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."

Comments

I wonder

[JaffaKREE]

how badly a small scratch will affect these ? How much data redundancy is there ?

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

And, just how many games will ever use that much space? Considering a large slice of PS2 games that come on DVD are just barely scraping a single gig (and filled to the brim with empty "dummy files") I'd be surprised if any game hits over 10 gigs.

I mean, let's have higher resolution FMV's! Crisp! Less artificing. But seriously, the game itself -- Do you suppose they'll ever make a 50 gigabyte PS3 game?

I'm not denying that they will. Just being curious.

Re:I wonder

[grub]

I mean, let's have higher resolution FMV's! Crisp! Less artificing. But seriously, the game itself -- Do you suppose they'll ever make a 50 gigabyte PS3 game?

It's not just about games. Once the Blu-Ray readers are more common and available for a few hundred bucks for your AV rack you'll see the push to re-buy the movies you've already bought on VHS and DVD.

"Star Wars Special BluRay Edition in 300 channel THX certified blah blah blah" (and Greedo will still shoot first in that release)

Re:I wonder

[Laur]

Right.. the manufacturers have never dreamed that a disc would be scratched. They build so much data correction into these things it's a non-issue.

Don't rent DVDs much do you?

Re:I wonder

[vasqzr]

Keep 10 copies of a game on the disc. Bad spot in one? read it from another copy of the game on the same disc.

Or, maybe they'll start using some sort of caddy, much like when CDROM's first became used in PC's.

Or, they'll use some 'space-age' technology where you can't scratch the disks.

Re:I wonder

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

I honestly have no idea, but the latest Final Fantasy games I've played (X and X-2) seem so well done and crafted, with tons of audio/video, I'd wager at least one company (SquareSoft, or is it SquareEnix now or some other name?) will make use of this extra added space.

Re:I wonder

[libra-dragon]

How about distributing 10 different games on one disc. Allowing access to games via an activation key hashed from the internal host id. Maybe tack on a few Sony movies accessed by the same method.

Re:I wonder

[Zorilla]

Or, maybe they'll start using some sort of caddy...

*click*.....*click*.......*click*...

Damn...

Re:I wonder

[British]

Look on the bright side. With the next installment of Grand Theft Auto, they could have a larger library of tunes to play while you're driving around in Liberty/Vice City. beats mere 15 minute tracks per station like GTA3 had.

Of course, they could just make some premium version of GTA that would use something like private shoutcast stations to stream radio stations and have virtually unlimited in-game music.

Re:I wonder

[Enucite]

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.

Re:I wonder

[nempo]

I guess that you've never played a final fantasy game have you ? ;D

Re:I wonder

[ZorbaTHut]

A game that I worked on - Everquest: Champions of Norrath - used the entire dual-layer DVD. In fact, if we'd had more, we could have used it. In fact, we ended up having to remove some of the data for the international version because the voice files were too big to fit. I personally wrote a compression algorithm to compress our textures down to about half their previous size (and yes, they were compressed before also.)

I think one level had around 10gb of textures uncompressed, brought down to under half a gig after heavy processing.

That said, if we'd had access to a really fast processor and GPU, none of that would have been necessary. So I don't know what people can use 50gb for, given that the system is extremely fast.

But maybe it's not as fast as I think it is.

Re:I wonder

[mausmalone]

some of the graphic and audio hurdles you see in modern games aren't just 'cause the systems aren't fast enough to handle them. Repeated models, redundant textures, low res textures, dialog without audio... all of these things can be aleviated by having a bigger storage medium. Of course, expect development times to increase because of it ...

Re:I wonder

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Well you don't technically play FF games, it is more like watching them.

Re:I wonder

[ZorbaTHut]

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. :/

Re:I wonder

[Tenebrious1]

So how long will the new FF summonings be, 10 minutes each? 30 minute cut scenes? I shudder at the thought.

