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Java to Appear in Next-Gen DVD players
Ivan P. writes "Sun Microsystems's Java technology will be built into Blu-ray DVD players, executives said on Monday during Sun's JavaOne trade show, a development that advances the technology in the consumer electronics market for which Sun originally developed the software. 'Java will be used for control menus, interactive features, network services and games,' said Yasushi Nishimura, director of Panasonic's Research and Development Company of America. 'This means that all Blu-ray Disc player devices will be shipped equipped with Java.'" Next stop, annoying Flash intros.
Microsoft's codec is in the HD-DVD spec
That means it will take about a week for someone to write a crack to bypass all those annoying trailers we have to watch before we can actually watch the dvd we payed for.
Since when did operating systems become a religion?
Well, at least they'll take up less space than the current annoying MPEG2 intros...
Next stop, annoying Flash intros. Sigh... how this relates to java is beyond me... java is actually a very powerful language that drives alot of enterprise solutions and embedded systems. People always confuse java with java applets, or for some reason think java is crap. I used to too, before I got to know the language better. Oh, do I like Ruby or python better? Sure. But that doesnt remove the fact that java is here to stay and has proven itself more than enough in the enterprise. So why slashdot's hostility towards it remains is beyond me. I've seen large scale systems attempted to be developed in perl and believe me... that doesnt work well at all! :)
After reading the article, it seems to me that these new media standards are pushing far beyond just new ways to store video. Gosling is quoted as saying "Part of the DVD standard is the players have network ports out of the back". This just smacks of network controlled DRM, and the ability to run java bytecode when the discs boot could allow a whole new range of lockdown facilities on the disks. Not to mention the amount of complexity having network & JVM functionality must be introducing to the end units. Surely even mass production wil struggle to bring such complex devices down to sane prices in the near future.
This would appear to be strongly pushing the bias of practicality toward the opposing HD-DVD camp, while attempting to strengthen Blu-Ray's position as technologically more advanced and superior.
Business Voyeur
Is it just me, or am I the only one completely freakin annoyed with DVD menus? One out of every two has a DVD menu that is absolutely infuriating from a usability perspective. Half the time I'm guessing at what is about to happen, as there appears to be not one freakin convention in the industry as to how DVD menus should be laid out, operate, and respond. I appears to be a totally 'make-work' industry, and nobody can convince me that the production of fancy interfaces doesn't cost a little extra. I'm not saying you can't figure them out after a little fumbling, but sheesh, I'm buying a movie and some comentary, not a magazine that happens to contain a movie.
ARGH. Probably one of my absolute top peeves of the last 10 years of technology. Its enough to make one weep for the comforting sight of a simple, nondescript blinking 12:00.
As for Java, I don't care what it is. I hope to god that interface creation is done through SOME kind of standardized framework or toolkit so at least widgets can at least act, if not look similar, DVD to DVD.
I know I'm asking for a lot tho, because it really seems to me that there are a lot of things in our technilogical world that are done simply because somebody sees a potential way to make money and successfully sells the problem (standardized DVD menus, in this case, the horror) to an industry.
"Old man yells at systemd"
> Next stop, annoying Flash intros.
The playstation 2 already has a flash player in it, used by various games for their menu systems among other things.
I guess game companies try not to annoy their customers, so Flash gets used reasonably there.
Damn, now we just need to get these things a network connection and a plugin for Azureus, then I can download new movies before their released, watch them on my TV, and maybe if its also one of those nifty VHS/DVD combo things, burn my new movie to a disk.
Scott Swezey
Although I see what you are saying about the danger of a network based DRM creeping into discs, I think it very unlikley - a deivce that requires a working network connection would not be nearly as mass-market as DVD players are today. It simply cannot be a requirement.
There may be some specialized discs that do something like this but I don't not think it will be mandatory.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The inclusion of Java could lead to nicer open source DVD authoring apps that would allow easier control over menu workings. And it's a lot nicer to have a standard language underneath rather than the cryptic menu building language of todays DVD's.
At the very least those games they always throw on kids DVD's might not be so awful to play if they do not have to be shoe-horned into a system never really designed for games.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is 'Insightful'?! This is a troll to start Java is slow because applets are stupid war. Java is a platform. Code it how you will. It's obviously a damn good platform considering its extremely wide spread use despite strong arm tactics by its competitors.
In Tivo's case, it actually is Java. The interface used to be very quick and snappy. Then they decided to push the Home Media Option out to all users, and the same quick, responsive UI has now slowed down to a horrible crawl. The hardware didn't change at all, only the software.
As for the poster making the crack about putting Windows Mobile on a box, Microsoft already has a program with Comcast and Motorola where the HD DVR box Comcast offers uses Microsoft technology. I have no idea if it's WinCE-based or Windows XP Embedded-based, but it's very quick and responsive compared to my now-sluggish Tivo. It doesn't have all of the searching and filtering features of Tivo (I wish it at least had thumbs-up/down), but it has a more responsive UI and records HD streams so I use it much more than my Tivo (relegated to my bedroom TV and a basic cable feed).
Note: the majority of people couldn't give a hang about back-end, so called 'enterprise' solutions with Java)
Yes, because, like, no-one uses E-Bay, banks, stock-markets, airline on-line booking systems.
I'm sure the majority of people couldn't give a hang about these.
