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v1.0 of HD-DVD Physical Specs Approved
Repran writes "The DVD Forum this week approved HD-DVD 1.0, a specification that will compete with Blu-Ray which is not yet approved for the future of the DVD disc format. This effectively gives manufacturers a green light to begin producing devices.
In related news Microsoft's VC-9 codec has been included in the official HD-DVD specs."
I can't imagine that a green light will be much help
in making Blu-Ray disks.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I was confused enough by the switch to blue light, now they can use a green light?
Give life
raargh raargh snort gibber DMCA
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
How soon before pr0n is sold on HD-DVDs? ... and how soon before someone rips it and puts it on gnutella?
now all we need are better and faster computers to display the movies.
Great, first my VHS collection, now my DVD collection will become obsolete. At least know we know why George Lucas finally decided to release the original Star Wars DVDs this year. He had to make sure everyone had the chance to buy it before HD-DVD becomes standard. Then he'll release the ultra-super-special edition on HD-DVD later.
The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.
By the sounds of the article Microsoft has submitted their VC-9 codec as an open standard, does that actually mean that OS encoders/decoders can be developed free from MS lawer related hassle, or are there still strings attached?
I knew there was a reason I got this expensive set.
I hope these new players are backwards compatible with everything - DVD's, CD's, VCD's, etc. Otherwise I'm not buying it. The thing is, I like movies on DVD pretty much the way they are now - The Quality is great on my TV, and I can play movies on my laptop. I don't see myself playing these new formats on my powerbook any time soon - Unless they have a DVD layer on the disc too - now that would be cool.
"microsoft anything " makes me a bit worried... soon, they'll only let their propriatary software players only play files encoded in that format... not that I use their players, but still....
Its all fun and games until someone loses an eye... then its just fun.
Not that this has anything to do with the MPAA yet, this is the way things should be done. Once there is a decent standard in place, and there is a widespread enough install base of players that can paly these discs, the film industry will begin phasing over to this format for DVD releases, eventually phasing out the older format (or perhaps making it backwards compatible). Provided that pirates could (and eventually will) figure out how to rip these, would you really sit on kazaa waiting for a 30+GB movie download, just to avoid buying the DVD? Even with a great connection, it's just not worth the time / HDD space. I for one, would rather just buy the DVD.
New technology. It's sux but it's great.
I researched long and hard to find out if my current DVD player was most compatible with DVD+R or DVD-R. It's an Apex 500w model. Turns out it's not compatible with either standard, although some online reports conflict with my findings. I eventually had to buy a new dvd player to play anything that I burned in my Liteon DVD+/-RW drive.
I can't imagine that all these new standards will work with many existing DVD players. Everyone is always playing catch-up, although all DVD movies rented from Blockbuster will always work in older models. Just getting a new DVD writer for the latest and greatest standards will result in having to buy more electronics equipment for the house. Hell, even the current +R and -R standards haven't been hashed out.
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HD-DVD format uses a 405nm-wavelength blue-violet laser technology, in contrast to the 650nm-wavelength red laser technology used in traditional DVD formats. The rewritable Blu-ray disc, with a data transfer rate of 36Mbps, can hold up to 27GB of data on a single-sided single layer disc (compared to the traditional DVD's 4.7GB capacity), which amounts to about 12 hours of standard video or more than 2 hours of high-definition video.
AOD is pretty much the same, except it has a storage capacity of 20GB on a single-layer disc
The current story should read:
Repran writes "Extremetech reports that the DVD Forum this week approved HD-DVD 1.0, [...] In related news, an arstechnica story reports that Microsoft's VC-9 codec has been included in the official HD-DVD specs."
I think it's important to keep story sources in the headline. It's a matter of politeness, and gives the reader a immediate idea on who is saying what. For stories with a zillion links, I think it's generally OK to leave the names of the sources out if it would lead to excessive clutter.
Even more annoying is this story:
An anchor tag on "The University of Tokyo" should go to the University of Tokyo's website. The link should be anchored to "illusion of invisibility" or perhaps "Optical Camouflage."
I never liked the tendency to anchor irrelevant things to stories, but it's done often enough that it's confusing when it gets mixed up. Also, the submitter's diatribe should be left out, but that's another matter.
Or maybe I'm just getting old and crusty.
HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray. It's time for another format war. Consumers don't want this -- especially when regular DVD is "good enough" for most of them, and from their perspective, DVD is only a few years old. VHS got a couple decades of use before DVD showed up on the market, and when it did, the improvement in picture and sound quality (not to mention taking up less space) was enough to get consumers to adopt the format.
Now they expect consumers to shift again? No. It's too soon. And the fact that there's a format war on top of all that, will make both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray about as successful as SACD and DVD-A have been in replacing the good old audio CD -- i.e. not successful at all except for a handful of high-end enthusiasts.
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I hope that they potentially sacrifice backwards compatibility for the sake of quality.
I was watching the movie Miracle on a very nice widescreen TV and I could readily see jagged edges and compression.
I'm pretty sure it was the encoding and not a problem with the dvd player or TV.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I have a high definition TV and I get a few HD channels. I also watch pseudo HD DVDs (DVDs only display at 480p, while "true" HD is 720p), but overall HD content offerings are pretty slim. What I'm wondering is when everyone expects that the TV/movie industries will start filming exclusively with HD cameras instead of the traditional cameras that most are still using.