Personally I'd rather they spend the time creating more "world" to explore rather than rendering hours and hours FMVs...

Re:I wonder

[Brackney]

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...

Re:I wonder

[master_p]

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.

Re:I wonder

[Baikala]

Thats the compression algorithms and the quality of the player, not the imperfections in the medium

Re:I wonder

[geminidomino]

As much as it made my skin crawl to see someone judge FF by X and X-2, I have to agree that SE will probably use a good part of this extra space. If I'm not mistaken (and I might well be) Star Ocean 3 (an Enix title) is the first US-released game to span more than one DVD.

What will XBOX 2 use

[ThomasFlip]

Probably not this, anyone know ?

Now all we need...

[ackthpt]

Now all we need is some decent games. It would be very cool if Sony would direct some of their lucre towards obtaining rights to M.U.L.E. and Mail Order Monsters and put them on this system.

with all that storage they could make the planet Irata truly shine...

Fuzzy Logic.

[Carik]

Does anyone else keep reading "Blu-Ray" as "BluRry"?

backwards compatible

[Tante]

Will this be compatible with all my PS2 games?

Re:backwards compatible

[Krandor3]

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.

Re:backwards compatible

[xjerky]

Ebay?

54GB

[Anonymous Coward]

size of 54 GB, being an ideal medium to distribute next generation entertainment content from movies and music to computer applications.

Yes, that allows a lot of bloat for computer applications. Windows anyone? Sorry.

Re:54GB

[Walt Dismal]

Now I can stop worrying about archiving my pRoN collection.

Re:54GB

[prell]

I was thinking: if you divide the amount of RAM available to the PS2 by the capacity of dual-layer DVDs, you get about 0.034. If you multiply 54 GB by 0.0034, you get ~183.60 MB. As impressive as 54 GB on a single disc sounds, it makes sense from a "scaling"/being-able-to-take-advantage-of perspective. Of course, if you consider the maximum size advertised in this article, which is 200 GB, you get 680.0 MB. What are the odds that the PS3 will have 512 MB of ram? 384?

Security by Obscurity?

[LostCluster]

Since most of us don't use this type of disc in our computers, and are unlikely to upgrade solely to copy videogame disks... could they be hoping on good old fashioned security by obscurity to be an extra hurdle against piracy?

Re:Security by Obscurity?

[wheany]

Why not? It will probably do nothing to stop professional pirates, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt.

Re:Security by Obscurity?

[nbert]

I wouldn't call it Obscurity, because this format is very well documented and Bluray writers are planned. But it definitely slows down piracy since those discs are more expensive (lowers pirates profit). It's also quite likely that the PS3 will come out before any affordable writers are out... so there won't be any illegal copies around for a certain timeframe...
And even if piracy becomes a problem they will get an advantage in the next format war.

IMO those factors played a higher role in their decision than enabling developers to create 54 GB games.

Re:Security by Obscurity?

[Dot.Com.CEO]

That is EXACTLY the same argument I have been hearing for years and it is ALWAYS invalid. People said that cds would be uncopiable because people would not have the hard disk space, cd recorders are amazingly expensive, so is media, and it takes about a week on an unreliable connection to download a cd. Well, guess what, things moved on. Then came dvds. Exact same arguments. Now it's the same with a blue-ray or whatever it's called. With a 10Mbit connection, something entirely possible during the next 3-4 years, the average consumer will be able to download 54 Gb in more or less 24 hours. Good enough for you?

BD-RW

[elcheesmo]

I just want to know when I can get a BD-RW off of newegg.

Re:BD-RW

[Zorilla]

Let's see, it took seven years for affordable DVD writing, and dual layer discs are still either unavailible or expensive to the asinine degree. Prepare to wait a while.

Purchase of MGM

[frankmu]

this way Sony can push the PS3 effectively. the question is will they have enough Blue ray HD movies available by the time the PS3 is released.

