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Panasonic's Blu-ray Recorder To Hit Market In July
lunarscape writes "Forbes is reporting that 'Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. on Wednesday unveiled what it calls the world's first DVD recorder that supports single-side, dual-layer Blu-ray Discs with a maximum capacity of 50 gigabytes.' It looks like Sony's own Blu-ray recorder will now have some competition."
Another toy that I can't afford!
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
Unknown host pong.
Matsushita unveils DVD recorder adopting Blu-ray Disc format+
, 06.30.04, 10:21 AM ET
OSAKA, Jun 30, 2004 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. on Wednesday unveiled what it calls the world's first DVD recorder that supports single-side, dual-layer Blu-ray Discs with a maximum capacity of 50 gigabytes.
The DMR-E700BD, the high-end model of Matsushita's DIGA DVD recorder series, will be put on the Japanese market on an open-price basis on July 31, said the major consumer electronics maker known for its Panasonic brand.
The new model can record up to four and a half hours of digital high-definition programming or up to 63 hours of analog programming, Matsushita said. The machine is equipped with built-in tuners for terrestrial digital broadcasting, broadcast satellites, 110-degree communications satellites and terrestrial analog broadcasting.
Matsushita is the second company after Sony Corp. to release a DVD recorder adopting the Blu-ray Disc, a next-generation large-capacity optical disc video recording format.
Using a blue-violet laser, the Blu-ray Disc achieves over two hours of digital high-definition video recording on a single-sided, single-layer CD/DVD-size disc with a diameter of 12 centimeters.
I wonder if there's gonna be a Knoppix version that takes advantage of this...
/*cue old time movie dream scene harp*/
:D
"All new Knoppix 6.0! Every Linux distribution can now be tested on a bootable live CD!
So now indie film makers can record super-high-res bad acting, tired dialogue, and shoddy set production. Joy!
in bed.
a way to store all my pr0n!
and maybe even fit my monthly SPAM archives onto a couple of discs!
I mean I still can't watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy directors cut without swapping discs so whats the point!
How long until something like this is viable for a backup solution? Im not talking about writing a few hundred megs to CD, but full-scale 40G drive backup?
Does that mean I'll have to buy another set of Star Wars DVDs, The Blue Ray Edition?
I hope this time Han shoots first.
They went from red laser to blue-ray. Why don't they just skip straight to gamma-ray DVDs? Sure, you'd have to wear a radiation suit to watch Return of the King, but that's a small price to pay for ultra-high capacity, right?
This has to be a giant step forward in bringing optical disk capacities closer to being in line with current capacities of hard disks.
Furthermore, this may just be the media necessary to actually record the new streaming formats that are GB's in size.
4.5GB DVDs just weren't big enough to back up my data (well, unless I wanted to burn 166 DVDs every 8 months or so). Until something like this I'd had nothing I could use but hard drives... tapes were just too expensive and unreliable (and slow). This will still be slow, I'm sure, but at least it'll make for a good backup medium. It's about f'ing time. Sign me up for one, at least once media prices for it become reasonable. I wonder what the shelf life on their dual-layer media is...
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
It's interesting that the first Blu-Ray recorders are being first marketed as standalone recorders, and there's no version for a computer yet. Usually, it's the other way around (CD/DVD)...
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
What is open-price basis? Sounds like a "we'll let people bid until we like a number" pricing scheme. The 50GB capacity is definitely nice - for HD content - but 63 hrs of regular analog? Don't know if that would actually happen or alot of burned DVDs w/1% storage used. I would not think that current DVD owners would burn multiple movies into 1 DVD backup. It would be nice to have a DVD backup of my computer DASD (only 4 disks!!!)
for the moment anyway. The price tag, form factor and lack of HDTV will I think put most people off these. DVD is adequate for the masses and until something clearly better and more affordable comes these are just expensive gadgets.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Can we really trust these discs? I mean, the CD is a reliable digital support, it will tolerate alot of abuses. We all know that sometimes, a CD with lots and lots of scratches will work just fine. The DVD on the other hand, is alot more sensitive. I've had problems with dvd's where I could hardly see any scratches on the surface, and I've heard some other people complain about it as well. Maybe we're just dumb and don't know how to properly handle them, but still no one can deny that a DVD is alot more sensitive. If these guys says they pub 50gb on a single disk, I can only imagine how sensitive the damn thing will be. They should have some kind of enclosure, like the old 3.5" disks. Those were never reliable, but I can only imagine how much worse they'd be if they had the exposed disk.
I am a speak english. Do you not? - Saroto
... exist on my HD.