The absolutely highest quality HD content that I can receive is from Discovery Channel HD, which films all of its content using HD cameras exclusively, and believe me, it shows. It's the channel I use to "show off" my equipment, because none of the other channels even compare. Having TNT and ESPN is HighDef is nice, but it seems that they're not taking the same efforts to ensure the crystal-clear quality that Discovery is with their channels.
Having a higher density DVD format should help to prod movie makers into putting more "oomph" in their output because they'll be capable of higher resolutions on a single disc, but when do you all think the film/tv producers will start filming using HD digital equipment exclusively? Anyone have any thoughts on this?
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
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I agree that most stories are composed by retards here who don't even know how to link in the correct part of the story or give proper attribution.
Just wondering if the MPAA managed to force non-backwards compatibility into the standard or not so they would get people buying all the favorite movies all over again in the new format in 2-3 years...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Why would you need a new TV? True HD TVs today are capable of 1080i and 720p scan modes, and current DVDs can only store 480p content, so I was assuming that the new format would allow them to be "truly" HD and finally catch up with the TV's capabilities. Am I missing something?
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
for example, a single-layer disc can hold 23.3 GB, 25 GB or 27 GB
How can they compete with blu-ray when the capacities specified by the blu-ray camp are like 1.53, 1.667 and 1.8 times the ones their capacities??
As CD's they're not so common, but available at somewhat reasonable prices, if you look for them.
DVD media increases storage space bigtime, and allows 1.4 GB (single sided) or 2.8 GB (double sided, DVD-RAM) on such a mini disc.
They are available now (used in some digital camcorders), but the only ones I've seen on sale so far, are about 10 times more expensive than normal DVD-RWs. About the same price per disc for both 12 & 8 cm. discs would seem more reasonable to me.
So slap me with a couple of new, higher density formats if you want to, but I prefer the little ones.
The links from the extremetech article are /.ed it seems, does anyone know if this final standard will be 1080p or 1080i?
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"Not only do I need a new DVD player, I also need a new TV to play it on?"
No, you just install an HD DVD drive, switch your monitor to 1920x1080 mode, and off you go...
Movies, for the most part, are already "HD" or better in their original film formats. All that will be required to make true HD versions of these will be to go back to the reel and re-digitize them to 1080i or 720p, instead of to 480p.
Not all HD content is filmed with HD digital equipment, either. Alias, for example (which broadcasts at 720p) is filmed with, well, film.
35mm movie film is significantly better in effective resolution than 480p, and anything filmed that way will have little trouble making its way into the HD world.
I can't wait until the new HD DVDs blue screen! Bye bye Microsoft.
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IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
One thing that really spooks me is that I've had enough trouble with fingerprints messing with dvds. The pits are too small. This is going to be worse, right?
I *really* hope they have the sense to put these in some sort of caddy. I know that won't be a popular idea here, but it really bugs me that the mere act of handling a disc puts it at risk. And since the movie industry won't let me make backups....
"Derp de derp."
...Playboy and the Spice Channel, both of which pride themselves on being vendors of classy porn.
I'd have thought "classy porn" was an oxymoron, but put in perspective I guess it's not!
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Looks like on2 and their vp6.2 codec didn't make the cut. I guess they could still implement a codec based on the open standards . Time will tell, but MS is positioning itself out of the PC world and into the DRM revenue one.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
tritto
Just because a standard is open does not mean that there are no patent issues.
Here, the articles on the topic (and others they link to) imply that at least SOME patents are held by M$. They're asking around for anyone else with relevant patents, to see whether the "reasonable and non-discriminatory" license fees need to get split between M$ and others, or whether M$ keeps the whole license pie.
Patent license issues will (probably, IANAL) make the license requirements inconsistent with the GPL's clause 4 (no sublicensing).
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Fuck Lucas, seriously. Do not give that dude any more money.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
HDDVD players will play old DVD discs.
blu-ray players will not play DVD discs.
That being license fees. However it's fixed fees, so anyone can pay them and develop what they like. Also the spec can't be changed without STMPE approval, which then makes the changes available to everyone. So they can't restrict what kind of software (or hardware) you make, and they can't screw you over by introducing changes to the spec or the fees. Once you've paid, you're good to go.
Open, but not free.
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IMO, far more important than the physical format is the capabilities of the HD-DVD spec. The HD-DVD spec need to be dramatically more powerful than the current spec which has virtually no RAM (16 variables), no processor, no permanent storage etc.
Interactivity, Interactivity, Interactivity
HD-DVD will NOT take-off in a big way unless the format supports a greatly expanded level of interactivity. Interactivity that requires much better hardware. I'm talking a REAL computer-level components inside the box; a fast CPU, memory, permanent storage, web connectivity and a 3D GPU. The HD-DVD spec should also support and understand (but not necessarily include) tuners and PVR functionality. And all HD-DVD players should be recordable.
Just simply being HDTV video will not be enough to get most people to buy all new hardware and software... mark my words, I'm not wrong about this! Why? Read on...
