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Toshiba To Offer Laptops With HD-DVD in 2005
LBArrettAnderson writes "Toshiba will release laptops with HD-DVD under its high-end Qosmio brand and plans to ship one million units in the first year to Europe, the U.S. and China, as well as Japan. The company claims the slimline HD-DVD format is more suitable to laptop PCs than the rival Blu-ray Disc format."
Besides being competiting formats is there any major differences between HD-DVD and Blu-ray? If not, how long will it be before there are drives that support both formats like DVD+/-RW drives?
Reasons why HD-DVD could be better suited for a laptop (I don't know which apply though):
consumes less power
is less susceptible to vibration
smaller form factor
less heat dissipated (either due to disc rpm or embedded processing)
It was the studios that ultimately forced the compromises that led to a single SD-DVD format, and I think the same will happen with Blu-Ray. Whichever format has the clear majority of titles in print wins.
Battery power is crucial on a notebook comp. Your first reason could very likely be it.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
# less heat dissipated (either due to disc rpm or embedded processing)
Why limit your selves to spinning the disc? Why not have a fixed disc and have the laptop spin around... really fast? Now that's what I'd call a super-twist display!
It was the studios that ultimately forced the compromises that led to a single SD-DVD format, and I think the same will happen with Blu-Ray.
/my clue-by-four is at the ready...
Well, sort of. The studios backed DVD, and then some of the studios branched off and were trying to support DIVX (the throw-away, incompatible DVD rival). Then the consumers proceeded to hit those studios and everyone associated with DIVX with a clue-by-four, and now we have a single DVD standard.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Taking a hint from another slashdot post there's probably only 1 technical reason:
HD-DVD uses a red laser, so it can read current DVDs without a hybrid setup. A Blu-Ray player would need 2 lasers (1 red, 1 blue) to read old DVDs and Blu-Ray disks. Since 1 laser is cheaper than 2 lasers, it's better suited for a laptop (higher margins)
Oh, and they are on the steering committee, like you said. That's probably the main reason... But from a technical standpoint, they want higher profit margins.
The DRM will not prevent good old-fashoned "insert and hit play", but it will prevent uncontrolled ripping and copying
I'll believe that when I see it. Copy-protection has been a trade-off between protection and ability to use the data since the idea was first conceived.
The marketing drones always say it won't interfere with normal use. Even the CD DRM that prevents it from being played at all on computers, DVD players and older CD players.
Jason
ProfQuotes
The DRM will not prevent good old-fashoned "insert and hit play", but it will prevent uncontrolled ripping and copying.
...for the first couple of months, you mean.
I really wonder why they even bother. Unless they include hardware DRM to disallow access to all unauthorized programs, this WILL be cracked. And either one does do such a thing, the other one will almost assuredly win the format wars.
My message to MPAA is this: Save your money. Leave it unencrypted. Let us do what we want with our movies. The VCR did not put you out of business, and neither will this.
There's a big difference here: copy protection is not built into the CD standard, so any copy protection system necessarily violates the standard. In this case, copy protection will be built into the standard, so all players will support it.
Having said that, I have no doubt that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray both will be far less flexible than CD or DVD in playback due to the protection schemes employed. Ironically, Microsoft's presence in these format discussions will work in our favor here. They are certainly going to work towards PC-compatible playback, and whatever they enable will be enabled in Linux as well by the nature of the standard.
I have not read up on the specifics, but my reasoning is as follows:
At some point, the video must be decrypted in order for it to play. If it can be decrypted for viewing, it can be decrypted for recording. Now, maybe they'll only allow approved, closed source software to play Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, but that alone isn't enough. As soon as either standard replaces DVD, we'll see millions of eyes and minds trained on this new format. Some will want to exploit it, but some will just want to be able to play their movies on Linux. No matter how great their encryption is, no matter how hard they try to discourage reverse engineering, it only takes one flawed implementation or one source code leak.
Hardware DRM can make life much more difficult. If the HD-DVD-ROM refuses to talk to anything but PowerHD-DVD (or whatever), there are going to be problems.
But this is means even more money, even more restrictions--not just for us, but for the third-party manufacturers as well. Maybe Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are headed down this dark path, but I think (and I hope) that one of them will look up and say hey! This is costing us money and it's not making the consumers or the manufacturers happy. Provided the media companies backing them can see the light, it's a simple matter of tossing the DRM (or at least, the uncrackable DRM) out the door and bam, the format war is over. It's simple greed. They want to control how we use their products, but I think they'll settle for simply selling us those products.
Oh yeah, SACD and DVD-A might be uncracked now, but neither one has supplanted the CD yet. Once the CD is long gone, there will be a much greater interest in cracking the new format.
BUT... they might never supplant it. According to Wikipedia: [regarding SACD] "These include 80 bit encryption of the audio data, with a key encoded on a special area of the disk that is only readable by a licensed SACD device."
That's BS. Moral outrage aside, I'm sure has hell not going to buy media I can't play on my computer--it has the best speakers in the house.