Fujifilm Blu-ray & HD DVD Media Mid 2006

Michael writes to tell us TheTechLounge is reporting that Fuji Film has announced the release of Blu-Ray and HD DVD media by mid 2006. From the article: "Consumers are driving demand for interactive gaming and entertainment applications that require enormous storage capacity," noted Steve Solomon, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Recording Media Division, Fuji Photo Film U.S.A. "Fujifilm coating technology will ensure the precision and quality of signal strength in these new media formats. The success of new recording technologies depends on the availability of affordable, reliable media and our scientists are already working to perfect next-generation storage solutions, long before they hit the market."

Comments

Good thing

[JonN]

To be honest, even though I have heard a lot of complaining and what not about the new DVD technology, I feel there is one part in TFA that shows that this is a necessary step, regardless of hardware upgrade costs and whatever else:

With mainstream adoption of high definition (HD) content, television sets and recording devices, consumers and retailers will need new storage technologies to handle ever-expanding digitized files. For example, a two-hour program in HD creates a digital file roughly 15-25 Gigabytes in size, or the equivalent of more than 13 hours of standard-definition TV.

I got a HDTV for the purpose of watching high definition television. True I can get HDTV cable, satellite, etc. however if I want to watch my favorite documentary, I would prefer it HD then standard, same goes for all the other movies I love to watch.

Re:Good thing

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

For example, a two-hour program in HD creates a digital file roughly 15-25 Gigabytes in size,

They are lying through exaggeration. When most people talk about HD, they are referring to the ATSC standard which is MPEG2 at roughly 8.5GB/hour, tops - and is often null-padded to maintain a constant-bitrate, making the effective bitrate substsantially less than 8.5GB/hour. So a full 2 hour program is 17GB.

When you look at the newer HD formats like Europe is going with, ones that implement MPEG4 or even some of the funky things that Microsoft has already released (Terminator2, bunch of IMAX, and some other hollywood/foreign movies in Europe) then it is relatively easy to get 2 hours of "HD content" on a regular single-layer DVD.

So, if MPEG4 were used to record to permanent storage, regular recordable DVD's would be sufficient.

Re:Good thing

[MrBandersnatch]

Indeed, I was making just the same point (less eliquently) earlier today.

In fact, arnt they using H.264 for blu-ray? Id be interested to know how large a file would be for an hours HD content (on average). Roughly 2 GB would be my guess....I may have to actually try it :)

Re:Good thing

[Kjella]

They are lying through exaggeration. When most people talk about HD, they are referring to the ATSC standard which is MPEG2 at roughly 8.5GB/hour, tops - and is often null-padded to maintain a constant-bitrate, making the effective bitrate substsantially less than 8.5GB/hour. So a full 2 hour program is 17GB.

When you look at the newer HD formats like Europe is going with, ones that implement MPEG4 or even some of the funky things that Microsoft has already released (Terminator2, bunch of IMAX, and some other hollywood/foreign movies in Europe) then it is relatively easy to get 2 hours of "HD content" on a regular single-layer DVD.

While you are correct, the ATSC standard is also quite heavily compressed compared to current DVDs. Notice that 1920x1080 = 6x 720x480. 54GB Blu-Ray = 6x 9GB DVD. If we are going for MPEG4 in Europe, I missed it completely. TV broadcasts in my country are none OTA, none cable, I think one pan-european on satellite. The first people see of HDTV will probably be the PS3. I don't think you can tell the difference between Blu-Ray and a 9GB WMV on a 1280x720 or 1368x768 TV though, and that's what 99% of the marketed HDTVs have. On the other hand, for example Terminator 2 was released 2,5 years ago and Microsoft has completely failed to bring HDTV movies to the mass market.

Right now I don't think it's about the technology be it HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or WMV DVDs, it is about getting a solid player base deployed. Xbox 360 doesn't have the market share nor HD-DVD, Intel VIIV doesn't have enough consumer appeal, and where the fuck are the WMV DVDs, except a few "proof-of-concepts"? It all depends how long the PS3 will drag out though, they don't want to say anything at CES meaning it's quite a while off. All in all it seems to me they've all dropped the ball.

Re:WHA?

[drinkypoo]

They just pulled it out of their ass. It looks a lot like the brain has a hologrammatic information storage system based on interference patterns between quantum fluctuations stored in calcium dendrites which are attached to neurons. As such, it is capable of storing representations of basically infinite amounts of information, much as a hologram does - if you remove part of a hologram, then the whole of the image is preserved, but the entire thing loses quality. If you remove part of the human brain, then the whole of memory is preserved, but it is also degraded (to some degree) as a whole.

The 125 GB thing is as purely bullshit as the 30 Hz vision thing (it's a guideline, not a rule, and vision has nothing to do with scanning rates unless you're a computer) and should be disregarded completely. No one has any fucking idea what the upper limit on human information storage is.

Re:Consumers Driving Demand?

