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Toshiba, NEC Plan To Create Yet Another Optical Format
selderrr writes: "Dow Jones Newswires is reporting today that Toshiba and NEC are planning to propose a new optical disk format to the DVD Forum that will offer four times more storage capacity than current DVDs. In February, a consortium of nine companies, including Sony and Matsushita, announced a new format that would offer 50GB of data storage. While the Toshiba/NEC option is smaller at 40GB, it is cheaper to produce. The two disc formats will not be compatible." Related, coryboehne writes "The New York Times has a great report detailing the history of the DVD. According to the article digital videodiscs and their players have now surpassed the VHS in terms of sales for the first time (In 2001, $10.3 billion was spent on movies, 52% of this on DVD's, now compare this to 2002, $12.4 billion total revenue with 65%, going for DVD's) . Funny considering that DVD's are only in about a third of American homes (about 30 million households, and consider that a quarter of these homes have more than one player), compare that to the unbelievable amount of VHS players (about 90% of homes in the USA have a VHS player) and it quickly shows just how popular the DVD has become."
DVD stands for "Digital Versatile Disc." In it's infancy it was known as a Digital Video Disc, but everyone wanted the format for their own purposes, so the "V" was changed to Versatile. Now you can have video, audio, data, etc. all on one format and not have a contradictory name.
It wouldn't be a Monday without someone launching a new media format or network protocol.
Escoutaire
When a dream dreams the dreamer, the dreams the real.
Is this really necessary? With 100GB hard drives becoming more commonplace, I think we're at the limit of what normal users need out of hardware. There is just no use whatsoever for 50GB removable discs. In 10 years, we will all still be using DVD+RW. Drives will be a lot faster, sure, but history has shown that there is just no application that requires more than the ample 4.7GB of removable storage provided by DVD technology.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I haven't heard that many people complaining that DVDs are too small and that we need a more expensive higher-density format. There are plenty of formats out there from various companies with expensive media holding gigs and gigs of data. Most people can't afford DVD+R or DVD-R (or whatever other formats there are), and this doesn't have much use beyond backing up large files. I can't imagine people needing more space than that provided by DVDs for movies or software.
Could anyone argue that DVD was such a huge success because there was no real competing format at the quality level? We didn't have to choose between two incompatible video disk formats. We just had to choose between a Panasonic or a Phillips..
Now, they are doing the betamax vs vhs thing again. I wish they would learn their lesson. In establishing standards, a bit of cartel may be for the better.
Stop the brainwash
A very long time ago (october 12th 2000) to be exact, I read a story on geek.com detailing new florescent disk technologies, kinda reminds me of this technology.
What is this perfect technology? You've probably never heard of it, it has only been used in the field of science. It's called a TRacking Optical Laser. Used for data-collection in high data-rate/volume situations it supports the following amazing features:
- 2.3 TB of data storage
- Guaranteed media lifetime of 300 years
- Supports speeds up to 12 GB/s
- Even at the low purchasing volumes seen so far, the cost is about $.10/disc and $100/player-recorder
Best of all, this device is made right here in the US of A. But you won't see it in Circuit City any time soon because the devious Japanese "engineer"ing firms have bribed Congress to hell and make sure our shelfs stay flooded with their inferior products.It just shows that most people who have a video recorder don't go out and buy a new one, just because there are new models out.
Or it shows how gullible people are in repurchasing the same content that they have already bought in another format.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In 2001, $10.3 billion was spent on movies, 52% of this on DVD's, now compare this to 2002, $12.4 billion total revenue with 65%, going for DVD's)
These figures aren't all that surprising, considering that VCRs have more uses than just watching pre-recorded movies. Lots of people probably have VCRs mostly for time-shifting purposes. I, myself, only rent movies infrequently and don't buy a great number of them. Whereas, DVDs really only have one purpose, to play pre-recorded movies. They also offer higher quality and more convenience than VCRs, so it's not surprising that the sales figures for DVDs would be increasing, and although only a minority of households have DVDs, the ones that do would belong to the more hard-core movie collectors who are more likely to spend money on movies than average.
