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Blue-Laser DVD Formats Wars
killmore notes a story running on ZDNet talking about incompatible blue laser formats of Blue-Laser DVDs which can store 36GB of data. The new format is from Toshiba & NEC and boasts backwards compatibility with the current standards for DVDs.
finally a format I could possibly use :)
which can store 36GB of date. Now I can fit my whole schedule on one dvd.
which can store 36GB of date
/.-ers could render a pretty hot date with 36GB of storage!
Sounds like
Toshiba, NEC see blue in DVD future
By Richard Shim
CNET News.com
May 12, 2003, 11:39 AM PT
URL: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-1001033.html
Toshiba and NEC are demonstrating a new DVD recording technology that promises a significantly higher storage capacity without a major investment in new production facilities.
The Japanese companies will present details of their blue-laser format, called Advanced Optical Disc, this week at the Optical Data Storage 2003 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. AOD is based on short-wavelength blue-violet lasers--instead of the red lasers that are now in DVD drives--to read data off of discs.
Toshiba said in a release that it has stored up to 36GB on a single-sided disc and that the technology can be applied to consumer electronics and computer products. Current Digital Video Discs hold about 4.7 GB of data.
The technology, however, is drawing a mixed response from some analysts.
"The appetite for new investments in new production lines is small right now," said Wolfgang Schlichting, research director of removable storage at research firm IDC. As a result, the claim that the blue-laser technology requires only a modest investment could resonate with manufacturers.
On the other hand, "the technology may be running too fast for end-user demand," he said. "For many, DVD is good enough."
Nevertheless, electronics companies are positioning their technologies to be leaders when (and if) consumers are ready to upgrade. Because the prices of DVD products are falling rapidly, manufacturers are looking for new technologies that could spark another round of upgrades, with higher profit margins for the hardware and media. The price of DVD drives paid by manufacturers dropped 33 percent in 2002, according to IDC.
Nine companies, including Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony and Thomson, are working on their own DVD recordable format, known as Blu-ray.
Sony previously announced a DVD recorder based on Blu-ray technology for the Japanese market, but has not commented on U.S. availability.
Toshiba and NEC are working with an industry group called the DVD Forum to gain the support of its 215 member companies.
The emergence of two blue-laser DVD recording technologies could lead to a replay of the competition surrounding red-laser DVD recordable formats--DVD+R versus DVD-R--which has caused some consumer confusion and slowed sales.
Toshiba and NEC said that their technology allows for backward compatibility with current DVD formats.
Representatives from Toshiba did not immediately return calls for comment. In previous interviews, they have said the recorders would be available next year.
when is someone going to post how to exchange the amber/yellow led on front for a blue/red led?
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
36GB of date? wow, and I thought I'd never get any...
I see... I see...
VHS vs. Beta II: The Search for More Money
Mike
killmore notes a story running on ZDNet talking about incompatible blue laser formats of Blue-Laser DVDs which can store 36GB of date.
I hate it when I'm in the middle of a date and I have to swap discs...
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
Thousands of slashbots stare at each other in bewilderment.
"What's a date?"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"can store 36GB of date"
As in 36GB of pr0n from my dates?
Just what the DVD medium needs, more freaking standards. Heck, last time I went into my local WorstBuy to pick up a pack of DVD-RW media (only wanted a couple) all they had was rows and rows of DVW+R discs and tons of empty shelf space for the DVD-R stuff. Does this mean we're going to have to start choosing between multiple Blue standards as well? Is anybody else tired of having multiple (completely identical feature wise) discs to choose from? Is this not lunacy?
I read the internet for the articles.
Toshiba wanted dual layer and Sony (I think) wanted to standardize on flippers. Thank goodness they comprimized and kept both.
36Gb of Date? That's enough to satisfy even the most hedonistic of DBAs...
I doubt even full-screen video of every date the Slashdot community has been on would amount to 36 GB. :) ba-da-boom! hey!
stuff |
An incompatible format that boasts backwards-compatability.
Best Windows Freeware
why does everything has to be backward compatible? I think we spend too much time making something backward compatible, while we could have used the same time making new innovations.
about 3 yrs back i was working on a 3D renderer, and instead of implementing a new file format, i was trying to store in a old format. i dont know why???
