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Toshiba Develops 3-Layer DVD and HD-DVD
morpheus83 writes, "Toshiba, in collaboration with disk manufacturer Memory Tech Japan, has successfully combined a HD-DVD and DVD to a single 3-layer, twin-format disk. The resulting disk conforms to DVD standards so it can be played on DVD players, and also on HD-DVD players after upgrading the firmware. The disk can have either Single Layer DVD (4.7GB) + Dual Layer HD DVD (30GB); or Dual Layer DVD (8.5GB) + Single Layer HD DVD (15GB). There will not be a long wait as the new disk can be produced on the existing HD-DVD mass production line with minor process additions."
Amazing, who would have though that both Sony Stock and Sony Executives would accelarate at the same rate on their way down.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Say for example you're married like I am. You could use the DVD format for kids videos, pictures etc etc and install a DVD only drive on your wife's machine. Your machine however could have a HD-DVD drive and the HD-DVD side could be your porn, and she'd never know. This, by far, will save many marriages that are destroyed by porn.
I think we just figured out who's going to win in HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray...
PS3... Where is the Blu-Ray Advantage now?
Oh, no, consumers won't find this confusing at all.
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Going by the number of stretched video I've seen from users who don't know the difference between widescreen/letterboxed/4:3/16:9/pan-and-scan, (just when you thought "but I don't like the horizontal black bars at the top and bottom" was dying out on 4:3 screens, the very same who now have 16:9 screens are sying things like "I don't like the vertical black bars on the left and right!")...
The dirty little secret of this technology is that it's just a regular DVD, but you can convince yourself that it's HD-DVD when you play it back on an HD-DVD player... on your NTSC display. Or something.
(And if you can't immediately tell the difference, I'm sure there's a guy in a blue shirt who'll be happy to sell you some triple-layer Monster Cables that'll cure what ails ya. "Only triple-layer monster cables are compliant with triple-layer HD, sir, and can we interest you in the extended warranty on your new cables?")
My guess is that Sony will still win this one, thanks to the Umpteen PS3-installed BluRay players that will eventually fill the market.* Unless HD-DVD players become really cheap really fast, I can't see them matching the installed base that will rumble into place as soon as Sony get their act together.
* This does not imply that I believe the PS3 will crush the XBox360 - Microsoft will probably gain marketshare this generation. But Sony will still sell a bucketload of PS3:s, giving them the edge in the HD wars.
This is a perfect example of ingenuity that you will rarely see in the Sony camp, thanks to their rabid pursuit of a closed, proprietary-format monopoly. This is something that benefits consumers first and foremost, and reinforces my decision to back HD DVD whenever possible. Even if Sony could do this technologically, I see them killing the idea for marketing reasons.
No, re-read the article. You only need to upgrade the firmware of HD-DVD players, not DVD players.
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Well, you'll still need a HD-DVD player to access the HD-DVD layers... so I don't see how it'll help the XBOX, unless you want to use the new external HD-DVD drive.
Yeah, but it's all about the firware update... You'd have to get everybody with an existing dvd player to have this done. Or in the case you posted about, you'd need everybody with an existing Xbox 360 to have a firmware upgrade.
In the article summary (and TFA), DVD players will not have to be modified. Existing HD-DVD players, though, will need a firmware update to handle it.
for those of us stuck with regular DVD. I imagine studios will use the single layer at 4.7 gigs for dvd and the dual layer at 30 gigs for HD-DVD, meaning we'll get lousy picture. As an anime nerd, several of my favorite movies and shows got release on dvd-5 and are almost unwatchable (Nadesico being the worse, what with all the red).
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I am most definitely not trying to troll, but as much as I wish this was useful, I just can't find it to be so. They need to develop a compatible quad-layer DVD, for dual HD-DVD and dual standard DVD support on the same side of a disk. As it stands right now, neither 15GB for HD-DVD or 4.7 GB for standard DVD is sufficient size for an entire movie in their respective formats, meaning that either the DVD version or the HD-DVD version on the disk is going to suffer. If I was in the market for HD right now, I certainly would not be purchasing one of these discs, as I would either be going to suffer *now* because of the compression to a single-layer DVD, or I would suffer *later* because of the compression to a single-layer HD-DVD.
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Yeah, Sony's going to have a hard time dealing with this one.
You can buy a movie today, watch it on your DVD player today, and watch it on your HD-DVD player in a few years when the prices come down. It takes all the scariness out of being an early adopter; at the very least, you've got a perfectly good DVD.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
There is no HD-DVD player in a XBox 360...