I'd bet that a minority of households have 1.5GHz+ computers with the latest GeForce video cards, but that they represent a disportionately large share of video-game purchasers.
It's not surprising that an increasing percentage of total video revenues come from DVD sales. They cost more than VHS. So even if you sell equal numbers of VHS and DVD, the DVDs are going to take a larger percent of the revenue. Plus the fact that they don't take up as much room as VHS tapes means people are more likely to have a very large collection without realizing they've bought so many.
take a format, take an asymmetric mirror, and reverse the original format to create an incompatible new format. Repeat 42 times.
From the article: "Their new optical disc will have a storage capacity four times larger than that of the DVD. It will be capable of recording up to 25 hours of television broadcasts."
They will have to confront the RIAA, MPAA and friends if they want to sell this gear. If the current legislation being drafted for HDTV and the DMCA are succesful, there will be nothing to record.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Hooray, when this comes out I'll have another reason to go spend more money on another player as entertainment companies will abandon DVD! Thankyou consumer electronics and entertainment companies!
It's rather annoying really, DVD has just become established and now they want to obsolete it!? I bet that the media will be even more expensive than DVD's are now, which are even more expensive than VHS tapes (how it can be ~$10 cheaper to make a tape than press a DVD?)
Though it does mean that videos and audio will be able to be stored with higher quality - which is a good thing because degrading quality sucks. IMHO they should not bring out another format until they can store 4 hours of video on a disc without resorting to lossy compression.
DVDs are marketed differently than VHS. The prices are so low right now that there's an enormous incentive to buy rather than rent.
One interpretation of these numbers is that lower prices == higher revenue. Betcha the RIAA doesn't catch on to it.
How many hours of video would 50 gig be?
I have lots of video tape I'd like to move to DVD, just don't know about formats and such.
Thanks
Whatever storage, processing, memory you have you can never have enough. I used to write tracks that fitted on floppy disks (from the sampler and computer). Now they don't fit on CD-R anymore and I even give DVD-R a run for its money sometimes.
Basically as you realise you can so something (ie use a whole 48Mb track to record just the hihat say) you push it more. I think that is a good thing as it means less compromise on silly techy issues and better sounding music.
Computers are at last getting big enough to handle things without the pathetic error of not enough disk storage to perform that operation.
I say roll-on the 1 Terrabyte DVD!!!
(Well so long as the write rates go up, DVD-Rx2 is a little on the slow side)
locarecords.com
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
link here
Shocking, everyone can afford a VHS deck, while DVD players are considered more of a luxury. Sure there are $60 DVD decks, but mostly online and hard to find. While they have recently hit the affordable levels, VHS has been there for 10 years.
Therefore, DVD, with its smaller penetration, has more penetration among upper income folks.
Upper income folks buy more DVDs? Wow... Who would have thought.
Video collecting is an expensive extravagance. While I enjoy my DVD collection (it gets used more than my VHS collection), I have more disposable income than most Americans.
However, I can't imagine being shocked at DVD's penetration...
Alex
First, Sony announces a new DVD burner that supports the two leading DVD-recordable formats. The peasants rejoice.
In response to this, two brand-new incompatible DVD formats are put out in the hopes that competition breeds better business. What will the consumer gain from this? The Sony DVD-R/DVD+R/RW100 and two new abbreviations to play with. How are they going to manage to fit this all onto the faceplate of one multifunction device?
The reason dvds have so much market share compared to vhs is because the movie catalog rollout to dvd. People with DVDs who love Godfather will re-buy the title on DVD, even though they already have Godfather on VHS. People are replacing thier movie collection in the new format.
I'll be doing it for of the newly released special edition Pulp Fiction DVD.
I'm not a *new* buyer. I'm a *repeat* buyer of the same movie. Naturally, this is not sustainable. Ad DVD adoption increases, and as the back catalog is filled out and people have replaced their collection, DVD will be no different from what VHS is. I doubt VHS is going away soon.
Of course, when VHS *does* go away, and the DVD catalog is complete, and the everyone has replaced their collections -- the movie introduce an "all new" format and start the cycle over again.
For accurate head-to-head measurements, check unit sales of LOTR on VHS vs DVD.
