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A Triple-Standard Disk
On the heels of the news of Toshiba's proposed double-standard disk comes word that Warner Brothers engineers have applied for a patent on a triple-standard disk. The new disk would offer HD-DVD and Blu-Ray on one side and standard DVD on the other. From the article: "Warner's plan is to create a disk with a Blu-ray top layer that works like a two-way mirror. This should reflect just enough blue light for a Blu-ray player to read it okay. But it should also let enough light through for HD-DVD players to ignore the Blu-ray recording and find a second HD-DVD layer beneath." See the patent application, filed last month.
They can phase out old DVDs even faster now... you're paying extra for the HD content anyway, so why not buy the HD player? Seems like a new approached to planned obsolescence by Warner.
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No, you see then the purchaser could seperate the discs (give one to a friend). Obviously the studios would not like this...
:)
You aren't thinking nearly evil enough to be a film studio.
Or they could stop acting like children, sit it down, discuss the technical and logistical merits of both and DECIDE ON ONE STANDARD FOR NOW. ...
Just saying.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
definition: "Should" - a work that should never be allowed in describing a patent.
So they really haven't figured out how to do it? So what they file the patent hope they can figure it out and if not hope someone else does so they can sue them?
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Did anyone else imagine Wile E Coyote in a lab coat at the ACME factory?
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
For one thing this probably isnt as perfect a solution as it seems because the disks will obviously be significantly more expensive than even the more expensive of either bluray or hddvd. For example, it will have to have that super expensive surface coating that bluray disks require since the wavelength of laser is so short (to prevent scratching).
But the more interesting thing is that if these were to go mainstream among the media providers, then success of each format in terms of players sold will be determined much more simply by price relative to the other rather than by a combination of many more factors such as movie catalog/availability, disk cost, what kinds of disks friends have, etc.
So, which of the two types of player is intrinsically cheaper and by how much? Does HDDVD have a huge advantage in the area of cost to manufacture players?
Once again Slashdot shows its abyssmal understanding of patents.
This patent was not FILED August 10, 2006. It was PUBLISHED August 10, 2006. The actual filing date, shown later in the publication, is December 22, 2005.
It may seem a trivial, but in the digital media market, eight months can make the difference between being a leader and a follower.
Now studios can release one disc that is pretty much universally playable. This should go a long way to encourage the adoption of HD-DVD AND Blu-ray. If these discs become prevalent, and people realize that they could upgrade their DVD player to a Blu-ray player, and still play their last 10 movies, but in higher quality on their HDTV, they might actually consider the upgrade. As opposed to now, where people might not upgrade because they must buy NEW movies and start a NEW collection in order to enjoy what they see as "slightly" better picture quality over DVD (as well as massive DRM!).
If I was a movie studio executive, I would support these triple-layer discs at any cost.
"Warner's plan is to create a disk with a Blu-ray top layer that works like a two-way mirror. This should reflect just enough blue light for a Blu-ray player to read it okay. But it should also let enough light through for HD-DVD players to ignore the Blu-ray recording and find a second HD-DVD layer beneath."
Oh, this sounds like just a wunnerful guarantee of problem-free operation on all the drives, Blu-ray or HD-DVD, that were designed and produced with really tight tolerances before this mutant format was conceived. No problems with marginal signals at all, nosireee, we promise.
-k
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of disk drives in this country. The Seagate Cheeta was the disk to own. Then the other guy came out with a two-standard disk. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the ST-506. That's two-standards and an extra channel. For speed. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened--the bastards went to three standardss. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling two platters and an extra channel. Speed or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five platters.
Sure, we could go to three platters next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, three worked out pretty well, and four is the next number after three. So let's play it safe. Let's make a wider channel and call it the Cheeta turbo. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!
You think it's crazy? It is crazy. But I don't give a shit. From now on, we're the ones who have the edge in the multi-side game. Are they the best a man can get? Fuck, no. Seagate is the best a man can get.
What part of this don't you understand? If two sides is good, and three sides is better, obviously five sides would make us the best fucking disk that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the disk game by clinging to the two-platter industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, five platters is the biggest chance of all.
Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my ass with it. They don't tell me what to invent--I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick two more sides in there. I don't care how. Make the platters so thin they're invisible. Put some on the outside. I don't care if they have to cram the fifth platter in perpendicular to the other four, just do it!
You're taking the "safety" part of "safety disk" too literally, grandma. Cut the strings and soar. Let's hit it. Let's roll. This is our chance to make disk history. Let's dream big. All you have to do is say that five platters can happen, and it will happen. If you aren't on board, then fuck you. And if you're on the board, then fuck you and your father. Hey, if I'm the only one who'll take risks, I'm sure as hell happy to hog all the glory when the five- platter disk becomes the storage tool for the U.S. of "this is how we shave now" A.
