Blu-Ray/Standard DVD Hybrids Planned

An anonymous reader writes "Recently stories about hybrid HD-DVD and regular DVDs were in the news. This was supposed to be an advantage for HD-DVD in its battle with Blu-Ray. But that advantage will not exist, as according to this story on PhysOrg, the same technology will be available for Blu-Ray. And it is even better than the HD-DVD solution, since instead of two sided media, it uses a triple layer structure on one side (one layer of 33.5GB for Blu-Ray, then two layers for 9GB of dual layer DVD data)"

Comments

Behold.

[Blapto]

Now little Timmy can store days of HD porn under the mattress! Oh the march of technology...

Re:Behold.

[drakethegreat]

If he can find it. Chances are it isn't legal if he can.

Re:Behold.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now little Timmy can store days of HD porn under the mattress! Oh the march of technology...

I ain't so little. -Tim

Re:Behold.

[anum]

This is the Internet just because it is illegal doesn't mean Timmy can't find it. It just means T Timmy's dad is going to be in a lot of trouble.

P.S. Happy searching Tim ;)

Re:Behold.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what your ex-gf (who just so happens to be my gf now) says.

Re:Behold.

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

If history has proven anything, it's that:

1. Timmy does have porn.
2. Timmy doesn't care if that porn is illegal.

Re:Behold.

[drakethegreat]

Yep its a lot easier to break the law when uncle sam doesn't have an eye on you as you browse the web. People often underestimate the government though and it comes back to haunt them sometimes.

Re:Behold.

[wampus]

I guarantee that I was more worried about mom and dad finding out about my stash of pr0n than I was about the cops...

Re:Behold.

[Anonymous Coward]

-->

Forward compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the best feature of this is that regular DVD drives can read the DVD data, no need for early upgrades. This will make a transition to the new media format MUCH easier.

Re:Forward compatible

[nkh]

I don't think the transition will be better: you don't know yet which technology will win. You'll stick to one kind of hybrid DVD and hope that it won't be dropped by manufacturers in the future. Worse, you'll have to upgrade to the format of your DVDs, not the format widely accepted later. Your choice is now, the real choice is later (but it will be too late to change :(

Err, umm, who cares?

[Creepy Crawler]

---And it is even better than the HD-DVD solution, since instead of two sided media, it uses a triple layer structure on one side (one layer of 33.5GB for Blu-Ray, then two layers for 9GB of dual layer DVD data)"

Its not the amount of space you have, but the content on it..

When there's Umpteen Million releases of the same movie, who gives a flying fuck?

Do you wanna buy Lord of the Rings 1?

LOTR 1 stripped no goodies.
LOTR 1 some goodies.
LOTR 1 lots of goodies not found on "some goodies"
LOTR 1 3 disc crammed set of goodies, but not same goodies as "lots of goodies"

(REPEAT LOTR 2, LOTR 3)

LOTR COMPLETE BASIC BOXED SET
LOTR COMPLETE Booklet BOXED SET
LOTR COMPLETE (no booklet) 9 DVD set
LOTR SUPER-COMPLETE 12 DVD set with T-Shirt
LOTR SUPER-DUPER-ABSOLUTELY-COMPLETE Boxed SET
LOTR Extras not found on "SUPER-DUPER-ABSOLUTELY-COMPLETE" Boxed set.

Now tell me.. Will the Blu-disc technology make Movie producers from stop making this many releases to bilk buyers into buying extras after extras?

Some reason, I dont think it will....

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if they'll be able to put *ALL* the shooting material on one such disc I suppose. Althought, they have those releases to milk out as much money as possible.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[Creepy Crawler]

Of course they wont. Thats my point.

Even with dual-layer DVD's, I still see half-way filled up DVD's or movies filled with compression artifacts just to keep from using dual layers.

It doesnt matter what the movie is, there's almost guaranteed to be 2 releases AT MINIMUM. One is for the basic movie.. and then for the movie with extras. Popular movies are guaranteed to have at least 4 different releases.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[John Hasler]

About movies? Not me. However, 33.5G is room enough for all of Debian on one disc.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[Taladar]

And who the hell said this is interesting because of movies? Normal DVDs are more than enough for one movie. Bigger Media are interesting for Data Storage and I don't know about you but 33.5 GB sounds almost small compared to harddisks of today to me.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Consumers themselves have to stop buying the multiple revisions. They can't blame other people for their own impulses to own the latest version of everything. Those that behave like sheep, deserve to be treated like sheep and be sheared.

I don't think I've bought multiple revisions of a movie yet. There are times I have waited a remastered version because the first release was crap, but that means I have only bought one version.

I really don't care for the series, but I consider the LotR situation to be different, they announced both the theatrical and extended versions at the same time.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[JKR]

Ahem, high definition, anyone? At a raw bitrate of over 120 MB/s, and _maybe_ halfway decent compressed quality at 8 - 12 MB/s (personally I'd say not but I spent a summer looking at the real thing), bigger optical media are a prerequisite for high definition.

Otherwise, you're looking at maybe 20 MINUTES of footage on a disk, max.

Jon.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[raventh1]

Me.

I don't care what the industry does. I want Blu-Ray. This fixes any issues I had before, because now it has a better chance of not dying. I want to use Blu-Ray because it holds more, if the industry supports that, even better, because that means the stuff I use won't be obscure like Beta.

Now all we need is people to support multi-format players to start off, if everyone did it wouldn't matter.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[Aeiri]

Tell me about it, I saw in an ad recently the Matrix 10 DVD box set. How the HELL did they manage to fill up 10 DVDs worth? This is all I can come up with:

1: Matrix
2: Matrix Revolutions
3: Matrix Reloaded
4: Matrix Revisited (the extras disk they made)
5: Animatrix

So there is HALF of it... where do the other 5 disks go? Are they paperweights?

6: Paperweight 1 (to keep the first and second discs from flying away)
7: Paperweight 2 (to keep the third and fourth discs from flying away)
8: Paperweight 3 (to keep the fifth disc and first paperweight from flying away)
9: Paperweight 4 (to keep the second and third paperweights from flying away)
10: Paperweight 5 (to keep the fourth paperweight and the box from flying away)

Also included, a solid rock paperweight, so the fifth paperweight doesn't fly away.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[Zorilla]

Bytes (B) or bits (b)?

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, if HD is 120 MB/s, about twice the speed of current hard drives, how do HD PVRs and capture cards work? Try dividing by eight, dumbass.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

I agree. BD-ROM holds more than HD-DVD, so

BD-ROM > HD-DVD

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[cthellis]

Actually, by that they mean you can access all the content without flipping, and use the other side for its usual cool graphics, information, etc. rather than a small amount of text in the inner plastic ring. Accessing more content is fine too, as it could be used in different ways, not just to "fill it up with random crap." For instance, if you don't need all the DVD space for the DVD movie, the BR player could use it itself for more high-def content or just increasing the bitrate of the current content. Or they could stick on a DVD-Audio album of the soundtrack too, could they not? (Or at least "some music" if an "album" would get the RIAA up in arms.) Regardless, it's just better. The questionable factor is cost and if their production method can be handled well alongside others.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[tonsofpcs]

And thats only the legal releases.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, I saw at least 4 street vendors in NYC today with at least 2 different versions of most movies between them....

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[tonsofpcs]

Beta is not obscure, if you would like to argue/discuss this further, feel free to post on my journal.

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[tonsofpcs]

1) he's off, but the other way, his number is way too low for RAW. 2) they use COMPRESSION, note that most HD broadcasts are done using MPEG-2 compression already, so it is COMPRESSED. RAW != MPEG-2

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yknow, I just don't see where you're coming from on this point. You use LOTR as an example, when it's clearly the counterexample--don't make a rule from the exception.

Most (around 95%) popular flicks at most come in ONE variety, with at most TWO discs (one being for movie content, and the other being for whatever other bullshit they decide is worth putting on a DVD.) By default most recent movies call themselves the "bouns", or "collectors" set, and include all of the crap that nobody wants. The exception to this is the release for whatever reason they decide they need to have one box for widescreen and one for fullscreen, and I'm seeing less and less of these.

LOTR is an Epic; this is the only reason why all these crazy releases happen. They want to produce a DVD that was like what they saw in the theatre first, and then later come out with the way the director (jackass one at that) "wanted" you to see it, and then throw in the makings of and whatever. It's the same with Matrix, to a lesser of an extent (because of it being a lesser epic).