Software Wars
When CDR's became available, it only took a few disks to backup a typical disk. Now it takes 115 to backup a single $83 disk drive.
Personally, I would have to go out of my way to fill up a standard dvd the way it is. Most of the cds I have burned have huge chunks of unused space.
It'll be a while before there's a market for this type of disc, assuming we aren't talking about a 40 gig DVD-R, here.
HDTV hasn't widely penetrated yet, so that potential use for the extra space isn't there. And the fact that studios aren't likely to want to put more stuff on single discs (because people won't pay that much more for it) means that at current resolutions, the market isn't there.
Unless we're talking about RECORDABLE discs for computer use, this won't go anywhere for a while. And the Toshiba one will be most likely, since any drive will have to be compatible with as many options as possible to be competetive.
Still, nice to know that when the market wants it, the tech will be ready.
Buying DVD is a much better value than buying a lame VHS. Especially for movie crazed people who watch kung-fu flicks until the tape wears out (not that I've ever done that a half dozen times). Why doesn't the music business realize the huge market here? They could easily fit all the music on a DVD and include all sorts of commentary by the musician as well as behind the scenes footage. MTV and VH1 already do a lot of behind the scenes shows on bands. Why can't they include that on the same disk? It would definitely go a long way to make it more attractive to me.
I'd rather not pay 16-18 bucks for a music CD, but I would be willing to pay 24.00 for a DVD with extra features and content. They don't even have to make new content. They could just cherry pick interviews, concert footage, music videos and other existing stuff. Oh well, the music execs suck. End of story.
Like many others, I own both a DVD player and a VHS recorder/player. While I occasionally buy films in the VHS format (even less frequently now that I have my DVD player), I bought my VHS player primarily for watching rental films and for recording stuff on TV. DVD, on the other hand, has been heavily marketed as a player of purchased films, and although I now rent films in the DVD format, I bought my DVD player primarily to watch purchased DVD films.
The DVD may have better image quality, and room for more hi-fi audio channels (stereo sound quality on the VHS is excellent, though), but the main reason I prefer DVD is media durabilty. Every time I watch one of my VHS films, it wears down. Image and sound quality deteriorate over time and with use. I'm reluctant to let people borrow my favourite VHS films. With DVD i have no such hesitations.
I think this accounts for a lot of the difference in sales. The VHS is marketed as a recorder, the DVD is marketed (at least in Sweden) as the hub of your home cinema. While all newer films are available on rental DVD, purchasable DVD's are much more visibly available than their VHS counterparts.
Excellent marketing by the filmmakers. They recognised that the change of technology generations gave them a chance to push for a change in consumer patterns.
It would be nice if they see the advent of Internet media distribution as an opportunity as well, and not a threat.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
".....planning to propose a new optical disk format to the DVD Forum that will offer four times more storage capacity than current DVDs"
Gee, like DVD was supposed to have been all along? Not gonna buy into it. Wouldn't be prudent at this junc-ture.
The Toshiba-NEC disc has a 40-gigabyte capacity, smaller than that of the Blu- ray, but cheaper to produce. The structure of their disc is similar to DVD's, allowing manufacturers to use current DVD production equipment to make the new optical disc. I was thinking maybe they dropped 10 gigs to have b/w compatibility? Like not in old dvd players, but the ability to play dvds in their new players. Maybe for the 50gig bluray dvd you cannot play old dvds/cds. Does anybody know for sure?
The companies supporting Blue-ray are: Hitachi Ltd., LG Electronics Inc., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Pioneer Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corporation, Sony Corporation, and Thomson Multimedia.
-- null
2 50 GB discs or 2.5 40 GB disc are much easier to deal with than 22 DVD (+/-) r's
Geez, now I can rec..., er, indefinitely time-shift a whole season of Babylon5 on a single disc? (tosses old DVD writer out the window).
Is there some mass conspiracy to confuse customers? If it's not a "DVD" why the hell do they call it a DVD!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Ok, now go make those 50 Gb beasts writeable for a really small cost and include the drives with new PC's so we can finally move on from those bloody floppy disks!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This makes no sense. If such a device does exist either there is a problem with it or the prices you quote are way off. care to elaborate or provide links?
