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PS3 To Use Blu-Ray Technology
Daetrin writes "GameSpot has reported an announcement by Sony that the PlayStation 3 will use Blu-Ray technology, a next-generation optical disc format which 'can hold 25GB on a single layer and 50GB on the dual-layer discs', as many people have been speculating. What Sony hasn't said for sure is whether the PS3 will be backwards compatible with DVD movies and PS2 games. However, they indicated that they will reveal more details about the PlayStation 3 at a premiere in Japan on March 31st next year. (And, if nothing else, there will certainly be plenty of rumors before then.)"
Technology created (in part) by Sony to be used in a Sony product!
When 640Kb should be enough for everyone?
(Yeah I know I am mixing ram with disk size here, but it is a joke. Laugh)
Wow, those discs could hold thousands of DDR songs!
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Are you a Chipotle Fan?
Oh, you'll be able to play your old movies and games, they'll just be a bit bluray.
Sony wouldn't do a proprietary thing, would they? Owning rights to all those movies and music are just tempting them to get back at the world for Betamax.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
... a next-generation optical disc format which 'can hold 25GB on a single layer
What they didn't mention is that each disc is 3 meters in diameter.
I understand this is also going to replace RFID tags as a theft deterent.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
You must have some shitty DVD players, because the seven that I either own now or have owned in the past never had that problem.
on opposite sides of the disc?
Gee didnt see that coming - oh wait thats right, Sony has something to do with BluRay dont they...
Does it really matter if it will play dvd movies?If you can afford a $300+ console, you can afford a $50- dvd player.
word.
Most movie-DVD's are dual layer. All DVD players should be able to play dual layer DVD's! Are you sure you're not talking about double sided DVD's?
Also, Sony should make sure that they don't have all the "Disc read error" problems this time through.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
IMHO, they will probably use the extra space to employ some sort of advanced encryption technique to deter hackers/etc from cracking their shizzle...or something.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
And does not the world have to stay on hold while Redmond innovates?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115834&cid=98
The next pasture is always greener
haven't the mpaa decided to go with hd-dvd? if so does this mean microsoft could position themselves to allow users to watch mainstream HD movies while ps3 can't?
Will be known as "Sting Ray".
In the future games will include the pr0n network drive at the company that management never finds out about ;)
Yup.
Sony just punched the entire HD world in the face. Due to the popularity of the playstation, everyone will be able to play blue-ray disks. This will be the new video format that will have market penetration and therefor drive new MOVIE disk sales.
You know all those dvds you have? (ive got about 300) You get to re-purchase all of those in HD on blue-ray.
Huzzah!
Although this means nothing if you dont have an HD-tv. Or, if you are a bargain hunter, youve got an awesome range of super-cheap dvds coming your way.
no
Shouldn't DVDs handle their games?
... like the old NeoGeo games.
I would think so. But now with increasing processor speeds and huge storage discs, they can bloat their games all they want, hire bad programmers with no concept of efficiency, and still come out ahead.
Honestly though, I could see selling an entire game pack for $500. "Buy the whole pack and never have to change the disc."
Also, it would be a great licensing scheme. There are lots of people who would like storage like that.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I may be alone in this, but I'm just not hyped up about Blu-ray technology. For me it seems like the SVHS of the DVD era. Since you need a HDTV and a high end home theatre setup to really enjoy it, I can't see the average consumer jumping all over this, especially since everybody already has their regular DVDs. I think it will be good for games that want to cram a lot of FMV on a disc, but for movies I'm just not sold.
I read the internet for the articles.
Programmers in consoles never had TOO much resources before. They aren't going to know what to do with themselves.
What do you do with 25 GB for a SINGLE GAME? I'm well aware that the big names can easily figure out what to do with it, but at the cost of higher production costs and longer turnarounds, which are already becoming a problem.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
Sony may also be doing this for anti-piracy purposes, as the pirates will probably need to get new Blue-Ray burning hardware as well to make duplicates (and no doubt that will cost plenty of $$$ as well).
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I mean, can it grab more info in a given time span? Does it grab multiple layers or tracks in one rotation? Will it fill the data bus, and keep it full? Cause 50GB is a damn lot of loading otherwise. Seriously though, why do we constantly get disk drives that spin faster, why not just scan more tracks at once? I've keep hearing about bue ray from the perspective of data density, but not speed.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
what's the read time on the bluray discs? the PS2 load times were atrocious enough. i don't want to feel like i'm back on my c64 where you had to go make a sandwich while waiting for your game to load.
R.I.P.
Am I to understand that it allows for disk rewriting, much in the same way that VCR Cartridges can be overwritten? If that's the case, this represents a huge leap forward for consumer optical disks.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
They are really working hard to meet the Playstation 10 specifications at this rate. Good for them I say.
