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D-VHS to Hit The Market This Week
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Yahoo News is has an article stating that D-VHS is hitting the market this week. The upside: D-VHS supports full high-definition picture quality. The down side: $35 - $45 per movie (although available for less) and $2k for a player. Seems to me you'd lose a lot of that HD picture after a few viewings too. 4 studios are supporting it: 'JVC persuaded Fox, Universal, DreamWorks and Artisan to support the format after developing a new copy-protection standard it calls D-Theater to prevent unauthorized copying of the high-definition movies'."
Can someone say 'DivX'?
Isn't tape very 70s? DVD is just fine for film, and I would prefer to record off the air onto a TIVO-like device. This technology seems dead in the water to me... Can anyone think of a good application for it?
Jeremy
I acually don't think you should lose any of the quality. This isn't VHS where it's stored in an analog format that degrades, I'd think of it more as a DAT tape with all digital data that should keep it's quality. Just keep it away from a magnet. Since JVC came up with it, and they own the patent on VHS, I'm sure the name came from that, and the fact that it's on tapes.
You're media is going to get copied...learn to embrace it, or just get over it. I shouldn't be subjected to all of this crap. Pretty soon we'll be signing stuff just to watch a movie.
Why in the world would I spend 2k on a player
that will not let me make copies?
The lunacy just never ends!
I'm going to get Episode II when it comes out.. on BETA.
How many people have sets capable of rendering the signal at full quality anyway?
Maybe it would have had a chance before DVD authoring equipment became cheap, (assuming the authoring equipment for this format even exists for consumers), but otherwise this looks to be DOA.
The development costs will just be translated to higher DVD prices in a year.
D-Beta is gonna kick ass!
This isn't VHS where it's stored in an analog format that degrades
Tape streaches. It flexes. It gets worn. It gets demagnetized. It tears.
The problem with VHS degradation over time has nothing to do with the data format on the tape. The problem is with the medium itself: flexible magnetic storage.
It's great if you aren't going to use it often, but if it keeps getting wound and unwound, wrapped around rollers, and pressed against a read head, it will wear out.
t'nera semordnilap
I am sure you wouldn't say that if it was your hard work being ripped off. Copying a CD, DVD, tape or whatever, to avoid buying it is the same thing as shoplifting right off the shelf in a store. Maybe you think shoplifting is okay, but I think theives are scum. Theft is theft, in your words "just get over it".
D-Theater is an option (feature) on D-VHS tape decks. There are already decks on the market, especially in Japan, that are D-VHS but not D-Theater.
D-Theater is a content encryption system. D-VHS is a recording format (MPEG-2 aparently). A D-VHS recorder would allow you to record any HDTV broadcast directly - up to 4 hours of it in fact. Also, D-VHS supports full Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks at a bit rate of 576Kbps (higher than DVD's 448Kbps rate). This is being touted as the VHS for the HDTV generation.
Also, while the titles are listed at 35-40 USD Buy.com and BestBuy have them listed at 25-29 USD, so they aren't terribly more expensive than DVDs. Even so, DVDs have market edge on D-VHS (and a few other technological advantages including durability). It seems as if D-Theater is unimportant, but take notice of D-VHS.
It's digital. Computer backups on tape can be read more than a few times before fading away. And video data isn't all that demanding of accuracy; bit errors will hopefully just make one or a few pixels the wrong color for a fraction of a second.
..probably cashed a nice check from JVC, a la DIVX back in the old days.
Proof that the studios are whores to the highest bidders.
From what I understand:
This new format is for DIGITAL video stored on a MAGNETIC TAPE. This is different from DVD, which is digital data on an optical disk. In terms of performance/quality, there is no clear difference; they are both digital video formats.
However, anyone with a $50 DVD drive in their computer can view/copy DVD discs at will. With D-VHS, there is no easy tape-to-computer interface, only a proprietary player controlled by the movie industry.
This is nothing more than the movie industry's latest attempt to take away accessibility with no real gain in the underlying technology.
This is very close to DIVX (not the video codec), which was a "throwawy DVD" format which was implemented by the movie industry and even sold at Circuit City for awhile. DIVX was a product that had no new technicaly features, and had restricted accessibility. Consumers saw that DIVX was an inferior product, and it quickly went under. D-VHS will no doubt subscribe to the same fate.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/D-VHS/dvhs-e.h tml
How can this possibly compete with DVD? I really don't see how it can. DVD is not dominant now but it will be by the time D-VHS gets to a reasonable price.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
DVD seems to be "good enough" for watching videos at home; I really don't see the need for yet another format. The only problems I can see with the DVD rental business is that DVDs are much more fragile than VHS tapes. I've rented brand new DVDs that were already skipping. I wonder what the life of a DVD vs. a VHS/D-VHS tape is? I know video store VHS tapes are expensive for the stores to buy, like $70 or something crazy. If DVDs are the same price, (to pay for licensing I assume), then it will be more expensive for video stores to rent out DVDs than D-VHS/VHS.
Otherwise this makes no sense to go out and buy a D-VHS, people just bought DVD machines en-masse.
D-VHS has been around here in the U.S. for at least 3 years. I happen to own one of these puppies, and have been recording shows to D-VHS tape ever since I bought. However, as far as I know, my system does not support HDTV, only MPEG2 encoded NTSC video. Also, video quality degradation is very unlikely; I have movies and programs recorded over 2 and a half years ago on DVHS, and have yet to notice any degradation.
Since it is in fact raw digital information recorded on the tape, the type of degradation would most likely be dropped frames, motion artifacts, "mosquitos," and the like, rather than the typical problems of "regular" VHS such as snow, color saturation problems, and reduced definition.
Perhaps what this really meant by the article is that High Definition DVHS movies will be available. I have my doubts as to whether or not this will really have an impact on the mainstream video market (perhaps the upscale home theatre market will embrace it). $45 bucks for a video; however, is just rediculous.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
If this format is simply a digitization of a regular tape, then why does it have to cost so much? VCR's are closer to the 100 dollar range, and DVD's are as low as 60 dollars. So we know that the extra mechanical parts for a tape are not too expensive, and the digital decoders and such are also not too expensive. Why the $2000 for a player? Or the $30 movies? Is it the low production numbers? Extra licensing fees? I can't think of any good reasons. Any ideas?
I have had a D-VHS recorder/player since 1998 and I paid under $800 for it at the time. Echostar (read Dishnetwork) and JVC made a satellite reciever d-vhs combo years ago. It's very nice picture quality and even records the dolby 5.1 stream.
Well, to be honest when I first saw this post I thought oh great tape again, but the fact that this is true HDTV quality didn't hit me until just now. Folks, thats something in the order of 1920x1280 pixels. The datarate for this kind of data is astonishing, specifically, for 24fps Film (yes lower than pal or ntsc for estimation sake) thats 1920x1280x3x8x24 Bits per Second, assuming we're using 24bit color (can anyone confirm that?) That comes out to be: 168.75 MB/s (!@#!@%) So yes I guess the entire tape thing can be excuesed. Try to get anything close to that datarate (even with compression, though I'm not sure how much it uses, that would only be accomplishable with the newest hard drives, and even a 160 gig would only hold 16 minutes). Very impressive. Kudos JVC
... posted AC because I'm supposed to be studying for exams and I don't have time to double check specs or my math.
Ok just my quick 2 cents worth
-drk
I give it 4 months till a 12 year old writes DeDVHS...
The link in the story isn't very informative. Here's a better link, with pictures and more information.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
" ALL IN ONE " STORAGE = 1 FORMAT !
100 YEAR SHELF LIFE OF MEDIA.
INFINITE STORAGE !
REMOVABLE !
BANDWIDTH >>>>>10 GBITS/SEC, THATS >>,1000 HD'S
DONT BUY ANY NEW TECHNOLOGY UNTIL 3D VOLUME HOLOGRAPHIC STORAGE DRIVES HIT THE MARKET
YOU'LL BE SORRY !!
http://colossalstorage.net/colossal.htm
So this thing will record uncompressed, digital HDTV information? Can you imagine the bandwidth?
This thing would be excellent for backing up huge storage, I think it even beats DLT tapes in speed, and certainly it beats them in capacity.
But instead, it's used to store video, in uncompressed form (stupid) and with copy protection. Not to speak that tape devices that use media of this lenght are unsuitable for home usage, where a constant temperature and humidity are not guaranteed, and multiple viewing is the norm.
Plus, this is the age of direct access media (CD, VCD, DVD), will people who got used to DVD accept sequential access?
In conclusion: I think this technology will tank, and not many will shed a tear.
Sigged!
a two year old is charged under the DMCA because she played her Play-doh (TM) in a little nudge of her daddys "Debbie Does Dolly" D-VHS tape.
This curcumvention device, which was thought to be harmless for years (and tastey) allowed the juvenile to copy the tape for her bigger brother.
When asked, spokesmen from JVC stated: "this [event] just shows you how far people go to copy tapes, We need better standards for copy protection!!!!".
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
Just like DAT made its way into the consumer sector so well, I would expect D-VHS to do the same! With prices like these, who could resist!?
Now, really, I see this taking the place of Beta, MiniDV, and D8 in the content-creation field. It could be rather good for them, because it provides digital video (something Beta doesn't) along with HD support, something MiniDV and D8 can't.
± 29 dB
Dumb-Consumer.
Its called "the useless product" scheme.
Since nobody's gonna be using these things, looks like not many movies are gonna be pirated with em.
Some of the currently-available D-VHS decks support FireWire I/O. This allows one to record and play video to the deck with a computer (the streams can be recorded from the deck - e.g. for PVR-style timeshifting of HDTV - or generated and encoded yourself).
Several people at avsforum.com have already gotten this working using MPEG2-over-FireWire support built into Windows XP.