Of course people with DVD players buy more videos than people with VCR's. First, people who have DVD players have more disposable income. I spent $350 on my first DVD player, and didn't bat an eye. I think the total bill that day was over $500 when I included a few movies. Compare this with the person scraping together $59 for a VCR.
But that should be modded 'redundant'.
Here is the insightful part:
What consumer cares how cheap the discs are to create? The savings will NOT be passed on to us. The savings will get divvied up amongst the distributor, presser of discs, and the owner of the source material.
Don't count on data either. At the very least, Valenti and the gang will be pushing for some sort of blank media tax.
The only way these get onto consumers' shelves is if the profit taking potential for the entities I mentioned is so great that they essentially subsidize the players.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
And I just made my final payment on my high-end Sony Hi-Fi system with a MiniDisc player!
3 people per household I guess?
Notice it said HOMES not people
Putting VHS > DVD I would make it SVCD (just in case) SVCD will get you ~ 2hour per 1.5 GB so you can do over 50 hours of sVHS quality on the 40 GB disc
No doubt because people can easily use their VCRs to pirate movies. I guess Jack Valenti was right after all.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Does this new format support HDTV signals? I just got my new TV and satellite decoder hooked up this weekend, and I was just plain awestruck by the 1080i demos I saw.
Truly getting closer to looking through a window...and regular TV looks fuzzy.
My progressive scan DVD player looks pretty good too, but an HD-DVD type player would be really wild.
Is that what this new media will ultimately do?
(on the downside most of the HD stuff has no business taking up HD time - old movies? The Young and the Restless? What's the point?)
I don't see that this is going to be very telling as far as true market share. LOTR is going to be a movie that is bought by a peticular market, most of whom ( I IMAGINE ) will aready have DVD's. IMHO, you need to do this on a movie that had great theater reviews, execlent revenew, and had much larger appeal to the general public as a "good flick".
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
Whoopee! Yet another format for the MPAA and RIAA to force digital "rights" managment onto! Managing their so-called "rights" by managing all of ours into nothingness! Let's all help them out by running out and buying it like the lemmings we are!
"Funny considering that DVD's are only in about a third of American homes (about 30 million households, and consider that a quarter of these homes have more than one player), compare that to the unbelievable amount of VHS players (about 90% of homes in the USA have a VHS player) and it quickly shows just how popular the DVD has become."
That is odd. Why aren't more customers running out and buying the newer technology with all its new features? Features like the inability to fast-forward through commercials or FBI warnings. Features like the inability to make archival copies as guaranteed by copyright law. Features like region coding. VCR's don't even have a cartel like the DVD Forum to eliminate all competition through their strong-arm tactics! Who the heck wants to record television broadcasts, anyway? As we all know, that's both amoral and illegal!
I used to have a DVD player, but then I got rid of my PlayStation 2. If they want me to buy into a new technology, they can come back when they stop trying to do through technology what they can't do legally. Of course, trying to put out a better product in a capitalistic market is a completely alien concept to them...
For only $17.99 ! Or from blockbuster previously viewed fro 10.99 ... Uh oh, do I hear the RIAA complaining again that P2P is killing their sales of 60 minute $17.99 lame audio cds? Awww...
One interpretation of these numbers is that lower prices == higher revenue. Betcha the RIAA doesn't catch on to it.
:)
:)
So, by your logic, if the RIAA were to market its products for zero dollars, it would recieve the maximum possible revenue. In fact, it would make more sense to attach a negative value to its products, in essence, paying people money to accept its products in order to maximize profits. I, for one, am completely in favour of this marketing plan. Your logic has a certain charm to it that modern business lacks
Unfortunately, the industry-standard trick is to use various branches of mathematics (Statistics and Calculus, mostly) to determine the maximum point of the function of numCustomers * price. As price increases, the number of customers decreases, but this may be made up for in profits. As price decreases, more people buy the product, but profits diminish. In the end, there should be a mathematical sweet spot at which enough people part with enough money to buy a new pair of silicone breasts (or, to be fair, buttocks) for whichever star's popularity is in a state of decline. (Oh, and tack on a few dollars to each disc for extra measure...just in case
Proof that you can't trust history books.