;) It's pretty bad when you have to buy 200 gb HDs and use them to backup your images and stick'em in the closet. There are better uses.
Now I've archived them all to DVD, 2x for security. That means I need 56 dvds (23 go in an offline jukebox, 23 into a spindle around the block) to be 'safe'.
Now editing those photos typically creates 89mb images for printing. The largest are the scanned chromes, at 8000LPI from a drum scanner. To give you an idea, this prints natively at 40x60x400LPI on photographic paper.
What's this mean? It means I damn well want this to hit the commercial market, hard, and cheap
Of course they have not addressed the longetivity of these disks. Just like Epson made a little blunder, I'd hate to have my data on it offline and find out, 3 months later, that the high levels of smog have eaten it into oblivion.
(Canon 10D generates 6.4mb/image; each image generates 36mb 16bit Tiff; each tiff is manipulated to create a minimum of a 16x20 print which may have multiple images/reprints)
Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, but I thought I heard something about dual sided DVD discs. Anyone know anything about that? Could there eventually be dual sided dual layered discs? That'd be sweet, 100 GB capacity!
I'm in the middle of downloading 30 GB of data from one of the SOHO instruments; it will take 3 days to get it over our T1. The only advantage of doing the transfer over the net is that putting it on DVDs for mailing would require somebody on their end to monitor and swap out 6-7 DVDs as they're burned, and then somebody on my end to monitor and swap out those DVDs as they're read onto my hard drive. With a Blu-Ray disk they could burn a single medium then drop it in the mail. And I'd still get the data at the same time as my network transfer will finish.
It's not the size that matters... it's how you use it
The storage industry is always too far behind, IMHO. By the time this technology gets affordable, it'll catch the back end of it's usefulness. When tapes were out, I needed 4 or 5 tapes to get my stuff backed up. Then I switched to CD-R, then to DVD-R, now to hard drives. I have around 300 GB to back up, but I refuse to pay for an autoloader or something crazy. If the format held a terabyte, then sure, I'd consider it, but 50 GB = 10 movies. Also consider the cost of storage these days: as of right now, I'm seeing less than $0.50/gig for EIDE hard drives. Unless you're bringing gigabytes of data around with you in your pocket every day, you'd get more for your money with a cheap file server and a bunch of huge drives. As far as the consumer/home market goes, what takes up 50 gig? Are they really going to release all six Star Wars on one 50 GB DVD? Hells no! The only application I see for that is for "Season 1"-type packages, where you're getting 6 or 8 DVDs now anyway, but this technology will not be pervasive anytime soon.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Are these blu-ray disks as robust as normal CDs and DVDs (hah!) or do they decay like many CD-Rs? I recently tried to load a few old CD-Rs that had been lying around for a while... nothing. Errors all over the place. Will this thing be useful for archiving stuff or only for same-year viewing?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Look for Sony to complete it's "merger" with BMG, throw the MGM movie library on the pile, and issue HDVDs (HDTV DVDs) for loading onto your Media Vaio, and taking with you on your PS-ultra, docking in your car for those long drives to Sony IMAX. Trailer spam to your Sony smartphone!
--
make install -not war
I've been thinking for some time now about buying a dvd recorder, but every time i think i've made up my mind, another toy pops up. New technology, better, faster, more reliable, better standard, you name it. How do i know which one to buy now? If i go for a DVD-R+ or -, or now for this blue ray thingie .. Can someone give me a good advice?
You youngsters and your fancy schmancy 50Gb single-sided, dual-layered Blu-ray Discs. When I was young, all we had were single-sided, single-density 360Kb 5.25" floppy disks and we liked them. Oooh yes those were the days...we used to copy IBMBIO.SYS, IBMDOS.SYS, COMMAND.COM and bricks.exe and we were ready for a fancy, fun-filled Friday night. You youngsters are such softies.
I guess that's why I'm using only DVD-R discs today. DVD+R won't play in my DVD player and when I asked about why it didn't support it, the salesman said that DVD+R isn't the standard, and while DVD-R was supported on basically all DVD players, not all supported DVD+R.
And since I don't want to decide when I buy the discs if I should have DVD movies on them or data, I simply don't bother with DVD+R at all since DVD-R works with both on all standalone DVD players (as long as they support recordable discs of course).
I wonder if Blu-Ray will face the same destiny: unsupported by next generation DVD players => only widely useful for data storage => impossible to use as a generic format => don't bother with them at all.
