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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-
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.
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 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.
Sooner than you'd expect. Don't forget: pr0n producers are the early adopters of tech, man. Serious - video tapes, web commerce, streaming video, and so forth. The first plain ol' DVD I ever saw (actually second to the the Dolby demo disc) was pr0n.
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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.
and how soon was it before somebody said the P-word when another mass-storage article hit slashdot? 3 seconds? four?
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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you don't understand - the pr0n is as vital to us as air, water, food. you can think of it as the food buffer of the octospiders - when it's gone, we have but seconds to live. without it we are less than human, we are no better than an ape diddling himself in a jungle with a fruit for inspiration. anything which allows us to increase our pr0n buffer is much appreciated and worshipped as a glowing green vessel to the gods.
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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"
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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.
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."
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
In fact, with the pace of technology now, buying content is just a waste.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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
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.
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 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.
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...
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
...HD-DVD would use the same 3:2 Telecine that DVDs use today.
Or they could just store a native 24fps 1080p stream on the disc and let the player deal with it.