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
That's a lot of date! Who would need that much fruit? I bet they will wish they had an iLoo after eating that many dates!
I was all ready to fire off a clever remark about the date typo, but all the subscribers beat me to it! Damn you, /. subscription service, you're obstructing my quest for high Karma!
You are suppose to be the last defense against typos and stuff!
...incompatible blue laser formats of Blue-Laser DVDs which can store 36GB of date
36 GB of data? 36 GB to date? tsk tsk tsk...
If water were beans, I'd be 70% beans.
... has the media format standards always been divided between two non-compatable formats. Is there really any reason they cannot agree on one. Why not argue over three or four.
Beta/VHS, CD-RW/CD-RW+, mp3/wma, DVD-RW,DVD-RW+. One of them always looses big time, they ought follow in the footsteps of the W3C or IETF and make _one_ standard that makes everyone happy.
It seems as though companies align themselves along competition lines rather than going with the one with the best specification.
Who cares how much data or what data format it can store! All I want is to remove the top cover of the drive and replace it with plexiglass, mod the computer case so there's also a plexiglass so the pretty blue laser light can actually shine through the case. mmm...
Of course, this is quite expensive, unless someone can show me a blue laser that I can attach to the computer that will automatically point towards the eyes of whoever snooping over my back....
Please direct all bug reports to
> backwards compatibility with the current standards for DVDs.
What standards? I've been waiting and waiting for the "current standards" to shake out, and they still haven't. Maybe I'll be able to get a DVD burner in another 2-3 years, when they finally do have a standard!
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
I already have problems with my 2-year-old son scratching my CD collection. DVDs are even MORE sensitive to scratching. As the wavelength shortens and density increases, it seems reasonable to expect the thing to be a lot more sensitive to scratching. If the format stores a disc in a cartridge, then this is not a problem. However, cartridges seem to have died out years ago.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Two imcompatible formats promising the same thing. Whatever will we do? Will one be more successful than the other? Will one drive the other to extinction? Do you think that the winner will be the most technologically sophisticated, or the cheapest and most widely-licensed?
Interesting news, but nothing I'm going to worry about. We've all weathered incompatible formats before. If you want to know which one will win, just wait a year after drives for both formats go on sale and check your Best Buy flier for the cheapest price.
There is an interesting commentary on this over at the Digital Bits. It looks like some companies don't want backwards compatibilty with today's DVD, and they want to lock down the market and prevent cheap Chinese players from entering the HD-DVD arena.
If they do that, I think that you will see HD-DVD relegated to a LaserDisc sized niche market. Only true videophiles will spend hundereds of dollars to upgrade hardware, and hundreds more to replace their DVD collection with HD discs. The rest of the population will be perfectly happy with Anamorphic Widescreen DVD on a HD set.
What they need to do is instead of bickering about my format or yours, they just need to make a open standard that anyone can use. Granted you don't make all the money of the royalties, but we all saw how quickly DVD took off. As long as there's a good reason to upgrade (HDTV compatability, extra features, etc), and there's only one standard with DVD backwards compatability, then people won't stop to think about upgrading. It'll be a no brainer as long as you have an HDTV (which someday may be commonplace).
Maybe the MPAA could actually do something useful and actually back an open, flexible, and useful standard that can be used in computers and HD-DVD players.
if /. editors are allowed to change their stories without notification, should users be able to delete their replies?
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
seems to have died out? have you considered how many cds would need to be replaced vs. not replaced in a situation where they were all protected vs. not? It's economics.. they changed their product into something you'll replace several times over if you're an average joe. They DID initially promote CDs as indestructable. *AHEM* we all know that is very very much bs.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
[eyelids half-shut, drool running out of corner of mouth]
Mmmmmmm....36GB should give me more than enough room to do everything I ever wanted to do on a date.
Yes, even that. Mmmmmmmmmm.