I'm still happy with DVD quality movies, thanks.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
Seriously, even if it's just 25GB or 50GB of textures and movies, doesn't this mean we'll be waiting even LONGER in between game cycles now. Sheesh, as if 2-4 years a game wasn't long enough! :)
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
Replying to myself, i know bad bad bad.
But sony could of ALSO just signed its own death warrant. If they are not able to reach market penetration with the ps3, and/or hd-dvd catches on first, then this is a MASSIVE problem for them, and could cost them a fortune.
The #1 reason the ps2 sold well in japan was because it was the cheapest dvd player on the market. Not because it could play games. Keep that in mind.
Also, most people are not going to see the big difference between DVD and HD, its just not as big of a leap as vhs and dvd.
no
Uh, Yes, they have. Where have you been?
Geez, this is like last year news, and a simple google search revealed all of these links.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
The root reason that the PS2 basically took over the gaming market seems to me to be that they walked into the marketplace with a bunch of runnable software on a (then) new machine. The Ps2 was radically different from the Ps1, but the market inertia of having all those Ps1 titles runnable got the developers to support it anyway (with the notable exception of the Crash Bandicoot folks, who weren't up to the challenge according to their own publicity handouts.)
From my perspective, I've invested a lot of money into PsX titles. I'm not going to exchange my Ps2 for an incompatible Ps3 (and I don't have room to add another console.)
From a developers perspective, I have trouble believing that developers will broadly embrace a new console, incompatible with previous software, using a new programming paradigm. That's why the Xbox and Gamecube have failed to catch up. The XBox in particular is an interesting example, as it is a much better box hardware and development software wise, than the Ps2. But it is way, way behind the Ps2 in installed units.
I own all three of the current generation of consoles - XBox, Ps2 and Gamecube. I've spent a lot more on media than on boxes, and I'm not about to throw out that investment in an offhand manner. I suspect I'm not alone in this.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
50GB available for a game? Unless the games loaded HD video clips directly into the play scenario there seems to be a little excess capacity.
IMO, the PS3 game makers would start including videos of the developer, a storyline about the company, music (and music video) clips for the music embedded in the game, web content (even links to 'sponsors'.
Honestly though, I could see selling an entire game pack for $500. "Buy the whole pack and never have to change the disc."... and when your three-year old uses it as a frisbee; you can buy it again for 500 USD? I'll pass.
Cue the obligatory Sony Playstation hype machine.
Hey... It worked before, didn't it? Maybe this time they'll actually deliver what they promise.
If the previous posts are correct and the blu-ray discs are read/write, I'll wager that the 25GB would in fact be used to add game expansions/patches etc ala X-Box Hard drive, just now you wouldn't need the hard drive, everything pertaining to the game itself could be written to the game disc.
That would be interesting as a concept especially for Everquest style games.
And of course PS9 will use Hyper x-ray laser technology (TM) and have telepathic sound hooked up straight to your brain.
Anyone remember that commercial?
...but it bugs me when people use "backwards compatible" incorrectly. People basically use it to mean "compatible" now.
If the PS3 can play DVD's and PS2 games, it's "compatible".
If the PS3 games can be played on the PS2, it's "backwards compatible".
They are two distinct concepts that deserve distinct names. Like I said, I'm such a nitpicky ass.
Cheers.
In Japan it matters...space.
Space matters... in Japan!
I hearby mod myself redundant.
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
... if I were to download a bin/cue of one of these games/HD movies/whatever, that wouldn't be fun. It already hypothetically sucks to download DVD.
What is slashdot?
Nintendo was releasing two disk games near the Gamecube launch (Resident Evil 0). It's clear games have grown too big for CDs, now if PC game makers will just drop the CD format once and for all so I don't have to track 4 CDs just to install a game :).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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What Sony hasn't said for sure is whether the PS3 will be backwards compatible with DVD movies and PS2 games.
This isn't entirely true, Ken Kutargi has already said publically last September that the PS3 will play PS2 AND PS1 games. You can find more on the story here, but here's a quote from it:-
"Mr. Ken Kutaragi, the boss of Sony Computer Entertainment division, has confirmed that the trend of backwards compatibility across next-gen consoles will continue. The Playstation 3 will support both Playstation 2 and PSOne titles when released sometime in 2005-2006."
While no mention was made of if it'd play regular DVDs, since PS2 games are DVD-Based it's a darn good bet it'll be able to.You must have some shitty DVD players, because the seven that I either own now or have owned in the past never had that problem.
Dare I ask why you're on your 7th DVD player?
way to play both sides of the fence.
now if only the MPAA gave 2 shits about who has a bluray device when they decide which format to go with for HD DVDs.