Dan Dennedy and I are working on a Linux driver that will provide the same functionality as Windows XP. (it will appear at linux1394.sourceforge.net; it's not ready for release yet though).
D-VHS is a truly versatile format. The deck I have experience with (JVC) can record and play MPEG-2 streams at a wide variety of bitrates (up to 29MBit/sec) and formats (720x480 NTSC up to 1920x1080 HDTV)... The encoding is standard MPEG-2, so you can make and play your own HDTV content (I've done it already), and you could probably also do things like record a DVD to tape without re-compressing the video.
Note however that Windows XP and my drivers can only handle cleartext MPEG-2 streams (either home-made or recorded from broadcast/satellite HDTV). The new "D-Theater" standard is basically like DVD's CSS; the MPEG-2 streams will come in a scrambled format that is "impossible" to read without a licensed decoder.
This week d-vhs and its companion d-theater will be released.
.003 seconds after that, someone will figure out that all the copy control in the world does no good at all when they simply wire their 2,000$ (!) d-vhs deck into their computer using a few cables they picked up at the local computer shop ... oops, thats a thoughtcrime to think about the fact that your d-vhs deck has to send its output into a television, which, like your PC's gfx card, has no idea of what copy protection is. [1]
.003 seconds for someone to figure out how to handle the increased resolution and audio.
Approximately
Wait a sec, I hear jackbooted thugs from Hollywood knocking at door. Oopsy.
[1] - Im not sure that any standard format (eg; avi, mpeg*, etc) will be able to handle all the features d-vhs supports very well. Im not a video format guru, so forgive me if Im wrong. You will have to wait another
.sig of the day: sysadmin for hire: gdd(at)siliconinc.net
one might also wish to purchase one of these to make the $2049 worthwhile.
Tape leads to stretching, stretching leads to degredation, degredation leads to blocky artifacts, blocky artifacts lead to nothing. At least with analog tape, when it wears you still have some semblance of a picture. I think my JVC Digital Camcorder is great but I am still looking for a good way to store that digital video somewhere that's cheap and NOT tape. I think the next big format will be hard drives. Just swap it in to the bay and watch amazingly high quality digital video and sound. Cost? $80 per movie and eventually lower. These things are getting so cheap, they are almost disposable.
Won't they just have a "re-tension" option on the players?
The problems are streching, physical contact, and frequency of use.
If the reader expects each bit to be X distance from the next, but the tape streches, then the read head will read some other magnetic data from the extended area. The same goes for wrinkling and bending.
Tapes are more likely to sustain this kind of wear since the process of using them involves physical contact. Take a look into an open VCR as you insert a tape. Those metal rods can damage your tape. They pull and flex the tape. The head can also damage the tape. The motors can damage the tape if they pull to hard an the tape reaches its end, resulting in a harsh jerk.
The reason that these problems are less likely to plague backup tapes is because of frequency of use:
How often do you insert each computer tape? Remember that the act of inserting the casette into a VCR causes physical contact with the actual tape.
How frequently do you use the tape at all? Don't you just write to it in most cases?
Don't you only read from it infrequently and usually only once? When you re-write the tape, it can make up for some streching (within certain limits).
More importantly, how often do you "pause" a data tape? Pausing streches tape.
How often do you run the tape at high speed while the read head is in contact with it? That is exactly what happens when you scan tapes by pushing ff or rw in play mode. That is even more damaging to the tapes than just playing them.
Sure error correcting exists, but my point is that tape is more error-prone than other forms of storage since the simple act of reading or writing the data can degrade it.
t'nera semordnilap
"Seems to me you'd lose a lot of that HD picture after a few viewings too."
Wait a second. This is a digital format -- correct? When you say "lose [...] that HD picture" you mean there would be digital artifacts, correct? I have worked with some high-end digital video mediums in a professional setting (DVCPRO at a local FOX-affiliate) and I would hope this new D-VHS has at the very least a level of quality that allows a fair amount of viewage without damage to the "data." DVCPRO, although a professional format, doesn't seem to have too much of a problem for the most part -- the deck seemed to act up more than the tapes and require regular cleaning, that's all. If I were to guess I'd say you should be able to view D-VHS quite a few times before problems arise, otherwise the product is as good as defective.
My two cents.
_
Unrelated Link: Windows Users Click HERE!
Manufacturer's suggested retail price: $1999.95
JVC's upcoming HDTV-capable Dish Network receiver will also have a IEEE 1394 (FireWire) connection so it can transfer content directly to the D-VHS box.
It uses MPEG-2.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://dvhsmovie.com/ has more info about D-VHS.
Is it still considered Karma-whoring when I'm already at my cap?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Normal TV is 480 lines interlaced. Improved quality can be designated as 480p (non-interlaced), 1080i, 720p and 1080p (in that order). Unless you're getting 1080p with a digital interface to the display (not RGB analog) I don't believe you're getting "full high-definition picture quality". Since the industry is still fighting (afsik) about copy protection of this 1080p digital signal, I question if the technology can give the promised quality, or if you can even find a display that would accept it at any price.
And I tend to agree that this kind of prices on magnetic tapes that likely will degrade isn't a wise move.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Wow, there's a lot of FUD floating around here..
D-VHS is currently the only format that allows true High Definition resolutions in a removable format. It allows you to record HD content from a HDTV Set Top Box (if the HD receiver is equipped with a firewire port). It also allows playback of pre-recorded movies at 1080i resolution.
DVD's don't have the storage capacity to hold an HDTV movie. Broadcast HDTV is about 9GB per hour. Pre-recorded movies on D-VHS will be even more than that, up to twice the bit rate of broadcast HDTV.
DVD's are at best 480p (720x480), the D-VHS VCR supports HD resolutions, 720p (1280x720) and 1080i (1920x1080). The HD movies are over four times the resolution/quality of DVD's. The difference is very dramatic.
This variant of D-VHS, D-Theater, includes an encrpytion, to stop the pre-recorded movies from being copied (much like CSS was supposed to do with DVD's). That is the only restriction that this format has, which is a welcome change from all the other attempts to control HD content.
The JVC unit also has analog component video outputs, allowing 1080i playback on all existing HDTV's. This capability is one that Hollywood has been threatening to disable in HD receivers (block the "Analog Hole").
If you look at the statistics for HD capable TV's sold vs. HDTV Set Top Boxes, you'll see that most people with the nice 16:9 HD-Capable TV's are not using the full capabilies of their TV's. They are just using them for DVD's. D-VHS could be the first chance for them to really use their HDTV.
The real deal. ;-)
paul
palo alto
http://www.pafree.net
Alesis makes bad-ass 8-channel 20-bit digital audio recorders like the XT20 which store data on S-VHS tapes just fine . If you're just tuning in, the beauty of digital is that you can optimize your information storage/transmission for the medium/channel. (this is why Shannon is so cool) If you know the effective storage capacity of a piece of magnetic tape which is getting old has been stretched a bit, you encode the data at that capacity. That way the media can degrade a bit and you don't loose anything. If you use a nice robust encoding method, the media can degrade beyond that point and you still dont loose much. If you wanted to use regular VHS instead of a higher capacity tape, you just run the tape faster and don't pack the bits as tightly (probably not an issue as there's no mention in the article of using _actual_ VHS tapes, and 1. im sure they want to use more expensive media to prevent copying and 2. _actual_ VHS tapes should have been designed to hold about as much info as they do, and while going digital lets you optimize the space you have, HDTV may require more info than you can fit on conventional VHS tapes) Granted, you can destroy a tape, but you can destroy an optical disk too.
;-)
So, yeah, that was my short answer to "Seems to me you'd lose a lot of that HD picture after a few viewings too."
I'd rather spend the money on a telescope or nice flat screen.
TV isn't worth a $1.5k tv, $500 sound system and $2k vcr.
Damn you - that post seriously screwed up scrolling on my old Celeron 333.
Seems to me you'd lose a lot of that HD picture after a few viewings too
The "D" stands for digital, which means that there is no degredation in quality between viewings or replications. This is only a problem when using analog equipment.
High-volume VHS duplication is done by thermal magnetic contact printing, a process which is completely independent of the recording format. So these tapes shouldn't cost any more to produce than existing VHS tapes, and existing VHS duplication facilities should be able to make them, at the usual rate of one 2-hour tape every 24 seconds.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The decks have IEEE1394(Firewire) interfaces, and have a raw-data mode typically used for recording encrypted data from satellite broadcasts, so it will be trivial to write drivers to allow data storage and retrieval.
Now, I said "cheap" in the subject -- $1000 is already not bad for a 44GB media size, but if D-VHS takes off in the consumer market the prices will plummet!
Here's wishing it'd happen soon...
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
The great advantage would be that you won't be able to fast-forward past advertisements you recorded because they would be protected by "don't skip"-markers.
Oh, you meant advantage for the consumer...
Seriously, don't you think they're gonna do something like that?
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
If you used LaserDisc, you're probably the target market for this product. This is aimed at the 'videophile', who wants the best quality possible. The people that have the expensive, 16:9, HD capable sets.
This is not meant to replace DVD's.. They are still in the process of milking that market. And, D-VHS has obvious disadvantages in flexibility.
A few years down the road, we will have HD-DVD, which will have the storage capacity for a full HD quality movie. Until then, some of us will be recording HD, and viewing High Definition movies in this format.
I'll gladly retire the D-VHS at that point.. but I am not willing to wait the several years until HD-DVD is here to have my 1080i movies.
it kicks MAJOR booty.
I recently demoed a JVC G150CL front projector (1365x1024 resolution) fed by a D-VHS player playing a Yes concert. The video was in widescreen 1080-line format, so the projector displayed it in the center 768 lines of its display area for moderate loss of resolution.
