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

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll pick up a few when I go out for my copy of Duke Nuken Forever in my rocket car.

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

[Artie Dent]

The only reason that I would be hesitant to buy some of this new technology is the competing features right now. It would be great to have the highest format available, but if the new players aren't mutually compatible (which really shouldn't be that hard to do) than one is likely to get stuck with the digital Betamax tapes. If there's any new technology that supports both formats, this would be extremely valuable and consumers wouldn't end up getting stiffed in the end. A dual-reading HD DVD reader/writer would sell like hotcakes methinks.

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

[Ironsides]

As (always) size depends on bitrate. H.264 is supposed to be able to encode at 1/4 the bit rate for equivalent quality. This is theoretical. It depends a lot on the encoder. Also, for some scenes you want higher bitrate. I have heard that HD DVDs (refering to HD, not the standard) might be up to a 40Mbps or more, even though broadcast HDTV is limited to 20Mbps (19.4 in reality, but I'm rounding). BTW, I have not yet heard of an h.264 encoder that will use the full capabilities of the codec yet and 20Mbps is the absolute minimum you need for HD, you really need more.

So, given that, for HD equivalent, we are talking 5 to 10 Mbps for h.264 for HDTV. 10 Mbps = 4.5GB/hour. So a 2 hour movie in h.264 might fit on a standard DVD, but you wouldn't have room for anything but the video track. You still need to get audio on there which is another Gig (assuming you only have one). Extras and everything else will still need to be on a second disk.

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.

I for one..

[doormat]

I, for one, welcome our new DRM overlords.

Good god

[grasshoppa]

That "article" is a press release. Written by Fugifilm, or someone that thinks very very highly of them.

I mean, it's nice to know that they predict mid 2006 for the arrival of the media, but that's really the only nugget of news in both the article and /. summary.

Re:Good god

[underpar]

Only through leading chemical knowledge and manufacturing expertise can a company produce this precise a product with durability and performance, at a competitive cost.

That's not marketing speak! That's honest journalism.

Re:Good god

[game kid]

I take it more that mid-2006 will be more the arrival of the HD/BR media blitz than actual goods. I expect Spring (or even that holy, un-commercialized *ahem* day of Easter) to be a season where the media companies persuade people on TV (watch for changes in the Nightly News and TRL commercials!) that their formats, while restrictive to consumers (they won't say that out loud obviously) will be necessary for living.

I expect something like "Unlike VHS and DVD, you'll be able to see the pimples on your younger brother while he does jump shots. See the threads on your daughter's bridal gown. See the implant scars on your favorite celebrity on the other side of the beach!" on commercials by then.

WHA?

[LividBlivet]

"or 8,000 times more data than a human brain retains in a lifetime." Since when did the human brain retain 125GB of data? Anyone know where this comes from or did they just pull it out of their ass?

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:WHA?

[JonN]

http://www.sizes.com/people/brain.htm
http://www.geocities.com/rnseitz/The_Great_Gray_Ra velled_Knot.htm

"Robert Birge (Syracuse University) who studies the storage of data in proteins, estimated in 1996 that the memory capacity of the brain was between one and ten terabytes, with a most likely value of 3 terabytes. Such estimates are generally based on counting neurons and assuming each neuron holds 1 bit. Bear in mind that the brain has better algorithms for compressing certain types of information than computers do."

"The human brain contains about 50 billion to 200 billion neurons (nobody knows how many for sure), each of which interfaces with 1,000 to 100,000 other neurons through 100 trillion (10 14) to 10 quadrillion (10 16) synaptic junctions. Each synapse possesses a variable firing threshold which is reduced as the neuron is repeatedly activated. If we assume that the firing threshold at each synapse can assume 256 distinguishable levels, and if we suppose that there are 20,000 shared synapses per neuron (10,000 per neuron), then the total information storage capacity of the synapses in the cortex would be of the order of 500 to 1,000 terabytes. (Of course, if the brain's storage of information takes place at a molecular level, then I would be afraid to hazard a guess regarding how many bytes can be stored in the brain. One estimate has placed it at about 3.6 X 10 19 bytes.)"

Both from Google Answers

Re:WHA?

[Kijori]

The question though isn't the maximum amount the brain can hold, but how much it can hold in a lifetime. Surely the number they quote could be an estimate of the amount the brain takes in in a lifetime, which you could estimate very roughly by recording all of someone's sensory inputs in a day and finding the size of the part they can recall, then extrapolating.
I'm not saying that 125GB is by any stretch of the imagination accurate, but I don't think it's meant to reflect a maximum capacity.