DVD is Great Enough
In the vast majority of consumer's eyes, DVD is already the holy grail of quality. As was already pointed out, it was both the quality of the format and the value-add of extras (and low cost of software) that caused DVD to be the success that it is. However as far as quality goes we've reached the "great enough" level for the vast majority of consumers. An anamorphic DVD on a well calibrated HDTV is nearly as good as HDTV (especially from film-sourced materials). In fact if you were to conduct a poll and ask people if DVD is HDTV quality, I predict a large majority of people would say yes. Again, to most consumers DVD is "great enough". No HDTV/DVD side-by-side is going to change that. Most people simply can't see the or don't care about the difference.
Value Add (Did I mention Interactivity?)
We are going to have to offer the customer much larger value-add. I'm talking interactivity only possible today on a computer or game system. Menus with 24-bit real-time 3D generated graphic "overlays" (think X-Box game menus), interactive viewing experiences (think infinifilm on steroids), interactive timelines, interactive maps, documentary level behind the scenes, "extras" presented in context with the show while you are re-watching it, searchable script-to-screen. All this and much more would be possible if the player actually had some decent hardware and the spec supported it.
Better Compression
MPEG-2 is looking a little long in the tooth, support for modern codecs is a must. MPEG-4, AVC, H.264, QuickTime and WiMP, should all be supported. And since we have a CPU, we should be able to come up with new codecs in the future that can be "loaded" on the fly. Better codecs open the door to applications we haven't even thought of yet. Like searchable video. Imagine releasing not just a few episodes of TV show on a single DVD, and not just an entire season. Imagine being able to create an "interactive episode guide" that included the entire 7 year run of Buffy on a SINGLE DVD, all searchable by script, subject, character, and much more. With a modern codec and 28 gigs of space, this is possible (I've done the math). In fact with reduced frame sizes (think of the video as being in a corner with interactive elements around it), you could fit the entire history of Star Trek, every episode of every series and the movies all on ONE disc, all searchable, all obsessively interactive.
** This is the kind of interactivity that will sell a new format. **
Forwards Compatibility
Figure out a way to make the HD-DVD format both backward AND forward compatible. People love DVD; they are invested in DVD, both financially and emotionally. The transition between SD and HD needs to be as painless and invisible as possible, otherwise it simply won't happen. That means that tomorrow's HD-DVD discs must play on today's SD-DVD players. This way the industry can start releasing HD-DVD discs immediately, and wait for the hardware penetration to catch up. It won't be easy, but it is possible. We are smart people around here, we can figure out a way. (Perhaps
35mm has a resolution well in excess of 720x480. Since it's analogue you can't put a hard and fast number on it, but good 35mm should have resolution sufficent for about 4000 pixels of detail. Now, for a number of reasons, it doesn't look quite as clear when you transfer a movie from film tha when you shoot it straight to digital, but it still looks a hell of a lot better than DVD. When you then take the time to clean it up and remaster it, it looks really slick.
o nt ent_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx
So more or less any existing movie with a good print in a vault can be transfered to HD and see a quality improvement.
If you have Windows and a fairly fast computer (at least 2.4ghz P4 or equivialnt Athlon) go check out Microsoft's WM-HD demos, specifically the Terminator 2 demo. That shows what can be done from film to HD.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/c
You need to get a Powerbook, my friend. My Ti-book has NO problems whatsoever playing DVDs that are fingered, scratched, dusty, whatever. The video looks flawless and plays at a steady 60fps on even the crappiest discs. I don't know how Apple does it, but their Superdrives are amazing. My Ti-book is so good, that I got rid of my DVD player and I'm using it to play movies on my TV now.
I laughed out loud once when I saw on the back of a DVD cover that it contained a "collector's booklet." It had a picture and a track listing. In my view, the only movies that have really got the whole DVD thing right has been the LOTR. Extended editions with extra bits that are actually valuable. Even on the Jaws DVD, which is an absolute classic, the "outtakes" consist of Roy Scheider trying to fire his gun, then swearing. That's it. Umm, yes.
So I totally agree that more storage for the same old crap won't be all that much to cheer about. Hopefully somebody comes up with some more interesting stuff to put on these discs.
Verizon DSL will loose more to the Comcast high speed internet?
Or Gigabit internet will come true?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
I have to say I'd prefer the Sony standard (Blu-Ray) over HD-DVD. The capacities are greater (up to 27GB), so you can still use MPEG-2 and fit a whole movie on a disc. With HD-DVD, they would have to move to MPEG-4.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
It was a WHOLE 2 minutes, so...yeah!
In fact, with the pace of technology now, buying content is just a waste.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
This is a great boon for backup of miniDV tapes. Since 1 hour of miniDV = 15 GB of data, and the typical miniDV tape is 1 hour long, I will be able to easily backup captured digital video onto these discs and preserve the IN and OUT points of captured video (which is critical when recompiling). I had been using tape backup, but that is slow, and gives me a lot of headaches. I can't wait.
blu-ray players will not play DVD discs.
Please provide either a citation, or a hyperlink to your crack dealer.
But the same thing was said of CDs and DVDs, but .VOB files are showing up on P2P now. Consumer bandwidth as been going up up up.
That said, yes, for someone with a reasonably adult ratio of time to money, it's way better to buy a DVD than to try and download one.
My video compression blog
These new standards will work with absolutely no existing players, either in a device or in a computer.
We're talking a new physical form factor here in any case. While today's computers high end computers likely will be software upgradable for playback, but a new drive will be needed.
