Father of DVD Interviewed

An Anonymous Coward writes "Interview with Koji Hase. Talks about some of the interesting history behind the DVD format, copyright protection, and competing formats for audio."

Comments

Pet Peeve and question.

[line-bundle]

The worst thing I find about DVD is region encoding. Why is it there? It seems they wanted to put something to replace the PAL/SECAM/NTSC barrier. But I feel it might not help at all because people will (are?) buying Region 1 DVD player (I am from region 6 or thereabouts and things only appear for our region after decades).

And a question. Is the NTSC stuff encoded on the DVD or is it an artifact of the conversion from digital to analong of the image?

Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[l1gunman]

The 'logic' behind region encoding is to allow the motion picture industry to phase the release of movies across the globe.

Not all movies are released at the same time in all countries. They usually are released in the US first, Europe and Japan next, etc. A movie may actually be released on DVD or VHS in the US before it hits the theatres in some countries.

Regional playback controls are thus an attempt to keep DVD sales from eating into theatre revenues in countries where theatre release is significantly later in time than it is in the US.

I don't agree with it, but that's the reason.

What if the hokey-pokey really is what it's all about?

Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[Jordy]

I always hated this argument because old movies that are no longer in theaters are also put on region locked discs.

Examples of region locked discs (from IMDB):

* The Wizard of Oz (1939)
* Gone with the Wind (1939)
* Snow White (1937)
* Tron (1982)
* Star Trek 1 (1979)
* Casablanca (1943)
* The Maltese Falcon (1941)

I could go on and on and on.

The real reason for region control is price fixing, plain and simple.

Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[cowbutt]

I always hated this argument because old movies that are no longer in theaters are also put on region locked discs.

Examples of region locked discs (from IMDB):

[snip]

I could go on and on and on.

The real reason for region control is price fixing, plain and simple.

I kinda bought Hollywood's "we want to stagger DVD release dates because we need to stagger cinema releases because we don't have enough prints to go round" argument until I noticed this for myself a couple of months ago (not having really paid much attention to DVD until then...)

This is basic economics; if you're able to artificially segment your market, you'll optimise the total revenue by charging the most each segment will pay for your product. Without region coding, europeans like me would probably be importing all our DVDs from S-E Asia or the US where they're cheaper.

Playing the DVD game ensures you'll get screwed by the content publishers because the rules have been set by them entirely to their advantage. I've chosen not to play (apart from region-free discs such as music...)

--

Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[sph]

The worst thing I find about DVD is region encoding. Why is it there?

The original idea was to prevent importing movies on DVD from other regions before they actually hit cinemas locally. The point has become somewhat vague, because many discs are released only on some region, so many people have to resort to importing to get all the stuff they like. Interestingly, lately many blockbusters have opened at cinema almost simultaneously worldwide, which is definitely a good development. I wouldn't be surprised if this was at least partly because of the DVD importing still being possible despite region codes.

It seems they wanted to put something to replace the PAL/SECAM/NTSC barrier.

That barrier still exists on DVDs, but it's easier to overcome than with VHS. There are PAL and NTSC discs. Every PAL player can also play NTSC discs, but only some NTSC players can play PAL discs. If component signal is used (RGB is very common in Europe) you don't have to bother with color encodings, only whether your television can sync to 50/60Hz and display all the lines needed.

Is the NTSC stuff encoded on the DVD or is it an artifact of the conversion from digital to analong of the image?

Picture on DVD is fully digital MPEG-2, hence it has no NTSC, PAL or SECAM color encoding. Picture resolution and FPS still match either NTSC or PAL (SECAM has same specs as PAL, so there are no SECAM discs), because almost every display device used with DVDs still uses them. NTSC resolution on DVD is 720x480, while PAL is 720x576. Player handles 2:2 (PAL) or 3:2 (NTSC) pulldown on film material, and is also responsible for generating actual NTSC/PAL/SECAM color encoding if something else than component signal is used in connecting player to the display device. Needless to say, using component signal gives the best image quality you can achieve without going progressive, because it requires no additional signal format conversions after DA-conversion.

