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Sony Adopts Blu-ray Disc PlayStation 3
fenimor writes "Sony announced today that it had begun preparations to adopt Blu-ray Disc ROM (BD-ROM) format as a medium for the next generation PlayStation. Single side double layer Blu-Ray discs have a huge memory size of 54 GB, being an ideal medium to distribute next generation entertainment content from movies and music to computer applications. Next month Sony plans to announce a 200GB 8-layer version of BD-ROM according to MacWorld."
Lots. That was a common concern when DVDs came out but there is a lot more data correction on DVD. Same so with BluRay See the FAQ
Dude, Dell is supporting Blu-ray.
The Dreamcast DID have a proprietary format. It was called the GD-Rom.
The following explanation is courtesy of SkunkWorks
The Sega Dreamcast GD-ROM system utilizes Oak Technology's OTI-9220 CD-ROM controller which is a single chip integration of Sony's "CXD-3005R" DSP/Servo control and Oak Technology's "OTI-912" CD-ROM decoder.
So what does this mean? Sega had their "proprietary" GD-ROM system designed to use media with 2 times the capacity of CD-ROM discs, but with off-the-shelf CD-ROM components, and may have used a technique of running the spindle motor at half the speed required for CD-ROM's in reading 2x density GD-ROM discs-- tricking the pickup into believing it's reading off data from a CD-ROM disc at "x" (CAV) spindle rpm when it is actually reading a GD-ROM disc at "y" spindle rpm (x divided by 2=y). With same data read rates as with a CD-ROM disc running at twice it's rpm, the optical head, focus servo controls, signal processors, etc etc. aren't aware it's actually reading data off from a larger capacity medium. In other words, the GD-ROM disc is nothing more than a "passively accelerated" (tightly packed) CD-ROM disc, "decelerated" to emulate a CD-ROM by running the spindle motor at half the rpm!
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
Blu-ray can read standard DVDs and CDs as well. Weather Sony adds the software/hardware for backward compatibility is a different question, but a blu-ray laser does not prevent them from doing so.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117867,0 0.asp
While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue laser is that it has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometer) than a red laser (650 nanometer), which means that it's possible to focus the laser beam with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly on the disc and makes it possible to fit more data on the same size disc. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVDs.
ROYGBIV - Somewhere between green and indigo.
http://www.blu-ray.com/info/
Don't rent DVDs much do you?
My father owns a chain of stores that rent DVDs. The grandparent is absolutely correct when he says scratches are a non-issue. You'd be amazed what those things can survive. They're infinitely better than CDs as far as reliability after being scratched.
If you're having problems with rentals, get a better DVD player. The only people who come back with problems have either a first generation DVD player, or a mauled DVD.
Sony has already made it perfectly clear that the PS3 will also be backwards compatible with PS2 and PS1 much like the PS2 is with PS1.
After the merger Square and Enix became Square Enix, U.S.A. Co. Ltd. in the United States. But have since changed their U.S. based division's name to Square Enix, Inc. They are still called Square Enix, Co. Ltd. in Japan, and Square Enix, Ltd. in Europe.
Very lossy. They "started" as 32-bit color, and, well, they're textures. They tend to be pretty monochromatic. It's amazing how many bits you can get rid of when your source is highly monochromatic. :) Every world texture in the game is compressed, and, well, how many texture artifacts did you see? :P
:/
(There are a few, but you have to kind of know what you're looking for - they look surprisingly like MPEG2 decoding artifacts, despite absolutely no similarity between the algorithms.)
And thanks for the compliment ^^
The problem with extra content is that somebody has to generate it and debug it. I mean, yeah, we would have loved to add tons of new character classes and weapons and levels and quests, but the fact is that spending twice as long making the game wouldn't have generated twice the sales. Even all the different colorings on the pieces of armor - I watched our artists wandering around the office for *days* with long reams of paper, doublechecking that every single armor color matched up properly (and boy did I not envy them, although I did the same thing with the minimaps, so there you have it.)
Content, unfortunately, is surprisingly expensive to produce.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
I always thought physical RAM was a greater hurdle for people developing on consoles. There's not a lot there so you end up shuffling data in and out of RAM from optical media. Not the best arrangement...
PS3 games will have so highly advanced graphics, that the textures alone will fill more than, let's say, 5 DVDs of today. With resolutions of 4096x4096 and more, and with multiple textures for each surface, the big space is really needed.
And let's not forget the audio.
Maybe Sony should just stop working on optical drives -- from my perspective, they have a very poor track record because they're way late to deliver interesting amounts of storage space and whatever they ship only works with proprietary formats.
