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Red vs. Blue Lasers Complicate DVD's Future
bnavarro writes: "The EE Times is reporting that the DVD Forum's Steering Committee voted this week to approve the use of low-bit-rate compression for high-definition DVD. The DVD Forum's decision, made at a meeting Tuesday (Feb. 26) in Tokyo, to stick with a red-laser-based scheme but switch to low-bit-rate compression, came only a week after nine of the world's biggest electronics companies agreed to promote a blue-laser-based format for next-generation video and computer optical disks."
The companies do one thing, but the standard commitee approve another?
Perhaps they should try talking to each other.
Just out of curiosity - could the electronics companies just go ahead and use what they want, or would they then be 'not allowed' to use the DVD name because it doesnt conform to the predetermined standards?
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What's the point in changing standards when the current one is ok? I mean current DVD technology is good enough for most video uses. This "improvement" can merely scare people from buying that DVD players to replace their VHS systems. It's too early to change standards! I mean VHS lasted for more than ten years and so should the current DVD technology.
IVAN Nethack is not the king anymore.
The point is that while DVD looks great on most standard TV's, HDTV's are another matter. Suddenly you can see lots of compression artifacts. This isn't much of an issue now, but it will be soon enough.
I doubt DVD2, or whatever it will be called, will arrive in the next 5 years and if it does it will be in parallell with the current technology and cater mostly to videophiles and gadget freaks. There's a lot of money to be made from early adopters.
I for one think it's a great idea to decide on a standard before companies start producing their own technologies. That has caused problems again and again. Nice to see people are learning from past mistakes.
What's the difference between blue, red and green lasers?
Green laser pointers use an infra-red laser diode, with a yag crystal to double the frequency. Also, they increase the brightness of the beam by turning in on and off at about a 60/40 duty cycle, while driving the diode at a higher current than it could handle at 100% duty. You can actually see this by moving the dot back and forth quickly - it appears as a dashed line.
They're a neat toy if you've got $400 to burn (last I checked).
I've been thinking about getting a DVD-ROM drive (and maybe a DVDRW as well) for my pc for a long time.
For the purposes of mass digital storage (like backing up many gigs) as well as dvd ripping.
What would you guys suggest I do? Wait until the "standards" become standards? How do I know when the right time is?
Should I wait for this fabled 28G on one disc?
Sigs pose an operational security risk and help the baddies aggregate data. I guess commenting does too, oops.
I'm not a Microsoft fan, but I've got to admit that idea of downloading a 700 MB .wmv file, burning it to a CD and being able to play it back in my DVD player at DVD quality is quite enticing.
And what on earth makes you think Microsoft's patented DRM will ever allow you to do that? If you want to be able to move your content from medium to medium as you see fit, without restriction, your only real long term hope is to use free software. Of course, if the SSSCA is passed theres a good chance free operating systems, such as FreeBSD and GNU/Linux, will be outlawed as a result.
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"OTOH, the electronics companies benefit from the blue laser format, since blue lasers are still Really Expensive.Guess which format the electronics companies are pushing?"
But that's the confusion.
If the blue laser is better in doing the job but is more expensive for the manufacturers, then why: "...nine of the world's biggest electronics companies agreed to promote a blue-laser-based format for next-generation video and computer optical disks." The electronics companies are the ones who have to make millions of blue laser readers for all the people to read them, the dvd sellers only have to buy 10 writers to make millions of dvds, more if they have the throughput needs, in which case they have the money.
it would seem to me that it's backwards.
Also:
consumers want inexpensive larg capacity DVD burners. If the cost of the burner is $300 but could store on a 5 dollar disk more than most standard hard drives (50G), I'd buy it. It's like having 50g drives, which, I'm sorry but I only use for archiving anyway. there's no way I access over 50g activly, I compile it and store it, perhaps change around 20 gigs if I'm organizing or cleaning house. Tape drives aren't cheap and they're lame as far as tech and time. searching sucks and dvd is sooo much faster.
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Actually, people are buying HDTV for DVD players now. Progressive scanning DVD players, that is. 480p is technically a DTV standard and you can only watch 480p on a DTV or HDTV. Most people who buy HDTV (and I sell a lot of HDTV) buy a progressive scanning DVD players. (you can get one for like $170 now)
Also, the 16x9 formats usually have an enhanced mode for widescreen DVDs. So there's a lot of reason to have an HDTV now and use existing DVD technology. 480p is still pretty sharp compared to the crap we watch over cable.
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At the end of the day, it comes down to the analogous course that music has taken: the record to 8-track to cassette to CD to MP3 trip. How many times do I have to buy the White Album? How many times do I have to buy Top Gun? How many times are consumers willing? You have to space out these changes, with "mandatory" switches no earlier than ten years apart. Any more frequent and people get burned out chasing the technological carrot.
I cannot believe these industry "expert" groups. They claim that the main reason for using red lasers is cost. However, they seem to "forget" that using a low-bit rate technology as opposed to a blue laser actually will INCREASE costs since supporting MPEG-4 will require higher processing power, and thus more powerful and more expensive silicon.
BUT most important to consumers is the fact that MPEG-4 compression is just NOT SUITABLE for high-definition content which is meant to be seen on a decently large screen (29 inches and above). MPEG-4 simply produces too many artifacts (even today with low-bit-rate MPEG-2 you can see on cable how dark images in motion seen to leave a "ghost" behind).
So now the REAL REASON why they (the content providers) still want to pursue red-laser: They get to give consumers a low-quality version of the video image!!! By doing this they feel they are protecting their investment, while in reality they are simply giving consumers a low-quality solution.
If and once they provide this stupid red laser approach for high resolution video, what they effectively will have done is invite third parties to come with competing high-quality products (which sadly will probably will never be supported with popular content since there is a monopoly among the content providers and media player producers), OR some hackers will come up with a scheme to rip high-quality video out of HD broadcast (for TV or movie theatres) and distribute it in a competing format themselves over the Internet. In other words, Napster all over again because for the same reason as before: they industry is NOT thinking about what consumers want, and what consumers want is a high-quality display system to match their new TV.