Flaming Sony for Proprietary Format

[goldspider]

You all know it's coming, but seriously folks, before the Dreamcast and original Playstation came out, what console's games didn't come out on a proprietary format?

Re:Flaming Sony for Proprietary Format

[magicsquid]

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!

Hmmm.....

[superpulpsicle]

Actually we need a decent media reader. I have never had a playstation 1 or 2 for more than 2 years. The lens or lens motor always die on me. Will Blue Ray be better?

Re:Hmmm.....

[Neon Spiral Injector]

I've never had a Sony optical media reader that lasted more than a couple years. Discman portable CD players, DVD players, and of course PS2s. I've stopped buying Sony products. But I will probably get a PS3, just nothing else where I have a choice of manufacturers.

Nope

[Wesley Felter]

Dude, Dell is supporting Blu-ray.

Blu-Ray Winning

[Kenshin]

Personally, I see this as the action that will establish BD-ROM as the leader of the next-gen disc formats.

I don't know many people who will rush-out to buy a new DVD player to play HD movies, but EVERYONE is going to buy a PS3.

With that installed base, it will be fairly easy to translate into the market for movies being sold in that format.

Re:Blu-Ray Winning

[Damek]

I won't be buying a PS3 (unless it has Doom III and Half-Life 2), but then I never bought a PS1 or PS2 or XBox or GameCube or anything else. I'm not in the market.

But I also think it's too early for any new movie media standard. Sure, I'm an outlier, as demonstrated by what I just said about the PS3, but I just started getting some movies on DVD, and I imagine a good segment of the public only really got into DVD buying within the last few years. Even assuming 4-5 years before a new format is really available with lots of movies, who would want to buy it? DVDs are good enough for most people, and probably still will be in 4-5 years. If new players support old DVDs, and new content just starts coming out in HD on the new disc media, then I can see a slow switchover being painless and mattering little.

But then there's the issue of media life. I've checked out a few DVDs from the library over the past year or so, and they all had such damage that parts of the films were unwatchable. DVD-damage is much worse than VHS-tape-damage. At least with a VHS you can still get an idea of what's going on, hear the dialog, or fast-forward. A damaged DVD skips and pauses painfully, decides to jump to the next chapter, and can't fast-forward through the video file because it can't read the video file. Even denser media will undoubtedly be worse, right?

Re:Blu-Ray Winning

[iezhy]

Personally, I see this as the action that will establish BD-ROM as the leader of the next-gen disc formats

sony already tried to establish MD (mini-disk) technology few years ago, which was a brilliant sollution for the time. Although, MD's were eaten by cheaper CD-R/RW's

so its way to early to predict something - i guess the most affordable and widespread technology will win

Re:Blu-Ray Winning

[Etrigan_696]

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.

Bluray has a 50GB capacity

[squeezee]

What Ken Kutaragi appears to have said was that the PS3 will have 54GB of storage Capacity in addition to playing DVDs and CDs. Since Bluray can hold 25/50GB one assumes he is alluding to the inclusion of an onboard HDD or flash memory device.

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/549/549950p1.html

finally a followup to The Dukes of Hazzard

[Tante]

With PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and PSP(TM) (PlayStation(R) Portable), SCEI will continue to expand the market and create a new world of computer entertainment. Have they made anything new for the PlayStation in the past 3 years? Or do they think making it smaller is a breakthrough.

if this is the case then I doubt ps3 in 05

[cyrax777]

Like people keep suggesting. More like late 06 early 07.

anti-piracy

[alatesystems]

If they really want to stop piracy, they should do what Sega did with the dreamcast, using a non-standard format, the gd-rom.

It will be impossible for people to burn those other formats.

Chris

MGM comes into the picture..

[voice of unreason]

Interesting. I think I'm starting to see Sony's strategy. They're rolling out a console that can probably play blu-ray DVD movies. They recently bought MGM, giving Sony the rights to rerelease all of MGM's movies on DVD. With PS3 to put players into the market, and with MGM movies to release, it sounds like sony has put a lot of thought into making their blu-ray standard a success.