For playback devices, we're need all new systems, with new lasers, decoder chips, etcetera. This is a leap akin to that from VCD to DVD.
My video compression blog
Actually, very few "HD" monitors you buy in a comsumer store can actually resolve 1080 vertical lines. Infact, only some can resolve 720 vertical lines. But they all can do much more than 480.
I specifically waited to buy an HD TV, because I knew that eventually there would be an HD DVD player, and I bet there was a good chance that it'd be incompatible.
Education is the silver bullet.
I mean, given a 40 or 50 inch flat-screen HDTV (whether LCD, Plasma, DLP, or whatever), a decent dolby-supporting sound system, and HDTV-quality DVDs... is it enough to give a theater-quality experience? If not, how much higher resolution do the DVDs, and how much bigger do the TVs, have to get before this happens? And then, will it be enough to kill theaters?
I'm not a proponent of eliminating theaters, but I don't have a lot of nostalgia for them, either; I go to the theater for the immersive qualities. I'm mostly curious how much better this sort of technology needs to get before Regal Cinemas starts getting nervous.
Jaws was made in the freaking 70's! What kind of extra footage would you expect them to have lying around? For newer discs compiling extra's is easier, but for the classics it can be nigh impossible. I suppose they could have added a commentary track to the movie, but Spielberg is adamantly opposed to those.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
"So yeah, great, HD-DVDs live up to the full potential of HDTVs. But I don't have an HDTV."
So you plug in the SDTV output of your HD-DVD player to your crappy old TV and it will downconvert for you. Then when you go to your mate's place and see just how much better the DVDs look in HD, you buy an HDTV.
Assuming the disks don't cost much more than an SD DVD, then movie companies can release only HD-DVD versions of the movies and anyone with an HD-DVD player can watch them.
Magnetic media (like tape) are extremely reliable in the sense that I can slip a bit here, scratch a bit there but still hear or view the content with minimal distortion. They can also be 'overburned' by recording and playing at lower speeds.
Low density optical media (like CD) are also reasonable fault tolerant (with the built-in 8/13 and error checking) to the extent that radial scratches do not effect the content. There is also sufficient 'extra' space to permit overburning.
Medium density optical media (like DVD-R) are more stringent in terms of error checking. There is very little ECC and other error handling mechanisms and small scratches or smudges can really mess up the content. Also, there is no space for any overburning, the disks are 'maxed'
Now with these 25GB/110cm^2 disks, the disks are very error prone and I for one would be very careful of scratches or marks.
This plus the format of the data (MPEG-4) means that one small piece of data loss, I cannot view any frame till the next I frame (FYI, MPEG frames are I-full, P-delta and B-reverse delta. P and B depend on the prior/next frames and a typical sequence is IPBPBPBPBPBPBI and many videos have about 10 seconds or so between the I frames)
It's too soon. Normal people don't "upgrade" nearly as fast as geeks do. People are just now getting DVD players as home. There's going to be virtually *no* market for a new standard for at least another 5 years. Nobody will buy it!
I don't want interativity, I just want to watch the movie. I seldom watch the outtakes, cut footage, commetaries, etc., I'd rather see a couple of bucks knocked of the price. I would like to see all those movies that I can only get in the directors cut, have the original theatrical release on the disc too. Often there is really good reason why that scene the director was so fond of was pulled.
In my experience RF converters are insanely popular simply because that's how Joe Sixpack knows how to hook it up. I went to my parents house, and they had cable hooked up into the VCR, the VCR hooked into a pass through on an RF converter for the DVD player, and then hooked into the coax on the TV. And this was a modern TV with 3 rear and 1 front video input 2 with S-video.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
I agree - at no point have I cared about a clearer picture from my movies. It just means they'll take longer to make and be more expensive. (activate RDF) Two things consumers NEED!
http://www.rustyrazorblade.com
Are you trying to be funny with the Leibnitz notation, or did you not know that would be Leibnitz notation for the derivative of the function DVD over the Deriviative of X
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I think what upsets people is that someone upgrading from a VHS to a DVD to an HD-DVD copy of a movie pays just as much as someone who's buying the HD-DVD version as his first copy. That is, you aren't just paying for the improvement in the standard. You're paying for the improvements + any intellectual rights to view the movie. If you own the VHS and DVD versions as well, you've paid for those intellectual rights multiple times.
This flies in the face of the MPAA/RIAA's argument that filesharing is bad because when you buy a DVD/CD, you are purchasing intellectual rights to view/listen. If it's wrong for me to view/listen to the DVD/CD without buying a license, it's wrong for them to sell the same license to me multiple times in different formats. The software industry figured out this contradiction long ago and offers discounts for upgrade versions.
The surprising thing for me is that both H.264/AVC and WM9 codecs are mandatory. The inclusion of MPEG-2 is understood by compatibility reasons, but WHY introduce two codecs with similar capabilities if one should be enough? This will force to support both codecs in all the players, and this will increase the cost. The DVD player market is already too cost sensitive for those luxuries!
Not yet, but before you know it there will be 1080p or higher....I already bought my HD set last fall, so I kind of quit paying attention, but I think one manufacturer *already* sells a display capable of upconverting to 1080p now.