And the NEC/Toshiba thing (AOD, or Advanced Optical Disc using 0.6nm) isn't new, it's been under discussion for some time. Frankly, they have the better system as it applies to DVD-Video, since it fits well in the current fabrication process. It admittedly has a lower storage capacity than Blu-Ray, but it's not significant and with a recent dual layer announcement from NEC/Toshiba, there should be no reason an HD movie would not fit on a single AOD platter.
So for now, unless the 0.1nm group (Blu-Ray) gets going, they're going to get shut out of the DVD-Video NG spec (not that they have a significant chance anyhow, due to startup costs.)
-David
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
special edition dvds? How is Peter Jackson supposed to sell two versions of the same movie two times only four months apart if they're both the same number of discs?
"It seems as though companies align themselves along competition lines rather than going with the one with the best specification."
Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the difference between a geek looking at the world, and a suit looking at the world.
Two words: Capitalism and greed. People want something based off the best tech, then they need to ask for it. Simple as that, otherwise other forces will come into play, and they will not always work in your favour.
all this high capacity crap is all fun and good but in the fast pace world that i live in (audio and video) i need to make backups quick, and if i have to wait 4 to 6 hours to burn 36GB then this will not help me
I already have problems with my 2-year-old son scratching my CD collection.
well good parenting meant you put things out of the way of a baby/toddler so they dont destroy it or hurt themselves.
Nice to blame your fault for leaving them out or accessable on your kid.. what's next for your blame ladder?
Put your crap out of reach and the childrent wont hurt it... Sheesh, why are people stuch retards when it comes to parenting today?
I though Sony was to be the first one to ship an actual unit, but only in japan for the time being
I thought DVD was a standard. How come such a confusion?
just put 500mb of data and many gb of zeros onto each side of each disc. I'm convinced that's why Stargate is double-sided.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I have noticed lately that many of the companies that were DVD+RW "supporters" are now offering DVD-RW drives either separately or in Desktop\Notebook computers. Sony, TDK & HP all of which are listed as DVD+RW supporters have DVD-RW offerings. I wonder if they are starting to quietly shift formats. I also saw that the first "Blue Laser" product from Sony in only backwards compatible with -RW and not +RW.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I wouldn't want a 36*10^6 g date
That's probably true assuming the same format. But if they wanted, it would be smart to take advantage of that huge capacity by increasing the error-checking redundancy. That way you could take a belt sander to the damned thing and still maybe read it. Well, maybe not quite...but you get the idea.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
In the interest of compromise and back compatability, do you think we can merge the red and blue technologies for something more purplish? That way, everyone's happy!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
...which can be mounted on the top of a shark!
DVD technology is years behind what it should be because of stupid industry bickering over certain issues.
If any of you will recall, there was this minor issue with a copy protection scheme that took years to hammer our and a week to crack.
Anyone wanna bet this situation will be shown to contain equal stupidity?
Join Tor today!
So this means DVD-R, DVD+R, Blue1DVD-R, Blue1DVD+R, Blue2DVD-R, Blue2DVD+R?
What exactly -is- the difference between +/-R, anyway? Same question for the two blue 'standards'?
Please help metamoderate.
There is one non-backward compatible change I'd like to see embraced: put the optical media in a _thin_ cartridge.
:(
I believe blue-ray is such, but from what I read blue-ray is not really meant as the next-gen DVD format, mostly as a format for recorders and computers. And one of the reason cited is the cartridge
I would prefer a format where the media is protected better than current CDs and DVDs. A format that could be grabbed by a reader more reliably than the current (cf. slot-loading readers on Mac). I don't understand why so many seem opposed to such a change. Maybe some people imagine something similar to the old CD caddies, where you had to place the regular format in a cartridge. I rather imagine a format that is always enclosed in a cartridge, like the 3 1/2" floppies.
Conspiracy theory: RIAA/MPAA execs don't want this to happen, as they know more people would lend their CDs/DVDs to friends if the media was made more resistant to abuse.
For the record: I don't believe that for a second.
OK, I don't own any DVDs or a DVD player (except the one in my 5-yo Mac that I've still never used) so I'm a little out of the loop. What the heck is the difference between all these formats? Is there a place with a good summary or feature comparison?
Constitutionally Correct
However, cartridges seem to have died out years ago.