Despite this handicap, the detail was fantastic---make sure you're not self conscious about your complexion if you ever get shot on high-def video. As long as they're not too aggressive with MPEG2 compression, movies released in this format will truly be spectacular.
And folks, I know it's expensive, but there is one reason you might want to get one of the first models anyway. Right now, D-VHS players have analog component outputs to feed to your favorite high-definition display device. In a couple of years, they may have to remove those outputs and replace them with an encrypted digital output that may not be back-compatible with supposedly "HDTV-ready" sets.
If that happens, those unprotected players they're currently selling are going to be significantly more valuable.
What's the point of this D-VHS when there are already home DVD video recorders being sold in Japan for roughly the same price, if not already cheaper. Last summer in Osaka, I've already saw DVD-RW home video recorders, with a 4.7GB DVD-RW holding 2 hrs of high quality video. It's sufficient to even record Japan's digital TV. And that machine can also play all DVDs. So what's the point of D-VHS, which is TAPE-based, and the whole point of DVD is to avoid the linear-tape that wears out and is slow?
First off, the title is misleading, because the story is announcing studio releases on DVHS, not DVHS itself. The subsequent responses seem geared against the player itself, not the story regarding studio releases
But why do I want a DVHS recorder?
1) why not? it's backwards compatible with VHS and records at far superior quality than s-vhs.
2) copying digital camcorder video to a vhs recorder seems ridiculous and I sure am not going to buy another digital camcorder to make archives of my home movies. I'd rather get a dvhs recorder instead.
3) copying non-macrovisioned dvd's to tape in real time (through the analogs) seems to be a better use of my time that fiddling with the computer and a dvdr to make a digital copy. Sometimes I want to watch the commentary track from a rental but I don't get enough time to watch it before Blockbuster wants their DVD back.
4) I think I read somewhere that there are players on the market that ignore the digital encyption stuff, (Toshiba?, not sure). It was in one of this month's home theater mags.
5) it's a real shame that people who have HDTV-enabled sets don't realize that they don't need a HDTV to get benefits out of their set. They really marketed that term HDTV-enabled wrong (especially with the number of cheap prog-scan dvd players available)
Now, as for the cover story - I am not really crazy about buying dvhs studio releases, even if it is double the line resolution of DVD. Much like MiniDisc, they tried to make a market out of studio releases on the format and failed, but even without those releases, the recorder/players have found a comfortable market.
Tape is dead -- RIP
:)
Just as the audio cassette has all but died, replaced by CD, CDR, CDRW, minidisk and memory sticks -- so the video tape cassette will also soon be dead.
Remember that several companies tried to breathe life into the dying audio cassette format by fancy analog and digital techniques designed to increase the dynamic range and frequency response -- but it was sheer futility.
And this is how it will be with tape-based video recording, be it analog or digital.
With writeable and rewriteable CD and DVD media cheap and still falling, it's only a matter of time before the video cassette (regardless of its resolution) joins that old turntable you've got up in the attic.
I'm already starting to record many of the programs I want to keep for posterity (such as Junkyard wars episodes) onto CDR or VCD.
Using this technique I can use low resolution (VCD/MPEG1) when I want compatibility with DVD players, higher resolution SVCD (for the DVD) or Divx for the PC.
I've been able to cram nearly two hours of near-VHS quality video and audio onto a single 700MB CDR and at the current price of CDRs, that's a media cost that is lower than for VHS recording.
I've also burnt a few movies using high bitrate Divx encoding and I can still get a near-broadcast quality recording of an entire movie on a high-capacity CDR.
Once DVDR/RW drives and their media get cheaper then tape will be well and truly dead -- thank goodness.
I'm actually really pissed right now that some rare music vids I taped about four or five years ago on a top-of-the-line Sony VCR will no longer play cleanly. I paid a premium for top-quality tape, stored them very carefully and they've only been played a handful of times but now, when I went to burn them to CDR, they won't all play without color and stereo sound drop-outs in a few places.
Give me disk-based media over tape anyday!
Of course there will probably be a whole clique of videophiles who'll come out of the woodwork and claim that analog recordings have a better "warmth" and color tones than their digital equivalents.
These sandal-wearing, yoghurt-loving, tree-huggers would also just love to have a VCR that was filled with vacuum tubes rather than silicon -- so that the sound was also good
You ever try to scribble on the outside of a tape? Darn they probably even make the rollers incompatible with a bic pen....
So spend a few grand creating a work from which you hope to recoup some cash, let everyone use it for nothing, and see how much more fed up you become.
The mirror of the mirror was slashdotted, so here is a mirror.
/.'ed (Score:0)
Mirror of your mirror; you can't be too careful. (Score:-1)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 06, @12:51AM (#3650518) Mirror of this article in case it's
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 06, @12:40AM (#3650454)
Posted by timothy on Thursday June 06, @12:27AM
from the yeah-that'll-work dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Yahoo News is has an article stating that D-VHS is hitting the market this week. The upshot: D-VHS supports full high-definition picture quality, at a lower total cost of ownership than DVD. Run out and grab one today. 4 studios are supporting it: 'JVC persuaded Fox, Universal, DreamWorks and Artisan to support the format after developing a new copy-protection standard it calls D-Theater to prevent unauthorized copying of the high-definition movies', which means that the tapes themselves will be much cheaper than VHS."
...as we don't have high definition TVs (unless you jump through hoops to obtain one, but there are no HD broadcasts to use with it). Therefore, the new D-VHS will remain a niche thing (if indeed it's ever released here), meaning DVDs have a long life ahead of them here, and throughout Europe. Oh well - if they stop making DVDs over in the States, at least you'll be able to import them from Europe ;)
Take one of these D-VHS VCR's, add a MEMS display, such as a TI DLP projector,
and top it off with a kick ass DD5.1 / DTS surround sound system, and you're getting dangerously close to the digital theaters that George Lucas was pushing for Episode 2.
Episode 2 was recorded in 1080/24p, HD resolution.
This equipment gets you pretty darn close to a digital theater in the comfort of your own home.
There's also superbit DVD, which provides an even higher resolution than conventional DVD.
DVHS is not meant for the general consumer market and was not developed to replace DVD. DVHS is meant for the videophiles who demand the most out of their home theaters. No, I'm not talking about those with an HDTV and a store bought sony home theater speakers. I'm talking about the people who easily spend 40k on the components and may possibly have a dedicated room for home theater viewing (including home theater style seats).
People who demand the best and have the money to afford it are the people who will be this DVHS player.
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
This is from the JVC site:
1. Achieves 49 hours max. recording of images and sound.
2. 4 selectable data rates 2.0Mbps (49-hour recording), 2.8Mbps (35-hour recording), 4.7Mbps (21-hour recording), 7.0Mbps (14-hour recording) assure compatibility with a wide range of future applications.
DVD is still a very new format... it still lacks majority acceptance, as evidenced by the inventories of your neighboorhood video rental store... yet DVD has a lot of advantages... portability, compactness, robustness, cost effectiveness...
Thus far, there are only two things this system brings that DVD doesn't: 1) a semi-decent copy protection system and 2) high definition. Is high definition really that big of a deal? Digital widescreen on a DVD is more than enough for 95% of home video watchers... the sounds on DVD is phenomenal... the video quality is scores better than regular VHS... and really, consumers just aren't that picky...
And definitely, to be able to get the increase in video quality, 99% of consumers ain't gonna run out and buy no $2000 system and pay no $35 per media to get high definition... cause it's just not that big of a deal...
-jag
http://starboard.flowtheory.net/
..is that in the cases you cited, the new technology had significant advantages *for the consumer*, which is what really drives adoption:
...
.... widespread adoption of Netscape/WordPerfect/MacOS ... who needs another ...?
... news ... e-mail ... who needs another format?
-- CD's - with widespread adoption of tapes, what is the motivation for taping companies to provide widespread support for another format, with CD readers costing about $2000?
Random access, along with much-improved quality and durability.
-- tapes - with widespread adoption of vinyl disks, what is the motivation for sound companies to provide widespread support for another format, with tape recorders costing about $2000?
Cassette tapes made it possible to carry your music with you anywhere. LP's, 45's and reel-to-reel would never have been practical in a car or a portable music player.
-- vinyl disks -
Compared to what? That was really the first consumer-friendly music format (well, plastic disks, anyway. I don't think the kind of plastic matters much). Edison cylinders weren't really something the kids could use.
-- Internet Explorer/Word/Windows -
A little less obvious, but:
1. Explorer came with Windows, which is what killed Netscape, really. How the heck would you even manage to download Netscape in order to install it in the first place, if you weren't an uber-Geek?
2. I have no explanation for the success of Word - I never really used word processors during the time that Word replaced Wordperfect/Wordstar. I suspect that the rise of Windows did in Wordperfect, though. Which leads to:
3. Windows didn't replace MacOS, it just enabled people who had bought the wrong system in the first place to use a cheap knock-off.
-- WWW - with widespread
Ease of use, pure and simple. I could (and did) use Gopher, news, ftp, and all the rest, but my mother never could.
-Mark
Tonight I went out and rented some DVD's I had been meaning to see for awhile now. I only got a DVD player last month and I love the format. The ability to jump chapter to chapter, the menus, the special features everything is so much nicer then the old VCR. When I finish the movie I pop it out and thats it, no need to rewind. I will not give up these features of the DVD just to get a better picture. Hell my TV is crap just like 99% of the market out there. I can't even use the full resolution coming off of the DVD.
I doubt anyone other then audiophiles will be interested in the new system. Even if it was the same price as a DVD player and DVD's, it just is too expensive to upgrade a system every couple of years. If they try to force me to upgrade I will simply move my entire library into a digital format on a big file server. All protection will eventually be broke and I'm not going to be forced into a standard I don't want. Keep DVD's around and I will continue to rent and buy them as I see fit.