Large-volume optical storage provides an excellent archival medium for large datasets. It can be kept in a near-online state with higher retrieval time for less work than traditional methods, e.g. tape.
I know a company that was looking for exactly this (actually, hoping for 80-100G capacity) a few months ago; a small (~30 person) company but they crunch monthly databases running around 70G, which they would like to keep around without paying for and maintaining massive disk arrays, especially since old data is only needed on occasion.
I still haven't bought a DVD player or DVD.
w00t for me. Ultimate Anti-consumer.
What we really need is a format with less dictatorship-like licensing. I don't mean the whole DeCSS thing, which was dictatorship enough, but the general DVD licensing scheme. If you want to even sell a product that has a DVD drive it is $10,000. It is another $10,000 as you all know to make the software to read DVDs, another $10,000 if you want to manufacture the DVD. So the Powers that be have made $30,000 off of every single DVD player ever made. Isn't that a bit steep? I know $30,000 is a drop in the hat to big companies, but that rules out small inventors from even making and selling a DVD rom based product. Isn't ONE $10,000 fee for the manufacture of the drive itself enough? If I buy an object shouldn't I have the right to resell it anyway I see fit without paying an extra $10,000? It's not like I can still use it after I sell it. There are alot of DVD players out there, millions. You'd think that 10,000 millions would be enough without the DVD consortium feeling the need to triple it.
Wow, I can't even recall the last time I used the VHS player to actually play recorded media.
Since I bought a DVD player, it's just been the TV tuner.
As for the "new formats", *YAWN*. By the time the RIAA and MPAA get through with them, they'll require biometrics and a telephone jacked into the UberMegaCorp's databases. Remeber DIVX?
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the MPAA/RIAA facists change the law they wrote to label anyone they believe has misuesd their copyrights as an enemy combatant.
We dont need a ned disc format!
18 GB of DIVX should give us 2+ hours of HDTV playtime!
Use BETA!
(seriously. Whats with all the sony worship by geeks? Sony is, after all, the one that gave us beta.)
Since HD content at broadcast-level bitrates (19.2Mbps) require 8.6GB/hr, these discs would be the ideal format to use for HD-DVD. Even three hour movies would comfortably fit on the 40GB version, with plenty of room for DD5.1, DTS, a couple commentaries, and plenty of other extras.
Heck, for most movies you could even match DVHS's bitrate of 28.2Mbps (12.7GB/hr) comfortably.
Sure sounds better than the red-laser "solution" the studios have been pushing.
It will take a poster-sized wall chart just to summarize the basic formats and their compatibility.
Consumers will just refer to them all as DVD!@#*&!!
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I'm with you up to a point. In fact, I can easily envision people dutifully repurchasing all their Pauly Shore movies on DVD because that's the thing to do these days. But if I may, I would like to offer two counterpoints:
1. Not all of us just blindly repurchase everything. Except for situations covered by point #2, I have not bought anything on DVD that I already have on VHS.
2. The times when I do repurchase something (for example: Se7en and Twin Peaks/any thing by David Lynch) I've gotten a lot more bang for my money.
My Twin Peaks tapes look like crap. They always have. The DVDs look fantastic. And they have the Log Lady introductions. And they have commentary. And they have other cool stuff.
The same is true for Se7en. While my tape didn't look like crap the way TP did, the DVD does look better. And there is a lot of stuff on the two discs that was not on the VHS tape.
It's not like they just played the VHS tape, captured the output and recorded that on to a DVD.
We're not all lemmings. And sometimes, buying the DVD is not just "repurchasing the same content."
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
Yeah all they did was run Travolta's montrous head
under a high powered flourescent light and they
knew they had found a new way to store information.
1. find a scientologist with huge head.
2. convince scientologist that Lron has come back
from the dead, and is waiting at the lab.
3. preheat flourescent bulb
4. put scientologist under the bulb and wait 10
minutes.
