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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.'"
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.
It should be noted that this is an increase of 25GB to 33.4GB per layer. Double layer blu-rays are already capable of storing 50 GB.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Unfortunately, they also announced that this 33% space increase will be used by their new DECE encryption, "delivering greater flexibility, value, and security to consumers, without any extra cost, just a free firmware upgrade".
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...
Microsoft also wants to participate in Blu-ray development- I heard the next release will be capable of 2 GB.
Equally, before Christmas Walmart in some states were selling a blu-ray player for $55. You could buy a new player annually for five years and spend less than a PS3.
Of course the PS3 offers a lot more, but if you just want to watch Blu-Rays on your HDTV, over-buying is an expensive way to go about it.
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?
Already done, see the Sega Dreamcast discs: GD-ROM.
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.
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.
maybe I'm old school, but back in my day a STANDARDIZED SPECIFICATION essentially means that everyone got together, said what they wanted the new tech to accomplish, the engineers had many a heated debate on the exact methods as to how it was going to happen, the marketers figured out how it was going to be sold, the accountants begged the engineers and marketers to do it cheaper, and when all was said and done, there was a new technology that was a STANDARD. A piece of hardware/software that was certified to read and/or write content written to that spec was the end user's assurance that their content would play back on their hardware, period. Vinyl records started as mono, and they played back on every Victrola of the day. Whether I play a record back from the 1920's on a similar vintage Victrola, or my 2008 vintage Numark TTX turntables with brand new Shure Whitelabel cartridges, the record will play, end of story. The reverse is also true; all of my vinyl pressed in the last few years will play back on a record player that rolled off the assembly line during the Harding administration. A CD pressed to Redbook audio spec* today will play back on a CD player from 1985. This is how standards work. If the most recent disc labeled to conform to the Blu-Ray spec does not play on EVERY Blu-Ray player that has been certified to also conform to the Blu-Ray spec, then one of three things must be true: 1.) The disc isn't to spec and shouldn't have been certified, 2.) the player isn't to spec and shouldn't have been certified, 3.) the Blu-Ray spec is incomplete at best and broken at worst. Vinyl, 8-Track, Cassettes, VHS, CD-ROM*, 3 1/2" floppy, and for the most part DVD-ROM* have gotten along just fine without firmware updates, else we are talking about a moving target, which is the very situation that specifications are written to prevent.
*For these, I am referring to commercially stamped media, not CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, etc. designed for consumer use.