Re:WHA?

[drinkypoo]

It's also a bunch of crap from that standpoint, because no part of the brain or body is digital, except maybe the fingers and toes, ha-ha. Seriously though folks, we have no digital inputs. You can't measure our information process in bits or anything based on bits. It doesn't work. We're not based on powers of two, or powers of ten, we're based on analog values.

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.

What Would Bob Metcalfe Say?

[DysenteryInTheRanks]

I was at Best Buy and am pretty sure I overheard Bob Metcalfe going off to one of the sales staff about how much _both_ nex-gen DVD formats suck, since neither can handle the forthcoming Video Internet. He suggested that newer DVD formats be developed to take hold in the next few years.

So I'd, you know, save my money for now. (You'll probably need it for a new operating system anyway, based on some other stuff he was saying.)

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.

How about...

[grub]

...giving us reasonably priced dual-layer DVD-R first?

Fuji and the Brain

[digitaldc]

"A single terabyte of holographic disc storage is roughly the equivalent of 16 days of continuously running DVD movies, or 8,000 times more data than a human brain retains in a lifetime."

It's funny that the same human brain that created this breakthrough can't match its capacity, but it is still smart enough to create a device that can.

No we aren't

[squoozer]

"Consumers are driving demand for interactive gaming and entertainment applications that require enormous storage capacity,"

Eh? What is this guy going on about? The number of pieces of media, excluding films, that come in DVD format is tiny. I admit that I haven't bought many games recently but I don't own a single one in DVD format and I don't remember seeing any that did. As for music - well enough said. So I ask you: what are there entertainment applications (not it's plural) that require massive storage?

The other thing I have a problem with is the way they bang on about perfecting the media before it hits the market. Isn't that what's supposed to happen anyway? Perhaps we have all just become used to things not working for the first couple of releases.

Re:Cool MEDIA!!

[thaerin]

Which came first, the media or the hardware? I know they're wanting to get in on the bandwagon and let customers know that there'll be media for the hardware that should be out near or before the same period. Why can't they announce that they'll have some 16X DVD+/-R media sometime soon for the drive that I bought two months ago?

HVD due Q3 2006...

[MrBandersnatch]

According to an article on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatil e_Disc) a 300GB HVD disk is due Q3 2006 and an 800GB disk in 2007. If the cost of HVD manages to reach a similar price point to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD then both these media are going to end up dead in the water.....

See ya in '08

[RyoShin]

Perhaps I'm one of the few that prefer riding the middle of the wave of technology, or the fact that I'm relatively non-wealthy prohibits me from buying the latest and greatest, but I'm going to wait a while for this to work itself out.

Balancing between DVD+ and DVD- is a pain enough as it is; having worked at both Best Buy and Wal-mart (in Electronics) for a short amount of time, the most asked question about writable media is "What's the difference between + and -?" followed by "Which one should I get?". It helps that most DVD burners are dual-format, so there isn't much of a worry about which one to buy, so after the initial explanation it isn't that much of a problem. (DVD Recorders, for TVs, tend to stick to one format for the cheaper ones, though I've found that some can record both even if they only list one.)

If HD DVD and Blu-ray are a format war, I'm living in Switzerland. Unless they create at least a reader that can read both formats (I haven't heard of one, yet), one will come out on top. In the mean time, I am not going to spend my money on media and a player that may quickly go defunct, especially if the various Hollywood studios split on which format to use (assuming they don't do both.)

I can see this being a big headache for stores- so many ill-informed (or just ignorant) consumers are going to buy one of the new discs, take it home, and be utterly miffed that it won't play on their player. They'll take it back, throw a tantrum, then pick out a different movie to exchange- and it will be in the same format as the one they just returned.

I figure it will take about two years for one of these formats to come out the winner. Unfortunatly, Sony's Blu-ray will probably take the cake, as it's being incorporated in the PS3, which could sell like the PS2 at its release. Hello, Mr. DRM!

In the mean time, since most companies will probably be wary over the format war, most movies/series will still be released on regular DVD, to the delight of myself and most consumers. It works great. The quality of DVDs are fine, in my opinion, and I don't have to worry about buying a new player (or three).

The best ending would be that both formats fail, and I don't think this is out of the question. While the "hipsters" out there may want bigger and better, middle America is a-ok with DVDs, and will probably still be by 2008. With both formats failed, either the various companies will realize that they need one standard and work together on that, or we'll just replay the whole thing over again.