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[blekkazzen]

Disc 1: The Matrix Disc 2: The Matrix Revisited Disc 3: The Matrix Reloaded Disc 4: The Matrix Reloaded Revisited Disc 5: The Matrix Revolutions Disc 6: The Matrix Revolutions Revisited Disc 7: The Animatrix Disc 8: The Roots of the Matrix Disc 9: The Burly Man Chronicles Disc 10: The Zion Archive

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[raventh1]

So you can take Beta to anyone's house and use it? (Media)

I have used Beta. Joe Blow doesn't know what Beta is. I comment is on a consumer level. Really what else matters?

Re:Err, umm, who cares?

[tonsofpcs]

Why would I want to take it to anyone's house? I can only record broadcasted material for my own personal viewing later. Anything that I make and want to distribute, I can send to a dub house to make copies onto the lower standards [VHS] (or I can make them myself).

China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[Anonymous Coward]

The only winner in the format battle of HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray is China. It does not enforce the claims by foreigners (i.e. non-Chinese) to intellectual property developed anywhere in the West. Many American companies have discovered that their applications for patents in China are purposefully delayed by some bureaucrat. Then, a Chinese company will access that patent application and file another application for the very same patent. The Chinese application will be approved, and Americans (i.e. the original inventors) selling the product using the patent in China will be forced to pay royalties to a Chinese company.

Such is the nature of the evil mind.

This battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray has no meaning for Westerners. In China, they will derive no money from the technologies that they have patented for both formats. The situation is a "lose-lose" for the West.

NO FIRST POST FOR YOU!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Come back, TWENTY MINUTES!!!

Both sides simultaneously?

[swb]

Do any of these systems plan to have the ability to read/write both sides at the same time? Double-sided media with no cartridge is kind of limited for labeling, but it is a cheap and easy way to double storage without a lot of engineering.

I'd also think a two-sided medium could be faster than single-sided medium if you combined the surfaces together in a RAID-0 kind of striping setup.

Would it really be that much more expensive to put a R/W head on top of the drive in addition to on the bottom?

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[koreaman]

It would probably only be about twice as expensive, but it wouldn't fit as well in current cases.

I know it's an easily remedied problem, but it is something.

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[zakezuke]

I'd also think a two-sided medium could be faster than single-sided medium if you combined the surfaces together in a RAID-0 kind of striping setup.

Downward compatibility. A two sided disk one side at a time assures the fact that it can be read, at least in part, by a single sided drive.

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[TheGavster]

I'm guessing the second head is rather more expensive; in dual-sided laserdisc players its apparently more economical to have a mechanism for moving the head to the other side of the disc (a nightmare of mechanics in there ...)

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm.. The mass of the disk head would be double - could lead to slower seek time!!! It is also tricky to do it with the way the mechanical part are done right now.

At the cut throat rate of optical drives, don't think you have really done the engineering work to even ask that question.

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[Zorilla]

DVDs and Blu-Ray in this case, while random access, don't take advantage of that too often. Seek time isn't too important when most data is being read sequentially anyway. It's more important in situations where the data could be loaded from different areas of the media in endless different combinations.

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[Gaewyn L Knight]

I still want to know why hard disks... dvds.. floppies etc have never had multiple heads per platter and side. I mean come on people.. the slowest parts of disk usage are seek time and read rate. If we build 2 independant heads that can read the same side of the same disk at the same time we make the device able to handle double the read rate with the potential of lower seek times.

Also means you can read 2+ files at the same time or read with one head and write with the other.

Stop the size wars guys and start making hard disks faster.

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[Mr_Whoopass]

Well, something close was made and produced commercially with the Kenwood label for a couple of years on CD-ROM drives. Zen Research developed what they called "True-X" technology which was their attemp to help debunk all the ridiculous leap-frog marketing of touted drive speeds which we all know was, at the time, less fact than fiction. Very few drives actually reached their advertised speeds and even fewer could actually sustain those claimed speeds over the entire surface of the disc. "True-X" technology developed by Zen research basically took the one laser and split it into multiple beams that would read different tracks of the disc, effectively keeping transfer rates consistent across the entire disc. Having owned several of them, I can testify to the superior speeds they offered over other typical drives of the day, reliability of the units themselves aside. While they still never seemed to actually sustain their advertised speeds either, they were much closer to actual advertised speeds than everything else on the market, and by a long way! Old reviews: http://tech-report.com/reviews/2000q3/kenwood72x/i ndex3.x http://geek.com/hwswrev/hardware/cdrom/kw52xcd.htm Granted all reading and writing was done on one side of the disc, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see that same approach utilized in products in the future since as the ammount of data per disc keeps going up and up, the time taken to read/write that data will as well barring different technical approaches such as your suggested dual head drives. I can speculate at possible reasons why we haven't seen muti-head/sided drives en masse to date, but as I am not in the field, it is just that, speculation. I would imagine that you would effectively almost double the manufacturing costs? I would see split optical methods as a much more realistic and cost effective solution rather than increasing the number of read/write heads. For all I know though, current drives could already be using variations of this method already, but judging from benchmarks of drives I have owned since, that is highly unlikely as the myth of "claimed" drive speeds seems to just be continuing its legacy of hype and half-truths. I am but an egg...

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[TheToon]

Been there done that. Harddisks with multiple head racks was not uncommon on large (18") drives and Connor tried to market a model around 1990 iirc. The engineering is just too hard, especially on small drives and it's mostly a moot point as all performance critical systems are running RAID anyway. In a way, you can look at a 6 drive RAID array as a single drive with 6 head racks :)

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Would it really be that much more expensive to put a R/W head on top of the drive in addition to on the bottom?"

The groove in the disc runs the wrong way if you put a head on top, unless you want to run the disc backwards, which would probably require a more expensive motor (run forward for reading using the bottom head, and reverse for reading using the top head).

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Unfortunate problem is that with raid one head can't write while the other is reading. Since they don't exist on the same physical storage media. Especially in mail servers and the like you would get a tremendous gain from being able to do contiguous read/write operations. Plus... what is so hard about the engineering? Just make another head array on the other side of the disk, that is trivial. The only added hardship is the software to maintain a correct state on the drive during write operations and stealing that code from RAID would solve that.

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[IncohereD]

Plus... what is so hard about the engineering?

Okay...let's take the somewhat 'easy' case of one set for reading, one for writing. First - do read and writes happen at the same speed? Probably, but maybe not.

Second - are the reads and writes that are happening at the same time the same length? Almost definitely not.

Third - are the reads and writes going to be occuring 180 degrees apart all the time? Almost definitely not. You could say "just stop or start a little bit before or after the other", but that just makes the second point worse.

Fourth - is DMA set up to handle read and write at the same time? I think you'd need separate DMAs for this.

Fifth - scheduling algorithms for the heads. Not impossible, but not trivial to tune for performance either.

I don't think these problems are insurmountable, but I think in terms or real performance gains you'd be looking at something less than 50%, and certainly nowhere near 100%. And would probably cost more than 50% more. As someone else said, RAID would probably be better. And remember kids, the ID is for Inexpensive Disks.

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[TheToon]

Yes, valid points. And, you have the mechanical problem. The track and bit density is so high that even the slightest air turbulence can cause problems. As the heads would often be at different tracks, the turbulence would be changing and higher than with just one set of heads. The seek-vibrations could be a factor too.

Re:Both sides simultaneously?

[TheToon]

Doesn't matter. If I/O is a bottleneck, just add disks to your SAN/RAID storage system. Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Four drives will be cheaper and faster than two drives with twin-heads.

It was a good idea tho, just not feasible today.

Not such a huge leap forward

[Dr. Spork]

Unlike the poster I actually read the article. The blue layer only stores 25GB, not 33.

I imagine that the extras and interviews wouldn't have to be duplicated in the HD layer, so that's decent amount of space. Still from 9GB to 25GB seems like a pretty small jump. Notice that the jump from CD (700MB) to DVD (9GB)is more than an order of magnitude, which makes sense. Compared to that jump, an improvement from 9 to 25GB is a bit underwhelming. I think it would have been better to wait for a denser format, since there are so few playback devices out there which can display in true HD anyway.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[Zocalo]

I think it would have been better to wait for a denser format, since there are so few playback devices out there which can display in true HD anyway.

Exactly my view. There is just too much in flux within the home video market at the moment for my taste; HDTV, digital broadcasts, replacements for DVDs and, of course, PVR systems that can cope with it all. With so many choices, the chances of getting stuck with another Betamax are so much higher, especially with integrated media stations. A PVR with HDTV support, integrated digital broadcast receiver and DVD recorder is going to be of limited appeal if the DVD format used turns out to be as popular as Betamax.