There's a slight difference from today though -- Blu-Ray will get a higher capacity than the standardized HD-DVD format. That will make it interesting to see where things go, since Blu-Ray isn't compatible with the existing DVD spec which HD-DVD is, possibly making it harder to create combo drives like the DVD+/-R drives. I doubt I'd use Blu-Ray though even with that advantage, if I can't play burned DVD's on my standalone player.
Maybe Sony will get into the same situation as Hewlett-Packard (and more?) currently seems to be in. I recently saw a laptop from HP with a DVD writer that *only* supported DVD+R. Since they want to push their format. Of course, everyone I know saw that as a major disadvantage, and they might even have lost customers for it.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
But is Blu-Ray backwards-compat to "normal" DVD, or will this mean I'm buying a new DVD drive?
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I'm waiting for an affordable BlueRay burner to come out for my PC so that I can start copying DVDs without losing quality and features. MMM...4 movies on one disc....druel.
Open price? I don't suppose that's free as in beer?
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
50 GB.. Is more than 5 times the size of my hard drive....
Isn't that amazing?! (...how far behind the times you are that is)
"Derp de derp."
This would be really cool for video collections. Instead of going out and buying a collection of DVD's to say, watch all of Trigun or Cowboy Beebop, now you just get one disk of equal form factor that has EVERYTHING on it. Video compilations like, say, the collected works of Monty Python, or every movie staring Jackie Chan (evar) would become feasible! And the special features sections could be packed to the brim with every piece of trivia or obscure net joke about the subject of the disk.
I for one welcome our new high-capacity overlords.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
I will wait for the HD-DVD format to come about. There are just too many people arguing over the next standard, and until it becomes a standard, I will wait. This is my standard response.
"This is you left and that's your left. This is your right and that's your right. You're gonna die!
the salesman said that DVD+R isn't the standard, and while DVD-R was supported on basically all DVD players
The salesman was full of shit. A salesman told me the opposite.
They're both standard. Some units work well with one, some with the other, some with neither (older ones).
The only "right" answer is to stick with what works, which has been DVD-R for me too (mostly because thats what my PS2 and XBOX like).
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Where is the American ingenuity ?
Why are we dependent on Japanese technology which to me is very average.(maybe because we don't have as many electronic manufacturers like we once did.)
DVD technology is limited and is slow coming.
Whats the alternative ?
How about holographic storage.
Latest Blue laser recorder shipped.
to backup everything i need to keep when i have to reinstall
steal this sig
I hope this means that the actual drive matches the blue of the laser too. Then I could have a cool new drive to match the thousands of blue LEDs I bought in bulk.
And after we get Linux on one disk, once each blu-ray DVDr becomes cheap enough, what's to stop us from mailing them all over the place, AOL-style?
At least with a disk this big, you can't apply any of the "limited viewing window" technologies to it. When you have 60-some hours of video on the disk, there's no way to watch it all before the disk degrades to an un-watchable state.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
I can't find the episode, but they had a bin for Beta (full), VHS (full), and an empty one marked DVD. I can't recall the context but it was on the Simpson's so I had to post it.
"I'm a karate man. Karate mans bleed on the inside."
I don't think he was completely full of shit, since I agree with the DVD Forum being the standardizing body when it comes to DVD discs, and not a random group of companies deciding to form an alliance and push their format. Although I can understand if they wish to call their format a standard.
I could compare the DVD Forum to the W3C, where the DVD+RW Alliance could be Microsoft and any henchmen that follows their path. Not that I dislike any companies behind the DVD+RW Alliance; just picked Microsoft for the sake of the web standard comparison since they have a lot of own "standards" in this field.
I don't think it's a coincidence that your PS2 and XBOX happen to like DVD-R mostly too.
Having said that, I agree that you should stick to what works as well. If DVD+R worked everywhere, and DVD-R not really everywhere, I would've went for DVD+R instead.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
My understanding is that Sony, Matsushita and the other big consumer electronics companies are developing these high density discs for one specific purpose; to hold HD quality video content. Currently DVDs only have enough storage for average length movies at 480i resolution. A 25-50GB disc could hold a movie at 720p or 1080i resolution, which would be a serious improvement.
Maybe the idea is to shake the bugs out of the format by beta-testing it on the Lunatic Fringe... I mean, early adopters that are willing to shell out big bucks for a writable drive.
national geographic has some awesome sun images this month
... just like I bought 80's when they were $0.50/gig, and 120's when they were $0.43/gig, and 160's.... and now 200's.
So far the system runs 2x200/8mb, 2x80/2mb, and a smattering of 160/120s.