How many times can all you sysadmins read your tape backups? How about DAT?
I would imagine that durability for this would be comparable.
This is a serious reply...
I am a 22 year old male living with my parents..
Since I graduated high school with a "D" average, I've done nothing but work one hour a day at a local coffee shop so I can afford my habbit of going through a 24-pack of Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi per-day (Yes, it is ironic that I drink caffeine-free soda when I work at a coffee shop, but my doctor says I should not drink caffeine any more because I've already done intensive damage to my liver.
I spend much of my free time reading and trolling Slashdot (with my current job, that allows for 23 hours minus some random number of hours for sleep). I also spend much of my time tinkering with computers and programming, mainly Linux type stuff. I've never really written anything usefull or contributed to any usefull open-source project, but doing what I do makes me feel important and elite.
I've never had a girlfriend or any type of relationship, never kissed a girl or had sex. I only shower about once every two to three days because I very rarely leave the house. The only incentive I have for showering as often as I do is that the stench from my self becomes too much for me to handle. You might wonder how a non-athletic computer geek like my self could end up smelling so bad, well I'll tell you that I get really worked up when my perl script notifies me of a new story with 0 posts. My heart beats intensely, my palms become sweaty and entire body trembles. I sometimes screw up my post because my hands shake too much and I try to hit Submit too early, so I miss out and I end up having to wait and I get like fifth post.
Basically the only time I leave the house is to purchase blank CD's when I need them immediately, rather than ordering them online. This is usually to burn pornographic movies for my self or warez which I sell to the neighborhood kids.
You should see my bedroom, it is stacked sky-high with computer books and magazines, dirty clothes and dishes, old pizza boxes and take out food containers, computer parts, notes, soda cans, etc. My parents are so annoying; they try and tell me to clean up my room, but why should I? No one ever comes in to it except my self. I also can't risk leaving my computer because I might miss getting a First Post on Slashdot (I wrote a perl script to refresh Slashdot and check for new stories).
My daily routine throughout the week is pretty much the same. I start off by waking up around 1:00pm, the first thing I do is roll out of bed and plop my self into my comfortable desk chair. After getting seated properly I log onto my Linux machine and immediately check Slashdot and my email. After about an hour or so of computer usage I usually get hungry so I scrounge around my room for some left-over fast-food from the day before (usually some McDonalds french fries or a slice or two of pizza). So, this continues onto the early hours of the morning (around 4:00am). Before I go to bed I do not brush my teeth, because I am way too lazy and I could care less about my breath or care of my teeth. So thats about all my day consists of. The highlight of the week is on Fridays when my mom prepares my favorite meal (this is the only time she cooks for me). The meal consists of kosher hot dogs on a fresh bun with a side of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese with a glass of cherry Kool-Aid.
"Beta and LaserDisc, say hello to your new friend, D-VHS" *Slams the closet door*
:-) )
:-p
I mean, there are so many disadvantages to this technology. Sure the picture quality is going to be very nice, much better then DVDs but... From what I understand this is a tape based format. Now, anyone who's been using DVDs for a while will never want to use DVHS. It's like going back to dialup when you had broadband : nobody wants to be waiting for the tape to go forward and backward so they can find what they're looking for.
Plus, what's cool about a DVD is that you get access to all the special features easily. But with a tape based format, you will have to fast-forward your way to the end of the tape to find the special features. I hate fastforwaring to the end of my "Army of Darkness" tape to show the alternate ending to friends who want to see it but not the whole movie. (not wanting to see the movie should be a crime, but that's another topic
Also, DVDs have these advantages over DVHS : they are small, shiny, and you don't get a fine at the videostore because you forgot to *rewind* your DVD.
I wonder if this DVHS is related to the old DVHS DishNetwork recorders that JVC marketed a few years ago?
That atrocity convinced me I am never buying JVC equipment again. It was a horribly designed piece of garbage. The firmware had all kinds of bugs, it didn't tape half the time it was supposed to, the tape player was not well integrated with the satellite receiver, and the fan in the damned thing was the loudest fan I'd ever heard (yes, louder than my PC).
Besides all of that, I can't imagine anyone would want D-VHS at any price, let alone $2K. You can't chapter-select, it can't possibly support the extra features that DVD does, I can't use it with my computer (maybe they consider that a 'feature'), and it is much more likely to fail (eating tapes, wearing tapes out).
This is a total nonstarter.
you can't stuff a HDTV movie onto a DVD.
Are you sure? The MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Video codec (used in DivX 5) compresses much tighter than the MPEG-2 video codec (used in DVD-Video). Would it be hard to compress 1280x720p/24 video at a 1 MB/s bitrate?
Will I retire or break 10K?
1080i looks like hell at 9.8Mb/s, and you only get around an hour per DVD layer at that rate.
Wouldn't 1080i look halfway decent at 9 Mb/s or so using MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Video (the DivX video codec)?
Will I retire or break 10K?
We've had D-VHS here in Japan for a while now...
...and it's not really popular. Most people prefer HDD recorders, DVD players and even just old VHS....
Next...
Sure if it's your own recorded media you can make a backup before it's too late, but if it's a commercial video, sorry pal, be seeing you again at the video store soon (and your little wallet too)!
The days of Tape/VHS cassettes were glorious for the record and movie industries. They'd sell a cassette, and the customer's tape deck or VCR would promptly munch it. Back to the store where you're obviously not going to get a refund for mangling the merchandise. Instant repeat revenue.
Then CDs and DVDs were born. Cheap, durable, and reliable. TOO durable and reliable. Sure if you're a moron you can scrape them up, but if you're a moron you can scrape up your nose picking it too. Careful and responsible owners were no longer victims of freak munchings, and the industry never forgave themselves for not making the damn things shatters inside the players (most of the time... hey, remember those gimmicky ads for 100x players back before DMA66?).
Right now, the movie and record industries are salivating all over themselves trying to figure out how to sell you the same damn thing over and over again (like teeny pop and the late 90's onslaught of natural disaster cinema). Like Circuit City's DIVX (the scam disc format, not the codec) was one of the first examples. Now the music industry wants to let us buy digital music, in multiple proprietary formats, and pay for it for each playback device we own, even when we've already bought the physical album!
D-VHS probably will and should replace Beta, et.al. in the professional sector, but I don't think it would have ever seen the light of day in video stores if the media was as durable as some of the new high capacity DVD/optical technology coming out.
But maybe I'm just biased against magnetic media because of all the data I've ever lost!
Slashdot: rejecting tech news in favor of rubber band guns since 1997.
Movie stores should invest in DVD copiers and rent copied discs...then replace the broken media. They would still pay for the license, but protect themselves against loss.
(um, yeah, I tried to find a cool link for 'tripping over each other' in Google with the word 'trampled'... but you don't even want to know what I found...)
Slashdot: rejecting tech news in favor of rubber band guns since 1997.
DVHS is a digital format. This means that as time goes on and you keep viewing the tape, the picture stays pristine. Of course, if the tape does develope flaws, the picture will either artifact or drop out completely, but it will always remain at the full HD resolution. Now, if if only we could get a good HD-DVD standard, with the capability to store 4 hours of HD video with 6.1 channel DTS sound, then we would be set for a good long time. But let's face it: nobody wants a tape format.
-James
pool goes from 6 mins to 24 hours in increments of 1 min. Each square is only a buck!
Definitely DOA. That was an amazing First Post. Not only was it on topic, but it finished the discussion nicely.
I don't agree that it could be successful. It's tape! Gaaack!
I agree that there is a need for more definition. I'm sure the other DivX people, the DivX
D-VHS to Hit The Market This Week
The Market (walking alone): Du-de-du... Du-de-...*OUCH!* (somebody hit him)
The Market: Who are you?
The Stranger: I'm the D-VHS, and this is your last week on this planet...!
[to be continued....]
(I can see my karma fallin'...!)
667 The Neighbour of the Beast
I'm posting this here because the original thread has passed the point of no return. I'm looking to get a better return on my posting investment here. This will get modded down, but I think most slashdotters read at -1 anyway. My original post:
============
You have a huge rocketship that just happens to be capable of going 2/3 the speed of light. Inside this rocketship you have a smaller version of the rocketship that can also do 2/3 the speed of light. The first rocket speeds up to 2/3 the speed of light, then the smaller rocket accelerates to 2/3 the speed of light and exits the large rocket. This smaller rocket is now doing 1 1/3 the speed of light, is it not? But that's not possible. I have no physics capable friends so I figured I'd ask on slashnerd when an appropriate article came up.
====================
The response:
=====================
The proper means of velocity addition relative to a frame is:
(v_1 + v_2) / (1 + v_1 v_2)
Note that we have taken the speed of light to be 1 to simplify life. In your example, the second ship will be travelling at 12/13 relative to your observer. It is worth mentioning that when your speeds are say, less than 1/100 (about 7 million mph), the denominator is very close to 1, and that is why velocity looks additive in our everyday experience.
===================
I fail to see why, relative to an observer outside both ships, the second ship wouldn't be "clocked" at going 1 1/3 the speed of light. Your equation makes sense, naturally, but why does the denominator arbitrarily add the speed of light? If you had a radar gun pointed at the second ship what would it report back? I mean, it IS going that fast, is it not? It holds true on a train at low speed, why wouldn't it on a rocket at high speeds?
It can compete with DVD very easily, actually. The current DVD standard only gives a 480p resolution, while the D-VHS standard can go all the way up to 1080i and 720p HDTV broadcasts. The current plan by the DVD steering comittee is to cripple Hi-Def DVDs by a use of MPEG4 with a stupidly low bitrate, to avoid the cost of moving to Blue Laser, FMD or other new disc types.