The Blu-Ray format uses cartridges which hold the discs. It's the main reason I hope it wins out.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
you don't know many two-year-olds, do you? Think, "tornado that just hit a 20 rock."
Is to do what I'm doing now. I'll wait til the dust settles on DVD+-R, and when everybody keeps shuffling around with the Blue DVD standards, I'll upgrade from CDRs to whatever's left in the DVD+-R format with a $68 drive and media that costs $.25 a piece.
(Have you priced burnproof CDRW's lately? I rember paying $350 for my first 4x drive and thought what a great deal it was...compared to that $800 drive a roommate had in college, which IIRC was _incompatible_ with CDR's.)
Alas, that means it'll ALWAYS take 12 pieces of media to back up my data.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Is anyone else wondering what happened to American inovation? Is a blue recordable DVD player that hard to come up with ? I know that the guys at www.inphase.com have holographic storage working but i don't hear much about it .
this country has sold all its electronics businesses and now waits for DATED japanese technology. This blue DVD player is nothing revolutionary.
Rendering into a new file format, whoa!!! I definitely see the similarities between people having to figure out how to open this magic new file of yours, and people having to buy 50 movies over again because their new dvd player doesn't support them, nice comparison...
I had a crazy idea this morning.
Why can't they make a "generic" optical disc that can be written in any format (CD, DVD-R, DVD+R, etc) up to whatever the granularity of the dye is?
I know its probably a dumb question, but it seems like there's no reason I shouldn't be able to write a CD-R format disc onto a DVD-R, at least in terms of pit density.
A single standard that makes everyone happy! Why didn't I think of that? You're, like, 19 years old, right?
One simple rule for its versus it's
...Heck, they can't even get reasonable interoperability with CD media.
Everyone has all these superstitions and voodoo about which dye colors and media types and brands and what speed to record at, and the plain fact is that it is not at all rare to find that a CD you've burned in a pretty-darn-new burner can't be read in someone else's pretty-darn-new drive. Either the standards are no good or the manufacturers aren't following them.
And it was only a few months ago that it transpired that you could burn out the laser in a LOT of DVD-RW drives simply by inserting a new kind of medium (4X, maybe?) that was, of course, SUPPOSED to be backward compatible with the old one--and was, except for the minor detail of destroying drives.
And wasn't it HP that promised that their DVD-RW drives would be compatible with DVD+RW media via a firmware upgrade... and then reneged on the promise?
What a zoo.
Isn't it about time to quit dicking around and set some standards for some reasonable kind of high-capacity medium that gives you some assurance that the data you store today can be read on a different drive tomorrow?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
IMHO this reads: " We are too poor right now to do much else than sell what we have and try not to go bankrupt. "
It is sad that possibly some great ideas in IT are escaping. It is difficult to be innovative when a great mind is in fear of being dismissed, downsized, and laid off due to our current economy.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Perhaps you have never encountered a 2 year old boy...
2 year old boys have been found at the top of empty closets with no visible means of climbing, 2 year old boys have been known to dis-assemble locked deadbolts, 2 year old boys have even been known to open a lockded gun safe without the key, then field strip and put back together a handgun in order to remove the trigger lock.
Come back to reality.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
The Pioneer 103, A03, 104, and A04 drives had a firmware bug that caused the laser in the drive to run too long at a high temperature and burn out while trying to identify 4x media. Pioneer released a firmware upgrade that fixes this problem.
It's still a pretty big black eye, though.
Of course, if they weren't trying so hard to identify media types to enforce 1x/2x/4x media licensing requirements, maybe they wouldn't have had this particular problem.
-AC
The development of the "blue" (Really violet) laser diode has taken TREMENDOUS effort over the last 3-4 years. (Read up on it some time it's pretty interesting) Yes, it was mostly all done (though not ALL) in asian countries. The US can't (and shouldn't) be the leader of ALL tech you know.
I don't know why a blue dvd recorder HAS to be revolutionary to be news-worthy, It is evolutionary and it is news-worthy, therefore it's in the news.