I've even a bunch of fibre channel in a striped array to assist in 1ms seek times as a swap disk.
One more media category that Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples, etc. will need to find room for on their shelves, in among the DVD+RW and the DVD-R and the Music CD-Rs and the Data CD-RW's and the Type 4 DVD-RAM and the Type 2 DVD-RAM and the Type 1 DVD-RAM and the "printable-but-not-by-inkjet" DVD's and the "inkjet-printable" DVD's.
I wonder what category of media they will kick out in order to make room for it? And what devices will start to become effectively orphaned as once-easily-obtained media become increasingly hard to find?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
just make good use of existing DVD space, it should be enough for HDTV, with improved new codec. blue ray doesnot seem competitive, the only thing is that those blue ray investors seem to hold a lot media on hostage against those new techonology for using DVD capacity but new codec.
shame on them.
...Blu-Ray isn't compatible with the existing DVD spec which HD-DVD is...
Actually both of them will be backwards-compatible with DVDs (simply because people will not buy anything else). Sony recently announced a drive head that can read Blu-ray, DVD, and CD.
For Lord of the Rings Trilogy on Super Special Edition on Blu-Ray with even more scenes than before! Running time 9d 11h 15m.
Do you REALLY need that much pr0n?
P.S. Eight months between backups really isn't a good backup schedule.
What, are you the DVD-Forum Troll or something?
DVD-Forum are the hollywood assholes who sued people for posting DeCSS. If the computer industry doesn't want to deal with those fucks, good for everyone.
Try scratching the TOP of a CD sometime. Fucked.
Please don't send me to jail government people. Just keep taking 50% of my income.
One of the scrapped special features of the Star Wars DVD was a "Virtual Lucas Ego and Self Worth" featurette. Word has it that they may be able to squeeze it onto one of these discs.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Try that on a 50G disc.
Amy
I recently tried to load a few old CD-Rs that had been lying around for a while... nothing. Errors all over the place.
I have a few dozen CDRs I burned over ten years ago. I recently checked them (and made dupes). No errors.
Aside from the obvious (avoid sunlight, humidity, unsupported stacking) I think a lot of people made the mistake of writing on their CDRs using Sharpies or other pens with non water-soluble inks. I suspect that any oil-based inks used react with oxygen and ultraviolet and slowly corrode the upper vinyl layers of the CDRs. Eventually they make it more likely that oxygen and water vapour can penetrate through to the metallic layers, causing corrosion.
Da Blog
Does this also record on standard DVD+/-R discs? If not, then it's not really a DVD recorder and it should be called a Blu-Ray recorder or an HD-DVD recorder or something else. Since the new discs will not play in any current DVD players, they're not really "DVDs" any more that a DVD is a CD.
Is this an open standard that other mfg's can build technology on top of?
Existing DVD recorders like my Philips DVR985 are built on an open standard so any DVD+RW's that I make in the recorder can be read in most standard DVD players (I haven't found one that doesn't work). It even works in my computer's dvd drive.
Ryan
HD-DVD will be fully endorsed by the DVD Standards Council, as well as looking like todays DVDs and not terrible late 1980s looking cartridge based discs. Scratch proof for a price markup? I could care less, i've never scratched a DVD in my life, nor have I ever had problems with scratched DVDs that i've rented. Its really not an issue, so there is no need to make it look like some mega-old stale technology. Gimme 1080i movies on DVD and i'll be one happy camper.
The Blue Laser was inveneted in Poland. Sony just stole it and badged it as their own invention.
g niecia_2 001.php]2001 Achievements[/URL]/ ~mskozub/seminarium/ ppt/laser.ppt]3.8MB PPT document[/URL]
y .php3?tem_ ID=5176&kategoria=The+Economic+Prize+of+the+Presid ent+of+the+Republic+of+Poland]President's award[/URL]
Here's the proof:
[URL=http://www.science.eu.org/rozne/osia
[URL=http://tempac.fuw.edu.pl
Here's proof in English:
[URL=http://www.prezydent.pl/nip/nagrod
I have 2 DVD players taht don't support DVD-R. So I need to use DVD+R. One is relatively new, the other is relatively old.
Your argument has some flaws.
DVD-R sales skyrocketed and everyone all of a sudden wound up getting a writer - the moment the blank price (usually calculated on a per-megabyte basis, though some people put VERY little bytes on each disk and therefore calculate the per-disk price) dropped below that of the departing CD-R technology.
In my little corner of the world no other DVD*R, DVD/R or DVD^R was adopted. Why? because the blanks cost significantly more than el-cheapo DVD-R's.