Personally I do think that this will fail, but its because the hi-end Home Cinema fanatics are all used to the superiority of using a disc format - DVD, and before that Laserdisc and even in a few cases the HiVision laserdiscs that Pioneer produced in small numbers for demonstrating their HDTVs with in Japan (these are a thing of beauty and a joy to behold, by the way). They don't want to go back to tape, certainly not something with the VHS name on it.
So, it'll die, but through a combination of the inherent and percieved image problems of tapes, not because this doesn't offer anything over DVD.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
It's tape! Gaaack!
The reason you have this attitude towards tape is that analog tape suffers degradation over time (tape becomes worn, quality degrades over generational copying, etc.). Keep in mind that nearly all music producers master to DAT first, which is similar to DVHS. D, being digital, means zeroes and ones are getting stored, and they don't degrade much over time and have almost zero noticable artifacts between generational copies. DAT master tapes sound the same after 1000 times of being played, unlike analog cassette tapes you're used to.
I can see DVHS being handy for TV stations replacing Beta, but not much else. Who needs another format in this day and age? Sure, maybe you can copy your favorite stuff in full res from your satellite now, but overall DVD has more advantages.
You would have thought they would have figured this out by now?
four letters fail: (BETA, DIVX, HDTV, XBOX, S-VHS, D-VHS, MPAA, RIAA)
three letters succeed: (VHS, DVD, MP3, PS2)
My original thought when reading this was: "Okay, so they think that John Q. is going to buy a video for $35-45, instead of a $17 DVD at Best Buy; and a $2000+ player instead of a crappy (but still decent for John Q.) DVD player for under $100 (also at Best Buy). For a movie that might stretch out and fade in unspecified way after a few viewings.. And one you can't skip through real fast like a DVD, or copy (What? Did I say copy? John Q.'ll have to give it to his 10-year old son whose a DeCSS expert to do that.)
But then it dawned on me: what they want to happen is that the format will be used by a select few for movies now (I have no idea which select few this is, but I'm sure it exists - there are a lot of bored hundred-thousand-aires out there I think) Add the benefit that they (as well as John Q.) will be able to record HDTV at full quality, for 2006 when everything has to go digital (Yeah, RIGHT!!) And it'll be copyright protected. (oops, John Q. missed that. Or he doesn't care.)
But the prices will come down, if only becasue the production of the custom ASICs that are in it will get ramped up, or more people start making them.
People here say that for a movie, they'd much rather watch a DVD, and for recording, they'd much rather use Tivo. Yes, they would. They're parents might even prefer a DVD for movies. Depending on who they're parents are, they might prefer a Tivo to tapes (the advantage is very high, but until you have seen it, the percieved entry-barrier to techno-phobes is also high) But do you think you're grand-mother will prefer DVD or Tivo? I know mine won't. She won't even touch a VCR, and didn't tough a microwave oven for the longest time (until we bought her one
I also think that at some point they want to get rid of the VCR completely - not that that would be easy - not only would they piss off consumer groups, electronics makers, computer makers, civil libertarians, real conservatives (the ones for smaller and less-intrusive government), and some artists groups [RAC for one], they would go on to alienate the entire video rental industry - although it seems to be transitioning to DVD pretty well..
The industry (or at least some powerful people in it) think that Sony-Betamax was a mistake. They don't want to overturn it per se, they just want to make it obsolete. By introducing D-VHS, which includes copyright-protection, and the overbroad-DMCA which enforces it, and armies of layers to play whack-a-mole with the P2P operators, and.. and armies of cloned cryogenically-frozen G-Men from Nazi Germany to go after the entire Napster Generation! (Well, we're not quite there yet..)
Some say the Betaxmax base should still hold. And I agree, it should. But that's another court case, for another day, in a different age than it was in the '70s (or whever Betamax was decided), I think a narrower Supreme Court (though I really have no idea on this one), and a Conngress that was less monetary-influenced and "pro-active" (in the wrong way) on these matters. And a public that was less apathetic than it was today (of course, I was born in 1978 - maybe politics really has always been going to hell in a handbasket!)
So let me get this straight. Making it digital makes duplicating the tape perfect, but keeping it on magnetic tape means the tape may die after many viewings. Reproducable but not rewatchable!? It's that the exact opposite of what studios should want in a new format!?
Gotta hand it to JVC for convincing them that their D-Theater isn't gonna be cracked like *every* other copy-protection standard.
You'd think with all the money they make the studios could hire someone intelligent for a change.
Just when I finally broke the habit of rewinding my DVD rentals.
It will be released then, ta dah!, on BETA tape, Digital BETA too. Why, because that's what the professionals use, and have done for years. (You thought the cable company digitized off 35mm film?)
True, most professionals still use Beta... however, and as you somewhat pointed out, they mostly use Digital Betacam ("DigiBeta") and Betacam SP. Both are uncompressed and are more than enough to store NTSC/PAL as good as they'll get. There is no need for anything greater unless you're ready to go to HD. (A side note... while Betacam SP is as good as uncompressed analog gets, DigiBeta came about as a lower cost replacement to D1, the original full-quality digital tape -- however D1 decks easily cost $400K+, an hour worth of blank tape - $400. DigiBeta is a dream come true for mid-sized video firms... NTSC as good as it'll get, uncompressed, and ready for the editing/compositing workstation. Betacam SP looks just as good, but because it's analog, requires time-consuming digitizing before it can be worked with on a workstation or PC/Mac.)
There are many other forms of Beta... including the new Betacam SX (which is compressed digital and suffers from the same compression artifacts that pop up on other similar compressed "DV" formats -- Digital 8, MiniDV, DVCAM, DVCPro. "DV" formats are great for home and small business use, with a compressed data stream of about 25Mbit/sec... but it's often loathed by pros due to artifacting and compositing work. Basicly, if you want full quality, go uncompressed. RAID storage is there, workstation hardware is there. Leave the comprssed stuff to Win/Mac users with their FinalCutPro-type software. Real users want DigiBeta and an Onyx3000 running Discreet Inferno or IFX Piranha.).
Anyhow...
Beta came (somewhat) popular with the release of 1/2" consumer Betamax, based off of the similar but much more expensive 3/4" U-MATIC decks. ED-Beta with 400 lines of resolution came out a few years later. Betacam followed with about 440 lines. Betacam SP with nearly 500 lines followed, providing more than enough quality for broadcast/archival NTSC. With the advent of Betacam SP (and competing Panasonic M-II) the video world began to improve optics as the tape side of things was already as good enough. Though you'll still see a lot of spec sheet padding and other BS when various vendors talk up their "lines of resolution".
no doubt the price will eventually come down with broader use. Still, personally I have not "upgraded" my $99 VCR because I haven't seen anything that will record what I want to record for the same price.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
'JVC persuaded Fox, Universal, DreamWorks and Artisan to support the format after developing a new copy-protection standard it calls D-Theater to prevent unauthorized copying of the high-definition movies'
That really bugs me. People should be able to make personal copies.
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
Superbit is just a fancy name for a standard dvd (usually a second release) that has been mastered with a higher bitrate (= better quality, fewer compression artifacts) than "average" DVDs. It is still plain DVD 720x480 resolution, nothing more.
Stuff like this is always huge in Japan for some reason. ;)
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
D-VHS *is* compressed. The bandwidth is actually quite low by HD standards... you'll get full HD resolution, but quite a few artifacts.... still better overall quality than DVD, though.
Uncompressed video is actually a good thing... especially for pros that want to do editing/compositing or want to convert to another format. You *don't* want to introduce compression artifacts and other compression ickyness early on in production. That's a *bad* thing. Compression is a last resort step often used to ease broadcast and/or delivery to the consumer. I have a major beef against overly-compressed HD... if I buy a TV capable of HD resolution, the last thing I want to see are high definition chunks of compression artifact crap on my screen. Compression on the standard television side of things is already bad enough --- look at a sub-par station on digital cable or DirecTV... compression artifacts galore. Not quite RealPlayer quality, but close.
I didn't see your "Internet Service Waiver", your "Personal PC Tax" slip or your monthly email voucher. Do you even have your "MS USA Patriot Passport" or your "Digital Social Security Key"?
You have made an unauthorized post! You crook! It's people like you that ruin it for the rest of us. You damn terrorists! At least pay your DT3 (Digital Text Transport Tariff). Geez!
:)
Kudos on an excellent post! I have been saying the same thing for quite awhile. There is A LOT of room for marketing bullshit to cloud the video sector over the next few years. "High Definition" and "HD" are nothing more than buzzwords and do not describe the quality! I have already seen MANY digital televisions stations pass themselves off as "HD" when in fact they are broadcasting nothing more than standard-resolution 720x480, albeit non-interlaced. What's worse are stations that "upconvert" standard-resolution video to a high definition format such as 1080i (1920x1080).... they're broadcasting in high definition, but the material they're showing is stretched/zoomed to fill all of the pixels and looks NO BETTER than the original standard-resolution material.
Buyer Beware! I dunno about you, but I'm gonna wait. Standard-definition gear is already cheap enough that I've been making great use of it -- DVDs, progressive scan DVD player, Sony Vega and Panasonic Panaflat TV, DolbyDigital & DTS reciever with good speakers.
Episode II - ATOC was indeed recorded in 1080/24p resolution (1920x1080). Too bad most digital theaters and home projectors are currently using 1280x1024 DLP elements. *sigh* Gotta start somewhere, I guess.
You are such greedy bastards that you make everything copy protected. I wish people boycotted any kind of media that used copy protection! Why can't I make a copy so I don't have to lug the media around? Why can't I make copies so that I have a backup? Why should musicians and actors make hundreds of millions of dollars when people who work harder are lucky to make a million?