"Holographic" storage has been talked about and played with incessently for almost a decade now. If it were practical, something would have been done with it by now. But the much simpler CD/DVD optical disk technology has progressed with sufficient speed and capacity to warrent more complex solutions completely unneccesary.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
While not nessicarly the "speed" of tape, CD media {used loosely to refer to a 5 inch disk ) has alot of appeal to me. While not replacing tape by any means, it's attractive because of the ease of CD changers. A 3 disk changer, which I believe is the practical limit of a standard 1/2 height 5.25 inch device, easily becomes 108gig.
This idea is very attractive to me, not only for let's say backing up files and such, but cranking out copies of home movies.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Your sig is fucking gay.
The Japanese companies will present details of their blue-laser format, called Advanced Optical Disc, this week at the Optical Data Storage 2003 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. AOD is based on short-wavelength blue-violet lasers--instead of the red lasers that are now in DVD drives--to read data off of discs.
Aren't they tempting fate with that abbreviation? Aren't they afraid that AOD may be DOA?
While users may like backwards compatibility, the studios won't want to tie themselves to a format that has already had its encryption method cracked. Unless they mean backwards-compatible like Sony's SACD format. How well has that taken off? I still don't have an SACD player--certainly not on my computer--so why should I buy an SACD of "Dark Side of the Moon" when I've already bought the CD version?
Put your crap out of reach and the childrent wont hurt it... Sheesh, why are people stuch retards when it comes to parenting today?
Gee, today? As opposed to when you were a parent, in the 1950s? 2 year old children like to explore, find, and break things.
blog & fiction: jd87
Actually it's more base than that. It's "Human Nature" to pick sides. There are two sides to almost everything. It affects every single part of our existance. And not JUST the commercial aspects of it.
/ Democrat
Coke/Pepsi
Colgate/Crest
VHS/Beta
Republican
Me/You
Us/Them
So....you're asking to be fucked? Is that it AC?
Put your crap out of reach and the childrent wont hurt it... Sheesh, why are people stuch
retards when it comes to parenting today?
Because the Baby Boomers set such a BAD EXAMPLE.
Well, the nice thing about DVHS comming out is the fact that there claims to be backwards compatability to SVHS, players that in the past have been most costly.
But, unfortunatly, isn't something likely to catch on, probally for the same reasons that consumer demand was never all that high for SVHS. And it's not like we don't have digital camcorders presently, which based on what i've observed, are used to download to a PC to make VCDs and DVDs, popular standards.
Now if a DVHS deck offered a nice firewire interface to the PC, and it could be used for analog vhs/svhs transfer to digital, then we'd have something trully spiffy, as one common complaint of VHS media is the fact it degrades. One common benifit of CD/DVD is the fact it tends to last a whole hell of alot longer, plus easy conversion to the *next* new format.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Uh, it's not stupid actually. Maybe we should change the phrase 'Compact Disk' to something that includes the word 'music' in it, too.
vhs vs betamax
dvd-r vs dvd+r
Just what we need, another 3 year or longer lame battle to keep dvd recorders away from standardization.
If the DVD-RAM/DVD-r/DVD+R fight didn't happen, wouldn't we have DVD recorder drives for $100 now,
and home theatre dvd/mpeg2 recorders for $250 now.
And, of course, mpeg4 hardware recorders for home theatre for $300 now.
Don't even get me started on the whole VCD not sold in the USA argument.
DAT....
inphase holography
Can fit on a few CD-sized discs, instead of several dozen! Maybe I can make a non-live backup of the damn collection now instead of needing 2 drives in case one cooks...
I want sharks with frikkin blue lasers
Now that... I'll buy! I wonder how much it'd hold?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Because if you don't, people won't buy your hardware. IBM vs. Apple, Clones vs. IBM PS/2, PlayStation 2 vs. Dreamcast, US Robotics vs. Hayes, SVHS vs. 8mm, etc.
:D
Yeah, but would being able to play Saturn (and possibly Sega CD) games on the Dreamcast have kept it around today?
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
I gave up mod points for this thread (I *always* mod up, btw) only to be modded into oblivion because I was a few *seconds* too slow. /raises eyebrows
How about giving a 5 or 10 minute window to delete our posts if someone beats us to the punch, or moderator (clue-by-four) training (like when you sort *newest first* the posts at the bottom are *not* redundant---/rolleyes/).