5. at this point the scientologists head will begin
to glow, so be sure you have your protective suits
ready.
6. after 20 minutes under the bulb, all of the thetans
that were clinging for dear life onto this poor
scientologist, start screaming off this guys body
at incredible speeds, so be sure you are behind a
concrete wall.
7. after 30 minutes the scientologist will be CLEAR
of all thetans and thus will be one kick ass smart
son of a bitch.
8. Pay scientologist a huge salary and sit back while
this guy solves all the worlds problems by putting
an end to insanity, criminality, and war.
What a coincidence! I bought an Apex 1200 DVD player at SEARS on Saturday for $60. That's SEARS, folks. Can't get more mainstream than that.
I have my complaints about this...it's the unhackable version that's VCD crippled, so it's not entirely roses and candy. It can play DVDs without having to boot a computer, which is basically why I got the thing. Just pop the disk in and off you go. It played my "Princess Mononoke" DVD which is perhaps the most elaborate DVD I have. It makes ATI Cinemaster choke, so I use it as a test of what I can or cannot do with a given DVD player/software.
BTW folks...advance word on the Daria "Is It College Yet?" DVD is that it, like the "Is It Fall Yet?" DVD, is DEFACTO REGION FREE. The box is marked Region 1, but the disk will play in any region so long as your TV will understand NTSC signals. From what I understand from my European friends this is not a problem.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Of course, the next step would be backing up full HDs, currently 80 to 100 GBs. But given the rate of growth of HDs, I can't imagine anything keeping up.
In 2001, $10.3 billion was spent on movies, 52% of this on DVD's, now compare this to 2002, $12.4 billion total revenue with 65%, going for DVD's)
Sure more money is being spent on DVDs but they are also a lot more expensive! VHS prices seem to be between $1 - $15, while the price for DVDs tends to be about $9 - $25. It makes sense that more money is being spent on them. Though I wonder what the statistics look like if you compare quantities.
Just what we need, another f-ing 'standard' to confuse everyone even more.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There are DVD recorders around, though pretty pricy, as is the media.
I think Tivo, etc. have VCR/DVD beat for time shifting purposes regardless, so an an integrated DVD/HDD recorder would pretty much cover all bases IMO.. they just need to make it a helluvalot cheaper
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
Unless we're talking about RECORDABLE discs for computer use, this won't go anywhere for a while. And the Toshiba one will be most likely, since any drive will have to be compatible with as many options as possible to be competetive.
Frankly, with 8mm backup tapes going for $50.00 a pop and 100GB/200GB LTO tapes costing $100.00 a pop, with all of the headaches associated with tape backups, something like this would be a godsend for the tech industry.
We already backup to DVD-R where it makes sense (database dumps, etc), and having daily archives on a stable medium that go back years (CD-R) has come in very, very handy more than once.
Imagine being able to backup and archive your entire fileserver that way.
That is what interests me in the 100GB optical media we keep being promised, or even the 27 GB media these folks are promising us. The ability to backup every night to a stable, randomly accessible medium from which restores are trivial, fast, and accessible for each day going back as far as we need to.
The day we can replace tape backup with inexpensive optical backup, a la today's DVD-R or CD-R media, is the day this sort of thing will have a very wide market in the computer industry, irrespective of what the entertainment industry wants or needs.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
$12.4 billion total revenue with 65%, going for DVD's) . Funny considering that DVD's are only in about a third of American homes (about 30 million households, and consider that a quarter of these homes have more than one player),
I don't think it is funny; I think this stat just speaks to the huge division of income and wealth in our country. The people at the upper echelon (most of the readers here) with disposable income and the best home theatre systems are able to purchase a lot of movies. While the people with VCR's have to worry about making the rent and taking care of their family. We (most of the readers here) should think about how we can change this divide the next time we are browsing for our next DVD purchase.
if these statistics/numbers are correct, you'd think such an increase in DVD sales would shut the MPAA up, no?
USA has a pop of well over 256 million (low, old estimate). Where do they get this 1/3 value from? Someone needs to get a calculator for the submitter...
And where did he get his figures from? Who says there's only 37.5 million DVD players out there?
I do.