DVD-9 DL may already be there on the market, even the blanks may already be there, but if they don't compete in price with DVD-R, they may as well not be there.
And same goes for blu-ray.
- "Show me da money!"
You want me to show you da moeny? Show us cheap blanks, I show you da money.
-
Many older DVD players don't have DVD+R or DVD+RW in their lookup table of book types, so don't know how to read them. DVD+R9 is even worse, of course. You can get around this by using software to force the DVD's book type to DVD-ROM when recording (or, with DVD+RW, at any time).
Anything less than about 120GB is frankly too small to justify the gargantuan expense of purchasing one of these "next-gen" optical discs.
When the DVD was at the stage these-not-yet-shipped discs are, a hard drive holding the same amount of data (4.7-9GB) was about 1/2 of the maximum size hard drive available for sale at a reason price. Today the maximum size hard drive of a similar sort is 250-400-500GB in size. Frankly, the guys trying to sell us newer plastic discs are trying to rip everyone off.
Of course they could always ship the low def movies with less compression and more extra features.
I realize that for the most part current compression on dvd's is 'good enough' or slightly better. But I'm one of those that prefer reduced compression. Espicaly if I'm gonna grab a frame and play with it for my own amusement.
With 50gb you drop compression on a two hour movie to somthing like 10-15 instead of the >100:1 they use now. For a one hour tv show you might be able to do it without loss. (especially when you take out the 20min of comercials!)
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
I'm in the middle of downloading 30 GB of data from one of the SOHO instruments; it will take 3 days to get it over our T1.
I'm dloading three iso's simultaneously on my Charter 256K/$34.95 a month plan and hittin about 900 meg an hour. At that rate 30 gig would equal about 33.3 hours or a bit less than a day and a half.
How much you paying for that T again?
HD-DVD is more a standard of (MPEG4-based) compression to let the studios shoehorn a hidef movie into something that's not really quite big enough for it. An HD-DVD player is a standard DVD player with a beefed-up decoder & WM9 support. Yes, you can get 1080i out of it, at the price of 110:1 compression. I prefer my movies without blockiness & filtering artifacts, thank you.
Hollywood might prefer the HD-DVD format because it requires less of an infrastructure upgrade, but they'll change their tune when the flood of pirated HD-DVDs really gets underway. Blu-Ray movies would at least have the defence of being simply too big to swap practically on the internet.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Next thing you know, Knoppix will fit on one of these, with about 120 gigs of programs, development environments, complete source code, and a few free (libre) movies, songs, photos, clipart, and other media to boot... And it will only take a month to download!
The problems are mostly with older players. Newer ones tend to be more thoroughly tested with recordable media of all types.
Hmm I wonder what blue laser would look like compared to say http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/lights/5a47/ ... As the colour spectrum goes Red-Orange-Green-Blue-Indigo-Violet. Wonder how long it'll take those lasers to hit the market to the average consumer, unless they have already??
another example of the fabulousness of gallium nitride (GaN) and its cousins in the III-nitride semiconductor material system
:P but at the end of the day as a geek i think blu-ray dvds are very very cool and i want to have them in my house ;)
gallium/aluminium/indium nitride (and their alloys) are the semiconductors that bring to you the blue/violet lasers being used to read/write the blu-ray discs
the wavelength of blue light is smaller than of red (red lasers are currently used for dvd/cd drives) and hence it has a finer resolution - that means, more data on the same size disc
only a few years ago gallium nitride technology was in its infancy - now, largely thanx to the hard work of Shuji Nakamura blue LEDs and lasers are making it into home electronics around the world! it really is an amazing to feat to have overcome the difficulties of developing this material into the fantastic devices today (see Shuji's book "The Blue Laser Diode: GaN Based Light Emitters and Lasers", 1997, for background into their development)
sure, most of us care little about how the technology gets to us, and bitch about the implementation - but let us think for a moment on the fact that we have it at all (and sure its expensive but a lot more money has gone into getting it to us)!
ok, so i'm a gan researcher and a little biased
notice this is the initial stage for the format war... between blu-ray and HD-DVD. once the next gen format (blu-ray or HD-DVD) has been decided THEN the makers will start competing against each other...
Notice now that for the beta vs. VHS war, it was pretty much sony vs. matsushita(panasonic) but now they are supporting each other. we have come a long way...
each company in the blu-ray camp were showing off LOTS of players last year here in tokyo at the consumer electronics show... while HD-DVD were still just showing mockups... toshiba and NEC better play catchup fast... cuz the race has alrady started.