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Blu-Ray DVDs Hit 100 GB
Xesdeeni writes "According to The Register and MacWorld, TDK has unveiled a Blu-Ray DVD with four layers that will hold a whopping 100 GB of data. This is shortly after the previously reported HD-DVD announced three-layer HD-DVD that would hold a "mere" 45 GB. Unfortunately, this is also on the heels of the news that the HD DVD unification talks have stalled."
Personally, HD-DVD's disgraceful AACS is enough to make me cheer for Blu-Ray, but I really think that BD-ROMs will win the battle.
Go Blu-Ray!
We already have problems with DVDs and CDs going bad. From what I've read, the Blu-Ray discs may be even more fragile due to their extremely thin protective layer. If I am to pick between the two coming standards (Blu-Ray vs HD), I'll choose the more reliable one.
There's got to be a price for these increases in storage capacity. With more data in a smaller package, aren't you just asking for larger errors due to physical damage and defect?
I'm just thinking of how scratched my average disk can get, and imagine if that scratch now corrupts 200 megs of data instead of a few bits in a song.
When are we gonna have to enclose these things in some sort of 8-track like case?
:::: the insomniac's digest
Yes, but is this something that will be standard on all blu-ray devices. Will the PS3 be able to read blu-ray discs which can reach 100GiG? Further, will game developers take advatage of that much space for larger, more expansive worlds?
Will the content providers step up and use the capacity?
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
But back to the topic at hand: The industry would benefit more from having ONE SINGLE TRUE UNIFIED STANDARD as opposed to a couple of standards, which would confuse people.
Actually, it doesn't matter, as we've seen with the DVD +/- wars, because manufacturers stepped up and released burners capable of burning either medium. The only losers are the early adopters who are stuck with the losing format.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Being robust is also and advantage -- but NOBODY talks about it. I find that DVDs are quite prone to having problems if you get them scratched. With the density increasing, this problem is likely to get worse. A larger DVD - ho hum. An indestructible DVD - that excites me!
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
SACD and DVD-A are not failing to catch on because of a platform war. They are failing to catch on because nobody cares.
The vast majority are productions which were "enhanced" for these formats were not actual improvements by the artist, nor are they usually identical recordings at a higher bitrate for the sake of audiophile appeal... but rather a naked attempt by the label to sell you a slightly more flashy second copy of an album you already bought.
Who in the hell is going to buy an alternate player just to support a format which offers pretty much no real advantage to the consumer?
From a consumer standpoint, there isn't much difference between the formats other than capacity. With either one, you're going to need new hardware to use it.
The real difference is in the manufacturing end. HD-DVD is designed with the goal of minimizing the amount of changes needed at the existing manufacturing plants, making it cheaper and easier for existing manufacturers to upgrade. Considering that movies often come with extra discs without increasing the retail price, odds are that Blu Ray isn't expensive enough that a movie on a Blu Ray disc would sell for more than one on an HD-DVD disc.
Considering Blu Ray discs are now reaching more than double the size of HD-DVD's, I think it's enough of a difference to justify the additional one time cost of upgrading the manufacturing plants. By the time we get writable versions of these discs, we're all going to have terrabyte hard disks and complaining how it takes over 20 HD-DVD's to back up our system.
I'm a composer/producer. It's actually as easy or easier to make a surround mix than a stereo mix. /.) and entertaining, there really is no reason to pay for the equipment/setup, and therefore no reason to spend the extra bucks on the higher quality discs.
But it's difficult for the average consumer to have a playback system that makes it worthwhile. You have to spend a few thousand dollars, and have the right room, and then spend your time sitting in the sweet spot to listen to your music.
If, like me, you listen to music while driving, exercising (oh wait, this is
The public at large (Joe Sixpack) gets all confused with this 2-format thing.
Joe Fourpack seems to understand that they can't play XBox games in their PS3.
Based on past OpenOffice.org discussions, it is also clear that Joe Fourpack understands that it is best to just use Microsoft Office, because it is not interoperable with the others. i.e. multiple standards.
Think of the benefit from multiple formats to the content owners (not to be confused with content producers).
If you have one type of DVD player in your living room, but computers (big name ones) come with a different type, you canot play the DVD on your computer. If your car has yet a different type of player, you will need to conveniently purchase another copy of the content for your car.
Yes, I am being sarcastic after the article about needing biometric ID's in order to play your DVD.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
For a lot of people who DO have DVD-A and/or SACD recordings, the primary appeal is surround sound, not higher resolutions or sample rates.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
From what I've read about the formats, it seems very unlikely that there will be any "combo" drives for BluRay and HD. DVD -/+ disks (plus all the way baby) are similar enough and use the same laser that doing a dual drive isn't that hard.
Personally I think I like BluRay partially because it seems to have the ability to offer a lot more storage space than HD. The one question about that is the time it takes to create a disk, I don't want to wait a full day to burn 100GB. However, the bigger reason I like BluRay is the name. I mean come on, HD-DVD? Boooooooring. Not only that but it will introduce confusion where there's already to much. HD-TV, Hard Drive, HD floppies, Half Duplex, Harley-Davidson. I mean, I don't need any more things I have to explain 10 times a day to my grandparents.
