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HD Recorder Can Use Standard DVDs
Stonent1 writes "Early next month Panasonic is going to release a DVD recorder that can store HD content on standard DVDs. The new device is expected to be a boon for the backer of the Blu-ray format; Blu-ray uses discs several times more expensive than standard DVD media. While the DVD discs won't have the capacity of a Blu-ray disc, the content will be of similar visual quality. 'The company said it will start selling three models of new DVD recorders capable of recording full HD programs on conventional DVD discs on November 1. The high-end model with a 500-gigabyte hard disk drive is likely to sell for 130,000 yen, Matsushita said.'" Update: 10/02 16:18 GMT by Z : Rewritten to clarify.
....if the machine itself is so expensive?
I'm guessing that this player just writes MPEG4 files to a DVD, which it can then play back. Why do we even need Blu-Ray. Couldn't a much cheaper device be made with no blu-ray capabilities that just records the HD Content straight to MPEG4 on DVD? That would actually big a major blow to both HDDVD and BluRay.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The hell with Blu-Ray. That format has even more onerous DRM than HD DVD. If I buy into the HD technology at all (I probably will not until DRM is busted), then it would be HD DVD, not Blu-Ray.
The Evil of Two Lessers, in my opinion.
We're talking about a digital world, where the medium is far less important than the codec. Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, whatever -- they're all about taking digital information, decoding it, and displaying it.
Since most of our movies are XViD (including our homemade videos), we've generally stopped using disc formats entirely. If I burn the XViD to CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray, it's still the data and codec that counts, not the medium.
Yes, people want to know if a given disc will work with their player, which is one reason why we need medium formats. Yet in a relatively free market, you'd see many multi-medium drives that work with almost anything (see most $49 DVD players today), so I'm guessing the number one reason for making new medium formats is control and DRM.
Is there any market reason for worrying about the medium, rather than the CODEC?
Blu-ray format, which currently uses discs several times more expensive than standard DVD media
It's important to clarify: The article talks about dual layer DVD-s, that's not standard DVD media. I can find single layer recordable DVD over here for less than a dollar. But dual layer recordables are ten times more expensive (for whatever reason).
Now something else: if I got my math right (can't guarantee I did), this means around ~950kbit/s for HD content on a dual layer DVD. They'll definitely need to use MPEG4 (remember: plenty of the current BR and HDDVD titles use MPEG2) to achieve acceptable quality for 18 hours of content. And I don't know if it'll look good still.
Can someone comment how ~950kbit/s fares for HD content. For standard DVD-quality video I use at least 500-600kbps on MPEG4 derivative, so I'm doubtful.
As far as I can tell from the extraordinarily sparse FA, that's all we know. The article made less sense than the summary
Isn't that the slashdot equivalent of dividing by zero?
OH SHI-
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
So is this some type of hybrid/dual laser device? Or is it a blu ray that uses the blue laser to record on conventional DVDs? Or what exactly?
It almost certainly has dual lasers, as do most recorders, but that has nothing to do with what it does...
Until they release more specs I can only speculate, but the press release makes it obvious enough - This simply contains a perfectly ordinary DVD burner, to which it writes MPEG-4 data on a normal DVD using the FS layout expected by BR drives.
Just as you can burn a DVD filesystem to a CD, you can just as easily burn a BR or HD filesystem to a DVD. They simply don't hold as much, requiring either loss of quality or limited duration (or both).
Now, why anyone would want to buy a recorder that costs more than the difference in price of recordable discs over the practical lifetime of that player while burning only ultra-low quality content, ya got me. The coolness factor, I guess? Personally, I plan to wait for dual-format next-gen burners and for one or the other's writeable discs to drop a tolerable price.
Perhaps this will cause some of our brain-addled technology media "journalists" to start noticing that HD-DVD and Blueray aren't about high definition video (my 2 year old Oppo DVD player does that just fine, apart from the fact no one will sell me a movie in DivX format), nor really about increased storage. Its really about moving to a format with a more functional DRM system.
There is no reason that standard 2 hour movies can't be distributed on a double-layer DVD using a modern compression format -- which are supported in just about every $99 DVD player I see at Circuit City. I don't have a problem with the big media companies moving in this direction - its their content, they can pick their format. I do have a problem with the fact that not a single journalist sees fit to note in their articles that the media companies public rationale for the switch is specious.
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
I've got 1920x1080 DivX of Naruto's 3rd movie. Total size - 2.2 gigs for 94 minutes of video and audio, with four different language subtitle choices. All on one DVD.
I'm glad I have a high-def DivX-capable standalone player. Screw these more expensive formats! Hooray compression technology!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
According to my opinion that's how it should be. A "file format" is independent from the medium. Why not store mp3's on DAT or MD? :-)
I just purchased a 320G byte hard drive for $99. It cost $15 to make it into a usb drive. At that price one could not buy the equivalent storage in dvd-rw disks. The hard drives are more reliable and much faster transferring data. There is no limit on how many times one can erase the hard drive either as I know there is a limit on how many time a dvd-rw can be rewritten. It is much easier to find an indiviudal movie on a hard drive than to look through the 70-80 dvd that it would take for the equivalent storage. It is also much harder to scratch a hard drive platter than it is to scratch or get a dirt mark on a dvd-rw disk.
Microsoft earlier tried to push VC-1 on standard DVDs; it would make a lot of sense for consumers to deliver AVC on DVD. It would not do much for producers and studios however, because DVDs are already easy to rip and the format is falling in price. Once "good enough" movie downloads start, the ability to market HD discs will become far harder, just as MP3s killed any real market for SACD/DVD-A.
Origins of the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD War
Blu-ray vs HD-DVD in Next Generation Game Consoles
"Voting With Your Feet" is still a valid concept. After reading the existing discussion, I side with h4rm0ny.
And I disagree that companies pay less attention to "theoretical" money. In fact we have some good examples right now... the RIAA and MPAA. They have pissed off a large percentage of the U.S. populace by going after that "theoretical" money.
The act of NOT buying CDs has brought us to the point that the music industry is now dropping DRM. People stopped buying over-priced CDs, and refused to buy DRMed rips. People voted with their feet... it was not the buying segment that changed the market, it was the non-buying segment.
I believe that not buying DRMed video will have a similar effect.
I burn H264 vids to a DVD. It stands to reason that some hardware device would eventually get around to doing the same. The more important question is where the hell does it record its HD content from.
A fair point, the compression artefacts are fairly noticable on most divx stuff.
However what is more important is if the quality improves at all. If HD compressed onto a DVD gives better quality than a normal DVD I'll take it regardless of wether the quality is worse than on some Blu Ray player I have no intention of buying.