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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."

28 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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      FTFA:

      "Professional industries have expressed a desire to find optical disc solutions that enable them to transition away from magnetic media for their archiving needs."

      Not that anyone expects you to RTFA.

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. 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.

    6. 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.

    7. 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.

    8. Re:Designed Obsolescence by causality · · Score: 5, Informative

      You also completely contradict yourself. You suggest Sony is part of some massive conspiracy because it is in their best interest to have high prices, and then immediately after say it is in their best interest to have low prices.

      I wouldn't call it conspiracy, I would call it collusion. It's reminiscent of the USA cellphone industry. For example, text messages cost next-to-nothing for the carrier of a CDMA network, and absolutely nothing for the carrier of a GSM network. Yet despite multiple competing cellphone networks, none of them have text message pricing that remotely reflects the actual cost of delivering SMS.

      It's not difficult to understand why. It benefits all of the cellphone companies to continue overcharging for this service, and the one company that undercuts the competition and forces all of them to lower their prices is going to ruin the high profit margins for everyone, itself included. No conspiracy is required; they didn't have to get together and plan this ahead of time. Each company only has to realize that changing this status quo will result in less profit, and they can realize this independently without consulting the other companies.

      Until and unless they start losing serious sales volume because customers feel that the price is too high, the movie producers have no incentive to engage in competition that they know will reduce their profit margins. Unlike the cellphone providers, they are not even directly competing with each other because of the monopoly nature of copyright. No one but Sony can produce and distribute copies of a movie for which Sony owns the copyright, so if you want a movie made by them you cannot purchase that same title from a competitor. So there is even less competition for each unique movie title than there is among cellphone providers for mobile phone services. That means there is even less incentive for any one company to rock the boat with aggressive pricing.

      Retailers ultimately set prices. And most retailers are being stupid because Amazon is massively undercutting them.

      If Sony's wholesale price for copies of its movies is X, then Amazon cannot charge less than X for those titles and expect to remain in business. That's why Sony's influence on the ultimate retail price is quite strong and should not be so quickly dismissed. I would venture that Amazon's lower prices have more to do with sales volume and the fact that they don't have the expenses of maintaining brick-and-mortar stores.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    9. Re:Designed Obsolescence by PitaBred · · Score: 4, Informative

      I place Blu-Ray along with DVD... if I can crack it and use it like I want, I'll deal with it. AnyDVD HD seems to work pretty well for me, so I don't mind getting movies on Blu-Ray. If that stops, I'll stop getting Blu-Rays (I already don't pay more than $15 or so for them. Screw new release prices). DVD has encryption on it just like Blu-Ray. Using one but not the other seems like a meaningless protest, along the lines of "get off my lawn!"

      --
      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
    10. Re:Designed Obsolescence by Anpheus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why? Hard drives are fantastic, 1TB for $100 and have superior read/write characteristics. Why worry about WORM when you can digitally sign the data and replicate it offsite cheaply without having to invest in niche burning and changing equipment that would be necessary to switch away from hard disks?

      Switching to optical media is like switching to tape. Unless you're already invested, I don't see why you'd want to get involved there.

    11. Re:Designed Obsolescence by Anpheus · · Score: 5, Informative

      Are you serious?

      No one has an answer for long term media over twenty five years. No one. CD-ROM has barely been around that long, tapes that old cannot be read in any current players, and hard drives back then used IDE, which I can still get adapters for.

      The only realistic way to archive digital media is to have a planned rotation policy. So, if I were to start today I'd start with 1 or 1.5TB disks in bulk, in 3 years consolidate those 2:1 to 2 or 3TB disks, etc. And keep consolidating (reducing the number of disks while also storing the data at multiple sites) perpetually. That's the only solution that keeps your data yours, and not at the mercy of a technology that you know won't be supported in twenty five years.

      And of course, just because I recommend hard drives don't mean I recommend throwing everything else out the window. Judicious use of ECC, storing archive data at multiple sites and even biting the bullet and storing data multiple times at a single site are all options that should be explored when determining your archive policy.

    12. Re:Designed Obsolescence by Anpheus · · Score: 4, Informative

      I work full time IT, part time as a movie theatre projectionist.

      Guess how all our digital movies arrive?

      Hard disk.

    13. Re:Designed Obsolescence by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And remember that as usual, by the time these things hit the market, hard drives will be comically larger. I commented on this problem way back when Blu-Ray came out. Basically, the comment was that 50 GB capacity would be great because I could back up my entire hard drive on just three or four discs, but that by the time they were actually available at a reasonable price, they would be worthless. They're still not affordable as a backup medium and at 50 GB apiece, it still would take nearly an entire 25-pack mini-spindle to back up my home machine (not to mention taking 12 hours with somebody swapping discs twice an hour).

      It was the same story for DVD-Rs, and CD-Rs before that. The only difference in this case is that the format is already obsolete in terms of capacity and was just proposed. Anything short of a terabyte disc capacity at this point is a complete joke, and is a pretty clear signal that the optical media format is likely to fall further and further behind hard drives on the cost-capacity curve. In short, optical discs as currently designed are unlikely to ever be a viable backup medium. (Well, maybe holographic optical or something, but certainly not any optical discs that are remotely similar to what we have today.)

