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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 difference between blue, red and green lasers?
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Doesn't this mean that this is going to take more proscessing power? I mean, I may be a bit off my bonkers, but won't this also be a costly changover? A new decoding chip for every player? Why not make the next shift encompass both technologies?
~Anztac
Though the article is lean on details, this would fit suspiciously well into Microsoft's plan to have DVD players support Windows audio/video. 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.
The future isn't what it used to be.
the wavelengths of different color lasers are different. I believe blue and green are shorter than red and therefore would create much closer spaced pits and grooves on media. It would also therefore be able to read more data from the media.
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.
- More compression. Needs
CPU horsepower somewhere (drive? your desktop
CPU?), but CPU horsepower is dirt cheap today.
- Blue lasers. The shorter
your wavelength, the higher your recording
density. But red lasers are widespread and cheap,
while blue lasers in consumer devices are not
all that well understood and there is a very
limited supply at the moment.
If you're in the business of selling blue lasers, of course you want to promote method #2 above. But DVD companies are not in the business of selling blue lasers - they're in the business of selling content.Of course, the decision to not use blue lasers impacts those who use the disks for purposes other than what the DVD companies want. If you want to store data on the disk, the "new" DVD compression doesn't help you any. And if you want to play the new DVD's on your non-DVD-consortium-approved player, the new compression techniques will probably make your attempts more complicated (if not more illegal...)
Can you imagine how confusing Starwars would be if everyone's lasers were the same colour?
...does Joe Six-pack understand the differences between DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM? Do _I_ understand the differences between these formats? Do you? Does the recent el-cheapo DVD player I bought play 2-layer disks? Do I know? WILL I know until I try to put one of them in and find that it won't play?
And now we're going to have TWO competing high-definition DVD formats? And HDTV itself, or do I mean "digital TV," is six or is it eight different formats, which are high-definition, except when they aren't, that is they are high-ER definition but not HIGH definition, only you can't get the high definition, and all the digital TV formats are about to become obsolete...
Anyone who buys ANY HDTV or DVD gear until the dust settles has gotta be nuts.
But you sure have to be amazed at the complexity and ingenuity the industry is using to shoot itself in the foot.
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Comparison chart
I don't see a benifit especially in storage space for the red laser format.
Anybody have a reason other than politics?
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I don't know about you, but I am in more favor of a new media with increased capacity, rather than seeing more and more compression on screen. Some DVDs in the likes of Magnolia or Titanic hurt my eyes, because you notice compression artifacts so much.
A new DVD format may take 10 years to become really widespread, but isn't this what happened to DVDs and audio-CDs. I'm ready to accept this change.
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.
Blue is a colder color than red, therefor blue lasers can be overclocked more than red lasers.
:)
Today is Monday, and right now its 01:40, so you might want to go get your self a generous bowl of coffee and do something more constructive than this
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).
With the wavelength of the laser, the color varies! For example red has a wavelength of 622-780 nm and blue has a wavelenngth of 455-490 nm! Red Has the longest wavelength, followeed by orange, yellow, green, blue and violet which has the shortest wavelength! ...
Refer to this document for further information
Life sucks.
I hear ya: I was watching the director's cut of "Aliens" on laser last night.
I do, however, like the price of DVD vs. Laserdiscs. New lasers were still running around CAN$70 to 80, whereas a new DVD will be around CAN$20 to 30. DVD's also don't have nasty sidebreaks every 30 minutes like CAV's do/did.
It was nice to see a movie fade to black without nasty compression artifacts/posterizing! Also, DVD's are smaller and lighter and a bit more convenient to carry around from place to place.
However, like with vinyl, I can guarantee there'll be movies on laser that simply never end up on DVD, mainly from studio apathy. I mean how many damn records do I own that are OOP and not available on CD?!
Ah well, at least I'll always have a copy of the original Star Wars trilogy without the crappy "special edition" footage! Mua ha ha!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
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.
Careful--they're not just changing the bitrate, they're also changing the codec. MPEG-4 yields much lower distortion for a given bitrate than MPEG-2. The tradeoff is in the increased CPU requirements.
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.
I think it would be great if a high-def DVD format came out in the next year, but it probably won't. Why limit things while still using 9GB DVD's? I don't understand the immediate need. DVD's are doing wonderful, and DVD's in progressive scan look great. We can wait 2 years for blue laser players to become a reality, it won't hurt anything to keep DVD's going longer, people are going to be mad about switching anyway.
The solution of the Red laser camp seems to be better compression (good) better post processing (good) but on the same size disc (bad). Switching formats is a hard transition for everyone, why don't they really switch formats and go for something that will be good enough to last for 10 years. Put blue laser discs, Mpeg 4, and good pre and post processing together and you have something that just may stand the test of time, like CD's. CD's are the first technology that I can remember that could possibly be called 'good enough'. I still want DVD-Audio and SACD to do well, but CD's are the first consumer technology that was really limited by how well they were made and the equipment used to play them back then by the format itself. These technology companies have the chance to do that now, with video, but it doesn't look like they are going to take it.
Look back in history to other formats that were just better use of the same space. SVCD, HDCD (20 bit CD) SVHS, the list goes on. They didn't do too well did they? What makes these companies think that 7 Mbit Mpeg 4 is going to look good enough to make people want to switch? There will compression artifacts all over at high resoltuions. Now 1080p 24fps, that is a beautiful thing and will make people drool.
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An earlier slashdot article stated that 90% of chipset makers have already signed on to include the low-bitrate MS codec. This post should not have been modded as "Troll".