Doesn't matter though. American consumers won't care. They don't have HD sets yet, and as you point out, they already rebought their collection. They're not about to do it again.
When the PS2 came out with DVD support, Sony didn't make the PS2 incompatible with PSone games and CD just because they decided to support DVDs. There is not reason to believe back-wards compatibility would be dropped from the PS3 likewise.
n fo/News/Press/200405/04- 026E/
. php?name=News&fi le=article&sid=64
In fact. Sony has developed a laser head that can read/write Bluray/DVD+/-rw/CD-RW.
http://www.sony.net/SonyI
Ken Kutargi himself already confirmed backwards compatibility.
http://www.ps3insider.com/modules
Games are getting increasingly expensive to create. A game that could fill a Blu-Ray disc would undoubtedly require an unprecedented, possibly bank-breaking budget for the artists and programmers.
My concern is not whether or not the blu-ray laser can read older formats like DVD or CD, but rather because of the physical differences of this technology. Each disc comes in a case, somewhat like the M-O cartridges, effectively preventing the system from using cd/dvd as those have to be slot/tray loaded.
A probable scenario is where sony introduces a case caddy (like those used in really old CDROM drives) that you can load discs in and then stick em into the PS3.
If it's market penetration you're talking about, I doubt that blu-ray will trump DVD anytime soon. I mean, look at VHS for example, you can still buy movies on VHS, and it has already been many years since the introduction of DVD.
... I just had, this could allow game developers to integrate full length movies in WITH the game.
i.e. spiderman the game also comes with spiderman the movie.
What is slashdot?
Microsoft's SP3 for Windows XP will be distributed only on blu-ray media. A Microsoft spokesman said "We look forward to serving up 25GB of patches to make Win XP the most secure operating system in the world." The spokesman added that SP4 would utilize the full potential of the media to deliver 50GB of patches to fix all the security holes introduced in SP3.
:)
. . . hey, it could happen
RTFA and think about piracy and things on rewritable disc!
What Sony hasn't said for sure is whether the PS3 will be backwards compatible with DVD movies and PS2 games.
a y_ps2_psone/
I remember them saying almost a year ago that PS2 games would be backwards compatible
http://www.theregister.com/2003/09/02/ps3_will_pl
Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi has confirmed that the PlayStation 3 will feature backwards compatibility with the PS2 and PSone, ensuring continued support for older software formats in the new hardware.
It's 36MB per second for 1x, if I remember correctly, and it is supposed to get quite a bit faster as the technology improves. It needs at least 19MB per second of bandwidth for HDTV.
Doesn't higher data density imply speed increases? (since the disks are the same size) If a DVD has to make 100 revolutions to read the data, wouldn't a Bluray have to make about 1/8 that to read the same amount? (roughly) Dunno, that seems like it would be faster to me.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
If the PS2 could play PS3 games then the PS2 would be forwards compatible. That the PS3 can play PS2 games means that the PS3 is backwards compatible with the PS2.
Check a dictionary.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
sorry about that 36 Mbps and 19 Mbps for the two numbers mentioned above, repsectively.
Yeah, I've always wondered why they don't have multiple lasers in optical drives to increase the bandwidth... I could understand this making writing problematic, but it should work just fine for reading
I have a hard time believing that the PS2 was the *cheapest* DVD player in Japan when it was far from the cheapest even here in the US.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Of course, it doesn't support HD-DVD.
Since the PS3 is already stated to support PS1 and PS2 games, it *must* support CD and DVD, so you don't *have* to re-purchase your DVDs in Blu-ray, just your HD-DVDs. Of course, if you're an HD addict and just can't stand those "low-res" DVDs, then yea, you need to buy *either* HD-DVD or Blu-ray, but Sony just helped you decide which one, in that case.
If you've already bought HD-DVD stuff, you *know* you're bleeding edge, and Sony just cut you...
What Sony hasn't said for sure is whether the PS3 will be backwards compatible with DVD movies and PS2 games.
Isn't always keeping backwards compatibility to the previous system what got MS in to the DLL hell mess it's in now??
...and that's all there is to it.
So I'm wondering... I'd like to get some input from some game developers (professional or otherwise), what is the design mentality behind optimizing game content? I mean, after playing DOOM3 this week and seeing how completely immense game information is getting, doesn't it seem to make more sense to try to automate as much as the game as possible, rather than manually creating so much of the contect (art, FMV, etc.)? How much are developers concentrating on actually trying to use LESS space but deliver MORE content? I understand there are certain things that will always take a lot of space (music, voice acting, etc.) but is there any push at all to create games that don't need as much space?
There is a cool little game/experiment called kkrieger that has been able to present some pretty impressive graphics by rendering them dynamically as the game starts, so it CAN be done. But is anyone doing it?