      For anything other than distribution of fixed content (movies, computer games, etc.), optical media doesn't make sense, and those types of content really don't have much need for larger and larger capacities beyond a certain point.

      Stick a fork in it. Optical is done.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    14. 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. DON'T YOU GET IT? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 3, Funny

    HDDVD lost the format war because it had way too many syllables!

    Everyone! We've been Had! Blu-Ray is exerting its dominance by proposing 4 or more syllable formats, forcing technical speak to be less groovy and savvy, making it once again disasterous to be a nerd, instead of the hip trend Apple was starting.

    Quick, someone start an internet petition (because those always work) to rename the formats to something catchy!

  3. 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.
    1. Re:Am I Missing Something Here? by WiglyWorm · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I bet you could burn an encryption key to the disk from the player itself, thereby locking it to a single player. The *IAA would gobble that shit up.

    2. Re:Am I Missing Something Here? by phoenix321 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Nevertheless, the point still stands: when people buy a DVD of "Avatar", do they buy a physical product, a plastic shiny disc, that happens to have the movie "Avatar" on it, or do they acquire the license to watch "Avatar" in DVD resolution that happens to be accompanied with a plastic shiny disc?

      Movie studies are the owner of the licenses. They need to decide which kind of merchandise their product is.

      It's either a physical thing and then they have no say about how the customer uses it, but when it's damaged, it's gone - or they sell a license and the customer has the right to make a backup, not lend it, not publicly show it but get another copy if one gets damaged.

      Currently, they're trying to eat their cake and have it.

    3. Re:Am I Missing Something Here? by pandrijeczko · · Score: 3, Informative

      I used to do a lot of archiving to DVD-R disks but discovered that despite being stored in disk cases away from the light and day-to-day use, they still developed read errors within a couple of years of having been written - yet I also have a large music CD collection stored in a similar fashion but have music CDs that are 20 years old that still play absolutely fine. I know for a fact it wasn't a particular brand of DVD-R with the read error problems because I used to make two backup copies to different disk brands....

      Yes, a hard disk in regular use is probably going to start failing within a couple of years also - but it's much quicker to slot in a new 1TB hard disk and backup to it than it is to burn about another 200 DVD-R disks to store the same amount of data...

      --
      Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  4. 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?

  5. yay by msclrhd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I like technology, but it seems to me that the media companies are pushing newer technologies faster than ever and are then wondering why they are performing badly. CDs, DVDs and other technology (hell, even colour television) took a while to take off, and it wasn't until the market was effectively saturated, and the technologies became affordable and commonplace, that other technologies were introduced.

    First it was High-Def and HDMI compatible vs compliant. Then it was HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray.

    Blu-Ray disks are finally starting to become affordable, but they come with the required HDMI upgrade of all your connecting audio/video hardware.

    With the RealD 3D televisions and associated content as well, especially with the competing players/technologies coming out soon after HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, it is unclear how things are going to pan out -- for example, are there going to be 3D Blu-Ray disks that require new hardware?

    To me, the home entertainment hardware is looking fragmented, and will continue to become even more fragmented as time goes on.

  6. Dear Corporate Overlords, by VTI9600 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Kudos on your selection of the term "Intra-Hybrid" (simply being a hybrid is never enough) and an acronym with an "X" in it for marketing your new products. Also, congratulations on having the forsight to not allow these new media to be played on clearly obsolete Blu-Ray players while still selling them as Blu-Ray discs. However, the following concerns me:

    Specifications for both disc types will be published during the upcoming months.

    Don't you realize that publishing specs hurts your bottom line?!?!

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. Erf, shades of DVD-R incompatibilities. by PhantomHarlock · · Score: 3, Informative

    Oh man. I thought we got away from this after we left the incompatibility of DVD-R/RW with most commercial video DVD players behind. Currently I can author my HD videos to Blu-Ray recordables and they play just fine on any Blu Ray player. Hallelujah. Fortunately I don't have much of a reason to use higher capacity discs, my videos aren't 6 hours long. At 12 GB / hr I can fit plenty on a stock Blu Ray disc. As a data application, this is probably OK, but hard drives are so cheap these days there's no point in doing optical backups. This might be used for 4k video and other very high end formats in the future, however.

    And if you say that there is no need for physical formats, you're wrong. At least in the USA, our level of broadband is not capable of delivering 25 mbits / sec video to the home, on demand and with everyone on your block doing same. With large LCD, plasma and DLP screens, that data rate makes all the difference in quality. Compare satellite HD to the same content on Blu-Ray and you'll see an enormous difference. Most Sat HD feeds I've seen are practically unwatchable due to compression artifacts.

    -M

  10. 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."

  11. This will come in handy... by AndreR · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... for those extended versions of the Lord of The Rings that will finally be coming on BluRay next year.

    "Oh, this would have required so many discs with that old BluRay technology, you know, we just used these new BDXL discs and actually reduced the cost of the box set for you, the customer, by having less discs! Just don't forget to pick up one of those new players on your way to the cashier."

    I kid, I kid, they would never do such a thing.