As to the media sizes though, do we *really* need that much additional space? Think about what goes onto a typical 9GB DVD - a single copy of the video, one or more audio streams, and some extras. The only thing that changes with the switch to HDTV (which is likely to be the standard for some time) is the video, which roughly quadruples in resolution. Once you factor in compression of the video stream then 25GB should be sufficient capacity to enable the delivery of HDTV discs with the technology avaiable today. That's just perfect for today's corporate attitude that a small profit now is better than a much larger one further down the road.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I believe there is a dual layer blu-ray standard that allows for nearly 50GB, which is apples-to-apples comparison with the dual layer DVD at 9GB.

This hybrid version allows for multi-format compatibility with the same disc (like SACD/CD hybrid discs), I don't think it is meant to expand capacity because it falls short of the dual layer version's capacity.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[Kjella]

The only thing that changes with the switch to HDTV (which is likely to be the standard for some time) is the video, which roughly quadruples in resolution.

720x480->1920x1080 = 6x the pixels. Not counting any other possible improvements like color space or frame rate.

Kjella

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[Taladar]

Think outside the box. There are other kinds of data out there except the "one movie per media" type.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[Anonymous Coward]

What? You mean "two movies per media"? That will never work...

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[forkazoo]

While we may see some improvements in color space or frame rate, the current HDTV standard doesn't include them. And, considering how long it has taken to get HDTV going, I don't suppose that we will see a huge level of penetration of "HDTV2" until we can watch it snow during a "Hell Devils" football game. (home game, naturally)

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[anum]

I don't think the CD->DVD->HD-DVD comparison is valid. Remember, CDs replaced audio casettes and DVDs replaced VHS tapes. A spinning disk was a huge upgrade over reels of tape. Not having to mess with all of that tracking and tape breakage/streching plus having to clean the heads. God, what a nightmare and thank God we're past all that.

I think the media executives have learned the wrong lesson from CDs and DVDs. They now seem to be looking for the next break away format which will convince us to once again replace our entire entertainment collections. To them this is like free money. They think they can get us there by offering something with improved resolution or fidelity.

Most of us however, our reasonably happy with what we have now (just like most of us were reasonably happy with VHS except for the mechanical difficulties noted above). Now us geeks and the hardcore video/audio folks may think HD is a good upgrade but I noticed that very few chose laserdisk when they had the option. Price and convenience is why we moved to CDs and DVDs not better quality, that was just the bonus.

Now I can't think of a more convenient media than spinning disks but what if we could find a way to get rid of the media all together? Why that sounds a lot like an iPod doesn't it? iTunes? iVids?

My prediction: The next big thing for delivering entertainment to the user will be TCP/IP. Shocking I know but there it is.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[Jeff DeMaagd]

IIRC, some cable systems already have video on demand. People seem to be slow in accepting it.

I really don't think HD players will be outrageously expensive. LD media was expensive because they costed 10x more to make than a CD or VHS.

No one has to replace their entire collection, I'm pretty amazed by that idea. I just want a better format moving forward, the stuff I already own will remain in their respective formats except for a very few favorite movies.

Even when video is delivered over internet, there will need to be a way to store it and back it up., like backing up iTunes tracks. While I haven't had a hard drive failure in a long time, hard drives are said to be in two categories: those that are dying and those that are dead.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I really don't think HD players will be outrageously expensive. LD media was expensive because they costed 10x more to make than a CD or VHS.

I should expand on this. Pressed Blu-Ray and HDDVD discs are already being made at $1 a piece in volume, marginally more than that of a pressed dual layer DVD. LDs costed about $10 a piece to make in volume because of their large size.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[DJStealth]

I have an HDTV and use Video on Demand, hardly close to HDTV quality, and not even close to DVD quality. The system as is requires a lot of bandwidth as you could have a million customers all wanting to watch 20 different shows, and each at a different spot. I think the quality may even be lower than regular digital TV.

For now, I generally stick to watching movies on the HDTV channels or on DVD. Those of you who have seen HDTV will vouch that there is a huge difference between DVD and HDTV quality picture.

(Has anyone actually tested those new DVD players that upsample the video to 1080i? Does that really improve the picture quality over the TV doing its own internal upsampling?)

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[DJStealth]

Actually, the parent post is correct wrt the # of pixels, its not exactly telling the whole story.

DVD is 480p 720x480 progressive scan.

Most HDTV's are only capable of 1080i (1920x1080 interlaced); although there is a 1080p standard, I have yet to see TVs supporting it.

So actually the calculation should be
720x480 vs 1920x1080/2 (for 2 scans per image), which is actually 3 times the # of pixels per second.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[LilGuy]

Yeah because they charge a damn arm and a leg for the service. Not only that, but you've got a rather limited selection of shows to watch. It seems they only went 1/2 the mile.. if they'd just run the other half, and give us all the shows at a decent price, it would sell like hotcakes.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[smurf975]

The article linked by slashdot talks about a single layer Blu-Ray. To quote:

The company (JVC) is also working on a Blu-ray/ DVD combo ROM disc with an even larger 58.5GB storage capacity. The proposed disc will be comprised of a 50GB Blu-ray dual layer and 8.5GB DVD dual layer structure.

Also to awnser a few questions in this thread. (I took the awnsers from the website http://www.blu-ray.com/ FAQ)

1.5 How much data can you fit on a Blu-ray Disc?
A single-layer disc can fit 23.3GB, 25GB or 27GB.
A dual-layer disc can fit 46.6GB, 50GB or 54GB.

1.6 How much video can you record on a Blu-ray Disc?
Over 2 hours of high-definition television (HDTV) on a 25GB disc.
About 13 hours of standard-definition television (SDTV) on a 25GB disc.

1.8 What video codecs will Blu-ray support?
The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is still in the process of finalizing the BD-ROM specification, but they have stated that MPEG-4 AVC High Profile (previously called FRExt) and Microsoft's VC-1 video codec (the proposed SMPTE standard based on WMV9) will be mandatory. They will also include MPEG-2 support for playback of HDTV recordings and DVDs.

1.9 What audio codecs will Blu-ray support?
The included audio codecs should offer a significant improvement over the audio formats supported by the current DVD spec. They are currently looking into advanced audio codecs, including lossless codecs.

3.1 Is Blu-ray the same thing as HD-DVD?
The read-only discs (HD DVD-ROM) will hold 15GB and 30GB, the rewritable discs (HD DVD-RW) will hold 20GB and 32GB, while the recordable discs (HD DVD-R) won't support dual-layer discs, so they will be limited to 15GB.

----

So going from a CD to a (dual layer) DVD the data storage improved by (9/0.7) almost 13 times.

Going from (dual) DVD to (dual) Blu-Ray the datastorage improves by (54/9) 6 times.

However Blu-ray does support MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, "costed"?

Seriously, learn some grammar

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[TractorBarry]

And then you will eventually be locked into pay per view on everything as the content will only be available from streams from the studios. These streams will not be savable.

The studios will have achieved their holy grail.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[IncohereD]

These streams will not be savable.

If you can see it with your eyes it is savable. This will always be true.

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[anum]

This thread is probably far to old to worry about anymore but I thought I had replied earlier. In my sleep deprived state I must have neglected to hit submit. I'll give it one more go...

All of your arguements have some merit. I recently decided to buy all of my DVDs in widescreen format because I expect my next TV to be widescreen. The cost is the same so it just makes sense. The same will be true for HD/Blu-Ray. If there is little cost differential AND they are backwards compatible (the focus of the article if anyone remembers) then even I will buy them. If enough people buy them then the retail players will soon offer compatability for the format (my latest DVD player cost $30, is region free and plays just about any disk I can find. It also has a horrible interface and tends to overheat and lock up but there you go).

You will not be forced to upgrade all of your media but I can assure you that the media companies would love to find the next Big Thing that would encourage you to do so. This is a major fantasy for them. It's like free money.

Now on to backups/storage and hard drive failures. Imagine that you are just an average Joe/Jane with little understanding or DESIRE to understand the mechanics of the situation. you don't worry about back ups and you don't worry about DRM. All you worry about is easy access to entertainment. What you want is to be able to go to iTunes and order songs you like and have them on an iPod like device you can take with you. If your iPod dies a horrible death in a flaming inferno or just falls in the toilet you go buy another one and fill it up again. You shouldn't have to buy the songs again though paying for the bandwidth to download them may be an issue.

Video is even easier because we don't generally (Yet) take our movies with us. What if every TV show or movie was online all the time? You pay a liitle bit for old stuff, more for newer stuff and more sill for "first runs" to be the first on your block to see it. Live sports would also be more than the old stuff and movies would follow the same model. The point here is that it has to be cheap enough and easy enough to make it more trouble to save everything then to just order it again. I may want to watch every episode of Gilligans Island right now but I doubt that I will want to do so again next month. In other words I don't backup the content I let the Cable company/Apple do that. If I have a problem I complain to them.