I want to see...

[Short Circuit]

A modernized Streets of SimCity. :)

That's not what worries me.

[mcc]

What worries me isn't the use of a proprietary Bluray-based storage format for the games of the Playstation 3 game console (which I personally plan to buy). What worries me is:

1. Sony will be soon leveraging the Playstation 3 game console to push a proprietary Bluray-based video format they will be attempting to introduce at about the same time.
2. Sony will be at about the same time attempting to leverage their upcoming PSP handheld game system to push another proprietary video format, this one based on Minidiscs, called UMD.

Something within this I'm not so comfortable with. We're about to get a bona fide Betamax vs VHS style format war between HD-DVD and BluRay. I don't think it's going to be pretty. I'm glad I don't have plans to buy an HDTV.

Big Deal

[LilMikey]

Most PS2 and XBox games don't even use both layers of today's DVDs. The only one I recall encountering is Rallisport 2 and it was only like 6.5 gig or so. What this does seem likely to do is drive up the production cost of the games and system, however this probably won't translate to higher game prices as competition will even that field.

Finally!

[Dark Paladin]

Square-Enix can finally achieve the dream of turning Final Fantasy XIV into nothing more than a 50 hour movie with save spots in between!

Re:Finally!

[miTTio]

Namco beat them to it. Ever played Xenosaga?

Re:Finally!

[Zcipher]

Actually, what I'd really like is for them to take that extra space and use it to include the original japanese voice acting. I cannot stress enough how much this would improve the game. Simply put, American voice actors are, with very few exceptions, terrible. As in, like a thousand needles in my spine. Restoring the original, non-awful voice acting would be the best use of additional space.

Re:Finally!

[Kiryat Malachi]

Personally, I like *understanding* the voice acting more than I like the Japanese voice acting. If I can't understand what they're saying, there's really no point in them saying it; give me BETTER VOICE ACTORS IN ENGLISH, not possibly better voice actors who I can't make a decent judgement on because I have no idea whether they're talking about their dead beloved or breakfast.

backing up will still take 50 disks

[davidwr]

In the days of 20MB hard disks, it took about 50 360KB floppies to back up a nearly-full disk, more or less.

In the days of 40GB hard disks, it took 50 800MB CD-Rs.

With 250GB systems, it takes about 50 4.7GB DVD-Rs.

By the time 50-200GB burners are available for under $200 in 7-8 years, I'll probably be using 2.5-10TB systems at home, and the ratio will still be 50.

I don't know about you, but 50 disk-swaps is several too many. Even with incremental or differential backups, it's a pain in the ***.

Your disks-per-complete-backup ratio may not be 50 but it's probably fairly stable over time.

Sony to announce 8 layer 200 GB Blu-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117867,0 0.asp

um...

[Run4yourlives]

that's why they have these things call tape...

You actually back up your entire harddrive on 50 CDs/DVDS? Sorry, but that's just anal.

Re:Blue Ray? What about Z Ray?

[Templaris]

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 forget about the drives!

[ProfessionalCookie]

While I'm mildly concerned about the discs what I'm really worried about is the drive.

I've gone through 2 PS2 drives- the units function perfectly otherwise they just rarely load discs anymore. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there that this has happened to. I want to know if we're gonna get cheap drives that break every 8 months.

I have the capacity to take care of the discs pretty well but all I can do with the drive is use it as intended.

That said, yay for new tech adoption.

Re:Don't forget about the drives!

[cortana]

Yes, yes we are.

Judging from the experiences of the gamers I know, the reason the PS2 is the most popular console is because EVERYBODY HAS TO BUY BLOODY THREE OF THEM!

Re:Don't forget about the drives!