The reason I mentioned 1920p, despite the lack of a an extant HD standard for it, is that the HD DVD standard should be designed to scale to future display capabilities. That is if its a "real" standard and not just a gimmick to fix DeCSS and make us buy new media.
Not quite.
So far the highest resoluion is 1920x1080. It is possible for that to be progressive at 24 frames per second too. I'm not aware of any sets that do more than 1080i though. Overall there are quite a few more formats than 1080i and 720p. About 18 if I'm not mistaken. And that's only US DTV which is only kinda standard last time I checked.
The studios are pushing HD-DVD because the distance from the surface to the dye layer is the same as standard DVDs. I presume that this means that they can use some of the current equipment to make the HD versions.
Blu-Ray uses a different distance. So setting up production lines for Blu-Ray will require a bigger investment.
For computer use, the larger capacity is worth the investment. Hardware companies expect much larger volumes than the movie studios, so a larger investment is acceptable. That's why most of the hardware companies are lining up behind Blu-Ray and most of the studios are lining up behind HD-DVD. Sony, being both, is confused, and will find a way to piss everyone off.
Profit had everything to do with it.
/. predicted, USB rules the roost and Firewire is only used in video niches.
That's because Apple essentially torpedoed 1394 adoption -- the cost being one reason Intel dropped it from the chipsets found in 70% of PCs. And now, as
What Intel offered up as alternatives to IEEE-1394 were two technologies, Serial ATA and USB 2.0, both of which were developed by Intel and produce a revenue stream for Intel, and neither of which was really a suitable replacement for the superior IEEE-1394.
Besides, do you really think that Intel is going to willingly let Apple get a toehold into the enormous PC motherboard chipset market? I think not...
I'm regularly getting pissed-off by dumbass companies that think no-one runs any OS other than Windows. Cases in point: HP, Intel, ATI, and now the DVD Forum.
It sounds like HD-DVD has been cooked-up just to allow Microsoft to embed a proprietary format in yet another monopolistic attempt to gain total control and lock all non windows/MS-licenced players (i.e. open source) out.
Its a foregone conclusion that the MPAA will also put its weight behind HD-DVD over blu-ray (even though it has inferior capacity and is a latecomer) just because windoze media player implements the DRM that they so badly want to force on us.
Its just one more link in the same chain that HDCP is in, where we will finally get totally locked out of our own systems.
But I have to wonder, if it ain't broke, why fix it?
While I can agree with your sentiment, this has to be the worst place on the internet to ask that question.
just download it to your harddrive, recode it to MPEG4 (or MPEG2) and burn it on a DVD.
Get one of those set top player deals from the Asian market that can play MPEG4 and read DVDs. No problem!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I think you mean 1080p HD-DVDs ;)
Just like it was not conceivable to download 1:1 DVD rips a few years ago.
Technology rulez.
PS: Plus, if it can be ripped, it will still be possible to convert the 30GB HD-DVD movie into a 700MB Xvid movie.
I hope the standard will include some kind of wavelet compression, like Dirac or Apple's Pixlet
With these you get better image quality at the same bitrate. Combine that with more bits and you have an awesome picture.
Lets hope they keep up with the current maths technology. Fourier transforms are just so last century!
I will bet Blu-Ray will trump HD-DVD for a variety of reasons. First off, the majority of consumer electronics companies will balk at paying royalties to Microsoft for the Windows Media IP rights inherent in the HD-DVD format. So many of them are already pushed out of shape at paying royalties to Time Warner for DVD proper. Second, Sony (Apple, and others too) isn't behind HD-DVD at all.
HD-DVD is a flawed standard because of their insistence in retaining the red laser (with less capacity) instead of going the Blu-Ray route. Compatibility could be achieved by packing a separate red laser with the Blu-Ray equipment, much like how Sony packaged a separate laser in their early DVD players strictly to be used by audio cds. That's the way to go. And to cut Microsoft out of the royalty gravy train.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
> I don't know how Apple does it, but their Superdrives are amazing.
IIRC, the TiBook superdrive is a Pioneer DVR-104. Run the profiler to see the manufacturer.
Well, mod me down if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that in order to play traditional CD's and DVD's the units will need to have two different lasers in them.
Because the public will insist on backward compatibility initially, the units produced for the first ten years or so will all have them. Then, when blue-wavelength DVD's have become popular enough that virtually all new DVD and CD purchases are blue formats with DRM, they'll introduce single-wavelength machines.
Up to now, this would have been difficult to do. It would have taken true perversity on the part of a manufacturer to produce, say, a player that would ONLY play SACD or DVD-A disks. Since the actual cost of a unit that ALSO plays traditional CD's is virtually the same, any manufacturer that tried to do that would face competitors willing to sell a CD-capable unit that is similarly price. Same price, also plays CD's, which will consumers choose?
But once we have a new standard with a different laser wavelength, once a manufacturer dares to jumps in with a blue-only, DRM-only unit, competitors will NOT be able to make a legacy-capable unit at the same price, because they'll have the cost of a second laser to play the legacy media.
And that is how the all-DRM era will begin.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
1080i, which, as you may have guessed, is an interlaced format.
720p is the highest progressive scan HDTV format that is commonly available in the consumer market. 1080i is the highest resolution commonly available in the consumer market...
