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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
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.
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...