As far as I understand it the .Net technologies and this are complimentary in that they tackle different but similar problems. Although .Net supplies a byte code interpreter of its own (CLR) it isn't necessary to use it (in fact most .Net apps are compiled to x86 machine language). .Net supplies a standard for language and API linkage data, representations of API's if you like. JVM supplies a binary level interface for execution of code.
Also, it isn't that people aren't (they are just in very small numbers) writing JVM byte code in something other than Java the point is they _can_. There are, I believe, JVM back ends for GCC for example.
In this case JVM is being used a little like XML. The syntax is there (the mark up language) but the tags and data mean nothing unless you know what they mean (XHTML for example). This is why I think information on the API is probably as interesting, if not more so, than the machine level programming model.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
In Tivo's case, it actually is Java. The interface used to be very quick and snappy. Then they decided to push the Home Media Option out to all users
The problem with your reasoning is that the quick and snappy UI was also in Java.
a) Java was DESIGNED for embedded systems, first and foremost. That's why it is hardware-agnostic; because it allows the hardware makers to throw in whatever chips are cheap in bulk at the time, change on a whim, and still push out the same upgrade to everyone. Being cross-platform in the MacOS/Linux/Windows way was just sort of a side-effect. Think about how much this will benefit set-top manufacturers!!
b) Java isn't interpreted anymore... its just-in-time compiled and then executed as native code. A bit of a start-up pause while the classes compile, that's all.
Jeremy
Java actually wasn't designed for generic 'embedded systems', it was designed for set-top boxes, but it was apparently too expensive for the prospective customers.
So this was Gosling's original intent. I don't know whether it's good or bad that it's now fulfilling that intent. I'd rather see Ruby in the standard, it'd be a lot easier to work with (and cheaper to license).
Not even his posted comment, but to him, he is objectionable:
Next stop, annoying Flash intros.
Right... the processor that will run the JVM, if not a specific Java chip, then the DVD will certainly have a chip capable of running an embedded flash player.
Now. I have to shout sorry:
FLASH IS A DISPLAY / VECTOR ANIMATION TECHNOLOGY.
1) It has nothing to do with Java - THIS news is AWESOME and I look forward to being able to write my own programs to take screen caps, and write a whimsical comment while the player is playing, and email it to a friend. Or keep a log of my movies and ratings as I watch them, or write a book mark sharing XML format, and wire it to the remote, so you can bookmark film locations, and plug your own audio commentary on them. (think about wedding videos / holiday video, and you will see why this is nice - but also for mainstream stuff)
2) So, Java can do games and animation, and even there are Java flash players, and SVG players, and MPEG4 players. Just because the technology is there, doesn't mean annoying 'Flash' (unrelated) intros.
3) *ahem*
What is more annoying is the abundance of unskipable content on DVD's, and this has nothing to do with either of the unrelated technologies that you have mentioned.
If this can be screwed off, I would be happier, I still haven't had time to look for a firmware hack for my DVD player.
Anyway.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
OK, yes, the announcement is something new and it is relevant for /. to report this kind of story, but as far as the DVD industry is concerned, they blew their chance and this is essentially old news.
Every DVD player comes equiped with its own CPU, and even its own assembly code that is a part of the DVD-Video specification. This is already a part of the DVD-Video spec from even the very beginning. The problem is that Hollywood (together with the other members of the DVD Consortium... now DVD Forum) deliberately crippled the CPU so that it could in reality do very little. I've described this CPU has having 26 registers, no RAM at all, and 1 TB ROM address space, with incredible video capabilities but lousy rendering capabilities (sub-pictures).
Frankly, I think the DVD Forum blew their chance at having a cheap consumer entertainment computer back when the original design was put together back in the mid 1980s. If the CPU would have even had just a little bit more computing power, including a small (even 64 K) amount of RAM and text rendering capabilities (nothing new or even expensive to implement back when the design was being put together) they would have had not only a movie playing machine, but a computing platform that would have been more widely distruted than the X-Box or Playstation.
Even before the DVD-Video 1.0 spec came out (it was at a beta 0.98 when I mentioned this) I was suggesting to the design committee for DVD-Video to incorporate Java into the specification. Even then (about 10 years ago) I felt that some sort of programming environment would have been both easy to implement and offer to make DVD-Video something well beyond a simple movie playback box. Obviously my idea fell on deaf ears. Too bad I didn't patent the idea (perhaps I should have).
The DVD Forum will probabaly screw this one up as well, but at least they are going down the right general direction. IMHO there is no reason to make it specific to the Blu-ray format except as a splash to make the new generation of players seem to have more capabilities. Existing DVD discs certainly could be using this same capability, and there is plenty of space on a DVD for some binary (even raw source code) programming instructions, with a full two hour movie.
Do I get this right?
A $50 box that is quiet, plugged into my TV, plugged into the Internet, and can run custom code from a custom disk that I burn?
Possible applications anyone?
A cheap slave box with a custom Java code that functions as an alternate type of MythTV front end, that streams video on demand from a MythTV backend?
Games? (Using only the remote control as an input device?)
A general porpoise Java app could be written that talks to a server, where the server "drives" the user interface on the TV screen. This general purpose DVD only needs to be released once. Applications can be written on your Linux box that present any type of user interface for any purpose. Home control menus and applications, for example. Show me the latest Slashdot headlines. (But the custom code for this is on the Linux box, the DVD is just a general remote driven user interface toolkit.) Show me the current weather map. Show me the front door security camera.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.