I am the boss of Information.
IMHO they should not bring out another format until they can store 4 hours of video on a disc without resorting to lossy compression.
The way the lossless/lossy distinction is tossed around on Slashdot ("lossy sux0rz, lossless r00lz") bugs me. There's no such thing as "lossless" unless you reproduce the original film atom-for-atom, and even then, quantum effects will screw it up. It becomes a matter of how much loss a fellow is willing to accept. For most users, an 8 Mbit/s stream of MPEG-2 video + AC3 is more than enough, and that's what a DVD offers. If by "lossless" you mean "linear PCM video and audio", then even those aren't lossless, as video is typically quantized down to 8 bits per channel per pixel, and audio rarely goes deeper than 24 bits per channel per sample.
Define your usage of lossless.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How are they going to manage to fit this all onto the faceplate of one multifunction device?
The version of Slashcode currently installed on Slashdot will strip out any plus-or-minus sign (±) that I try to insert. Taco put it on when people were abusing Unicode bidirectionality overrides and making parts of the page look more like Hebrew than English. Thus, when you see a # sign in the following paragraph, imagine an underlined + sign.
It won't be hard to fit the necessary logos on Sony's "DVD#RW" drive, which stands for DVD plus or minus RW. Do you really think it'll be that hard to fit the "COMPACT disc ReWritable High Speed" logo, the "DVD ( o ) RW" logo, and the "RW DVD+ReWritable" logo on the face of the disc tray?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Then again, given that they'll be packing whole seasons of a show onto one disk, they may be charging about $50 - $150 for it.
How much cheaper is the 40 GB version supposed to be that the end consumer will see any difference?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Perhaps they could place info on how a drive should attempt to read a disc on a special track, and then create drives with the ability to change how it tries to read a disc based on the info in this track. For instance, the track may contain info on the size and wavelength of the laser that should be used.
Of course, that would be yet another disc and drive format, and even something like that would be probably be short lived anyway.
Arg!
The last thing this industry needs is another competing standard confusing the general public and delaying adoption. Didn't they learn anything from DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RAM, etc? Sounds like everyone else did, they all agreed upfront to a common standard. So, I call for a geek boycott of Toshiba & NEC if they persist with this plan! I don't want anything to delay my HD-DVD...
It's seems obvious to a non-marketing-mathematician like me that the record industry's pricing equations produce results that are no more accurate than the data put into them. Since the industry rarely conducts nationwide-scale, long-term studies of demand at different pricing levels, it's hard to be sure how accurate their data is, and therefore their conclusions are questionable.
It's not entirely inappropriate to note that while the majority of VHS movies are marketed to the rental market at high prices ($80), nearly all DVDs are marketed toward home consumers at a much lower price... And that, just maybe, some portion of the impressive sales revenue is due to a surge of consumer purchasing. Was this surge predicted by the industry's mathematical models? I don't have any evidence that it was or wasn't, beyond the fact that they never bothered to try it before. It's possible that this program created a new enthusiasm for purchased videos that was never reflected in previous price/demand estimates.
Would enormous price-cuts improve CD sales revenue? I don't know, and until the record industry tries it, they have no idea what sort response they'll get from the public. It could create a golden-age of CD purchasing. Or people could react the way the industry's crude equations say they will.
or maybe it's just that you can't rent or buy VHS movies anymore. Sure, it may seem like there are some titles to those of you who have DVDs, but for those of us without, the past 2 years has looked an awful lot like a cartel squeezing the markets. It's a good thing I'm not paranoid.
get this technolgy here now pleaseee im tired of 2000 cdrs lol
One place where digital storage in such large capacities per disc becomes useful is in the storage format for movies shown in theaters with digital projection systems.
Imagine instead of having to lug around six 35-pound spools of 35 mm film for a two-hour movie, the entire movie is distributed on 2-3 Blu-Ray DVD's. The packaging to hold 2-3 Blu-Ray discs will probably weigh in at most 2-3 pounds, compared to the 210 pounds for a single movie print; the shipping costs for distribution alone would save a huge amount of money.