Besides, blue is cool. Everything nowadays has those great blue LEDs. The way I look at it, you're either with the blue pop culture or you're with the mole men.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Now instead of complaining that when you buy 30-minute shows on DVD which only put two episodes/disk, we'll have a format with 25x the capacity which is still only holding 2 episodes.
That's always bugged me about that kind of stuff on TV. They want to sell you a bazillion dollars worth of stuff. You want it all on one disk.
Then again, I have a huge problem equating two 30 minute episodes of a show which has been running for several seasons to the equivelant (or more) then a movie which cost over $100 million to make.
Yet, time and time again we see just that -- two episodes of Freinds (or whatever) costs as much as one Lord of the Rings movie -- personally I think they need to look at macroeconomics -- Mr Smith is not getting the utils of enjoyment out of the second purchase.
There is no reason to believe this won't keep happening as disks get bigger.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yes, but data integrity is the real key.
I've been burning DVD+-R's (4.7gb) and when I run the "verify data" option to confirm a good burn, the defective rate on my DVDs is about 1 in 5. I've had situations where the DVD burns and verifies perfectly in the burner but I cannot get it to read in another DVD reader.
Then there is the question of DVD rot. A DVD is a sandwich of two plastic layers. There is the possibility that the cement that binds these layers can become unglued.
For routine DVDs, I find myself burning 2 copies to be safe. For important DVDs I burn 3 copies (and use media from different manufacturers).
My primary DVD burner is a dual layer burner but I do not trust DVD media enough to burn dual layer discs. These 3 and 4 layer discs leave me wary of their long term reliability.
As a data addict, I feel I must weigh in here. There are a few concerns:
Migration
I have switched exclusively to recordable DVD for backups about 20 months ago. The extra capacity was dearly needed, as my CD-R collection was growing large by bounds and leaps, making it unmanageable. At first, like everyone else, I thought whoa - 4.37GB - surely nobody will need more that than. Famous last words.
What was interesting to observe is that a) the transition to DVD from CD-R happened faster for me than from previous backup mediums to CD-R (Zip disks, MO discs, etc.). Whereas I had used CD-R in conjunction with my previous mediums for quite a while, jumping from CD-R to DVD-R was much quicker. About the only things that held me back are the fact that most OS installation media are still CD-R images, and the fact that the mp3-capable HU in my car only reads CD-R. That's why I still stock CD-R, otherwise I would have none.
Capacity
I felt the capacity of DVD-R as being limiting much quicker than I did so with CD-R. In other words, 4.37GB "got small" much faster for me than 700MB did. Broadband is here to stay and is only getting faster. The average computer, its display adapter, is getting faster and can display higher bitrate video content. Filesize is only going up.
Evolution
I feel that DVD-R is a clear improvement on technology compared to CD-R. There are a number of practical issues to consider. It looks like they did their homework and fixed the main issues with CD-R.
Number one is sandwiching the recording layer between protective plastic discs, as opposed to putting it on top, as CD-R did, where it is easily damageable.
The other is the overall improvement of recording reliability. Granted I only use high-quality media, but it seems to me that either thru improved error-correction algorithms and/or improved quality control/design of both recorder and media, DVD-R far surpasses CD-R in reliability. I haven't burnt one single bad disc that was directly related to media or recorder in over 1000 burns on multiple recorders. CD-Rs would often fail to verify.
Price
There is no contest as far as the price, per GB, of DVD-R vs. hard drive for backup purposes. Believe it or not, backup media has traditionally been lagging behind the real needs of customers.
Standards
CD-R had no competing standards. Good. In the beginning of DVD-R, it was a problem if you had a -R and someone else had a +R. Bad. They fixed it by having virtually all drive manufacturers, for both recorders and readers, seamlessly support both standards. Fair enough, and it gets a "fair -to- good" grade. It is transparent enough that today you don't need to even look at what media you're buying (if your name is "John Smith," of course - us freaks look at much more than just the brand of media we buy). But DVD-R was clearly a step into the general direction of chaos as compared to CD-R. It looks like the next gen will be considerably worse, unless one of the standards completely kills the other one before either comes to market.
Conclusion
Please note that I am not closely following the BR vs. HD-DVD race because I think it would be a waste of time at this point. This is a disclaimer for any specifics I mention - they are only approximations.
I feel that 100GB should not be viewed as realistic. 4 layers are not practical unless they are introduced from the get-go. I offer current DVD-R dual-layer as an example. It has 2 major cons: 1) it is currently roughly 10-30 times as expensive as single layer DVD-R for roughly double capacity, 2) it does not burn anywhere near the speed at which DVD-R SL burns (fastest is 4x vs. 16x, realistic is 2.4x vs. 12x). The only people who spring for it are the ones that use them for video backups. Being that I only back up data, it would be of no use to me even if one of the two above points were to go away.
Therefore, lets say a single layer disc will have 25GB. Nothing wrong with that, but by the time it is introduced it will be "just enough" to satisfy the needs of the market.
I feel that backups will still be lagging for a while into the future. Don't believe the hype, and don't feed the trolls.
The industry would benefit more from having ONE SINGLE TRUE UNIFIED STANDARD as opposed to a couple of standards, which would confuse people.
The industry as a whole would benefit, we all know that. However, who should back out? The one that steps down loses everything and the other reigns supreme. In the DVD +/- war, neither + nor - won, and both formats are about. None of the producers stepped down, everyone "won" as opposed to one side losing.