The specifications do define resolutions all the way up to 1080p60, but good luck in finding a set that will support it.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
I hate it when I rent DVDs from the video store and they mess up at the good part of the movie.
HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF TRANSCODING!!! You can easily convert it into the same video people share on P2P now! I can't believe this guy got modded insightful! Have you ever heard of DIVX or XVID?!
Creative Demolition
How about keeping the promise made to all of us that the DVD would have 16x9 and pan/scan on the same disk?? that would be a start.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
The problem is, that eventually the old media fade out. I don't have many cassettes myself, but my parents do. In fact, they have a shelf of Beta tapes, then VHS, and from more recently, DVD's.
The big problem is that, to play the old Beta tapes, they still need to keep the old beta plugged in somewhere (that or transfer 50-100 tapes onto VHS/DVD). Same with the VHS player and DVD player.
So right now the main entertainment center has:
Surround sound mixer, Satellite box, DVD player, VHS player... and on another stand there's the Beta machine.
I'm going to make a wide assumption on this one though, and hope that the new format hardware will still read older format DVD's. Backwards compatability will save a lot of hassle in this case. Of course, once DVD goes down, then I'll still need to buy a new player to rent movies...
That said. I have 3 22inch NEC monitors and a 19inch lcd monitor to go with my computers. I have tv tuner cards in my main computer, and use it to watch almost all tv. The 27inch tv in the living room is only for games and laying with the girlfriend.
I've looked at new TV's but the price barrier isn't worth it to stare at boring shows even if they are much clearer.
The second disc contains a high-resolution surround-sound version of the film in WMV9. It recommends up to 3GHZ and 512MB of RAM.
I got some 0.2 fps out of it! But damn, the still shots I saw were sweet (and to think, my 1024x768 resolution was still missing about half the detail). I cannot wait for HD-DVD. Imagine the Lord of the Rings trilogy or animation like Spirited Away/Finding Nemo.
Why would you even want 16x9 and pan and scan on the same disc? All that does is ruin the quality. I have a few discs that do have both, and they are much lacking in special features. I won't even buy a disc that's not anamorphic widescreen. I'm personally glad that the discs are seperate. It also gives me reason to avoid places like blockbuster that only have the pan and scan version.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
After all, consumers just don't want the iPod Mini, as the iPod is good enough, and you're paying extra money for just a few more gigabytes of storage space!
Don't pretend to speak for everybody unless you've actually talked to everybody. Everyone I know would love upgraded resolution and sound for their movies--ever played a movie on a computer before? The blurry image is enough to make my eyes water. Think of the detail you're losing.
Cassette tapes were "good enough" too, and they even let you make copies if you wanted! Yet, CDs caught on long before CD-Rs became commonplace. HD-DVD will be pushed out the door and onto consumers, and consumers will buy them.
link i wasn't really talking about HDTV, but good job correcting that other guy. HDTV is too confusing for mass media to understand. However, the real point is, 1080p is legit and a few high end displays already support it. 720p is not a high enough resolution and 1080i...well, interlaced is silly IMHO. I'd rather have 50% better framerate than an 11% vertical resolution improvement. I'll stick with my ED CRT for quite a while.
why do I want it?? I want it because it was promised to me as part of the DVD standard and the reason for DVD being "better" than VHS.
As it stands I have to make certain I'm getting the right version and on some titles(CHarlies angels full throttle) the version is well hidden.
I have friends that don't like watching the "broken" version with the black bars. I sometimes watch movies with these individuals, I Just want the option... And according the the claims made when DVD was young, there should be no quality or space penalties for including the scan markers.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
never meaning atleast untill SD is no longer supported widely.
why you ask?
1: porn stars look.. skanky. and that's at 720x486.. just imagine them at 1920x1080.
2: porn is cheap to shoot. a lot of porn nowadays is shot on either DV (where camera range from $200 to $3000), or on perhaps betaSP. My personal experience is limited to DV, so i can't speak to how many people are using beta.. but i would say it's the vast minority. When your production costs include a motel room ($50), an actress or two ($500/each), a miniDV camera you can reuse over and over ($2k), tapes ($4/each), and a basic PC to edit on ($1-2k)... porn production is cheap. In contrast, HD format is very expensive to shoot (compared to dv).. at $30k (or more)/camera.. and editing systems being fairly pricey too.. not to mention $50-100 per tape.. i dont see a lot of the amateur producers making the switch.
Some major studios (vivid, etc), no doubt, will try to appeal to this niche market.. but it's going to take a lot of funds to do it right, and i also suspect a lot of post production and lighting magic to make the girls not look like disease infested burlap sacks.
The only exception i see is HDV, which is relatively cheap to shoot.. but there arent many HDV cameras on the market (and those that are, tend to suck, being single chippers).. so i wouldnt bet the farm on too many people adopting with HDV (although surely a few will)
You'd be wrong. There are so many HDTV ready sets already on the market that it would be suicide for HD-DVD manufacturers to make their output incompatible with those existing sets.
The "technician" the cable company sent out didn't understand why I wanted to use "all those wires" to put baseband video and audio into our stereo. The coax was "just one wire and easier". True it was marginally easier but I don't see much hope for selling even medium end stuff when the guy who hooks cable up all day doesn't know the least thing about av gear.
seriously, you should considering flashing your firmware to the current book 2.1 beta candidate.
book 1.0 tends to yellow pages after about 5-10 years, and no one has been able to write a patch yet to fix the bug.
