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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'."
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.
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.
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
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."
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
My buddy has managed to put a movie (DVD without the extra stuff) on one 700 MB disk w/ stereo and excellent video quality. It is a pain the ass but it is a way to copy DVD (without having to use two disks). I would rather go through this process than spend $2k on D-VHS especially when I can rent DVDs for $3. Not a legal alternative, but an alternative nonetheless.
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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.
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!)
That's if you don't count the $1995 for the player. That's steep.
My big questions:
1) Do the players they are selling record?
2) If so, do they get around the Macrovision copy protection built in to HD hardware/signals?
Related to 2) above, have the HD content copyright owners suddenly relaxed their position on recording? I doubt it.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again