Anyway, whatever...
To veer back on topic:
Blue lasers...more data, less dateuhhh....aw, shit did it again.
(note to humor impaired: NOT a troll.)
(note to mods having a bad day: just because I used 'a', 'and', 'the' like other posts != redundant)
(note to self: Seek Help)
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
What is D V D ?
DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disc.
The term is used to describe the new audio/video/data standards based on a high density next generation optical discs. As the name suggests, DVD covers a wide range of applications from audio and video to computer and other electronic fields.
--http://www.truecopy.com.au/dvd/
You guys don't get it. We KNOW what DVD is. We know that DVD is a generic medium for storing digital information on optical disks. We don't care. "Digital Versitile Disk" is a stupid name.
"DVD" stands for "digital video disk." I couldn't care less whether you use yours for storing your porn JPEGs or your music or as coasters. That's what it stands for, now and forever.
AOD or BluRay ?
Easy choice- "BluRay" sounds a billion times cooler.
Like what is "AOD"? "Attack of the DMCA"?
Pfff.
graspee
only if your stupid and don't protect your stuff. I have a 2 1/2 year old and he has never damaged any of my cd's, dvd's or tapes because they are all either higher than he can reach in cd towers on top of things or locked in the entertainment center.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The wavelength has nothing to do with it. Yes, more bits are damaged with each scratch, but there should also be more readable ECC bits in the neighborhood of the scratch which can be used to correct the errors caused by the scratch, so it should balance out. Just like RAID 5. If you have four 4 GB discs and you lose one, it's OK. But if you have four 250 GB discs and you lose one, it's OK. ECC is not exactly like RAID but in both cases it is the proportions that matter. If the discs are more sensitive to scratches than before, then either (a) they are not using a big enough interleave buffer, which means that the ECC bits are too close to the damaged bits and are getting damaged with them, or (b) they are not using enough ECC bits because they want the extra 2 GB of capacity.
They can probably make blu-ray as robust as they want. They just need to use a bigger interleaving buffer, and an ECC which can withstand more errors.
The format specification should tell you what kind of error-correcting codec is being used in a given format. It's probably worth a look.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
So what you're saying is that if I didn't act stupid, and protected my stuff, a 2 year old child would stop exploring and try to (unintentionally) break things? I think not.
blog & fiction: jd87
Both those sites have excellent reviews of players, media, writers, CODECs, conversions and everything in between.
We needed this technology yesterday!
According to blu-ray.com/faq it's claimed that the Blu-ray standard WILL come in a cartridge, and it WILL be DVD compatible. No details on how, but there it is
I'll do this the same way I did writable DVD...wait for Apple to pick one (DVD-R), and then go for the other one (DVD+R), since it will turn out to be technically better, and win in the long run.
--I'm all for cartridges to protect the media, but I hope the backwards-compatible format wins out.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
TDK recently came out with a new line of "Armor Plated" DVDs which are supposed to virtually eliminate the problem with scratch sensitivity. From the press release..."Compared to standard blank media, the new TDK Armor Plated discs provide a remarkable 100 times greater resistance to damage from everyday use such as scratches, dirt, fingerprints and other contaminants."
Actually the most interesting thing about the press release is that they cleverly avoid the whole Plural Acronyms Controversy by referring to the discs collectively as "DVD media" and "DVD discs".
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
as long as I can have all my divx movies on 6 discs i'm happy
Visit blu-ray.com and read more about those 25/50gb recordable discs supported by Sony, Hitachi, JVC, Panasonic, Philips, Pionner, Samsung, Sharp and TDK.
with my 2-year-old son scratching my CD collection
That's what they make ass-whoopins for.
The Blu-ray player/recorders will of course be backward compatable with both DVD and CD, in exactly the same way that DVD players all played CDs. The sneaky AOD press release refers to the AOD disc format itself, which bears some relation to the DVD format, sicne it's made by the DVD forum. The difference is invisible to the user -- both format players will play back all previous optical disc formats.