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Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
I think we all need to go back to cartridges... I remember the days I used to spend blowing dust out of my old Sega Genesis cartridges...
Seriously though, why don't we improve USB storage as fast as harddrives are? The lifespan of optical media is running out of umph.
Thank you,
Xeon
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
[i]Dare I ask why you're on your 7th DVD player?[/i]
Well, my family. Right now, I have two (one standalone hooked up to my TV, one DVD burner in my computer). Before I upgraded my computer a few months back, I had a DVD-ROM (3). Before I bought a new standalone DVD player a year ago, I had one with fewer features (4). My parents own a standalone (5). My oldest brother has a DVD-ROM (6). And my younger brother owns a PS2 (7).
You don't want to mix cache memory with storage memory. Though I don't know why there is such a fuss over blue-ray technology or not.
The real memory that matters is the cache one attached to the processor. If a game runs too long, you can always swap in another disk. You can't do that for cache memory. Remember back in the days when Marvel vs. Capcom games for PS1 couldn't tag in a 2nd character because there wasn't enough cache memory?
7th DVD player that apparently FLIPS the DVD over, no less!
You'd think that they could release one US DDR for PS or PS2 with "Butterfly".
There's a songwriter, a featured performer, and a record label. All must agree to a reasonable price for licensing the song in a DDR mix to be distributed in a given territory. The songs from the "Dancemania" compilation CDs tend not to make it to USA mixes; rumor has it that Toshiba EMI wants to overcharge Konami for a license to use these songs and recordings in the United States.
Nobody remember the 72x CDROM drive with, what was it 7 lasers?
I never used it but it supposedly didn't work with Linux so I'm sure *some* of you have heard of it or problems with it.
YARGH.
Stop perpetuating this.
Only TWO companies have ever taken a hit on their own console sales. Sega and Microsoft. Thats it.
Sony and nintendo have NEVER SOLD A CONSOLE FOR A LOSS. (well, except ps2 US launch, where shipping fees just barely put sony over the edge) Both companies at least break even on console sales.
Also remember mini-discs? Sony wanted the playstation group to use them for memory cards but it never happened because they were afraid the size were to big.
However, the PS2 console does seem to use MemoryStick media in a different form factor for its memory cards, given that both PS2 and MemoryStick media use "MagicGate" DRM.
Finally, Adult-rated games featuring every conceivable angle, all in high definition.
I think everyone is looking into this way too much. Just because the PS3 will support Blu Ray discs does not mean the game makers will use this technology to make/distribute thier games. Look at the PS2 for example, it supports Dual Layer DVD discs, yet there is only a handful of DL-DVD games out there(i.e GTA San Andreas). Just because the technology is there does not mean it will be fully utilized.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
For people without HDTV's, the discs will be so large that they will easily be able to hold a standard version of the same programming so you don't have image loss through downconverting the image.
Exactly what sort of "loss" would one find when downsampling a 1920x1080 image for display through a standard TV? Nyquist guarantees perfect reconstruction modulo the noise floor.
As a Dreamcast owner (*sigh*) I think the parent post needs modding up.
Remember the PSX DVR? It's a PS2 console with a hard drive and a DVD burner that records TV shows.
If each game takes up 25 or 50GB (whether it's needed for the game, or it's just padding), a lot less people will be downloading them from P2P networks...
" Those same cartridges were around back when PC CD-ROM drives were first coming out, and DVD-RAM uses them too. They didn't take off very well, even though it's a wonderful idea at protecting the CD, because it was a pain in the ass to swap out the CD that was in the caddy with another one."
Good idea, bad implimentation. The 3.5 floppy got it right. Look at how cheap those are, plastic and all.
People will accept a hard shell if done right i.e. VHS, Travan.
You haven't seen a classic film transfer into HD then... Watch HDNet movies some time, it looks incredible. There are also many movies that HAVE HD transfers because of HBO-HD, SHO-HD, HD Net movies, etc.
Also, many of the more recent DVD transfers were transfered via an HD transfer process, then outputting as 480p (and interlaced to 480i) for the DVDs, meaning that if movies were transferred in the past two years, there may not be much of a problem to get an HD-DVD out, and start making money,.
Alex
A quick Google search shows the Blu-ray 1x spec at 36Mbps... So it's pretty fast. At that speed, the article I read said it would take about 2.5 hours to fill a single sided Blu-ray disk. I'm too lazy to double check the math. :)
You can keep [your existing DVD based console] to play your old games.
Then what happens when an older console breaks down, and the maker won't swap it for a refurb unit anymore? Remember the recent article about nursing vs. emulating old hardware.
Makes me look forward to the PS3 even more. I really can't wait.