About half of you are almost screaming at your computers right now. DRM/Lock-in/proprietary formats/Set-top boxes! These are all real and valid concerns and I share them. I also get my TV though a digital cable set top box. The only way I can watch or record anything is by sending it though the box first. This annoys me. It makes my life more difficult and more expensive (I need a separate box for each TV and I have to rent or buy the additional boxes). I am a geek and I long for the good old days when cable ready meant that I could just plug it in and get a picture. And yet I still have digital cable and a proprietary set top box. There are millions more like me out there.

We are not there yet. We need more bandwidth into our homes and there are several other little issues that need to be worked out. The media executives need to remove their heads from the dark place they have stored them and draft new business models and we need the equivalent of a revolution in user interfaces. Can you imagine having to sort though EVERY TV show/movie ever made to find the one you want to watch right now? Something like Amazon's recomended lists will be needed along with other things. Advertising will need to change to fit the new model as well.

Still, I hope that some day I can call up what I want to listen to/watch and never even think about where it comes from or whether I have backed it up. It sould just be there and cheap enough that I don't worry too much about the cost. (Remember when phone calls cost so much that you actually rearranged your schedule to make them. When is the last time you did that?)

God what a long and rambling post. Sorry about that. I'll shut up now.

Cheers

Re:Not such a huge leap forward

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope.

720x480p is 30fps = 10368000 pixels/sec

1920x1080i is 60fps, interleaved = 62208000 pixels/sec

Interlaced video has 2 half-frames per "frame".

I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what kinda redundancy these discs have?
Over the years ,I have stored lots of data on cd's and I have lost some data because the cd's went bad for whatever reason. That was just on a one layer disc, now imagine having 3 layers of data, even more to worry about!

What I forsee is, lots of corrupted data due to dust,smudges,scratches and enviromental changes. I'm sure cotton or rubber gloves will be nescesary to hand the discs.

Re:I wonder...

[klui]

More worrysome is the thin protective layer next to the BD layer. The diagram is not to scale, but this outer layer is only 0.1mm. Kinda like the thickness of the label layer on the other side. If this outer layer is too thin/fragile, it will be as vulnerable as the label portion of CDs.

Re:I wonder...

[TLLOTS]

I believe in an earlier slashdot story, there was a technology talked about that could well be seen in use for blu-ray. This technology was a protective layer over the disk that was resistant enough to scratching to allow for someone to go nuts with steel wool on the surface without making a scratch. If it turns out to be as effective as claimed, then such concerns may prove without merit.

Proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

[Sarcasm]
Oh no, looks like somebody wants to make money off an excellent invention

This shouldnt succeed, everybody knows that all good inventions should be released under the GPL/open source

The infamy of it!
[/sarcasm]

Anyway, seems like a good idea. Anything that strengthens blu-ray against HD-DVD is a good thing, as its by far the superior format, and has the storage capaciy up to 200 GB in the future, as opposed to HD-DVD which seems to be stuck at about 30GB

Error correction and detection

[mahesh_gharat]

This article does not talk about the error correction and detection at all.

Higher the density and capacity of the data stored on such disk makes life miserable for error detection and correction against the scratches on the surface of the media. The standard DVDs are more prone to scratches while scratched CDs have more chance of recovering the data back.

I think this problem will only increase in these Blu-Ray/Standard DVD Hybrid disks.

Re:Error correction and detection

[violently_ill]

DVDs have a far more robust error correction system than CDs. blu-ray disks have an even better error correction and a scratch-proof coating as well. i read a review where a guy took a steel wool pad to a BD and was unable to scratch it. because of this special coating, the cartridge was deemed unnecessary and will most likely not be found in any future drives.

Re:Error correction and detection

[tepples]

because of this special coating, the cartridge was deemed unnecessary and will most likely not be found in any future drives.

What about a future 8cm BD standard for use in handheld devices? Carrying and switching discs on those would seem to introduce more wear than one gets in a typical DVD library. This is part of why the Sony PSP's UMD media have cartridges.

Re:Error correction and detection

[Anonymous Coward]

"a guy took a steel wool pad to a BD and was unable to scratch it"

But the ultimate test is to let a two-year-old play with it for five minutes.

Excellent

[Deternal]

This completely negates any reason for the movie companies to:

1. Increase prices for the new formats since:
   • They can combine the products and thus will not sell fewer units
   • Consumers will, once again be annoyed if they have to decide which format to buy
2. Try to get consumers to buy the same movie twice, so they can get the BD/HD-DVD enhanced version - it's the same disc, so they will have access to the new parts when they replace their dvd player.

Of course I'm not too optimistic - this will probably cost up to 10 cents extra a disc and the movie companies will of course use this to raise prices - just like they did twice with DVDs.

First they'll raise the prices because it's a new format, and the pr will go because it can have more material, and then, just like with DVD's the usefull extra material will only go on more expensive discs with the tag:

• "Limited Edition"
• "Special Edition"
• "Extended Edition"
• "Deluxe Edition"
• "Directors Cut Edition"
• "We Buttfuck You Edition"

Of course this will be around the same time the MPAA will start blaming all their problems on pirates. Because it's obviously not because theater tickets are 18-30usd and movies are 65-90usd a pop.

Re:Excellent

[dosius]

That's about the size of it too. Used to be, where I lived, you could catch a first run movie for $4.50 ($2.50 matinee), or go buy the video for about $15-$18, now, movies are $8.50 to get into, and DVDs $30-$35 (the $25 DVDs corresponding appoximately to a $10-$12 tape from then), and instead of $9-$11 tapes, we have $17-$20 CDs. Next few years, I'll prolly see $40-$50 for video discs, and $12 admission into the theaters.

Why do you think we pirate this stuff! Make the prices reasonable, MAYBE THEN WE'LL FUCKING BUY IT.

I can tell you I bought a lot more $11 tapes on a $35/mo stipend, than I buy $18 CDs on $140/mo after-bills money.

Moll.

Re:Excellent

[thebagel]

Movies are $2.50 to see here for kids, $3.00 for adults. Most expensive I've seen in a 150mi radius is $7.50 both. And I have never seen a movie release for $90. Even if the figures you supplied were accurate, it doesn't justify piracy. Sure, you're denying the MPAA of their cash, but you're also denying everyone else involved of their share, no matter how small. Is it worth it? If this were the software market, would you do the same?

Go ahead, mod me down. I dare you.

Re:Excellent

[Deternal]

Movies are $2.50 to see here for kids, $3.00 for adults.
Most expensive I've seen in a 150mi radius is $7.50 both.

Well I was thinking about future pricing, and I probably wasn't clear about that - however here is the current pricing of DVD's and theater tickets in DKK:

• Theater normal ticket: 85 dkk
• Theater cheap ticket: 70 dkk
• Normal release DVD price: 199 dkk
• Normal dvd offer price: 149 dkk
• DVD Release with some goodies: 249 dkk
• Retail price for LOTR:FotR SE: 449-600 dkk

Currently 100usd are 560 dkk.

My guess for BD/HD-DVD releases:

• Normal release BD price first year: 249-269 dkk
• Normal release BD price 2nd year: 299-329 dkk
• Normal theater ticket 2005: 105 dkk
• Normal theater ticket 2007 135 dkk

Even if the figures you supplied were accurate, it doesn't justify piracy.

I didn't promote piracy, I was however predicting that the MPAA will blame the lower sales on piracy.

Re:Excellent

[Zorilla]

Well, it helps to not slant your argument by using a jacked up economy (Greece) as an example. It makes a much larger differnce than a gradual inflation of ticket prices in the U.S.

Just to give you an example, many CDs cost around $30-40 in Japan.

Of course, as a counterpoint, I think I still had to pay $8.50 after student discount to get into the main theater in Oklahoma City, one where something always went wrong during the movie, whether it was A/C failure, speaker channels going out, fire alarms, bad projector focus and alignment, etc.

Not only about size...

[Kjella]

...but also about format. Assuming they don't release in the MPEG2 "compatibility" format, but actually release in MPEG4 or WMV (not going to fire up that flamewar by suggesting which), the effective gain will be much greater. 25GB MPEG4 should easily be equal to 50GB MPEG2, perhaps more. Most DVDs don't fill to more than 6-7GB anyway, so ~6(less sound) *(3*3 res upgrade less) = 54GB should be fully doable.

Kjella

Re:Not only about size...

[Dr. Spork]

Yeah, but I think it's already settled in the Blu-ray specification that the encoding will be MPEG2. I agree with you. We have much better, proven compression methods, and we should be using them. I bet we'll be kicking ourselves later... or not; maybe it will be like with CD's, where only certain annoying "fidelity freaks" will complain about the various observable artifacts of compression. Or, maybe the big media companies are waiting to see whether some Norwegian kid figures out how to decrypt these things again. If so, maybe they will introduce a "new, better" standard with MPEG4 and maybe 60GB/disk.