It's also good to note that because of the slight differences between NTSC and PAL discs, well-encoded PAL disc has better picture and smoother movement than well-encoded NTSC disc.

Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[MtViewGuy]

I think once digital projection for movie theaters becomes common by 2010, the idea of phased release of movies may become obselete.

The reason for phased release is simple: the very high cost of duplicating movie prints (each complete set for a 120-minute movie costs about US$2,500 to US$3,000 and you have to make about 6,000 to 8,000 prints for a blockbuster movie; you also have to factor into the cost of shipping each 35 mm print set weighing 210 pounds each for a 120-minute movie).

With the development of blue-spectrum LED lasers in the last few years, a theatrical-quality digital movie could probably fit on a single 300 mm optical disc; given today's technology to master and duplicate optical discs it'll probably be substantially cheaper to master and duplicate 8,000 optical discs than 8,000 film prints, not to mention shipping costs being a very tiny fraction of a 35 mm movie print! :-)

With that substantial drop in duplicating and shipping costs simultaneous worldwide release of blockbuster movies may become the norm, not the exception.

Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[squiggleslash]

That's a commonly held view, and is not the reason, though it may be "a" reason. Traditionally, motion picture producers have divided up the rights to distribute their movie to a group of studios, rather than just one. For instance, Universal might have the "North American" rights, and Fox might have the "Rest of world" rights. The studios in turn tend to farm out redistribution of films in home video format: one company might be given the rights to the VHS version, another laserdisc/special edition DVD, another DVD, etc. Quite often, the rights are given to multiple distributors within the same market, so you might find the same film released by Diamond and Criterion, for instance, as long as the two versions are aimed at different markets.

What region encoding does it provide a means to prevent distributors who do not want to compete with one another from doing so. A producer can sell rights to a DVD producer in the US to produce US-only DVDs, knowing that they can sell to another in Europe without the European distributor believing that they'd be in competition with the US distributor. As the marketing plan for the European DVD may differ radically from the US distributor, there is a potential conflict, especially, if the US distributor is competing with another US distributor, and a price war spills over into the EU with people finding it cheaper to import dumped DVDs than buy from the EU distributor.

That's why films like The Pit and the Pendulum, The Great Escape, etc, are being region coded, despite having been released around the world decades before DVDs were even a Valentian wet dream.

This is the real reason. It has nothing to do with staged releases. It probably wasn't originally to do with screwing customers, though that's the ultimate effect.

My personal opinion: Dixons, Currys, etc, the major consumer electronics retailers in the UK, should stop selling Region Two, or even Region Free, DVD players, and start exclusively selling Region One players - which are cheaper anyway. That would seriously screw up the market - DVD importers would have a field day, DVD player buyers would have more choice, Region Two distributors would essentially be forced to sell unlocked discs or bi-regional discs or face ruin in the UK, and long term the entire concept of region encoding would be discredited to the point I doubt any attempt would be made to implement it for DVDng.

Well, I can dream...

Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[nathanh]

Since NTSC is about 30fps (well 29.97) and PAL is 25fps they record DVDs in different formats i think (lets ignore SECAM). I thought a much smarter solution would be to store the film at 24fps on the disk

They do store the film at 24fps on the disc. The difference between a PAL disc and an NTSC disc is the resolution. PAL is 720x576 and NTSC is 720x480. The player converts the 24fps MPEG stream into 50fps or 60fps for the telly.

Be aware there's an incredible problem with the frame rate conversion. NTSC is 3:2 (odd frames twice, even frames thrice) which converts 24 fps into 60fps neatly. PAL is 2:2 (show each frame twice) which converts 24fps into 48fps. But PAL TVs are syncing at 50fps! So PAL DVD players actually show the movie a little bit fast to keep the frames syncing. This pitch shifts the audio track enough to be irritating, especially if you are playing DVD music (meaning music on DVD, not DVD-A).

Fortunately if you know the problem you can work around it. Some DVD players can output a bastardised format called PAL60. This is the PAL colour encoding at 60Hz. Almost any modern Australian TV supports this bastardised format.

