Blu-ray Capacity Increase Via Firmware

LordofEntropy writes "Blu-ray.com reports that Sony and Panasonic have announced a new optical disc evaluation technology that increases capacity from 25GB to 33.4GB. The tech uses existing Blu-ray diodes and is accomplished via firmware upgrade. The article says it is not known if and when the upgrade will be adopted into the Blu-ray spec. However, given that Sony and Panasonic are behind it, 'it will likely happen later this year.'"

Comments

Re:The diodes can stay, but the processor's gotta

[tlhIngan]

There's a little more than just a firmware upgrade involved here. This is a computationally-intensive process, which means the PS3 might be able to handle this, but the $100 player you got at Wal-Mart most certainly won't. Moore's Law means that this will become practical in the future, but this tech is definitely ahead of it's time.

Maybe even the PS3 can't handle it. After all, most of heavy work in decoding the data is not done on the PS3's copious CPU, but on the drive's dinky little processor.

Now, most drives have updatable firmware, so maybe that processor is powerful enough. The next issue becomes who's going to want to support the old obsolete products? That $99 Wal-mart player has maybe a year of firmware updates before it's obsolete and no updates will be released for it ever, even bug fixes.

That's why I recommend the PS3 as a blu-ray player, because it's going to be supported for a long time and receive bug fixes. Early DVD players often had trouble playing DVDs that were to spec, but using fancy DVD features that weren't well tested. There are probably many blu-ray features that aren't well tested either. A supported player with firmware updates will get fixes to support discs that use those features, but obsolete players... won't.

And there are a number of players already effectively obsolete (e.g., the very first blu-ray players with profile 1.0). So now if this spec is approved, will we be left with a bunch of players unable to use the new discs, forcing everyone into another hardware upgrade? Blu-ray is doing OK on its own, but forcing everyone with players to buy new ones seems like a non-starter...

Makes you wonder

[ickleberry]

What else can be upgraded in capacity with a simple firmware upgrade

I have always been suspicious of some of those Seagate hard-drives, particularly the 1" CompactFlash style ones they used to make.

What other storage medium has been crippled for the convenience of being able to sell *exactly* the same chip/disk at different capacities with very different prices?

Re:The diodes can stay, but the processor's gotta

[British]

It varies. I bought a bargain-basement DVD that my regular DVD player(advent) wouldn't play right, but the PS2 with the same disc played it without a problem.

Only PS3 games are likely to benefit

[DrXym]

The Blu Ray spec is cast in stone - 25Gb single layer or 50Gb dual layer. There is not a chance in hell that video disks are going to appear supporting some other scheme unless it was backwards compatible. Even if every player was firmware upgradeable (unlikely), not every manufacturer would issue patches and only a small % of users would bother even if they did. There is no chance this would fly.

The only place where the tech seems viable is for PS3s and games. Sony control the firmware so they can make PS3s read any format they like. The biggest issue is not every PS3 owner is internet connected to receive updates so if they just push new disks out some PS3s won't read them. Ordinarily, they'd put a mandatory firmware update on the disk, but the disk is unreadable without the firmware... So Sony probably have to ensure that firmware is pushed out beforehand or pack DVDs in with the game with the necessary firmware.