Release the god damn standard already!

[melted]

Jesus Christ, they've been talking about this shit for years and yet there's not a single recorder/player available. Do what Apple does - don't talk about shit until it's ready.

Re:Release the god damn standard already!

[Deternal]

It is released - check out the actual retail products here:
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/Section-13604/In dex.htm l
Also Disney and 20th century fox will start releasing BD movies no later then 2006 (though maybe late 2005 already).

AFAIK there are still no HD-DVD products yet tho.

Re:Release the god damn standard already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Re:Release the god damn standard already!

[Zorilla]

Well, it relies on another technology which is also very slow to adapt: HDTV. People aren't going to be interested in Blu-ray until they get a better TV, though I would love the storage space for backups - the general public probably doesn't care enough about that yet.

The only reasons DVD was so quick to adapt was because of its ability to be manufactured for dirt cheap and the huge quality jump that is to be expected when you come from media that had disappointing quality even 20 years ago.

And as for the Apple thing, you guys saw that Apple Product Cycle link a couple days ago, right? A bunch of people wearing black turtlenecks speculating is no fun, either.

Re:Release the god damn standard already!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Do what Apple does - don't talk about shit until it's ready.

Copland, anyone?

Re:TO ALL YOU BITCHES OUT THERE

[Anonymous Coward]

Mashed potatoes without lumps are fake as a $3 bill.

Moll.

the jump

[way2trivial]

from 'standard' consumer equipment is
700 mb to 4.5 gb..

the 9gb DVD is 2nd generation DVD burning.. want to guess what second gen blu/hdvd will bring?

Re:the jump

[cybertears]

CDs didn't always hold 700mb either. IIRC, 650mb -> 700mb and i've even seen 900mb CDs.

Something is wrong here

[Helpadingoatemybaby]

The 33.5G capacity of these disks (or the 58G capacity of the future) competition is too small for typical backups in comparison to current hard drive capacities.

By the time these penetrate the market to a significant extent hard drives will be typically over 400 or 500 gigabytes. And yes they hopefully will come out with higher capacity disks for computing, but the reason that the CD and DVD drives price point was so advantageous was that they were massed produced for consumer and computing needs.

One of the reasons for the success of CD's was that they were 640M, which was a pretty good ratio for drive backups at the time. Huge, in fact. But this ratio of disk/HD space is too small.

So in conclusion, we'll need a 640 Gigabyte disk to really grab our attention.

Re:Something is wrong here

[ti.payn]

I agree. I can remember when I could back up everything to 1 CD. It was huge. But the 4.5 GB of DVD space was lackluster and to be honest the numbers here are not that interesting either.

Now, if they wanted to talk about 1TB discs ... then I would be thinking about replacing all the drives I own.

Re:Something is wrong here

[solios]

Hard disk capacities have been outstripping backup media by orders of magnitude for years. 40g drives were already common when DVD-R hit, and now that it's developed, 120-160g drives are common and 40s are on their way out- and good luck finding 9g DVD-R media. Have fun backing up 300g of data to 4.5g DVD-Rs.

2g and 4g drives were commonplace by the time CD burners became consumer-viable- you still needed multiple disks to backup a full drive.

Re:Something is wrong here

[Gaima]

The 33.5G capacity of these disks (or the 58G capacity of the future) competition is too small for typical backups in comparison to current hard drive capacities.

But these discs are specifically a stepping stone, hybrid, solution.
Read only, with SD-DVD layers, not for backup use.

IIRC, the blu-ray standard has always called for 25GB layers. It's just they "can" fit loads of them in.
So your hope for higher capacity should become a reality.

Re:Something is wrong here

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmph. 640 Gigabytes ought to be enough for anyone.

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for fucking america in the ass, where can I sign up?

CD/DVD too many errors

[ZeekWatson]

No kidding, the arrival of the 1.44 MB floppy started the era of unreliable ejectable media. Zip, CD, DVD have all had less than stellar reliability.

Re:CD/DVD too many errors

[Taladar]

Floppy had a lot more errors than CD and all other optical media I know.

Re:CD/DVD too many errors

[Anonymous Coward]

Floppy had a lot more errors than CD and all other optical media I know.

I would beg to differ. Floppy disk errors were caused by mechanical damage that resulted from using the floppy since this is a direct-contact technology. You use it a lot and due to the wear and tear of mechanical contact the magnetic surface gets damaged physically. But with CDs you just put a CD on the shelf for a year and you get data corruption and major data loss eventhough you never even used the CD once that whole time. Now that is just unacceptable to me, with floppies at least you knew you could expect damage due to use, but CDs just tend to go sour without you touching them. That is why I refuse to buy any kind of optical RW drive, they are useless to me, I'd rather get a new hard drive, they are faster, far more reliable and convenient. Do the math: how much does a quality DVD-RW drive + 30 quality DVD media combo compare to a quality 120 or 200 Gb hard drive?

If you want something portable get a solid state hard drive, USB flash drives are getting cheaper by the day.

The bottom line is - optical drives are a dead-end technology that serves only one purpose well - the interests of RIAA and MPAA. They package it any way they want and you end up buying 3 disks, each containing the 20 % you wanted and 80 % of what you never wanted but still got charged for. No thanks, not for me.

Re:CD/DVD too many errors

[andreyw]

Floppy is by far the worst. In fact, even if you don't do anything stupid with the media (bend/light-on-fire/soak/place-near-speakers) - it still can crap out on you at any moment. And... as my box of 5 1/4" floppies can testify - do not age very well either.

CDs, when done properly - i.e. without using some ghetto glue to attach the substrate to the shiny layer - will last, properly handled, for a long time. I do have CDs that suffered bit rot, but those are thankfully few, and once again... due to shoddy manufacturing. I feel really sad that the caddy system (now used with BlueRay? I think?) has disappeared from the CD scene. It was clearly the best way to handle the media.... which is why I still use a 10 year-old SCSI Toshiba CD-ROM wiht a Caddy in my workstation.

I think solid state media is really the way to go, but I wish MO media wasn't killed off so fast. It was a good idea.

Re:CD/DVD too many errors

[DJStealth]

I have seen plenty of brand new floppies with data written to them sit on shelves for a year and not be readable anymore.

Re:CD/DVD too many errors

[Zorilla]

There was a time (late-nineties) that I was too much of a tightwad to bother with CD recorders or Zip disks. I just transferred files using 10-20 disk volumes. Those went bad 75% of the time. There were even times when I made three copies of something just in case two went bad. Did it work? Nope. All three went bad within a few hours of making them.

There was a workaround though. I can't believe I got my friends to open their computer cases so often so I could use one of my old HDs to do a file transfer. Also kinda scary to have to open up my family's brand new OEM computer to move files from the old one (this was 1999, before home machines typically had NICs in them).

Re:CD/DVD too many errors

[moonbender]

But with CDs you just put a CD on the shelf for a year and you get data corruption and major data loss eventhough you never even used the CD once that whole time. Now that is just unacceptable to me, with floppies at least you knew you could expect damage due to use, but CDs just tend to go sour without you touching them.

Ehhh. I doubt that floppies had (or have) a longer average shelf life expectancy than CDs.

Googling suggests that floppies are fairly safe for about 5 years, after that all bets are off - I couldn't find any source that seemed authoritative, though. Certainly mostly everybody here will have seen floppy disks that were good a lot later, but that's the best case, not the average or worst case. CDs, on the other hand, are routinely designed to last 10 to 20 years, or even longer with certain specialised brands.

The only thing that I can think of is that it might be easier to store a CD wrong - ie leaving it in bright, direct sunlight for days. They're also more prone to physical damage, ie scratching. But then again, at least they don't have any moving parts and are unimpressed by magnets. Personally, I've been using CDs a LOT more than I've ever used floppies, and I've had heaps of floppies go bad on me (most of them pirated Atari games, maybe it was karma) and very few CDs.

Re:CD/DVD too many errors

[Anonymous Coward]

CDs, on the other hand, are routinely designed to last 10 to 20 years, or even longer with certain specialised brands.

CDs are not designed to last long. Do you know that RIAA gets a percentage from every blank CD medium you buy, regardless of whether you put music on that CD or just your personal files? Do you think they want you not to buy a new set of CDs every 5 or so years just so you can make sure your personal CD-R(W) collection doesn't go sour?

CDs which are pressed from a mold do last longer, but I am talking about CD-R and CD-RW media, which are burned with a laser and are thus much more susceptible to sunlight, high temperature and physical damage.