Blu-Ray is one of the formats in the upcoming HD-DVD battle, and Sony is a major backer for this format.
Sony's building a facility to produce Blu-Ray disks. This falls in line with what I've read about them planning to release Blu-Ray HD-DVDs in 2005.
Having the PS3 support Blu-Ray HD-DVDs could very well effect the acceptance of Blu-Ray as the HD-DVD standard.
(1) Cartridges: Thankfully (or not, depending on how you feel about it) they dropped the cartridge requirement from the spec. Quoth the Blu-Ray FAQ #1.9:
(2) Transfer Rates: I had no idea transfer rates were so much higher with Blu-Ray. It's 36 Mbps for Blu-Ray versus 11.08 for DVD. And if you were wondering, yes HD-DVD transfers at 36 Mbps as well.Sony has a great history of wide acceptance for their formats, so I'll be watching this one closely. ;)
-- null
Forget DDR songs; if you had two you could watch the Trinity death scene in its entirety!
Technologically speaking, of course. The mental strain might be too great.
if you managed to get a hold of ten terrorists that would vote against Bush in '04, that must mean that GWB's antiterror policy is working real well...
If you talked to OBL, I'm sure that GWB would probably appreciate it if you left his address with the CIA, along the with the locations of any WMD's (other than ours) in Iraq.
Dunno about NEC, 3DO, Atari, Vectrex, Coleco, Intellivision, etc.etc.etc. but I'd be willing to wager some of them have too.
I ask only because that is how long it will take to watch^H^H^H^H^Hplay Final Fantasy X-4
Well, according to Rockstar, San Andreas, the upcomming GTA title, will need to be carefully optimized to fit on a dual layer and not all the content they want to put on will make it. One of the producers is quoted saying they hoped Sony would do something like this for the PS3 because if they didn't the next gen GTA would be even more limited then the upcomming one by the increase in overhead usually associated with next gen systems. So no, DVD's can not handle all the games. (Unless you believe that GTA titles are overbloated with useless crap, but unless they take a drastic turn, I don't see that as the case.)
As per another reply, you must have purchased some really low-quality, ultra-bargain DVD players.
Not to say that the problem doesn't exist; before I bought a stand-alone DVD player, certain DVDs would stop playing in my PS2 at layer-switch time, if I had the PS2 sitting vertically. Most would resume from the 'failure' point if I set the PS2 down in the horizontal position. But there is still one disc - Attack of the Clones - that will always fail at that point whenever played in the PS2 in either position. Works just fine in my standalone, though.
"I don't get it." -- ObviousGuy
I remember a while back, I think panasonic or yamaha had a cdrom drive that had multiple optical reading lasers.. claiming to be the fastest cdrom drive available at 50 or 60 some odd times.. I don't really remember much, you could probably google it and find more info about that technology...
*604x
because these days, consoles and PC's are getting more powerful.
More computing power, more memory, all sorts of special features. This might sound like a good thing at first, but really, it pushes developers to make games that look nice, and have very good special effects. The problem with this is that there would generally be less time and resources left over to make a good game.
So you end up with a lot of really nice looking games, where very little of the dev time has been spent developing gameplay.
Alot of people of there bought it just for the DVD player. That's one of the main reasons Nintendo didn't put one in the gamecube -they wanted to sell more games, because that's where the $$$ is made.
Shouldn't the PS3 by all means have the umpah to simply emulate the PS1 and PS2 in software, instead of putting it in hardware? The same goes for the XBox 2 / XBox situation.
Except that they would in turn be shooting themselves in the foot as HD-DVD is the standard Microsoft is pushing.
Though it would be funny, I bet the guy who issued blu-ray DVDs with MS patches probably wouldn't see future career options with the company.
-Matt
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For most, no. But I like to play my games via component input, and my TV - like many - only has one set of component INs. So if I want component output for both games and DVDs, it matters.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Thanks to a wonderful new coating from TDK, Blu-Ray discs are quite resistant to scratches.
It exists. I think it was panasonic a few years ago that put 4 or 5 lasers in one CD-ROM unit, read at 50x or so but spun really slow (compared to other equal speed drives) hence quieter and more reliable (didn't stress the motor as much).
I think the problem was that it was too expensive.
I'm no expert in disk usage/compression, but is it possible to be so inneficient in disk usage, that a game that would normally take 1 gig is expanded to 50 gigs in such a way that it is incompressable using normal methods? I'd say that if this is the case, then Sony has a great way to prevent piracy. Forget DRM. Forget lock outs, or strict rules. SURE! put it on your computer, SURE! give it to your friends, just have fun copying 50 gigs over DSL.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
You do realize that the same thing has been said every time there has been a jump in media capacity, right?
