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Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD
Michael S writes
sent in a good story which sumarizes the current status of the
battle between Blu-Ray & HD-DVD. There still isn't really a clear victor... or is there? I for one can't wait for this crap to get settled out so we can just enjoy having huge discs.
but wont they get scratched/ruined easily? ... as reported previously on slashdot
It takes an idiot to do cool things - that's why it's cool!
Spec-wise, Blu-Ray wins. Blu-Ray also has the support of Sony (and therefore will be in the PS3), has Apple supporting it (and therefore will be in future Macs by default...and Macs are used in the media content industry), and it supports all the codecs and specs that HD-DVD supports. In addition, it has larger storage space. Even Dell and Disney are supporting it.
HD-DVD's only benefit is that there won't be a need to alter today's manufacturing processes as much as Blu-Ray will require.
I predict (and hope) Blu-Ray will win. I know people love to cite Betamax in these articles, but just because Betamax died out doesn't mean the better format will die out in this case either. There's a lot of important backing for Blu-Ray.
Well, next to the tablet I'm typing this in on, I have a Mac SE that I'm setting up for my school's PreK. It's sitting on top of it's external CD-Drive, which is of course caddy-based. Everybody thought it was so much more convenient to not need caddys, but we still have cases. Why not just make cases that function AS caddy(s).
Just a thought.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Inphase in January introduced their prototype.
Where is the news on this ?
Funny, since Dell *and* HP supports Blu-Ray. Kind of "throws a wrench" in your theory. Doesn't it?
minidisc beating cdr
minidics never really seemed to catch on in the US, at least in my experiences. but i spent some time in japan when i was in college (there for a semester during the 2000-2001 school year). just about everyone i met there used minidics. lots of my friends there had portable minidic players instead of portable CD players, etc. also, just about every piece of home stereo equipment i saw there came standard with a minidisc player. while minidisc may not have been the top form of distribution for music and such, i'd say it had it's share of success.
Slackware
The plastic layer to the label side is something like 1mm thick, the laser side is 0.1mm thick. So the label side is safer.
Scratches on the laser side, on the other hand, are a different matter. The Blu-Ray group is requiring the use of a particular anti-scratch material that supposedly won't scratch with steel wool. It was used on the PSP face plate and some journalists reported the only way to scratch it was to take a knife and dig into it.
No, if I'm remembering correctly, the HD-DVD's are encoded in such a way that they will still play in most old DVD players too
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
RTFA
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Yes, but Apple are but a member of an evil global conspircy, a group of super companies who serve an advanced alien race, and are trying to STEAL YOUR BRAIN to feed their evil masters.
The transfer rate for blu-ray is, accoriding to their FAQ, 36 Mb/s, not 36MB/s. Which means that 1x blu-ray (4.5MB/s) is considerably slower than today's 16x DVD drives, which are ~21MB/s.
From the above linked article:
So your objection would seem to be overruled.
It's because of this coating that Blu-Ray will not require a caddy.
It's also worth noting that this same coating can be used on regular DVDs, and, one presumes, on HD-DVDs as well. Plenty more info can be found by googling DURABIS.
As reported elsewhere in the thread, Blu-Ray discs are made a material far more resistant to scratches than most DVD's today. So in fact they should be better off as far as renting goes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People seem to forget that Sony has had a hand in many of the most prevalent formats around;
The first being the 3.5" Floppy Disk. Sony invented the "micro" floppy disk drive, releasing its first commercially available model called the OA-D30V in 1981 for Apple.
Not to mention the CD-ROM was created by a collabaration by Sony and Phillips. The same duo helped launch the compact-cassete in the 60s. The DVD-ROM was a compromise between Sony/Phillip's Multimedia MMCD and the Toshiba/Warner's SuperDisk.
As for Blu-ray, while Sony is the major backer it is not a Sony format. Main issue that will play a major role in this format battle is royality fees and how each format handles how content providers and manufacters pay each consortium. There is major discontent on the DVD consortium's royalites, which charges $10 per device, with massive competitive pressure manufacters that keep prices low, manufacter's have profit margins on DVD players are razor thin. There is also the 3C and 6C consortium's technical liceencing fees that also are a major headache. Unsuprisingly, Blu-ray is designed to avoid much of Toshiba's 6C technical licence that it has on DVD.
RAR archives can also do this, in any percentage you'd like. Just adds in parity data and fixes it as needed.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
The backward compatibility they are talking about is in the manufacturing, not in the player. The players for either BR or HDDVD will likely be built to play standard DVDs, but wouldn't necessarily have to.
As mentioned elsewhere, HDDVD can be made in a way that it has a standard DVD layer and a HDDVD layer, but that isn't an official format, as far as I know.
Rob