Personally, I've been using CDs a LOT more than I've ever used floppies, and I've had heaps of floppies go bad on me (most of them pirated Atari games, maybe it was karma) and very few CDs.

That has nothing to do with CDs being more reliable. You are using CDs more because everything today is so bloated that sometimes you need several CDs for a single game or an application. Back in the floppy days I remember cramming 10+ games on a single 1.44 Mb floppy.

Re:CD/DVD too many errors

[moonbender]

CDs which are pressed from a mold do last longer, but I am talking about CD-R and CD-RW media, which are burned with a laser and are thus much more susceptible to sunlight, high temperature and physical damage.

Well, then you are wrong. There are media you can burn which are designed to last a long time, easily longer than 5 years. It's certainly not extremely good, but it's not necessarily - depending on the media you use - terrible bad, and it's a lot better than floppy disks.

Back in the floppy days I remember cramming 10+ games on a single 1.44 Mb floppy.

I remember Monkey Island 1 and Loom each coming on multiple floppies. And really, whether I use more CDs than floppies wasn't the point - it's that even though I've used floppies for maybe 5 years, and CDs for 10 I've had far more floppies go bad on me than CDs.

Re:CD/DVD too many errors

[Anonymous Coward]

First you said:

CDs, on the other hand, are routinely designed to last 10 to 20 years, or even longer with certain specialised brands.

... and not even 24 hours later:

Well, then you are wrong. There are media you can burn which are designed to last a long time, easily longer than 5 years. It's certainly not extremely good, but it's not necessarily - depending on the media you use - terrible bad, and it's a lot better than floppy disks.

Well, then you are misinformed because laser-writable CDs are much more susceptible to environmental factors than mold-pressed ones, feel free to google around for facts on that. It's also interesting how you went from longer than 20 years down to easily longer than 5 years in less than a day and now you're also trying to quantify a scientifically measurable phenomena by using subjective terms such as 'not extremely good' and 'not terribly bad.' If you want to argue a point make sure you have some objective arguments before you put your foot in your mouth. Which specialized brands are you talking about? Name a few that claim to design CDs that are meant to last 20 years or more.

I remember Monkey Island 1 and Loom each coming on multiple floppies. And really, whether I use more CDs than floppies wasn't the point - it's that even though I've used floppies for maybe 5 years, and CDs for 10 I've had far more floppies go bad on me than CDs.

So what does that prove, other than the fact that you might know who Guybrush Threepwood was? F-117a fit on a single floppy and that was a military flight simulator game with at least two dozen missions and terrains from all over the world. The point I was making is that you are using CDs more because the average storage needs have gone up and the prices of CDs have gone down, not because the floppy as a medium was inferior to CDs in terms of quality. Size was what gave birth to the CD as a storage medium. You may have been using CDs since 1994, but I seriously doubt you've been using CD-Rs since that time because they were released in 1994. I also know for a fact that you have not been using CD-RWs for 10 years because CD-RW was released mid-1997. Do you have a CD-RW disk that you have been routinely overwriting since late 1997? If so, let me know if it's still usable in 2007 or better yet in 2017. You do know that CD-RW media have a limit in terms of how many times they can be rewritten? Does that say to you that they were designed to last more than 20 years? If it does, I have some used chewing gum you'd want to buy.

So let's say you had 200 floppy disks and 20 of them went sour and that now you have 40 CDs and only 5 of them go sour. Which is better? You'd have 10 % vs 12.5 % failure rate, 28.8 Mb vs. 3250 Mb potential data loss. Floppy disks suck, but CDs suck and blow at the same time.

Re:CD/DVD too many errors

[moonbender]

Sorry for taking so long to respond, I would have done so earlier if only the damn network admins at the CCC congress had fixed the damned wireless LAN... ;)

First off, I readily admit that I am not an expert on CD media lifetimes. It's not something I dealt with in any detail, so my knowledge is limited to what I read by chance and what any computer user might pick up. This might serve to explain the inaccuracies and ambiguity you find in my posts. I think I do know that CDs are more reliable than floppy disks, and what I've read so far generally supports that.

So, anyway, without further ado: http://www.mam-a.com/technology/quality/longevity. htm

F-117a fit on a single floppy and that was a military flight simulator game with at least two dozen missions and terrains from all over the world.

Okay, so current software in general and games in particular are bloated, whatever. I really want to get off the that trail here - it really hasn't got any relation to the issue I originally talked about, which is the fact (or if you will, opinion) that CDs are a more reliable medium than floppy disks, or, even more specifically, that CDs have a longer shelf lifetime than floppies.

Re:TO ALL YOU BITCHES OUT THERE

[Anonymous Coward]

u forgot the blowjob.

Everyone's missing the point

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

The advantage of this hybrid BluRay/DVD-9 disc is that the studios can begin releasing hybrids instead of having a slow painful transition from DVD to the new BluRay or HD-DVD format. These hybrid discs are better than the HD/DVD hybrids because the vanilla DVD part is a full 2 layers - 9GB. This compares favorably to the HD/DVD hybrids which have only ONE layer of DVD. Most DVDs these days are 2-layered DVD-9s.

Re:Everyone's missing the point

[Dr. Spork]

I think you're quite right. If they could make players that don't cost too much more to manufacture, and disks that are maybe $1 costlier than red laser DVDs, they just might have a winner. Blu-ray has a bunch of studios already signed up, and if they just declared that all their disks will be Blu-ray and included some visible reminders of this in their pamphlet, like "you're not seeing the full quality of this disk unless you have a Blu-ray player", they might very well sell lots of players... after which the people would realize that it really makes no difference unless they own a high definition television, and that's where SONY will really make their money!

Re:Everyone's missing the point

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

Funny enough...no one really makes money on high-def TVs. LCD profit margins are ridiculously small, and LCD isn't even a mature technology yet.

Unit of Measurement?

[RileyLewis]

I think we all are dying to know how many Libraries of Congress this thing can hold.

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[liangzai]

China's entry into the WTO of course means they have to give and take. Giving here means complying with international agreements.

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[Taladar]

It is not evil. They just refuse to be another colony of the USA that pays taxes to king Big-American-Company. Sounds familiar?

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[RileyLewis]

I think your argument might have more weight if the companies involved (and us on slashdot) were primarily from China.

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[Anonymous Coward]

What effect does this have for importing products from China? Considering that businesses such as Walmart are importing a large % of their products from China, this would be wrong. It amounts to some companies in America marketing products pirated through China, so the originators and inventors of the products don't get paid anything.

This would destroy American research if allowed to go to far.

Why flame LotR?

[Kjella]

They've been very clear from the start that there'll be two versions, one plain and one with extra everything. So far, that is exactly it. The collected series is nothing but those combined, there is no "extra-extra".

I'd much rather you go after the movies that have
a) normal version
b) extended version
c) director's cut
d) remastered edition
e) special edition
f) ultimate edition
etc etc.

They typically told noone that their movie was so crappy they needed a dozen releases to get it right. Or that they had another 3 minutes of bonus material to add. Those should all burn and die.

Now, we shall see if they add something new in addition to making the LotR films HDTV-resolution. If they do, then you may complain. So far, I've seen no reason to complain about them.

lol Beta!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Turning out like VHS vs Beta.

Wasn't Beta he superior format like Blu-Ray is turning out to be, yet VHS was dominant? I smell a repeat.

Re:lol Beta!

[zakezuke]

Beta was better than VHS is many respects, but Beta cost more. Standards are formed not by what is better but what is cheapest. Who ever bought early were screwed.

Re:lol Beta!

[wheelgun]

If I remember correctly (?) the Betamax people screwed themselves by refusing to let other folks make betamax format VCR tapes w/o paying royalties, or something along those lines. I suspect Betamax machines cost more than VHS machines because they were never produced on the same massive scale. In any case I watched a lot of movies in Betamax format as a child and never observed a difference in picture quality. That might be due to the fact that our movie library was made up of old video store rental stock.

WG

Re:lol Beta!

[Zorilla]

I believe one of the main factors besides the manufacturing cockblock Sony put on their format was that the discs could only store 1 hour's worth of video and there was no technically feasible way to fit in more video without losing quality or changing the form factor. At least not at first, but they snoozed and lost because it took them too long to find a solution.

Too Much!

[Mozillabird]

I know that the one advancement any succesor to the DVD would want to make is in memory, but isn't 31 gigs too much? That's 13 hours of standard television. How could you possibly deal with so much on one disc? I personally like the HD-DVDs. Blu-ray should start advancing in the size, not the memory.

Optical media is moving faster than HDDs now...