To me this sounds a lot like SVHS, superior technology that only the professionals buy because they're the only ones with the equiptment to use it (these new DVDs aren't going to look significantly better on a standard consumer TV). Worse, because only professionals use it the companies have to price it at professional rates, virtually guarenteeing that the average consumer never even sees it. When was the last time you saw an SVHS player at Walmart? How many people even have S Video jacks on their TV? Most of the people I know still hook up their TV through the Coax because that's the only input their TV has.
I read the internet for the articles.
First, Hollywood is in the business of selling you the same thing over and over and over again. Theatrical release, Original VHS Release, DVD Release, DVD with director's Comments, DVD with Never-Before-Seen Footage, DVD Remastered Specially for Progressive-Scan Output. Oh, and now DVD for HDTV. Probably in 3 different formats, too, released 6 months apart so you'll buy all 3 of them, 480p, 720p, and then 1080i.
Really, how many versions of Star Wars and E.T. do you have???
Second, (I'm taking this on faith, never having seen 1080i HDTV) the current standard is "ok" only by comparison to the crap that is VHS analog playback. Now, whether or not low-bitrate red-laser DVD will be at the quality of 25mbit/sec broadcast HDTV... I dunno. I can hope, but I'm not exactly optimistic.
Third, don't think for a minute that this won't have a whole new collection of Son-of-CSS encryption built-in to prevent unauthorized copying.
Reasons enough?
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If blue lasers become common for DVD recorders, but the studios stick with red-laser, low-bit rate encoding for films they release, it will be possible, nay, likely, that pirates will release high-bit-rate movies that will be superior to the studio versions. That would be the ultimate insult -- with video tape, pirate copies were always worse than the originals -- with DVD they could be exactly the same, but if this decision goes through -- they could be better.
Interesting times.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Sure MPEG-4 decoding requires more transistors than MPEG-2, but Moore's law will take care of that. The money saved by having only one (cheap) red laser instead of a red laser and an expensive blue laser makes up for more money spent on the decoder chip.
"Given the strong representation of consumer electronics companies on the steering committee roster, the door is likely closed to proprietary schemes like Microsoft's Windows Media codec, code-named Corona."
Look back in history to other formats that were just better use of the same space. SVCD, HDCD (20 bit CD) SVHS, the list goes on. They didn't do too well did they?
SVCD did well, but not in the United States.
HDCD was not a new format but merely a mastering technique. The label made sure that the master data had at least 20 bits of precision, then they quantized to 16-bit in such a way as to shove all the dither noise into the 16-22 kHz band where humans can't hear very well.
SVHS and Betacam SP are still used in professional television equipment.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It still doesn't hide the fact that [noise-shaped mastering] isn't widely accepted.
Ever look at your CDs through Cool Edit's spectrograph? If, during quiet parts, you see a lot of noise (up to -40 dB) in the 16-22 kHz band, that's noise-shaping. (I see this on lots of albums.) If during a song's fade-out, the audio remains relatively clear even down to -70 or -80 dB, that's noise-shaping. (I'm still impressed by how clean the fade-outs on Genesis - Turn It On Again The Hits sound.) About half of the CDs that my family has bought and ripped recently had been mastered with a noise-shaping technology.
SVHS may be used elsewhere but it isn't really a consumer technology in that movies are not distributed in SVHS.
Likewise, hard drives may be used elsewhere but it isn't really a consumer technology in that movies are not (legitimately) distributed on hard drives.
Will I retire or break 10K?
NTSC content is 720x480 (not counting blanking lines), not 640x480.
1080i is, as you said, 1920x1080. 720p is 1280x720, but progressive (obviously). Once the blanking lines are added in, 720p and 1080i use exactly the same bandwidth, which is very close to 6x that of NTSC.
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Quick corrections (I'm a laser specialist)...
Most of what you said was true a couple years ago, but it's been changing, mostly due to the entertainment industry (get to that in a second...)
Green DPSS lasers (frequency doubled solid-state, as opposed to dye or ion gas lasers) use a very powerful infra-red (either 800 nm or 1.3 um) laser diode, usually 250 mW or higher... fire that at a Yag crystal or rod. The Yag crystal absorbs the infra-red light and lases at 1048 nm. For those who don't know frequencies, 400 is a deep blue, 550 is green, and 650 is deep red. You can see a powerful enough 750 nm beam, but most of the light is invisible.
Anyways, the Yag crystal lases at 1048 and a KDP crystal in the optic resonator doubles the frequency, giving a wavelength of 524 nm. Though there are some loses in the KDP, this is more then made up for by the efficiency of the resonating cavity itself; one of the mirrors is totally reflective to 1048 nm, but totally transparent to 524 nm... any green light passes straight through it.
Most DPSS solutions these days are made for entertainment. Someone figured out that there was a way to take DPSS and make it Continuous Wave (CW), thereby making it suitable for laser light shows. This was more expensive than ion gas lasers at the time (though that's not true any more), but was still attractive because its a much simpler design, has no moving parts, does not require expensive and difficult to maintain cooling, and can be housed in a much smaller box.
As far as cost... if one looks carefully, one can usually find a 5 mW model for between $100-$200. Watts per dollar goes up sharply, I think hitting a peak at 60 mW somewhere around $400-500.
If anyone reading this wants to know more, or acquire one of these... e-mail me at merlin_jim on hotmail.
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Given that Microwaves and X-rays are even smaller tha blue lasers (spectrum)
Why not skip-to-the-end so to speak. I know they have x-ray lasers. And Microwave technology is pretty well known by now. Seems kinda silly to be in the visible spectrum at all anymore.
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