[Kjella]

I'm sure they're *also* demanding the enormous hardware upgrade costs that will inevitably come with a new media standard. /sarcasm

2,5 years ago I bought a DVD burner for 2200,- NOK
Now I bought a much better one for 400,- NOK

Some of us are willing to pay. Yes, we're quite probably insane. I expect to get a Blu-Ray burner too before most. My 1920x1200 LCD screen doesn't have HDCP though, so well... if they want my money, it's not hard to get. I'm sure there will be other options if they aren't cooperative.

Re:Consumers Driving Demand?

[Anonymous Coward]

2.5 years ago, I bought a dvd burner for $85 CDN

last week, I bought a DVD burner for $60 CDN

I think you got screwed.

Re:How about...

[slavemowgli]

Once double-layer DVD-Rs won't be the "best" (i.e., biggest) media anymore, they'll drop in price pretty quickly.

first videos to be released on Blu-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6296434.htm l

Rings, Harry and Kong to go high-def
As studios dish slate news at Consumer Electronics Show
By Scott Hettrick 1/3/2006

JAN. 4 | The Mission: Impossible and Lord of the Rings trilogies as well as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Peter Jacksons King Kong all will be released on high-definition digital discs this year.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, almost every studio is expected to announce the first slate of high-def digital disc titles coming to market in 2006. More than 75 new and old movies and TV shows are expected with the introduction of the first DVD player, with dozens and maybe hundreds more by the end of the year.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, the studio with the most at stake in its Blu-ray Disc format, is being the most aggressive with plans to introduce the upcoming theatrical release Underworld Evolution day-and-date with the DVD in late spring/early summer. The studio will have 20 Sony and MGM titles including XXX and Robocop ready to go even earlier, when players are expected to be released as early as March.

Sony also will release four catalog titles each month beginning this summer, every new theatrical release day-and-date on DVD and Blu-ray Disc and the first high-def version of a TV series to be announced so far from a major studio, Stargate: Atlantis.

Additionally, Sony is going out on a limb and committing to the debut of two titles--Bridge on the River Kwai and Black Hawk Down--using the 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray Disc, which has been running behind development time from the standard 25GB single-layer disc.

The studio also is announcing plans Wednesday for summer titles featuring advanced interactive gaming using the BD Java software, which has sparked some dissension from Hewlett-Packard within the Blu-ray Disc camp. SPHE president Ben Feingold said the process is too far along now to turn back and not use BD Java.

As for the 50GB dual-layer disc, Feingold said both movies have long running times as well as hours of bonus features that the studio has produced but been unable to release on DVD because they take up too much space.

Sony also will take advantage of the enormous additional capacity to use uncompressed audio on some of its Blu-ray Disc titles, including two Sony/MGM titles in the first wave--The Fifth Element and The Last Waltz. Sony execs say that even movie theaters do not offer uncompressed digital audio.

Feingold said he expects to ship 50,000 to 100,000 units of each of the first titles, as compared to the 60,000 or so units for each of the first five movies shipped for PSP.

Other Blu-ray Disc backers, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate and Paramount, announced their lineup of titles as well. Disney will announce its titles and other plans at a Blu-ray Disc media event at CES on Thursday evening.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment president Mike Dunn said the studio will have five titles, including Fantastic Four and Ice Age, in stores two weeks prior to the release of the first Blu-ray Disc player by any manufacturer. Fox will release 20 titles by summer, also debuting most new theatrical titles day-and-date on DVD and Blu-ray.

Each title will have at least one feature unique to the new format and will include 10% to 20% of the bonus features from previously released or new DVDs and 80% new bonus elements, such as advanced branching and menus and including added value programming accessed through connections to other devices such as the Internet.

Fox also is preparing two sci-fi titles to be announced later that will take advantage of the extra capacity of the 50GB dual-layer disc.

We have material that we set aside a long time ago for these, Dunn said. Weve been working up to this and cataloging content for two years.

Lionsgate will release its traditional new-format driver Terminator 2 among its fir

Whoa, what's that you say?

[kripkenstein]

Disclaimer: I am a doctoral student in a computational neuroscience program.

1) "quantum fluctuations" - there is no sizeable portion of the neuroscience community that believe this. Quantum effects are considered negligible for neuronal behavior.

2) "calcium dendrites which are attached to neurons" - dendrites are PARTS of neurons (the part that gets input from other neurons), not something attached to them. Yes, certain dendrites are sensitive to calcium. But other neurotransmittors are just as important.


But the end seems about right. We have no good idea of the limits of human memory. But also, we have next to no idea of how the brain stores memories. What you mention here is a wildly speculative theory.

Re:WHA?

[Shawn Parr]

which is how we came up with the so-called CD-quality audio of 16 bit amplitude at 44 KHz

Actually 44.1 was choosen as it was originally supposed to be 48KHz, but at that sampling rate with the size of the disc decided upon there was not enough space for the then president of Sony's favorite recording of Beethovin's 9th Symphony to fit on a single disc.

Sony engineers moved to 44.1KHz to make their president happy. It was as high resolution as they could get with the amount of time they needed. There were also battles to keep it at 16 bits as numerous entities wanted to use 14 bits. Thank goodness they didn't do that as that difference would be much more noticeable to the average listener than dropping from 48k to 44.1.