[Kjella]

...HDDs have been very slow. Most of the disk producers pretty much paused at 250GB (3x83). The 400GB Hitachi didn't improve that at all (5x80). Some have gotten 100GB platters out the door, Seagate is leadning the pack with 133GB/platter. But I don't see any major things happening that'd give us 2TB disks instead of 200GB.

Where as optical media with DVDs, DL DVDs, HD DVD, Blue-Ray etc. seems to have a lot more going on to catch up. Of course this is due to them being extremely long behind. Before I got my DVD drive I would need ~300 CDs to back up my HDD. Now with DVDs it's down to ~100 DVDs. Give it dual layer (and add a disk I might buy), and it is maybe ~70 DL DVDs. By the time Blue-Ray recorders become reasonable I expect to have maybe 1TB of space. But at 25GB each, it'd take only ~40 BDs.

I'd say the ratio is going in favor of optical media, for the first time in a very long time.

Kjella

Re:Optical media is moving faster than HDDs now...

[mr_zorg_mobile]

Hard drives are so cheap these days, the only real viable way to back them up is on more hard drives. Simply use external drives that you can power off, or setup a RAID configuration. Cheap, easy, and fast.

Links to actuual giving?

[glrotate]

Can you cite for me instances where China has actually taken signifigant steps towards compliance?

Re:Links to actuual giving?

[liangzai]

http://www.ustr.gov/Document_Library/Fact_Sheets/2 001/Background_Information_on_China's_Accession_to _the_World_Trade_Organization.html

"China is in the process of modifying the full range of intellectual property laws and regulations, including those relating to patents, trademarks, trade secrets, integrated circuits and copyrights."

Still break easily?

[jago25_98]

Got any tips on stopping the things from getting scratched, smudged etc?

Make 2 copies of every disk? Manual raid

Re:Still break easily?

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't read on the enhancements Blu-Ray disc's have to protect from scratching. Apparently they are VERY difficult to scratch and if you write with permanent marker on surface and it rubs right off. Thus is the reason they can make a Blu-Ray disc without a cartridge. I find it hard to believe that people only think they are changing the capacity of discs, and aren't even thinking of other important enhancments. Also, the combo disc is awesome for movie companies, they only need to run one line to create the discs, and it will work with new HD systems, and Legacy DVD systems. I don't see the purpose of using it for storage though.

Re:nei dei fat yin ge dik kok hai hung lung

[Anonymous Coward]

pok gai. nei ma ma sik sie.

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[alpha_foobar]

American fear mongering is killing american research. Traditionally America has embraced emigrants from other countries seeking 'liberty' in the USA.

It would be naive to believe that the USA always embraced emigrants. Though the current political situation in the USA dicourages sharing of information that is desirable in an International Academic community... it is also making it more difficult for students to study in the USA.

But why should I care?

Oh, and I don't think we should patent anything anyhow... the only winners with patenting are the lawyers. If a company doesn't want to pay loyalties to some company in China, then don't try and patent it.. then they won't realise its worth patenting and won't realise you are making a patent infringement.

Expect 3 formats: DVD and two kinds of Blu-ray

[DumbSwede]

This should be an ideal transitional format (assuming it's not to prone to damage). I applaud the fact that this should beat back HD-DVD once and for all. However, movies will likely be released in 3 formats now: standard DVD, hybrid Blu-Ray/DVD (more expensive), Full Blu-Ray (more expensive still). The Full Blu-Ray being released months or years later with added features and improved HD definition. Until about 30 or 40 percent of people have Blu-Ray players, rental stores will not stock many titles (only a few blockbusters), and HD enthusiasts will have to buy disks at higher sell through prices.

This probably speeds the adoption of Blu-Ray players and while not a complete panacea in the interim, it is probably better than a protracted war between Full Blu-Ray and the crippled HD-DVD/DVD hybrid.

For those holding out for a Tera-byte disk of some sort with Ultra-HD, I think 25-50Gig standard HD is just about good enough, and should be around for awhile. My HD experience at home is already superior to going to our local Cineplex. Given that Blu-Ray can vary its bit rate on the fly all the way up to about double broadcast HD, and using better codecs to boot, this should make for some truly stunning Blu-Ray releases in the future. The digital release in theaters of Star-Wars were not (in pixel count) better than HD (about 1 mega-pixel for Phantom Menace and 2 mega-pixel for Attack of the Clones). Ultra HD would be what they call a 4k scan (about 4 thousand horizontal lines, 8 meg-pixel). Expect this to be what theaters start releasing in soon. A good HD (2k) scan will look virtually identical unless you have REALLY expensive equipment and a 10-foot wide screen. Many people can't tell the difference between a good upconverted DVD and HD on a good system. Knowing what a good HD source looks like, I'm pretty sure UHD finally gets us to the point of diminishing returns. Not that UHD won't ever catch on, just don't expect as rapid adoption as DVD or Blu-Ray/HD-DVD. With HD specs already set in stone by the FCC, a custom higher format will have quite the battle to catch on.

I expect to have a Blu-Ray in my Computer by 2006. I may even start trying to sell off my DVD collection in 2005 before they become completely worthless. Given that most were purchased used on Amazon, it won't be that big a loss.

Floppies don't keep well.

[solios]

Leastwise, they're quite a bit more succeptible to engineering quality than other media- do note that post-floppy, all of the moving parts have been moved into the reader and we're basically jamming disk platters into drives these days. So in addition to "platter" quality, floppies, zips, syquest, etc. had several additional points of failure in the physical disk hardware.

Re:China is Only Winner in Standards Battle

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll, repost

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll, repost

this whole thing sounds wonderful....

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole thing sounds wonderful, but I can only imagine how expensive blank media for these drives will be. I can't even afford to buy dual layer media as it is now. (last time I checked it was going for around 8 bucks per disc.)a far cry from the 35 dollars per 100 dvd's I pay now.

Will I ever see inexpensive dual layer discs, or will I have to just have to kiss my dual layer burner goodbye and hope blue ray blank media is cheap enough to buy?

Re:this whole thing sounds wonderful....

[lachlan76]

From what I heard media producers will be switching to a new process over the next year or so which promises to cheapen DL-DVD media.

Re:this whole thing sounds wonderful....

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you get 100 discs for 35 bucks? Can you buy em online? I paid $50 for 50 discs on newegg last time I bought DVDs.

On a side note, can 4x or 8x DVDs burn in a 2x writer?

Re:this whole thing sounds wonderful....

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get 100 dvd+r from newegg for 40 bucks (including shipping)...dvd-r are a couple bucks more.
If thats too much for you, newegg sells a brand of dvd called legacy, you can get a 100 pack of those for 27 dollars. I believe they're dvd-r's too.

Re:this whole thing sounds wonderful....

[Anonymous Coward]

oh and it all depends on your burner...with my nec 3500a I can burn at 8x with 4x media

We are talking HD here

[Sycraft-fu]

There is goo dreason to want more space for higher quality. Yes, you technicly can get 1080p at DVD rates (7mbps) using newer, better codecs. You can see it with T2 extreme editon. If you have a Windows PC with about a 3+ghz P4 (or equal Athlon), you can watch a DVD that contains an HD version of the movie. It's damn impressive and a whole lot better than SD-DVD, but you can see artifacting on a good monitor.

Thus what we'd like to be able to do for HD-DVD is scale the data rate up a bit. Double would be nice, more would be better. It would also allow for the realistic use of MPEG-2 for HD content instead of use MPEG-4 or VC-1.

Consider that MiniDV, the consumer DV format is 25mbps and only captures SD video with about the same quality as Betacam SP.

Re:We are talking HD here

[Anonymous Coward]

The format is called DV, the cassette is called miniDV. There is also DV tape [full-size dv], and then there are other Digital formats on similar tape -- DVCAM, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, etc. Just like VHS is a format and VHS-C is a cassette type (as well as normal VHS).

exactly

[muyuubyou]

That's exactly the reason it's looking like VHS-Beta more and more... also HD-DVD is already there (or soon will be wherever you are), while BluRay is vapor.

MPEG motion vectors

[tepples]

Has anyone actually tested those new DVD players that upsample the video to 1080i? Does that really improve the picture quality over the TV doing its own internal upsampling?

In theory it could, as having the DVD's MPEG-2 motion vectors available makes it that much easier for the upsampler to know which blocks of the video to weave and which parts to bob.

12" discs

[Universal Indicator]

I don't really care which format wins, but what I think would be cool would be to bring back laserdisc-sized 12" discs again. Just think of the enormous amount of storage we could put into 12" with today's current technologies. Then start adding multi-layer technology, and you've got all the space you need for HD content plus extras!

And how cool would it be to have an external USB (or FireWire) 12" burner for your computer?!

Re:12" discs

[inject_hotmail.com]

That'd be wikked!