BOYCOTT THESE ASSHOLES!
Even Microsoft makes them look bad!
Seems to me you'd lose a lot of that HD picture after a few viewings too.
Yeah, right. Just like DAT.
to make different play systems with each movie you release or better for everyone who buys one.
To achieve guaranteed dvd-quality, I need to compress movies (in dvd-resolution) with at least 1 Mbit/s when using DivX. And HDTV is 1920 x 1024. That means at least 5 times the information. You'll need alot more than 1mbit.
I said 1 MB/s with a capital B, meaning megabytes per second. I apologize for not being clear enough that I meant 8 megabits per second. Now is 8 Mbit/s big enough for 1920x1024 pixels at 24 fps using MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Video?
And what about the ordinary dvd-players?
And what about the ordinary TVs? Those with ordinary TVs aren't going to need HDTV DVD players.
Not everyone got PC-dvd and just upgrade their software.
MPEG-4 is an international standard. When the DVD forum makes an MPEG-4 based HDTV DVD format, it won't be "DVD Video" anymore, but instead "DVD Advanced Video" or something. Set-top boxes will be sold that advertise "Supports DVD Advanced Video".
Anyhow, you might not even possess the CPU-power to decompress at this resolution realtime.
MPEG standards are written with ASIC decompression in mind. You won't need a set of Athlon processors.
noone is going to alter an established format, if it means that the entire public will have to buy a new dvd-player.
The typical DVD Video player outputs 480i only. Those who have the cash to buy an HDTV set will probably have the cash to buy a DVD Advanced Video player.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Never mind picture quality and degradation, if they say DVHS gives better picture then let them, I couldn't care less. The problem is that this will take us back to winding/rewinding.
Not having to rewind, and the ability to skip to anywhere in the movie is IMHO the reason DVD beat VHS. Making VHS digital isn't going to remove this. People are lazy and impatient and going back to a tape based format is not an option for home users. Especially as most already own a DVD player and paying for a new box isn't that attractive
Verdict: Too little too late.
- We are the slashdot. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be moderated -
I think should answer your question this. The knowledge already you have, but learn yet you must. Learn you will do, when you repeat holy mantra I give you. Oneness with understanding is what you seek. Now fast you go and open window! At opened window you stand and at top of your lungs you shout:
Chabongo! Chabongo! Umkaliwabushap sem balaimulaka, rusimapushuap sem treppo. Basagusulai ja abnepomar bu gusul. Graftok! Mubumaparobosan sem arobapak resem bu pulamobanakam sem rubulauk. Tereovar sema Bukalumupiri, nabulkulburro sem mushamo rosomarekopoldor. Boshka, Brakama bu usurawe waganupurrosalbarrer re busikusishrikebarulla atoll busbuknosti sem gruwubulluzollobayollotar. Basnost sem kalabukakinazgobipulatisar trusemapo bumkalpobashawan reduminaprotomaroilisir se boshka. Chabongo bonowanukalasar!
If using D-VHS for computer backups really takes off, then they would probably fix it so that it would require authentication to use raw mode. Using the device both as a VCR and as a backup of computer data would mean that the drive manufacturers could potentially loose the sale of a backup drive for each VCR sold.
Besides the obvious nature of prayer has changed so radically from its original intentions to that of mind control. "Guilt, complacancy, and ignorance", that is the mantra from which every religion heaves its breath and rests its fleeced power. Prayer is to center one's self not to engage in the garbled self-referencing and socially distorted ruminations that are planted in religious minds. The only madness that may be worth keeping in this respect is the ritual of self-diety for we have powers that are far beyond the parlour-trick "miracles" of gods.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Ever wondered, what bad blocks on your floppy disk were? It is digital, but when magnetic domains get flipped enought to wrong direction, your ones will become zeroes and contrary.
;)
For that reason, optical media is more secure. BTW, in optical disc writers (CD, DVD) data is written with magnetic forces, reflective layer is heaten with laser to a temperature of currie point, where domains can be influenced with magnetic field. Below that point, domains don't care about magnetic forces. That's why your CD's are hot when they come out of CD writter. That's also why procedure is called toasting
* Origin: XBase BBS (2:490/4100) Well the good old days may not return and rocks might melt and sea may burn.
Breaking News: Studios release new format!!
The MPAA announced today that it is backing a new format called 'DivX-Rip'. Digital disks the size of CD's store entire films using an encoding technique called 'DivX'. The advantages of this format are many, mainly, that the studios no longer need to worry about producing high quality images as the quality of DivX-Rip is notably bad.
"We expect many studios to take-up the new format, especially animation studios such as Disney since the DivX format does exceptionally well at encoding cartoons." Said an MPAA spokesman. Production of DivX-rip disks has already begun, and is expected to skyrocket in the next 3 quarters.
The MPAA has also developed a new copy-protection system for the format known as Zip-Password. The encryption system will only allow people with the correct password to view the films.
The RIAA is also developing a new system for music distribution. Named "MP3-CD" the new format will allow 10 times more music to fit on a CD sized disk and still retain 100% of the quality.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Troll, troll, troll.. This argument is OLD. Copyright infringement is NOT the same as theft, no matter what the industry would like you to believe. Soon they'll be calling it terrorism so that they can get their way in the law books at any cost to our freedom.
Original poster is correct. There will always be the ability to duplicate media and all they are doing is screwing over the honest consumer in this case. The person who is going to illegally copy something will always find a way.
Yes, because the end result of EVERY effort should have a dollar value attached. That's capitalism, right? Never could you *possibly* do something without expecting a huge cash windfall to come your way. What?! Do something out of the goodness of your heart for the good of mankind? NEVER... unless I'm going to get paid megabucks.
Please. The people who whine the most about this shit are amongst the richest people in the world. RIAA, MPAA, Britney, NSync, flavour of the month.. ALL are massive money moguls who are crying the blues that they only made $100 billion this year instead of $105B. How many people pirate "Joe's Garage Band", the group of guys who aren't making millions and need to worry about their rent payments? I'd say very few.
Dude.
You are my GOD!
I would kill to have my mom make me macaroni and cheese like that.
this will be fun!
;-).
;-) rips of them now.
now we can rip a D-VHS signal @ HDTV resolutions, and include a digital surround soundtrack, with perfect quality to DiVX
That'll fit nicely on those 4.7G DVD-R's we'll be able to buy for $1 by then.
And we'll use our hacked Xbox to play them.
cool.
DVD liberated europe. I hate regio encoding, macrovision and CSS, but thanks to the DVD with all these features I'm able to watch digital DiVX
I never watch dvd's. I just rip them to divx and watch those instead.
thanks!!
"D-VHS probably will and should replace Beta, et.al. in the professional sector, but I don't think it would have ever seen the light of day in video stores if the media was as durable as some of the new high capacity DVD/optical technology coming out."
Clearly, you know absolutely nothing. Beta is NOT used professionally. Betacam was; Betacam SP is dying; Digital Betacam is standard; Beta SX never really took off; IMX is new and HD-CAM is gaining momentum despite being seriously flawed. Al of those formats are Beta-related, though none ARE actually Betamax. As far as VHS is concerned, where to start? JVC has already given us pros the miracle of D-9 - which was their first stab at a digital VHS format. It was ignored to death despite being actually rather good. Panasonic also gave us the ill-fated D-3 and fine D-5 formats which are obviously (though never admittedly) VHS descendants. D-VHS will have exactly zero impact on professional video. Incidentally, I live in the UK where D-VHS was introduced about 2 years ago - I've never heard of anyone actually buying one, although I'm sure that they're very fine machines in their own right. I can hardly believe that D-VHS has just hit the USA NOW - surely some mistake?
That was classic intercourse!
Its tape.
That means...
Fast forwarding and rewinding. (No random access)
Wrinkles and crinkles.
Tape jams.
Dirty heads.
More mechanics in the tape deck so higher maintenance.
DVD will win in the end except in post production houses. Why? 1) DVD cost significantly less for the comsumer; 2) DVD already has significant market penetration
Why are the studios big about D-VHS? 1) Because it wears out; 2) Even though its digital its stored on tape and therefore copies can suffer from signal degragation.
http://www.panasonic.com/PBDS/subcat/HD_World/HDWo rld_Main.html
Yet another...
2000 dollars for a D-VHS tape deck!
Hahahahahahahahahahahah!
The problem with any tape format is that it is sequential in nature, hence is less flexible than a format that allows you to go to the required track much faster.
I agree with the sentiment 'It's tape! Gaaack!'
Obviously you were in the top classes in reading and comprehension! He said DIVX, not DivX;-). One was a disc format, the other is an encoding format (MPEG-4, basically).
I've never seen such an ill informed reply to a post in all my life...
I read some comments here about this format's high quality.
When all is said and done, so what?
DVD is cheap and offers more than enough quality for that average user. It is also a far more flexible format.
D-VHS will disappear to the land of DAT and BETAMAX, with a small scale professional base - IF IT'S LUCKY.
This also represents the last desperate gasp of JVC's R&D dept.
One thing that hasn't been clarified to my ignorant eyes is the fact that most tapes don't inherently have 'tracks', so the movie would in theory be continuous just like old VHS's. I know that most likely they could easily impliment a 'bookmark' system where some data was stored on the tape as well as video that would tell the player various timecodes it could skip to. The problem is, would a tape-based format be able to have multiple audio 'tracks'. I think there's not a lot of "it's just like DVD's, but better" hype, and maybe for good reason...
buttloads of crap this is... why in the hell would anyone want anything on Tape... sure.. you can record.. but at that price, who would want to? crap crap crap.. definitly DOA.