People said we couldn't go to three. It'll cost a fortune to manufacture, they said. Well, we did it. Now some egghead in a lab is screaming "Five's crazy?" Well, perhaps he'd be more comfortable in the labs at Toshiba, working on fucking electrics. Rotary platters, my white ass!
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we should just ride in Sony's wake and make shitty game consoles. Ha! Not on your fucking life! The day I shadow a penny-ante outfit like Sony is the day I leave the disk game for good, and that won't happen until the day I die!
The market? Listen, we make the market. All we have to do is put her out there with a little jingle. It's as easy as, "Hey, saving with anything less than five plattess is like scraping your beard off with a dull hatchet." Or "You'll be so smooth, I could snort lines off of your ide cable."
I know what you're thinking now: What'll people say? Mew mew mew. Oh, no, what will people say?! Grow the fuck up. When you're on top, people talk. That's the price you pay for being on top. Which Seagate is, always has been, and forever shall be, Amen, five platters, sweet Jesus in heaven.
Stop. I just had a stroke of genius. Are you ready? Open your mouth, baby birds, cause Mama's about to drop you one sweet, fat nightcrawler. Here she comes: Put another channel on that fucker, too. That's right. Five platters, two channels, and make the second one SCSI. You heard me--the second strip is SCSI. It's a whole new way to think about data storage. Don't question it. Don't say a word. Just key the music, and call the chorus girls, because we're on the edge--the razor's edge--and I feel like dancing.
Just what the shelf life of these would be. Assuming it works and they figure out how to press the disk it sounds VERY touchy.
:(
How much of a scratch would it take to mangle the BluRay data that is being read off this semi-transparent layer. I thought those were pretty sensitive to start with.
How about the stability? Will any of the optical properties change over time of any of the several compononts involved? Will your new Disney disc last til your kid is out of elementary school?
All sounds like trouble waiting to happen to me.
Especially as the patent included a lot of SHOULDs to start with
oh well, pretty much a mental exercise as i am not going for either one for quite some time.
So this actually looks like one of the first articles on slashdot that actually covers a real patent. Not some stupid lame one-click, conjugation, whatever other simple and obvious nonsense. This format for these disks actually seems fairly patent worthy.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
One for BluRay, one for HD-DVD?
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
The major studios might have been able to control piracy by phasing out DVDs and using BluRay or HD-DVD with HDCP (and BD+ or whatever they are calling it today) since no one has convincingly broken HDCP yet (not that I think this won't happen). The hardware control and the key revocation actually gave them a fighting chance technologically.
/. have said that the quality on DVDs is good enough and they wont upgrade - I won't because I'm a poor grad student who cannot afford to spend a 1000+ bucks on a HDTV because in the end its still a TV. Even if HDCP isn't broken they've left a gaping hole because CSS certainly is and so people can buy these combo discs and still pirate the DVD versions of movies using their DVD-RW drives like they are doing now.
This move is shooting themselves in the foot - lots of people on
Ofcourse they are caught between a rock and a hard place - consumers don't want to upgrade from existing equipment that many of them think is good enough and the stuios want consumers to upgrade so that they can sell the same content again in a new format and control piracy more effectively - thus the combo disc. Ultimately the worst case scenario is people like the combo discs so they cant stop piracy and people still choose not to upgrade, and they have to sell these things at prices similar to regular dvds now or people won't buy it. I suspect this will likely happen if they implement this.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
The real question then, is what percentage of people have actually bought a new TV set during the past 2 years or so. if only 10% of the public bought a new TV set, then only 4% of the public has HD sets. And how many of those sets are 720p? Half? Now you're down to 2%. How many of those customers are in the upper middle class and higher and bought 2 or 3 HD sets. Now you might be down to 1% of households. Sure, it's growing, and will keep growing, especially as people are forced to replace analog sets with digital.
So where's the market for Bluray and HD-DVD now? DVD looks fabulous at 720p, it already has the resolution for that. Why do I need HD-DVD or Bluray? I think they have plenty of time to work out a resolution for this. If a dual layer disc with both formats is the ticket, fine. Just don't make me pay the freakin' royalties for each format on each disc I buy. I'm not paying $40-50 dollars to buy a movie. And while I'm on the subject of 'not paying for', I don't think the HD players are going to really become sellable until they are under $200 with low end models under $100. If they want to replace DVD they are going to have to make it so that it's not worth it to pay just a little bit less for DVD.