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Since the entire net community has proven that 4.7GB DVDs are perfectly acceptable, this paves the way for barebones movies at 4.7GB plus the HD version on dual layer. They'll be marketed as "future proof" and they'll charge you an extra $5-10 for the privledge. And you'll happily pay it becuase you know if you buy the DVD version you'll probably want the HD version eventually, and the initial cost - resale of the DVD will probably be in the $5-10 range.
Of course, if they really wanted HD-DVD to win, they'd _only_ produce the dual version. That way its a value added product, and you don't have to upgrade all the players in the house to get the most benefits. As you drop your DVD in favor of HD, your discs stay the same. Folks who are quality nuts will get an HD box pretty soon anyway, and the other 98% of the population will never know the difference of the lost 1-2GB of space.
It is seriously brilliant. Marketing can still fumble th ball on this, but properly played this could be the difference in who wins the format war.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It seems to me they don't need to buy the PS3 FOR the BR player.... They just need to buy it, then some time at the store say "Gee, I have this PS3 that says it can play blue-ray, might as well get a few movies and see what it's all about." The barrier to entry is much lower if you already have something that can play the movies.
SACD is a streming bit format. each bit signals either an up or down step on the waveform, rather than having sampled bytes indicating a complete level. This is why you can't really start an SACD song in the middle of the song.
I think I'll go back to bed now, on the grounds that the day can only get weirder after reading something like that.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Your machine however could have a HD-DVD drive and the HD-DVD side could be your porn, and she'd never know. This, by far, will save many marriages that are destroyed by porn.
Far more importantly, it will save all the porn that is destroyed by marriage.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Now Do I need a CD-R/DVD+/-RW-DL/HDDVD-SL or a CD-R/DVD+/-RW-SL/HDDVD-DL?
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I can't believe it - is the Slashdot populated by demented anti-Sony fanbois?
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This "hybrid disc magic" might be considered high-tech and cutting-edge in the HD DVD world, but the exact same "features" was shown and demonstrated live back at last years IFA 2005 in Berlin in the Blu-ray Disc area
http://www.blu-ray.com/ifa2005/
Hybrid discs are actually part of the offcial BD-ROM spec and was one of the selling points last year when all HD DVD came up with was those lame "flippers"
So don't buy into the Slashdot HD DVD hype, just accept the fact that everything you can do with HD DVD you can do better with BD. Storage capacity is 66% higher and the video interactivity is based on Sun's Java (just like the DVB standard).
Assume, for a moment, that standard DVD's go away and we're left with Blu-Ray disks vs. HD-DVD/DVD Hybrids.
The HD-DVD Drive can read DVDs and the HD-DVD layer on the hybrid disks, but not Blu-Ray disks.
The Blu-ray player can read their own proprietary format, PLUS the DVD layer of the hybrid disk. Sony can now market it as the "Only 100% compatible" player, since their movies play fine, AND the HD-DVD/Hybrid movies play as well. Of course that would only be at DVD resolutions, which could be used to point out the inferiority of the HD-DVD/DVD system -- or don't you think marketdroids will confuse the issue for the common user?
Backwards compatibility is a bitch, especially when your competitors can take advantage too.
ATRAC. Memory stick. Minidisk. UMD.
Both fail as video disc formats, BluRay survives as a niche recordable media format similar to DVD-RAM or Jazz disk.
The Farewell Tour II
But it really is a Sony product, given that the whole purpose behind it was that Sony saw the royalty money Toshiba was making from DVD, and how Sony's royalties from CD were about to run out due to patent expiration, and they wanted to get in on the fun.
Toshiba and the DVD forum wouldn't let them load up the next gen DVD spec with all of their patents, so they basically took their ball and went home, made their own spec with as much of their patents as possible in it, with no regard to the quality and feability of the final product.
The fact that Sony got many other CEs to come with them only speaks to the fact that BD was touted as a higher end, higher quality, more expensive = higher profit margin product.
The fact that Sony got more studio support only speaks to the fact that they loaded even more needless layers of copy protection onto it. More things to patent and get royalties from!
No, the whole reason Bluray exists is because of Sony's greed, so it will always be a Sony product in my eyes. Before the launches of BD and HD DVD, I wasn't sure if it was Sony or Toshiba that was being greedy in the format wars, but after seeing the products, it is clear that HD DVD is the better, more consumer friendly, and just plain cheaper product, so I'm pretty sure the greed was primarily on Sony(and friends)'s side.
Shit adds up at the bottom...