Though an even better solution would be consumer-grade multisync TVs. Then you could sync the TV at 24fps and ignore the upsampling process. I don't know if any consumer-grade DVD player can output 24fps.

Re:Now THAT's the attitude I like!

[cperciva]

Somehow, I can't quite see that quote coming from the average corporate suit, where "proprietary" is regarded as a feature not a flaw...

You don't understand, do you? Obsolescence is a feature, not a flaw.

How big is a CD?

[line-bundle]

In the section concerning dataplay.com he says: This new, compact, one-inch optical disc is the digital storage medium of the future for pre-recorded or user-recorded data or tunes. Capacities for these once-recordable discs run up to 500Mb, holding more than 11 hours of high-quality MP3 files or over five hours of CD-quality music.

I had thought that one hour of CD quality music is about 600Mb, so how does he get over five hours of CD-quality music?

Flash or HTML

[captaineo]

The one thing I wish were done a little differently with DVD (from the perspective of one who occasionally needs to author them) is the menu system. Instead of DVD's convoluted, proprietary menu implementation, I'd really prefer to see something like Flash or even dynamic HTML with Javascript. Imagine what DVD creators could do if they knew every DVD player had a Flash interpreter... (acknowledging of course that Flash was in a much more primitive state back when DVDs were being developed, if it even existed at the time :])

Re:Flash or HTML

[captaineo]

I don't particularly care about proprietary as in "controlled by one company," but I do dislike proprietary as in "different from standard practice for no good reason." I think it was unfortunate that the inventors of DVD went off and created their own half-baked UI system when better alternatives were in already in use. (yeah, that's about par for the course for most consumer electronics standards... =)

Nor do I really like how most DVD releases use the menu UI system. I hate wading through un-stoppable movie menus to get where I want to go. I really wish DVD had the feature of laserdisc where you could just punch in "take me to frame #18275" and it would jump there immediately.

(BTW I believe the specs for the Flash .swf file format are freely available, although I am not aware of any complete Free Software implementation.)

Prediciton that DataPlay will be a lasting format.

[SuperKendall]

In the article he states near the end that he sees DataPlay becoming a widespread technology (note to others - that does not mean he nessicarily supports the format, just that he sess a future for it).

I don't with that prediciton though - for MP3 use, I'm pretty sure small HD's will remain on top. The 10 GB iPod is about the size any DataPlay player would be, and holds a lot more... plus as the tech gets better and better, the iPod advances in capacity much faster than DataPlay. He said in the interview that HD + RAM will take over for home video use, I'm not sure why he doesn't follow the same line of reasoning for audio players (or just about anything else!).

As for the other possibly use of DataPlay, cameras - I can possibly see this as the cost of a DataPlay disc (about $20) is a lot cheaper than CompactFlash... but the question is will DataPlay be used in devices much before ~500Mb compactFlash cards come down near to the price of a DataPlay disc? Furthermore, I see 500mb as being way too small to be meaningful in the future digital camera market, as resoultion and color depth improves the storage needs will grow quite a bit. Here again, I have to wonder if a HD solution will not win in the end - either an HD embedded in the camera, or seperate bluetooth enabled HD packs that you wear somewhere and that the camera transmits pictures to.

In the end, I have to think that while he might have been good at bringing a particular technology to the market, he doesn't seem like a true visionary - most of his predicitons listed in the article seem pretty simplistic to me.

It's even more easy than that.

[Inoshiro]

In Canada, a DVD of a certain movie could be about 14.99$.

In the US, that same region 1 DVD is 14.99$.

However, Canadian dollars cost less than US dollars. This is why US people should import all DVDs from Canada and never pay for them in the US, because the MPAA is just trying to segment Canada/US (which, considering NAFTA, shouldn't happen) for greater profits.

This is also why any Canadians that do online shopping will be boned hard if they don't go to the ONE Canadian DVD site online that exists: cnl.com. They have great, Canadian prices and will ship titles to the US too.