In a word -- yes. According to the CEA, over 9.73 million DTV sets have been sold since their introduction in 1998. And over a million have been sold in the first two months of this year alone...
You remarked how Discovery channel looks the best, compared to other HD. In regards to cable HD.. Not all HD is created equal. Or rather, not all HD is /encoded/ equal.
Content providers (DirecTV, Viacom, COX, whatever) only have so much bandwidth to work with. Sadly enough.. a lot of times it's a formula like this..
"will we make more money / gain subscribers if we A: play 6 channels of 'full quality HD' content, or B: half the bitrate of those channels and now we can play 12!!"
usually, dumb consumers can't tell much difference between HD.. so obviously the network with the "most HD content evar!" has the best marketing ploy, versus the poor guy who wont easily be able to market "the highest bitrate available!" hehe.
As an aside, most movies (as stated by others) are already shot on film (35mm). Several tvshows are shot on film as well. Now, 35mm film can be scanned at a res of approx 4096 horizontal pixels.. although 2k (2048) is much more common. 2k is approx. equiv. to 1920x1080 HD quality. However, this may be the inital scan of the negative from shooting. After several prints, color timing, editing, to arrive at an OCN (final print), and then make individual prints from there, the resultion can actually degrade (estimated) into the range of 1000 pixels horiz. Now, the DVD transfer scan would be done from the OCN, which will be better than 1000 pixels, but probably not very close to the original 2k scan either.. so, the adoption of HD format may see studios doing DI processing a lot more, whereby what would have been an analog process (chemical color timing via reprinting, etc) may now be done more often in the digital realm, preserving resolution. I dunno how much of an impact this format will have on studios decisions to use DI (digital intermediary), but one can hope.. since the trend is already starting to get pretty big, and companies like Quantel and Discreet are marketing heavily in that direction, not to mention other players who were traditionally analog.
(i may have rambled, sorry if none of this made any sense.. busy at work, but really wanted to write this post)
Yeah, but there are so many VGA-ready monitors already on the market that it would be suicide for video card manufacturers to make their output incompatible with those existing monitors.
That doesn't mean they won't invent DVI, which is way, way better - and then have a DVI-to-VGA connector which is comparatively lousy.
Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if the HD-DVD players spawned a new video cable.
Education is the silver bullet.
9%? Taking that as true (I honestly have no idea), then that's a great time to do this.
Why? Because all of us (yes, I'm included) who have HDTV sets right now would jump on this in a heartbeat. Once a standard emerges, or equipment supports all competing standards, sales of high definition DVD systems (recorders or not) will skyrocket - at least to the 9% of the population who own the sets. Watching regular DVDs (even on fancy schmancy $1k DVD players) once you've been exposed to HDTV gets pretty old.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Everyone's predictions about the lack of consumer demand for these new products is correct; but in my opinion there is a different reason.
HD-TVs, projectors, and even LCD monitors are still too expensive. And without the ability to tell the difference between DVD and DVD-HD...I think they're going to end up being introduced too early and fail in the marketplace.
You're underestimating the combined arrogance and paranoia of the MPAA. I wouldn't be surprised if HD-DVD players down-res their component outputs. You better hope your TV has HDCP.
This was also covered on As the Apple Turns, oddly enough. It seems pretty clear to me that Steve Jobs, in his role as Pixar CEO, is worried about video piracy. It's trivially easy to pirate any DVD, either by ripping to hard disk and compressing using DiVX or another comparable codec, or by burning a copy to DVD-R/DVD+R.
Make no mistake. Jobs isn't complaining that HD-DVD doesn't have adequate copy protection methods. HD-DVD is so new that no standards have really been set in stone, especially not for things like the copy protection. Jobs is cautioning the industry not to jump on the HD-DVD bandwagon until something better than CSS exists for HD-DVD. Jobs specifically is saying that Hollywood shouldn't release movies in the new format until it can be assured that the new format can't be copied.
One such measure that Jobs suggested is to prevent HD-DVD burners from being bundled with computers. But this seems unlikely, and if he were to force Apple to do this, Apple might fall behind the Wintel world, which almost assuredly will start bundling HD-DVD burners with PCs as soon as it's economical to do so. Even jobs admitted this was an extreme scenario and hoped it wouldn't come to pass.
Personally, I don't see how you can meet the mandate of an un-copyable disc. Any encryption that can be decrypted in real time by embedded controllers in appliances like DVD players (or in this case, HD-DVD players) can be cracked by a computer. Most schemes to tie the content to the distribution media can be circumvented somehow. It's possible that video playback from pre-recorded HD-DVD discs might be made impossible (at the drive firmware level) on computers with HD-DVD-ROM drives, which would eliminate one of the easiest exploits for computer piracy... but an enterprising hacker might find a way to flash the drive's firmware to get around this issue, and then you're back where you started from. Yeah, you could simply not make HD-DVD-ROM drives for computers available at all, but that would insure Blu-Ray's success since everyone is hungry for bigger and better removable optical storage -- and Blu-Ray is already poised to make it into computers if Sony has its way.