As the cost of digital projectors come down (as I expect will happen by 2010), you'll see more and more movies shipped to theaters on blue-spectrum laser optical discs as the primary distribution format.
I can cite the following reasons why DVD sales have really taken off in the last 24 months:
/. think about MPAA's anti-piracy policies, their decision to adopt the low-cost sell-through model of video sales pioneered by the Walt Disney Company has ensured high level of sales and low levels of movie piracy of DVD discs. I mean, why bother with a pirate copy of a movie when in 6-8 months after theatrical release you can see it at home on a high-quality DVD release?
1. The price of players have dropped in price dramatically. You can get quite good players for under US$100 nowadays quite easily.
2. The price of DVD discs are actually very reasonable considering the content on the discs. Many DVD movies that come on two-disc sets in the US$25-US$30 range contain audio commentaries, foreign language sound tracks and/or subtitles, and supplementary material out of the wazoo.
3. DVD picture quality is excellent nowadays, especially if you can get a 480-line progressive-scan connection between the player and the TV set. Of course, DVD's have Dolby Digital and/or DTS surround sound tracks, which tremendously increases the enjoyment on appropriate home theater systems.
4. DVD's have become a huge boon for foreign-language programs. The distribution of officially-licensed Japanese anime programs have moved to DVD very quickly, especially with the fact the DVD pretty much settles the entire sub versus dub arguement since you can have both on the same disc! =)
I believe that despite what many people here on
How many times have I seen two, three, even four disc "special edition" DVD movies that could have easily fit on a single two-sided disc? Studios like putting high disc counts on their oversized boxes.
Well, cool anyways.
He did say households, not people.
This is a rip from the Xinhua Financial Network newswire from July 17: China produces alternative to DVD format Beijing, July 17, XFN - Mainland China-based Beijing E-world Technology Co Ltd has developed a new video disc format that could compete with the DVD format, the China Daily said. The newspaper said the new format, Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD), will allow Chinese DVD producers to avoid paying royalties to current DVD patent holders. Chinese DVD makers are required to pay around one billion yuan (US$120.48 million) a year in royalties for producing DVD players. It said EVDs, which are expected to have higher storage capacity than DVDs, will be manufactured by Shanghai-based SVA Group and should be on the market this year. Chinese DVD player manufacturers and the DVD6C Licensing Agency have been arguing over patent royalties for more than two years. The DVD6C Licensing Agency represents the six founders of the DVD Forum (formerly called the DVD Consortium) in the area of patent licensing. Chinese DVD player manufacturers are only willing to pay between US$2.00 and US$6.00 per player, while the royalty fees demanded by the technology developers were around US$20 per unit. The average price for an exported Chinese-made DVD player is less than US$130.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
Nowhere in that article did I see any mention of the "history of the DVD". It was basically just some stats on how DVDs have gotten really popular this year (big whoop).
Funny considering that DVD's are only in about a third of American homes... compare that to the unbelievable amount of VHS players... and it quickly shows just how popular the DVD has become."
What are you talking about??
If DVDs really were that popular don't you think that more than 1/3 of all households would have bought a DVD player by now? The only thing that stat shows is that the relatively small number of people who own DVD players buy a lot of DVDs. What does that have to do with anything?
When they released CD's we all had 120 - 300mb hard drives. What we need now is a disk in the 800gb range, re-writable etc. Sure some say we don't need it etc, but sooner or later we will Anyone been following constellation 3d? -or whoever it is? 14gb per layer, 100 - > 1000 layers (that's right 1400gb or 1.4tb's) Ricoh have already purchased a license I believe and C3D have actually managed to read normal DVD's with their drive and store audio or data on one of their disks thus far. Impressive stuff - I believe they are only at about 50 layers @ the mo :( - from memory but it sounds excellent to me.
I MAY be incorrect with some of my facts but here's some info
http://www.hoovers.com/uk/co/capsule/8/0,2163,1027 88,00.html
Now that's what I want..
The concept of a lossy or lossless encoder is relative to the digital source material.
What if the digital source material is from a camcorder that captures directly to DVD-RW or DVD+RW? Does that make MPEG-2 no longer lossy?
Will I retire or break 10K?