If no one ever uses it?
The reason I have that attitude towards tape is that is is not random access.
The video on my Tivo (at the medium setting, which is what I use for most things) isn't all that much better than VHS, and it's probably not as good as SVHS, but I would never go back to them. Having the data available in a format with random access allows me to just jump to a favourite scene or the special features.
I can't seeing ever using a sequential access device for content viewing/listening ever again.
Milalwi
I'm all for higher quality, but not if it means that I have to go back to rewinding tapes and fast-forwarding to special features (if there are any). I guess if I won the lottery and just had to have perfect HDTV quality, I'd get one as a companion to my dvd so I could have the best of both worlds, but it'll never replace scene selection or special features or easter eggs for me. It's the same reason I'll never own a DAT player when I can use a CD. The convenience really outweighs the slightly (and I mean from the perspective of the fact that DVD is already GREAT digital) better quality.
You aren't taking time dilation into account. (Neither does that formula, which doesn't look quite right.)
.99999 the speed of light.
.99999c relative to the "stationary" Observer, but time would almost completely stop for the occupants (relative to Observer). The ship #1 residents could then launch Ship #2 going at .99999c relative to them, and it's occupants would be almost frozen in time compared to Ship #1 (as well as even more frozen in time for the initial Observers).
;)
Ship #1 would be experiencing time dilation effects - time would be slower for people in Ship #1 than for "stationary" observer. Ship #2 would be going at 2/3 the speed of light *relative to Ship #1*. It would be going at a some other velocity relative to the original observer - somewhere between 2/3 and
Remember, velocity is [distance travelled]/[time taken to travel that distance], so Ship #2's absolute speed as measured by Ship #1 will be greater than it's speed as measured by the initial observer.
So you could have Ship #1 going at
Now you can go look up the formulas 'cause I'm to lazy.
But I love R3Tr0! I'm still waiting for them
to come out with D-8track and LP-ROM!
Actualy, there was a magazine(?) who
shipped Commodore 64 programs in this manner.
You would connect a record player to the tape
input on the machine, play the record, and
hope that the record would be clean enough for
the data to load correctly.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the DVHS tape going to be made of the same stuff as VHS? One thing I like about DVD is that there is no degradation of the data (at least not over my lifetime). My father has some great stuff on VHS, Raiders of the Lost Arc and the Last M*A*S*H episode to name a few, but they are so old that they can hardly be watched anymore. I even plan on having my wedding video burned to a DVD to maintain the quality of the picture. To echo my friend above what about the special features? Will I still be able to insert deleted scenes, turn on the directors commentary and view the trailers easily? I just don't see it taking off. I feel that there are not enough pureists out there that want a perfect picture. How many of us can really tell the difference anyway.
Make sure nobody wants to pay for the movie in the first place. Then there's no one to make a rip.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
Really, are we suppose to buy into that line of thinking from JVC and the other idiot media execs?
Sure, that's nice and dandy to protect your work, but copyright law is only there to artificially add value to the crap that's out there and to enforce the false value of it- it deserves to be copied. Only a complete rework of the copyright system that doesnt rip off the consumer unlike it does now would even be close to anything that I'd even think of contributing to the antipiracy effort. Even with that, I'd still copy things/support devices that allow me to do whatever the heck I want with the media and its contents.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
My idea on how to distribute music is to cut out the record company. As long as a band can come up with enough money to record the album, they can distribute it themselves. This will cut out the middleman, finally get rid of the horrific media of CD, and if they charge say a dollar or two to DL the album, they'll probably end up making more in the long run. I'm not condoning theft, merely that it's going to happen.
In 1982, Jack Valenti, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, told a House of Representatives subcommittee that the VCR was the beginning of the end for new movies, since studios would no longer receive money from networks eager to show their films on television.
"If you are an advertiser who has paid $280,000 a minute to advertise (on television), he feels a very large pain in his stomach as well, as in his checkbook, because (the VCR) destroys the reason for free television," Valenti said. "The technology is there, and I am the one who has a belief that before the next few years, the Japanese will have built into their machines an automatic situation that kills the commercial."
He was wrong about it before...
DVD - Great quality, doesn't really do HDTV well, can't recoder without hefty PC setup.
HDD Recorders - Great quality and compasity, not protable.
dVHS - Great quality, similar compasity to product already in market, design for HDTV, extremely portable[pack the tape and go], backwards compatable with VHS.
As to price, how much did the first DVD's cost?
-nuff said
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Unfortunately, not all digital tape behaves in quite that manner. As a matter of fact, look at the Alesis ADAT format. It's on an SVHS tape, but is recorded as ones and zeros. It's also utter garbage. I worked at a studio for a while that used ADAT and I would watch top quality tapes start giving errors after ten to fifteen passes through the deck. Also, DATs are *supposed* to sound the same after 1000s of times of being played...but it rarely works out to that amount. I worked with quite a few artists and engineers that considered a DAT to have maybe 100 top-quality plays. After that, toss it. While you could argue that the only thing lost at that point is a bit of the top-end quality, isn't that the point of this format in the first place?
-Rane (no account)
I can see DVHS being handy for TV stations replacing Beta, but not much else.
Heck no. Maybe a small market station or cable local orginator that is using SVHS might use it. But this is designed as a consumer format. Its got copy protection built into it and broacasters need to be able to look at things and copy things pursuant to constantly changing agreements.
Not to mention that its recording a highly compressed bitstream. Broadcasters tolerate some compression but not much before it hits the transmission point. It would go through too many decompress/compress cycles of a lossy algorithm before you ever see it at home. And that wouldn't be good at all.
Michael
--
The opinions above are mine. All mine! Bwuahahahahaah!
The opinions expressed above are those off one side of my brain, the other side and my employer may not agree.
You know, D-VHS isn't another lame format competing for market share, it fills a gap in the home theater market that will only grow in years to come--recording of hi-def video on removable media. Plain and simple. Tivo or ReplayTV can't come near HDTV quality, and the reason you don't see everyone lining up for a home theater-class re-recordable DVD player is because they don't exist. If you happen to pay the bucks for an HDTV tuner and TV, and won't be around some Thursday night to watch CSI in all its hi-res 1080i glory, do you want to record it on a VHS tape set to "SLP"? I think not. All the random access and rewinding arguments are beside the point--there's NOTHING OUT THERE that can do what this format can, until they release an HD-capable DVD-RW player or PVR.
there is a differnece between getting over the copying of something. and giving it away. Spiderman has been massively pirated same with attack of the clones. but last time i heard they werent giving it away and *gasp* making truckloads of money. breaking records to by the way
just because you dont visousely prevent others from any sort of copying does not mean you have to give it away
Let this retarded concept die. Do not buy!
D-VHS was never intended as a serious consumer tape format. Other than the fact that it is CURRENTLY the only available HD purchase/rental media, it is nothing but a perverse frankenstein reanimation of yesteryear's linear-access mechanical magnetic tape formats with all the disadvantages of inevitable mechanical wear and physical deterioration, and the lame absence of random access play. It seems like a transitional and ultimately short lived technology like Philips' DCC cassettes and Sony's
Digital-8 tapes.
D-VHS offers no substantial value to the user at all in terms of convenience and longevity, and in this enlightened age with widely available random-access technology such as DVD and PVR video decks, who wants to go back to 'please remember to rewind your tape before returning it' ???
Linear access magnetic tapes should at this point in time be relegated to high capacity bulk data backup and professional digital broadcast video formats.
It's more like some kind of experiment to see how many suckers are out there who are willing to pay greedy studios for some kind of frankenstein reanimated tape format and buy it again once the HD-DVDs arrive in one shape or another.
The technology of course exists today for the studios to put a HD movie on a disc the same size as a CD/DVD, but given 1) the ease by which the CSS "copy protection" of the DVD format was broken, and 2) the apparently almost indefinite lifespan of these discs (I have several audio CDs stamped nearly 20 years ago that are playing just fine!), it may be that they feel it is too much of a gamble at present to release a HD-DVD format until they've "tested" the new copy protection scheme on a short lived limited adoption expensive tape format they can take out of circulation should it be proken and the surviving copies will expire eventually like all tapes does in the end.
Another thought: Considering that tapes are "printed" with some kind of bulk linear recording technology, I wold be not at all surprised to learn that Hollyweird is printing digital serial numbers on those D-VHS tapes for tracking them. After all, a high bandwidth HD copy of a movie must be considered a 'valuable' item since a 'dishonest person' (or video enthusiast!) with the right equipment could theoretically create very good quality copies of the movie in any format desired by scaling down to regular broadcast formats.
Consider that even DVD isn't all that - the bandwidth is quite low, and there's many MPEG2 compression artifacts readily visible on a good TV / projector - such as "ringing" around titles and edges. From a HD master such a 'dishonest person' (or video enthusiast) could re-encode a title to a different format perhaps superior to the DVD MPEG2 encoding, and play it back using their computer on a conventional television or projector at substantially better quality than that afforded by conventional DVDs. Just a thought.
Ok I agree. This is a damn worthless format that will die screaming.
I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up - scanning a tape sucks compared to a random access format like DVD. Would you "degrade" your access speed of DVD for a streaming technology? Imagine scanning for the added features(even if they're planning on matching the extras on DVDs). So forget about existing DVD users as a market. OK, that leaves hard core VHS users as a potential user base. If you finally decided you wanted to leave VHS behind, would you really ignore the massively burdgeoning DVD market for a tiny market like this with inevitably pricey players and movies?
DOA indeed...
Beta SX never really took off
I've seen quite a few professionals with SX, including (the only) regional ITV news station I've seen (ITV is a large network in the UK, the commercial version of the BBC in some ways)
Digital Betacam is used much more.