I want one...but only if the drive/reader is only slightly smaller than the size of my PC case...and mounted vertically because there isn't enough room for it to be horizontal. :D

I remember when I was young, only my uncle was "brave" enough to buy into it. Too bad the populace decided it was a was of money. Yeah, it was pretty annoying having to swap discs every 60 mins or whatever it was.

Inject.

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[HermanAB]

They have the right to do anything that we are unable to stop them from doing - that is Catch 22.

Re:nei dei fat yin ge dik kok hai hung lung

[HermanAB]

So hoo flung dung?

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[Thu25245]

This battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray has no meaning for Westerners.

Of course not. If I'm not mistaken, most of the patent holders for the various DVD formats are Japanese companies.

Old Document; New Facts --> Ugly Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

The document about China's ascension into the World Trade Organization (WTO) indicated full of promise for the West. Unfortunately, the Chinese have not done what they promised to do in the signed documents submitted to the WTO. The Chinese are still stealing Western intellectual property.

Myself, I need it for backup

[melted]

For me DVDs are good enough already if we're talking about movies. I'm not gonna buy a HDTV set until it goes below $1K in price for a decent size widescreen TV.

I want 35GB per disk for photo backups. I generate about 10GB of data in a "slow" month (mostly 4000dpi film scans), so my hard drives fill up pretty quickly.

DKK

[Compact Dick]

The DKK is the Danish Krone of Denmark, not Greece.

Re:DKK

[Zorilla]

Oops, you're right. That was a result of a overly-hasty Google search where I saw "DKK" and "Greece" next to each other.

Turns out theirs is actually the GRD.

Re:DKK

[Deternal]

Well, between 2010 and 2015 the EU's economy will be bigger then the US economy - likely closer to 2010 then 2015.

That said, I have no doubt something comparable will happen in the US with regards to movie pricing.

Denmark, not Greece.

[ambrosen]

But given that he doesn't live in the US, why would he talk about prices there?

It better be a tought layer

[Farmbubba]

at .1 mm, that is really thin outer layer compared to the old DVD specs. And is 25 gig's enough? 1.44 megs was good enough until 600 megs. That was good until 8 gigs. This is only at best only 5 times bigger than DVD, not 400 or 13 times bigger than old jumps in storage.

Compatability is not HD-DVD's advantage

[Anonymous Coward]

The posters is wrong in saying HD-DVD's compatability is its big advantage.

The whole reason HD-DVD stores less than Bluray is because the thickness of the protective plastic layer is the same thickness as it is for DVD and CD. This means the beam from the blue laser can't be as finely focused as when using the thinner Bluray media and therefore they have to settle for a lower capacity to ensure reliable reads.

Now, what does this do for HD-DVD? It means that every single factory already producing CDs and DVDs can start making HD-DVDs any time it wants. A factory that wants to press Bluray? All new everything to start making them.

The cost benefits for manufacturing are enormous. Plants will spend significantly less on new equipment, they can maintain ability to produce legacy discs, the techniques are proven and reliable, and more plants will be able to jump in to meet demand as it grows without having to make a commitment long in advance.

HD-DVD clearly benefits from much more sound engineering than Bluray. It really makes no sense for the industry to pay such a high overall cost just for such a piddly capacity increase.

Japan is part of the West.

[Anonymous Coward]

But Japan is part of the West. Japanese companies, like American companies, are being shafted in mainland China. The Chinese are pirating intellectual property from Japanese companies.

12” No, but 7” might have worked (in the

[DumbSwede]

Having a back collection of about 100 12" laser discs I can tell you this is not the way to go.

Sure they would have the storage, but the disks are THICK and HEAVY. They take time to spin up and stabilize. I suspect the wobble would be hard to deal with at the kind of track pitches DVD have, so you are only using a fraction of the area you could. They were expensive to produce even at the end, probably like 10 to 15 dollars to manufacturer, instead of 10 to 15 cents for DVDs. With Blu-Ray in sight there is just no need. Teleport us back 5-10 years and release something short of HD but better than DVD on 7" like an old 45rpm record, now your talking. 7" media can still be fairly thin and light, but still sturdy. I always liked the size, and can imagine the 7" jackets looking better than the stupid rectangle boxes DVDs come in. Probably would take up the same space or less in a storage rack.

To Rant on about DVD holders a moment longer, I guess they wanted to be sure you didn't mistake them for CD crystal cases (which admittedly are crap for holding up). Disney's early cases took the cake for being monstrously large, and wouldn't fit in standard DVD racks. I guess also the industry wants a standard case the can take two disks for extra long movies or the special features disks. Still what a waste of physical storage space if you want to keep your covers with the DVDs. I personally wish they would include a 5" square slick back flier so I could keep every thing in a CD valet (which I do for my travelling collection).

One final complaint about DVD cases, WHY can't they standardize on a release button that works, and works well, for all cases. While I'm always able to get the DVD out, there have been times I worried I might crack it in the process. I'm sure there are a lot of senior citizens that can't get them out at all from some cases.

Red vs. Blue

[The Bubble]

This is something that I have not understood from the get-go: The way it was explained to me, while blu-ray is based on the combination of today's video compression technology with an advancement in optical technology (blue lasers), hd-dvd is based on the combination of today's optical technology (perhaps incrementally improved, I'm not sure) with an advancement in video compression (mpeg-4). My question, then, is why is there this unnecessary competition? Why not combine these two standards bring to the table, using mpeg-4 on blue-laser optical media. Of course, hd-dvd still has the benefit of being an easy manufacturing transition, but that didn't keep us from converting our tapes to cd's.

OMFG!~ WIN!

[Corellon Larethian]

The only downside is the tolerances allowed on the disk. It will take an entirely different kind of plastic coating, on both sides, to keep the data retrievable. It's likely to take special caddies at first, until they get the laser receivers sensitive enough to be able to focus through a scratch.

This means the fucking movie companies would be likely to actually be able to "license" out the movie. Flimsy media == Oodles of Revenue.

I'd rather just keep it simple. Two layers is more than enough. This is absolutely wonderful technology, even with just a single layer (25GB). Three BR layers (75GB) would be very useful to computer users, but it would take writing speeds of 50meg/sec to make it tangible.

Re:OMFG!~ WIN!

[The Bubble]

Actually, TDK has developed a 'new' coating for optical media (they call it 'Armor Plated') that supposedly prevents all scratch-related damage to data. They coat the disc with two layers of silica and a layerof fluorine resin. Though TDK hasn't revealed exactly how this protects the disc, those that have gotten their hands on the media have been 'unable to damage the disc at all,' attacking it with steel wool and permanent marker (it just wipes right off). Because of the promise of this technology, Sony has decided to forgo caddy-based media; and if Sony's that sure of it, I'm pretty inclined to trust it as well.

Don't forget

[Sleetan]

the eXtreme! Edition, and my personal favorite, the Boomstick Edition.

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[wernercd]

I notice your to much of a bitch to say this non-ac. Grow some balls (after your mom ungrounds you of course.) and the post that without the AC to hide behind. Fucking coward.

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[Anonymous Coward]

I notice your to much of a bitch

"that you're too".

and the post that

"and post".

Sadly I just don't care

[TractorBarry]

Well I'm afraid that I don't care what the winner in the new format wars will be. Whichever wins I'll not be "upgrading" until my old stuff dies. I just don't care about watching fims any more.

As enough people have already said it'll just be another excuse to put more unnecessary crap on discs. And on this note the current output of the American film industry is so dire that I've not bought a single disc all year. Nor have I been to the pictures (movies for y'all) or rented anything.

Sorry but it's all the same tired old shite.

1 Evil power threatens world.
2 Good guy can't get girl.
3 Car chase.
4 Random crapola plot
5 Car chase.
6 Good guy gets girl.
7 Another fucking car chase.
8 Semi unfinished ending just in case it sells and a remake looks profitable.

Swap two of the car chases for songs and you've got the "kiddie" (Disney, Pixar et. al.) market covered too.

What a load of fucking shite.

As for backing stuff up well just get some more hard drives in removable caddies/USB cradles. A couple of 640Gb backup drives should be enough for anyone (ducks)

Blu Ray/HD ? Oooh it's so exciting which do I choose ?

Guess who's got a new shovel ?

Re:Both sides simultaneously? - can't work

[Snard]

At least not easily. You would need to spin the disc down and reverse the direction to read the spiral track on the other side. Remember that clockwise on one side of the disc means counter-clockwise on the other side.

Re:China: Only Winner in Format Battle

[wernercd]

lol All you can comment on is the fact that I don't care enough bout grammer to edit my post? Wow. And you got the balls to do it ac? what courage. Guess I'll take lessons from you once I get back from Iraq. I could learn some stuff I guess.