Back when the first CD-ROM games came out, it was obvious that developers had no idea what to do with the extra space, and you saw lots and lots of "games" that were basically a collection of video clips. Now, even for smalltime developers, the thought of going back to cartridge or floppy media is ludicrous.
When the PS2 came out with the ability to read DVD-ROM games, few publishers took advantage and most PS2 games still came out on CD. Now it's a common occurance, and not simply because of cut-scenes. For example, SSX 3 (kickass snowboarding game) spools geometry off of the DVD, thus enabling courses that are so large they take upwards of 20 minutes to reach the bottom and at no time does it feel like you're on rails, thus side-stepping the RAM limitations inherent in consoles.
So, will developers initially not now what to do with 25GB initially? Sure. But history has shown that they will catch up and that you will see games that were unthinkable because of the technical limitations of the previous generation.
I swear I got the definitions straight years ago. But reading up again it looks like I totally misunderstood. Thanks for the correction, and modding this error down.
Cheers.
You could fit some seriously high quality porn on a blue ray :P
Does this mean we may finally see blue laser pointers before too long, at a reasonable price?
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A quick Google search shows the Blu-ray 1x spec at 36Mbps... So it's pretty fast. At that speed, the article I read said it would take about 2.5 hours to fill a single sided Blu-ray disk. I'm too lazy to double check the math. :)
OTOH, existing 8x DVD writers can write at 88Mbps. (Assuming DVD 1x is 11Mbps, which is probably a bit high.)
Which makes Blu-Ray's 36Mbps seem slow to me. They need to get the speed up by about 4x in order for it to be considered speedy in my book.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Buy a DVD player manufactured after, oh, say, 1974.
The blu-ray specs are currently at the 1x level, but there are plans for 2x in the works (72Mbps) and theoretical plans for 8x or more (288Mbps).
there was a drive some time ago that had 7 (+- a few) laser beams hitting the disc to get fast read times with a slow moving disc. While there are a few still in use today, most users have moved on as these drives had poor compatibility with copy protected games.
Finally! I mean CC Corp would be proud!!
Unless the disc costs $200 then I won't do it!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
No argument from me on that, I just don't think it was bought because it was the cheapest DVD player out there.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
"GameSpot has reported an announcement by Sony"
Actually GameSpot reported that Kyodo News has reported an announcement by Sony
If a game only requires 4gigs of space, I'm sure they're not going to go out of their way and try to find a way to fill up the rest of that 46gigs, they'll just use a regular DVD! It'll be cheaper too.
What it does, is allows for future expansion when needed.. Just cuz the technology is there to be used, but doesn't mean it has to be.
*604x
I work for a DVD/CD duplication firm
It seems a little pre-emptive for Sony to make this decision right now. Currently the next optical media standard is in flux. The 2 competing formats are Blu-ray Disc (BD) and High Def-DVD (HD.) This may be just a marketing ploy as the 2 standards are competing. They both offer pros and cons, and are very similar. They are currently not compatible, and need to be manafactured using completely different processes. Both formats are also striving ot be able to read existing DVDs to provide backwards compatiblity. Also both formats should in theory share the same form factor as current DVD's
HD 15gb
Less prone to read errors due to scratches
HD can be made on the same type of equipment as DVD with minor modifications
Copy protection built into standard
BD
23gb
In theory faster read/writes 36mbps
May need a caddy or hard coating
So it looks like cost vs size is the problem. Currently both groups are working together, but neither standard is final in any means. If you look at who is backing both formats. BD
DEll
HP
Hitachi
LG
Matsushita
Mitsubishi
Pioneer
Philips
Samsung
Sharp
Sony
Tdk
Thomson
VS
HD
Toshiba, NEC and the DVD forum
I think that sony is just throwing it out considering the standard is not set, a a marketing ploy trying to help their supported standard have more legitimacy. Remeber that DVD was a combo of the Sony-Philips MMCD and the Time-Warner Toshiba SD. Hopefully a beta-VCR or dueling 56k standard problem will not happen this time around.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
10 out of 10 Terrorists agree - Anybody but Bush in 2004
Maybe 10 out of 10 stupid terrorists. Bush has done an incredible job of making everyone in the world dislike us a little more. He makes more people want to join the terrorist cause. Smart terrorists like Bush because he is increasing their numbers. They fear a new candidate will come in and actually work with other countries and do good things so that their new recruit numbers will dwindle.
Offtopic, yes, but your sig is rediculous. How any intelligent and/or religious person can support Bush is beyond me...they just aren't looking at the facts.
Big Games (when measured by install size) typically make for Big Load Times.
Copying a full CD to your hard drive takes a few minutes, and that is approximately 650 Mb. If someone manages to use all that disk space, how much load time would a user experience in order to actually experience and benefit from all that bloody content?