As long as the content is in the digital domain, someone somewhere will be able to copy it and strip the copy protection. Hollywood waiting for a bulletproof distribution medium? They might as well wait forever, in which case we'll never see high-definition video content for purchase. (I'm sure the broadcasters would love that.)
Then again, there is precedent for creating a disc format that isn't computer readable. SACD has a physical layout that should theoretically be readable in most DVD-ROM drives, but no DVD drive has firmware that can read the high-def layer on a SACD disc, at least not that I'm aware of. In fact, most DVD drives can't even read the low-def, Red Book compliant layer on SACD hybrid discs, because the drives keep trying to read the bits off the high-def layer and get confused. There is a combination of firmware and lack of appropriate file system software for the OS of your choice that's making this an effective lock-out, though I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to read SACD discs on a PC -- assuming that there are enough people using SACD content in the first place who also happen to be hackers and file system gurus to make this happen. The fact that SACD has only found its niche in audiophile applications means this may not happen for some time, if at all!
(Damn, wish I hadn't blown my moderator points for this thread, but I really wanted to answer your question more than I wanted to moderate your question up.)
open4free ©
open4free ©
The DVD standard never said the movie had to have both pan and scan and widescreen versions, that it simply was an option. There are some movies that will never be released with a pan and scan version, and there are some that were shot in pan and scan to begin with so that there is not a wide screen version. It's completly up to the studio/director to decide how the movie is released.
I have friends that don't like watching the "broken" version with the black bars. I sometimes watch movies with these individuals
You should take the time to educate them on why widescreen is intrinsically better. There are even a few DVD's out there that have demo's as to why.
And according the the claims made when DVD was young, there should be no quality or space penalties for including the scan markers.
Are you kidding me? there is simply no way to have both versions on the disc without either a reduction in quality or a reduction in space. You only have two options for producing the pan and scan image. The first is to have a complete second copy of the movie in full resoltuion with the pan and scan done. The second option would be to have markers that tell which part of the frame to display. The first option retains the quality at the expense of space. Both versions in the movie use all 480 lines of resolution, but having two copies means you have to sacrifice some special features, or have multiple discs. The second option is going to reduce quality on the pan and scan image because if you are zooming in on the picture, you aren't using all the available resolution lines.
As it stands I have to make certain I'm getting the right version and on some titles(CHarlies angels full throttle) the version is well hidden.
Just do what I do and take it back. This seemed to be a bigger problem early in the DVD picture ('97 and '98), but since quite a number of people have begun to do this most retailers clearly mark the different versions.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
The toshiba LCOS tv supported 1080p. They don't make them anymore cause LCOS has problems but it did exist and you can probably still buy one if you really want to from somewhere. I know there are some others also.
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open4free ©
Thanks for the reply, but I wasn't missing THAT much...:)
I realize that most people don't own HDTVs. What I was wondering is why one would see the sudden "need" to buy one because of the new format of the HD DVDs - if you didn't "need" one before, you won't "need" one any more when the new formats come out - people without HDTVs will still be able to downconvert any HD content to view on their SD TV.
And, unless your computer is ancient, you do have an HDTV, just probably not an HDTV tuner. The monitor you are looking at is an HD monitor, as all monitors have been progressive scan with high resolutions for quite some time. If you don't want to shell out the money for an HDTV but still want to see what HD content looks like, grab one of these cards and put it in your computer for around $300.00. They are capable of turning a fairly high powered PC into a Tivo-like unit for OTA HD content...
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
At Europe: a good TV reachs 1080i100Hz.
HDDVD: Half space is visible and the other space is hidden (by the evil HaseCorp & his friend U.S.A.'s Federal).
open4free ©
Well, won't all broadcast tv be switched completly to HDTV in 2006 (at least that was the plan when I checked last year)? So unless you want to stick with cable/satellite or pay $300 for an HDTV reciever which downconverts to analog it looks like many people will be having to make the switch soon. Either that or we'll see an extension to the 2006 deadline... But in any case, it will happen eventually as old TVs die and the only new TVs being sold are HDTV.
Just like it would be suicide for them to introduce copy protection on DVI and break some existing sets? Oh, wait... they already did that -- it's called DVI-HDCP. Hmm, could it be that they don't have the consumer's best interests in mind!?!?!?
microsoft will need all the extra space to ship longhorn and force upgrades
It pisses me the hell off that even CD's didn't ship, as a standard, in a protective cover, which could be replaced when damaged.
I know that at a time, some came like this, I think I remember an option with some Compaq drive that you placed in a thin plastic "case" of sorts, which the drive would unload before reading the disc...
Or maybe I'm confusing it with those PD drives that never went anywhere - they cost more, but I believe beat CD-r 2 to 1 at longjevity for data integrity or something, and they were rewritable as well....
Playstation games and VCD/SVCD stuff is especially sensitive to fingerprints and scratches, since they opted to use XA mode, allowing them to get about 100 more megs onto a CD-R.
Just think - those extra 100 megs could be STANDARD if they had spent the EXTRA plastic to make a protective case - how much plastic is WASTED by all of the "firsbees" that have to be rewritten??? I keep Playstation games as images, compressed, ready to re-write when the kids scratch the disk up, how utterly WASTEFULL!
Of course, the emus are comming along quite nicely and with current hard drive sizes, I may not need the discs at all, honestly, but that's a different story (they can play the games right from the image file)...