[Spleener12]

I've had to buy two PS1s. The first was a 1998 model. This model worked quite well (well, it had the overheating problem ONCE) until it died in April 2001. This is probably due to the fact that it was on the carpet at the time when Sony specifically warns that you're not supposed to put it there, something I read in the manual to the PSOne I purchased a couple of days later.

I recall hearing that Final Fantasy 8 killed a lot of older PS1s (probably first-gen ones), probably due the the fact that it pushed the system a lot harder than any other games had done before it. Xenosaga Episode 1's dual-layered disc required some people to replace their PS2s as well, I beleive.

And then, of course, there are Playstations and Playstation 2s that are purchased at launch and played extensively and still work today.

I'd say that it's part luck, part how well you take care of them, and part how many revisions later you buy them that determines how long a Sony system lasts.

Re:recordable bd-rom for pc?

[captainClassLoader]

Perfect storage indeed - And it will only take a mere 4 or 5 of these discs to hold MS Office '07 when it comes out!... ;-)

Re:As space available goes up

[mr_spatula]

Insightful? That's not even a valid comparison.

The individual sprites were very, very small... A c64 game wouldn't keep each individual background as a single file, it was building these from indexed sprites, most likely 2-4 bits of color (not sure of the specifics)

Point being, you have a bunch of 256 byte sprites that are repeadedly being drawin on the screen... The instructions to "draw this sprite again" are quite a bit smaller...

oh, hell... you were being funny weren't you? (*smacks self on head*) Thanks, mods!

PS3 Hard Disk Speculation

[blueZhift]

By using such a high capacity read only storage medium, I wonder if this signals even less need for an internal hard drive for the PS3. If the console has enough system memory and/or available memory cards with fast enough read write access and fast throughput, then most games should be able to support updates/patches on the fly. If the memory cards really are up to it, then even a large RPG should be doable without need for a console HD. Most of the game world is going to be static so it can live on the read only disk. Updates for patches and special events are small diffs relative to the global data, so those reside on memory cards and loaded on the fly. Major expansions come on all new disks.

What does this all mean? It means that the PS3 is even less likely to come out with a HD and by extension, the same can be said for Xbox 2 since it will likely use a disks of similar capacity (to keep up in the spec war). I'd expect to see memory cards for both boxes come in 128MB and 256MB flavors.

Re:PS3 Hard Disk Speculation

[MikeBabcock]

Personally I'd love to see Sony just use Memory Stick Pro or something for their memory format instead of another proprietary format.

Why blue-ray will win the format wars

[gcpeart]

I think this may be why blue ray wins the format war. If PS3 uses it, and the average PS2 owner stay s true to their old behaviour, it won't be long before they are modding and burning and complaining about fair use. Before you know it, blueray dvdrw will be fly off the shelf, driving the price down, and making fence sitters say "hmmm do I get nearly equivilent option 1, or cheaper option 2?" Cheap wins (re: beta vs vhs) and boom blueray is your standard of choice. All thanks to the power of software piracy!

Nothing to worry about

[mapmaker]

Sony *always* goes for market domination on new electronics by trying to impose their proprietary format (Betamax, Memory Stick, Atrac) and they *always* fail. They *never* learn.

Sony's like the Brain from Pinky and the Brain:

"What are we going to do tonight Sony?"
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the home electronics business with a proprietary media format!"

but DVDs suck ...

[Heisenbug]

My title is wrong, but it's true that in my experience DVDs could benefit a lot from better error correction. I can't think of the last video tape I rented that had significant playback problems, but I can think of the last 5 DVDs that did. I would love to see a movie encoded on something like Blooray that has a full-on four way backup of the data, so it has to be scratched in exactly the wrong four places at once before it'll skip. I'm sure there are cleverer ways to make error checking more efficient, but you get the idea -- like the grandparent, I hope like hell they'll throw more data at this problem, because right now DVDs strike me as anything but permanent under normal use.

Maybe Sony should direct efforts elsewhere?

[jbn-o]

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).