END COMMUNICATION
they can bloat their games all they want, hire bad programmers with no concept of efficiency, and still come out ahead.
...
Yeah, because bloated code runs *so* well in a modern game engine. I mean, with a 3GHz chip, you could just as easily write Doom 3 using VB or Perl! It's not like collision detection, physics, AI, positional sound, sending data to the graphics card and such take any amount of CPU power
This is just one of the dumbest and most often repeated memes I see on Slashdot. "better capacity = more bloat".
When you have models comprised of several thousand polygons and levels built out of several million, you have to store it *somewhere*. When you have hundreds of megabytes or gigabytes of textures, they have to go somewhere. When you have CD-quality-or-better audio along with tons of recorded voice-overs, they have to go somewhere. When you have prerendered video streams at DVD-quality-or-better it has to go somewhere.
The code to manipulate all of it is still probably only on the order of 10 megabytes or so after compilation, though. And that's on a project that (typically) has upwards of a million lines of code.
But, yeah, I suppose you're right. It's all just bloated and inefficient programmers/artists.
Oh -- and your sig is also one of the dumbest I've read. Fits well with your post.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
I have two Phillips DVD players.
cost $75 each.
Both of them fail on dvd layer switch.
This is for clean, unscratched DVD's.
The gold color ones have problems, the silver colored ones do not?
Is gold dual layer?
Is silver single layer?
Gold CDR mp3 audio CD's also won't be read on one of the players. The other one is ok.
Yes. It will be backwards compatable. Sony ain't dumb. They know the biggest advantage the PS2 has was it's backwards compatability. They won't waste that. Especially since it looks like it might not be feasable for an XBox 2 to be backwards compatable if the arch change is big enough. (switching CPUs and GPUs = too much loss during emulation).
What the fuck kind of appeasement? I keep hearing "Clinton appeased terror! Clinton appeased terror!", but I still don't know what any of you are talking about.
The Oklahoma City bombing? Arrests, convictions, one execution so far.
The Cole bombing? Arrests and convictions. (Don't know about executions.)
The first WTC bombing? Arrests and convictions (Also don't know about executions.)
I'm just sayin', I wouldn't like to be appeased by that administration.
Perhaps with Kerry, we'll stop invading random countries because Stupid Americans can't tell the difference between one country full of Brown People and another. Then again, perhaps not. We seem to love our wars.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Anyone else remember the first CD-based systems? "Sewer Shark" or whatever? Scads of choppy, blurry sub-VCD quality video, and not much gameplay. What a crock.
It was a turning point for console gaming. I still consider the SNES to be the pinnacle of the form.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I'm wondering why nobody has made a PVR that runs off DVD-RWs?
DVD Video recorders do exist but don't offer functionality comparable to that of a TiVo recorder for several reasons:
Does anyone else think there finnaly getting revenge for losing the Vcr format war. Same story here, only instead of VHS VS. Betamax, its HD-dvd Vs. BR-rom.
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
What I want to know is why all the companies waste time with these intermediary technologies when CD-like media that hold one terabyte is available?
See the article entitled: FMD / DMD. The Next Step in Storage
They are also see-through. YAY!
at ZZZ
Think 'special features'. Interviews with the crew, featurettes, trailers of new games, demos of other games, bonus content, secondary modes, and so on. With 50 gigs of space, it doesn't matter what you put on - you can put everything on, and let the developers sort it out.
--Dan
Does it matter? Well I certainly got lost less in Doom then in Wolfenstein. In Half-Life you could navigate by the textures (not turn right at 3rd intersection but follow the signs to the waste disposal). In Morrowind after a user patch all the street signs showed real direction in readable language. Made the game a lot more fun. In Flightsim you no longer taxying behind a blue box but behind a KLM 747 classic.
Does it matter? Well yeah, no a bad game won't be good because of graphics but a good game can be better.
Personally I am looking forward to the day when real RPG's have voice acting (good voice acting). But that is going to take a lot of storage.
It also makes sense for sony for piracy reasons. If blue ray burners are rare then it will be hard to copy games.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
All I want to know is ...
:)
which format does Apple back?
CD - 700 MB
DVD - 9 GB
Minimum Size for Next Optical Disc Technology - 100 GB
Anything smaller and the consumer is being ripped-off.
pr0n!
The entire land of Tameriel rendered in Doom3-like graphics.... awesome. Xbox gots nothing. :P
The current triple-writer (reads/writes CD/DVD/Blu) from Sony uses one multi-frequency laser, a beamsplitter and three seperate light paths leading to three seperate detectors.
The current competing OPU uses three seperate lasers - but only one (multifruency) detector.
