG1 (although NOT Layer 3 audio for some inexplicable reason).
That was classic intercourse!
The early cr-recorders used cartridges. So did most of the Bernoulii-type MO disks. People didn't like the cartridges.
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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).
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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)
I tell people this and even the ones with digital-everything with HDTV setups look confused when I mention it.
It's a nasty little detail about DVDs that is never mentioned. That, and the fact that they will degrade over time. Looks like one complements the other?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
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.
Backwards compatibility would be the new drive being able to play old DVDs and CDs (probably with a cartrage you have to put the old disk in), not being able to play the new media in an old drive. Much like current DVD players are (mostly) backwards compatible with CDs and (sometimes) CD-R and CD-RW.
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.
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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
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
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
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
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.
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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.
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
/.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
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.
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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
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
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
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.
The protective cover is the BEST thing about it!
I have more scratched CDs than I know what to do with. This is not a problem for a typical adult with a few dozen CDs in jewel cases. It is a serious problem if a) the CDs are played a lot in the car, where the driver can't put them away while driving, and/or b) the kids play games, and don't exactly handle CDs with kid gloves. I've learned all sorts of tricks for getting around scratches, but none work that well. The best, btw, is an LG CD-RW drive that simply reads through them better than anything else I own. I burn replacements using CloneCD or some other program. In a serious case of a scratched music disk, I convert to MP3 and burn back, substituting a "napster'd" copy of the unsalvageable track; I consider that fair use!
Dataplay uses a 3"-floppy-like cartridge. Nice, but a bit small in capacity. BluRay's 5" CD in a cart will be very helpful. Caddys may have been a schlep but on balance I miss them.
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.
why not? with MPEG-4, you could have an entire TV season on one disk at HDTV quality.
i certainly wouldn't mind that.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
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.
A lot of money?
.) ALWAYS displays a blue APEX screen and CANNOT be turned off except by walking up to it and hitting the big red button.
I spent $20 on my Lite-On DVD drive for my computer.
DVD home entertainment systems just plain suck. . . . well they do! The ease of use factor is a pain unless you get a setup that supports automatic changing between inputs based upon detected signals, and even then the standalone DVD player that I do have (last fr*cking stand alone POS I buy. . .
Which is a major pain, at least 50 friggin buttons on the remote and I gotta get up to turn it off or on. -_-
Computers are superior for this thing, and they cost a lot less in the long run too.
Heck my 266mhz PentiumII is perfectly capible of playing DVD video, just would cost me $20-$30 for a DVD-ROM drive.
From now on my entertainment center is that video out cable for my Matrox G400 MAX dual head, the audio splitter cable(s), and whatever 5.25in drive is in style at the time.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
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?
Agreed, however most /.ers are not the normal consumer.
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
Will the industry introduce new annoying concepts which will keep me from making my backup copy?
Absolutely. It seems clear to me that Blu-Ray is not intended to benefit the consumer. The plan is to phase in these new disks with superior copy-prevention technology, then to phase out the old vanilla DVDs. Digital Rights Management with some kind of secure path will make unauthorized copying much more difficult. Also, expect certain disk ID ranges to require explicit permission sent from the content owner before temporarily allowing themselves to be played, in effect, a resurrection of the old (non-winky) Divx concept. Gear up for battle.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
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.
(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
LOL! And it's all true aswell!