Put this in the context of a hard drive: Pricewatch says we can get a 400GB HD for a little over $1/GB right now (lower capacity hard drives offer faster rotation speed at less than $1/GB prices). Putting aside the price, these HDs currently deliver 4X the space of what Sony may deliver in 2007, and the hard drive will offer no proprietary hassles. I'm guessing that any HD will be faster to find what I want to read and faster to get the data to me than the upcoming Sony device.
Perhaps their upcoming drive would be interesting if the specs for it and the compatible blank media were distributed to any competitors, thus letting the market turn this into the new low-end optical drive+media. But since Sony is probably not going to do that, I doubt the market will change to this new format.
I recall a Sony CD-R replacement that offered slightly more space than a conventional CD-R, but only if you used their proprietary encoding scheme. The drive cost more than a conventional CD-R burner and the blank media would cost more than conventional CD-Rs as well. The press release came out and I knew nobody who was excited about it. It was obviously a bad exchange: initial hardware outlay would cost too much money, there was virtually no interoperability with one's friends, and any subsequent maintenance would cost too much (CD-R burners are about $20 and DVD burners are about $30 right now, by my skimming of Pricewatch).
Digital Citizen
First, let me start off by saying I own a small, independent video store in rural Kentucky, USA....
So with that knowledge, comes this:
Lots of the poorer people in America don't even have a DVD player YET!
Quite a few movies are either no longer released on VHS, or the public release date for the VHS is a month or more later than the release date for the DVD.
I can order movies on VHS from my distributor, but they are insanely expensive.
Take the wretched "Bad Boys 2" for example. From my distributor, the DVD would be here on street date, ready to rent, for a measly $24.99
If I wanted the same movie on VHS on the same day as the DVD, it was $89.99.
If I wanted to wait six weeks, until the VHS tapes were shipped to Target and Wal-Mart, then the VHS would be $21.99.
The VAST majority of America doesn't give a flying crap about things like "HDTV" or "digital blahblahblah"....The vast majority of America thinks "Widescreen" cuts off the top and bottom of the movie (I know, I know, I explain this to at least three moron rednecks a day).
Most movie outlets were saying this spring that DVD accounts for about 80% of their sales, with VHS making up the rest. And numbers in rural areas - especially "The South" being somewhere closer to 65% DVD, 35% VHS.
Blu-Ray is going to be a long time in coming. I know the vast majority of my customers only got a DVD player this past christmas. After doing some accounting, I saw that the best way for me to compete with the big chains up the highway was for me to actually buy DVD players from Wal-Mart (the cheap APEX model) and give them away as a store promotion rather than plunk down $90 on a VHS tape that will take a year to pay for itself. So, my store gave away five DVD players last year at christmas to VHS-only customers. This year, I'm probably going to do the same.
DVD has only just recently unseated VHS as the video format of choice. TPTB had better understand this, and not go switching formats again too soon, or....
Well, or nothing. People will be pissed about it, but they'll either buy a BDR machine, or they'll not watch new movies.
Speaking from a movie standpoint, hollywood has only just recently taken advantage of the cool technological advancements that DVD offers over VHS - such as New Line Cinema's 'Infinifilm' line, and all the cool extras added to the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings movies. For a geek like me, that kind of stuff has a really high "cool factor", but for most people all that extra stuff might as well not even exist. Sure, a few of them might watch the deleted scenes on a DVD if they really liked the movie, but that's it.
And as for the whole disk v. tape debate in the durability department:
tapes rule. Sorry....but it's true. The plastic housing on a VHS tape protects it from harm. Sure, the tape stretches over time, but that's not an issue here.
If the tape stretches and snaps on the 300th use, that means I've rented the tape 300 times before it dies.
A dvd will last indefinitely - if it is cared for. However, dipshits will rent a DVD and hand it to their kid to put it in the player. the kid has...I dunno...ice cream or snot on their hands, and grabs the disk by the data side. When the movie doesn't play, the dipshit adult take it out, sees the goop on it, and rubs it vigorously on their shirt - RiGhT On ToP of their freaking buttons - to clean it. Then they pop in the disk and it still doesn't play (because they dug huge furrows in the plastic while trying to "clean" it). Then they bring it back in and say to me "Hey bubba, this thing don't play none!" I open it and see a snot-encrusted, scratched disk and sigh heavily.
DVDs should have been in a plastic caddy.
I pray that BD-ROM will be. I know it won't, but I still pray for it.