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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)"
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.
---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....
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.
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.
700 mb to 4.5 gb..
the 9gb DVD is 2nd generation DVD burning.. want to guess what second gen blu/hdvd will bring?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
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.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
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.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
...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
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
Letter To Iran
Troll, repost
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?
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.
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.
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.
Letter To Iran