Of course here at our student tv station we use SVHS!!!
yeah...
This format certainly is not unprecedented. The Digital 8 and Mini-DV formats commonly used on digital camcorders use a system that is similar to this, I would think. The underlying principles of digital magnetic tape storage is simple. Instead of recording an analog signal to the tape, we simply replace that with a preordered binary signal, like when you play a tape from an old Spectrum or Commodore, it sounds like static, bleeps and bloops.
Moreover, the time has passed for this form of storage. Certainly, you can strore a lot of information in this manner, as magnetic tape backup devices can use special tapes and backup over 10 gigabytes of data. The unfornuate thing is that they are only practically used as backup devices, as they are too slow-seeking and reading to be used as a conventional mass-storage device like a hard disk.
This form of video will obviously offer no advantages over DVD. It's more expensive to make where a plastic casette with tape spools inside and mechanical features must be made to accomidate a single casette, while a DVD is nothing more than a platter of pressed reflected film. Moreover, tape storage systems are linear, so, yup, you gotta rewind and fast forward to find stuff whereas DVD can seek almost instantaniously.
The copy protection mechanism they claim the tape offers can be easily circumvented. The CSS encryption on DVDs has already been cracked, so has Macrovision and other encryption formats. And IF this 'copy protection' feature is hard or impractical to circumvent, well, you gotta be able to see the video, so you can simply tape the video from your TV screen if all else fails (which it probably won't).
If this was introduced a few years ago with a lesser price tag, then it would be a novel invention. However, at this time, it is laughable. It has already been replaced by DVD even before its birth. Now, with great DVD players below the 100 dollar mark, this player that costs over $2k will be bought by not many people because it is expensive, offers no features above DVD, and will likely have a very small amount of videos made for it.
I co-own a small production studio, and am one of those Mac users with FinalCutPro-type software, and I've seen this attitude before. I edit a weekly TV show that is shot on BetaSP, and edited in Final Cut Pro. With properly calibrated equipment I have seen NO difference in quality between video edited on Inferno or Avid and video edited on FCP.
Yes, when I capture video onto my Mac it gets compressed, but it's still 1 Gig per 5 minutes, and it looks as good as the source Beta tape. I've done complex composting and effects on it and it comes out beautifully. The only downside is that it has to be captured in real-time, then dumped back to tape in real-time.
If you read the forums at sites like 2-pop you'll see that most people are unimpressed with the quality jump from modern digitized (and compressed) video to fully uncompressed video and RAID storage. The show I edit is done on about $20,000 worth of hardware (half of which is the BetaSP deck) and (as far as I can tell) is indistinguishable from video edited on $100,000 Avid system.
I don't mean to be belligerent about this, but this argument always reminds me of the vinyl vs. CD debates. It's really splitting hairs. Compressed video doesn't just mean Realplayer 56k streams. The abilities of those operating the equipment has as much to do with the quality of the output as the hardware you're using.
Don't you?
I like this news because at $2000 a unit, this will not achieve any sort of significant penetration. It will, therefore, not draw a lot of content from the entertainment industry as they wait until platform adoption occurs before investing in production and inventory maintenance and channel development.
This will be a direct piece of evidence refuting Sen. Hollings' claim that
OK, so it doesn't exactly refute that assertion, but it will show that protection is not the primary reason that studios aren't filling the channel with digital content. Consumer adoption is the primary driver, and people simply don't adopt things that are not worth their time/money/attention.
The CBDTPA aims to force the public to adopt technology that it doesn't want, need, or value. All in the name of promoting content availability.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
DVHS isn't meant to compete with DVD at all. DVHS is akin to DVD as SACD is to the Compact Disc, they're meant for 2 different markets: DVD is for the masses and DVHS is for the videophile that has $2000 to blow on a player and probably already has a 50" plasma display.
If you want your movies displayed with the full 1080 lines of resolution, and you've got the cash and you want it NOW - then DVHS is your only option at the moment.
I can hear people laughing from here.
Reasons why D-VHS sucks compared to DVD.
1) Tape degradation. DVD's are optical and never come in contact with any parts when playing, therefore they can never degrade in quality. Even if it gets a few scratches, it might skip, but the quality will remain.
2) Instant access. You never have to rewind a DVD, you can skip to any section you want and there is no dead-space at the beginning.
3) Multi language/subtitle support. This might be possible to do with D-VHS, but I highly doubt that it will be able to contain as much. I have DVD's that support 3 different audio tracks (not including the director commentary track) and 4 subtitled languages.
4) Special features. Actor biographies, commentaries, games, behind the scenes videos, deleted scenes, screensavers, etc..
5) DVD players cost as little as $99 and movies go for $15-$25 each.
6) You can play audio CD's in DVD players (some even support VCD).
7) DVD's are physically smaller than tapes. This means you can take many more of them with you.
8) You can't play D-VHS tapes on your PC, PlayStation 2, or Xbox.
9) You can find just about any movie ever made on DVD nowadays. D-VHS has several years of catching up to do.
psst... you can defeat this copy protection by writing on the tapes with a felt tip marker
The reason why data written to DAT's and DVHS and computer backup tapes and other digital tape does not degrade over time is because additional protection bits are written to the tape. There are systems whereby if you want to store k bits to the tape, you actually write n bits (n>k) in such a way that you can have some number of bits which can be lost due to noise or tape media dropouts or scratches or whatever and you will still be able to decode the original k bits. It is introducing redundancy into the data storage.
Yes, it's very clever. And yes, it only works with digital data. Remember, everything is analog at the lowest level.
My other first post is car post.
Is D-worst D-ang D-at I ever saw! And D-at's D-ee truth! ;-)
DivX is a bad analogy, sounds more like SVHS or BetaMax reincarnated to me. Why not just go to DVD-RW/RAM? Sequential-access media just plain sucks. Tapes wear out, strech/shrink and start losing data in about 10-20 years. I'd get tivo before sinking a bunch of money into a new vcr. Most stuff you record you watch once anyhow, and a fixed disk system shouldn't piss MPAA/RIAA/etc. too much, because it would be more difficult to copy stuff. I'm still miffed about the digital "macrovision" no-copy bit in the DTV feeds. Oh well, someone will just have to "violate" the DMCA and build a box to strip it out; that means another project and more money for the l337 h4x0rs i guess.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Its Tape, so the head is going to touch the tape and cause the tape to were. If the encoding is good then you can reconstruct the damaged data and all is good, till the tape wares out. A CD is never touched, only light is reflected off of it, so thats why it can last so long. But for most people I think this is dumb, becouse DVD seems like more modern tech, and its easier to store, cheaper to ship, and cheaper to make......
But as long as were going this track.... Bring back the eight track!!!
-James
yeah, we've got one too - but what does Sony's rebranding of the format tell you about it's success? Most of the limited success that SX has had has been down to Sony's agressive pricing on some really fine WS camcorders and the deck's low cost route of getting SP playback via SDI.
That was classic intercourse!
The tape aspect of DVHS is obviously inferior... how difficult is it going to be to get HDTV quality onto a dvd type disc?
OK - lets think about a few things people - VHS has been around for over 20 years with more movies available than DVD may ever see. Do you think they are going to bring out 'every' movie ever made in a DVD form ... NOT. Oh yeah...New D-VHS decks can also playback ALL the VHS analogue standards. How responsible to consumers' investments is JVC for accomplishing that!
- Yes DVD has better picture and resolution than standard 'analogue' VHS. But it definately doesn't have the speed (bitrate) or storage capacity of a VHS tape gone digital:D-VHS. D-VHS holds 50GB of data vs DVD's 4.7GB(per side). Titanic encoded for D-VHS requires 33GB.
- Have any of you 'chapter' and 'feature' geeks out there stood up in front of everyone in a movie theatre and started to surf the movie with a remote? The 'serious' home theatre user would prefer quality over navagation. Movies were meant to be watched from beginning to end - linear. Are they any of you who wish to argue that DVD is better than film? Gee-wiz... Film is linear...bummer it has to be rewound. Well people, D-VHS now allows consumers (simple folks like us) to playback studio D-5 master quality movies in high definition in our own homes! D-VHS is doing to the High-Definition video industry, what VHS did for Standard-Definition video industry 20 years ago.
- D-VHS is not to compete with DVD, because they are for two different audiences (customers). Stop worrying about D-VHS messing up DVD growth and support. Start worrying about the Internet streaming DVD 'standard def' quality video on demand - in the near future, you won't need to 'buy' shiny discs. You will just buy movies virtually, and watch them anytime, anywhere.
- D-VHS is simply taking it's place as the premium video playback technology for consumers, 'the ONLY HDTV format for consumers', and will be so for the next decade.
- Lastly, D-VHS will not replace DVD.... because it's in a different market than DVD. Yes engineers are working on blue-laser disc technologies that will enhance speed and storage for HD application, but we are several years away, and by that time gauranteed there will be competing manufacturers with various versions...like DVD+RW,-RW,RAM is today.
On top of that, new technologies like digital wafer cards could be better - no scratches, no moving parts, lots of storage, size of a quarter? Technology never stops improving.
If you want HDTV today, D-VHS is your ONLY choice.
(or buy a professional movie film projector for you basement):)
Any video professional worth his or her salt isn't going to waste their breath being any more specific than just 'beta' unless they're trusting some lackey to purchase equipment or training an assistant.
Omit the first sentence, and you might have had an informative post for the two people in the world who still think Betamax is the same 'Beta' currently in use, but in the real world, being an argumentitive smartass always earns zero karma.
Nice to see you've learned how to use Google to effectively win friends and influence people. Flamebait trailing Flamebait? Sure. But I have karma to spare.
Slashdot: rejecting tech news in favor of rubber band guns since 1997.