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Blu-ray Proposes Incompatible BD-XL and IH-BD Formats

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-that-time-again dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "The Blu-ray Disc Association announced upcoming specifications for high-capacity write-once and rewritable discs. The BDA proposed two new formats, BDXL, the name given to new 100GB and 128GB discs; and IH-BD, a so-called 'Intra-Hybrid' disc that will incorporate both read-only and rewritable layers. Specifications for both disc types will be published during the upcoming months. Both formats will be incompatible with existing hardware; however, new players designed to take advantage of the new formats will be able to play back existing Blu-ray discs, which are available in both 25 and 50GB capacity points."

13 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. Designed Obsolescence by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many Blue Ray players am I supposed to buy before they stop coming up with new formats? I bet they keep this sh!t up until the next video format wars. Asshats.

    1. Re:Designed Obsolescence by WiglyWorm · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And yet, we nerds keep buying the "latest greatest" technology and enabling them. Remember when people used to say paid DLC would never catch on because we were to used to free patches? Same basic principal, certain people gotta have it, though, and that's what gives these companies the ability to keep pushing incompatible the time frame for designed obsolescences shorter and shorter.

    2. Re:Designed Obsolescence by DragonWriter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How many Blue Ray players am I supposed to buy before they stop coming up with new formats?

      The succession of newer, higher capacity formats stretches way back before blu-ray. Personally, I think that the fact that, since CD-ROM, there's been a focus on allowing older media to play in newer devices is a good thing.

    3. Re:Designed Obsolescence by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, time to run out and buy all new stuff!

      Seriously though, I hope movie studios recognize that this is part of the reason their movie sales are down. It's not just piracy. It's a variety of reasons, but I believe one of the main reasons is that people who buy lots of movies are collectors.

      I say it as a collector: I don't really want to collect things that are transient in a way that makes them a huge money hole. Back in the day of VHS tapes, I bought a bunch of VHS tapes. When DVDs came out, I bought a bunch of DVDs, including repurchasing a couple of titles I had previously bought on VHS. Then came the MP3 revolution. I realized that it made far more sense to rip CDs to my computer so I could easily store, sort, and retrieve an enormous library, and I realized that those days would be coming for movies sooner or later.

      By the time DVD ripping become easy and commonplace, we were into the format wars. I might have bought DVDs and ripped them for my computer, but I knew HD was coming, and so I'd wait it out to see if Bluray or HD-DVD won. Then Bluray won, but it was still expensive and hard to rip. Then there's iTunes and Amazon to contend with, that save you the trouble of ripping and tagging, but aren't compatible with all devices. Now there's new and incompatible Bluray discs? The whole thing just keeps getting more and more complicated, and it's more and more clear that whatever movies I buy today I'll probably need to re-buy later. The only way that they could make me more unlikely to buy anything today is by announcing they'll release a new format in 2 years that supports higher resolutions and 3D displays.

      Sorry, it's a long rant for ideas that everyone has probably read before, but damn these companies need to get their crap together. They could stand to learn a thing or two from Gabe Newell on copy protection.

    4. Re:Designed Obsolescence by nomadic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Remember when people used to say paid DLC would never catch on because we were to used to free patches?

      Nope. I don't remember that. They've had game add-ons for decades, nothing particularly crazy about selling it online.

    5. Re:Designed Obsolescence by DrXym · · Score: 4, Insightful
      What are you talking about? If you had bought a profile 1.0 player you could still play discs which were profile 2.0, 3d or whatever. You'd miss out on the new functionality that your player would ignore but the movie would still play. Of course, new players are so cheap that I expect most people would probably go through at least 2 or 3 different players over the course of the lifetime of the format rather than stick with some crappy 1st gen player. In that regard it would be no different from DVD, or VHS probably.

      As for the new format, go ask the BDA what it's for, but I doubt they intended or expected it to supplant the existing and set-in-stone 25/50Gb disc formats. More likely it's for data storage or something exotic which has no bearing on consumer kit.

    6. Re:Designed Obsolescence by Ogi_UnixNut · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But that is the point. You (as a customer) are the antithesis of what they want. The want people to keep re-buying things all the damn time, in fact in an ideal word, the MPAA/RIAA would charge you for every time you set eyes on a movie or heard one of their songs. Failing that they probably would not mind a rental modal where people pay forever to be able to access the content. As such DRM is designed to fulfil these goals, which is why it ends up being so frustrating that enough people put their heads together to break it.

      Ideally they want the transition from one medium to another to be impossible. Failing that, making it so complicated that the majority of people just re-buy it all is an acceptable alternative. Once you realise this, why they implement DRM the way they do (or at all) and their general attitude make a lot more sense.

    7. Re:Designed Obsolescence by ColaMan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is that if you want to make a Blu-ray player, you need Sony's blessing in the form of licensing agreements.

      China, don't fail me now.

      (waits impatiently for the first Sorny All-in-one Blu-ray player to hit the market)

      --

      You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
      There is a lot of hype here.
  2. Am I Missing Something Here? by pandrijeczko · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Aren't writable optical disks pretty much dead these days?

    I've not used anything Blu-Ray yet but pretty much every PC and DVD player these days has USB ports into which you can plug thumb drives or external USB hard disks.

    And even for DVD-R disks, gigabyte for gigabyte hard disks are still cheaper, let alone for a new disk format where writable media is bound to be at a premium price initially.

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  3. So, let me get this straight... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because we all enjoyed the format war just that much and it didn't hamper adoption at all, they are now proposing a format civil war, where the two or more blu-ray factions fight to the death in a toxic stew of consumer confusion and apathy?

    Seriously?

  4. This is what happens when Sony wins by erroneus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They will do pretty much as they please, especially when it comes to perpetual changes, "new patents" and royalties galore. I'm wishing HD-DVD won the war. I saw it coming with Sony pushing Bluray.

  5. Re:Wallet voting by foxtyke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I already voted with my wallet, I'm sticking with DVD until they are done playing games.

    Haven't bought a new television for HDMI, haven't bought an HD-DVD or Blu-ray player and you know what? I didn't even buy a PS3, Wii or XBOX 360 for the same reason.

    You can't say its a standard or a feature and then change, remove or force me to upgrade anymore. I'm done with that stuff.

    I'm satisfied with my standard television, my standard DVD and my standard gaming on a PS2 (more of a PC gamer anyways) and what's more, a lot more people are getting the same way. If there's no explicit reason to change something, don't upgrade, don't buy it and just support what you like or use and save the money for supporting that, it is cheaper in the end anyways.

  6. Re:goatse by DJRumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This summary is misleading. There is little need for more capacity given the current specs for HD and the current utilization on a typical BD movie. These disks will target storage, and the only people who would need to upgrade would be those that needed these higher density disks. It was known before the spec was certified that higher capacity media would be in the pipe. That was one of the strengths of BD-Rom; it had lots of room to grow.

    From TFA: "In general, the two new formats will be geared toward broadcast and document archiving, both industries that need to record and store massive libraries of digital content. But consumer versions will be available, 'particularly in those regions where BD recorders have achieved broad consumer acceptance,' the BDA said."