We can expect a (cheaper/smaller) OPU in maybe 18 months or so, which will work with a single laser.
But from a consumer point of view - who cares. Blu drives will read and write everything.
There *may* be a few cheaper 'blu only' drives out there (some of the really early blu drives are) - but probably few people will buy them.
And, AFAIK, there is nothing technical that stops a blu drive from reading/writing HD-DVD - but there's plenty of licensing agreements to make them cost quite a lot. Expect the DVD+/-/RAM wars again people, and expect the same outcome (drives that do everything)
Anyway, I'm happy. The PSP is using 2cm Blu, and the PS3 is using blu - we can expect a BIG market for PC Blu-disc burners.
(There's currently a bit of a fight over the copy protection systems, too - the movie people have bought into HD-DVD, which has a technically weaker system. Mind you, since this is their games consle, Sony may just implement their own stronger protection for it and just choose to play DVD. I doubt many people will be replacing their whole collections any time soon anyway - and by the time any kind of high-res DVD has taken off, the novelty of the PS3 as a video-player will have worn off.
i don't know many people who have DVD burners yet, i haven't gotten around to buying one yet. This will prevent disk copying. If sony never releases any kind of burner, all the games will be safe, however people will find away around it, even if it means compressing everything rediculously and putting it on a DVD. Very few games i know exceed 2 CD's, i can't imagine what kind of game you could have to fill 25/50GB! BluRay is cool!
DVD+RW(Idon't know about DVD-RW) has a mode known as Random Write, which basically lets you put the drive into a mode were it acts like a HD.
CD-RW has packet writing as well, but that doesn't mean either optical medium is fast enough for primary storage of MPEG-2 video and layer 2 audio, especially in the face of file system fragmentation caused by deletion of programs.
Yes, as with DVD, there is a corresponding increase in data rate.
The problem with scanning more tracks at once is that a DVD only has one track. They are like records (LPs, vinyl). You could stick more heads around the platter but you can't just read 4 tracks then skip to the next 4 tracks - the tracking mechanism can't cope.
So keep in mind that the PS3 will be the cheapest Blueray *or* HD-DVD player on the market, and how can they fail to reach market penetration.
:-) DVD looks worse than broadcast quality, but better than VHS - it's a clear stopgap format, and anyone who bought into it was a fool. But have you SEEN a Blueray playing? Jesus Christ I saw one in Japan last year and the crispness and quality of the picture is absolutely awe-inspiring.
You talk as if market penetration and being the cheapest DVD player are somehow unlinked.
And as for not seeing the difference - are you insane?
You seem a little bitter today. I'll excuse it as a bad day, and I won't be quite so negative in my response.
Yes, you can have more inneficient code run on a 3 GHz computer than on a 800 MHz processor and still have it keep 60fps.
I've written games and virtual reality environments in school before. Granted, they weren't production quality, but I do have some experience with this. I can see filling an entire CD with a game and running out of room. But I can't imaging running out of room on a DVD without trying to.
Think about how much CD quality music you could store on a DVD. You can store a feature length (high quality) movie on a DVD and still have room for bonus features. Are you saying an efficient game writter might need all that room from graphics and video clips? Doesn't add up if you ask me.
Oh, and your sig is dumber than mine.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Do we really need 25 - 50 GB games? I can't see any game needing to be more than 10GB in the near future... Heck, I don't think there's an X-box or Ps2 game that uses more than one DVD. And I can count the number of GC games that use more than one G.O.D. (GameCube Optical Disk, which holds a "mere" 1.5 GB of data) on my fingers. 25 GB to 50 GB? What's the point? I think that the industry is puts way too much emphasis on technological growth and not enough emphasis on improving development costs and software/hardware design.
Of course it seems like loads of space, but it's not right now, it's in the future. Not only that, but 50GB is the maximum capacity, that's a dual-layer disc. 25GB is the standard single-layer capacity. Five years ago who would have thought we would ever need to use DVDs to store video games? People would have told you that you were crazy, but we use it. I'm sure lot's of thought went into that decision. I wouldn't just jump in and say, "Hey! Let's use super-large discs!" At least they aren't going the way of Nintendo with their Gamecube discs. Off topic: Why isn't the DVD2 just bluray discs with MPEG4 encoding?
The same people who believe in the right not to be enslaved, not to be forcibly bred, and believe a woman is more than a cow.
In other words, people who respect other people and other people's rights.
You made me read all the way through that just to meta-moderate your funny moderation as, yes, actually funny. Damn you and your cold chunk of poison!
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
The same people who believe in the right not to be enslaved, not to be forcibly bred
There is another 8-letter A-word, you know. Learn about it.
and believe a woman is more than a cow.
I just came back from the state fair. Don't be dissin' on the cows :-)