The problem is that the pirates in question (and most of them) had a DVD burner or array of them, whereas overseas pirates have actual DVD manufacturing capabilities. Therefore, they must have used DeCSS or a modern equivalent.
1:1 copying of course is what allows us to copy CD-ROMs whether they are encrypted or not because they simply copy all the data blindly. Right now it is impossible to copy a modern DVD using a 1:1 copy because most of them use a DVD-9, which has two layers and a maximum capacity of 8.5 Gb. If you do any DVD ripping at all you know that a typical 2 hour movie uses 6 Gb.
How do you 1:1 copy a 6Gb movie on 4.7Gb CDR? You don't.
So, you use one of Smartripper or one of the new DVD rippers (all of which are evolutions of DeCSS and break the DVD encryption) and copy the VOB's to your hard drive. You then transcode the DVD using Cinemacraft Encoder or a like industrial MPEG-2 encoding software to a smaller size. The picture quality hardly suffers at all because you use smart bitrate encoding.
Voila, a 6gb movie on a 4.7gb DVD-R. But impossible if you didnt transcode the DVD in order to recompress the video. And how do you rip the encrypted video in order to transcode it? DeCSS.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but THIS IS ILLEGAL. Not to say we shouldn't be doing it: we are being ripped off by the MPAA and RIAA. And those of us who do own the media should be entitled to replacement media. On the other hand, those companies do have a right to make a profit and the artists deserve to earn royalties for their work.
The logic on both sides of the issue is equally irrational. My real point is the DeCSS is an integral part of a DVD burner based pirating system. Unless you possess actual DVD pressing/manufacturing capability, you have to break the DVD encryption to either recompress or split the video in order to fit the smaller capacity of a DVD-R.
LCD manufacturing yields must be over 40% in order to make a profit. Volume is generally not a problem because most of the existing fabs are overbooked. The recent introduction of Taiwanese manufacturers into the Japanese dominanted LCD manufacturing industry was seen as being sucessful (read: profitable) when they reported yields of 50%. Japanese manufacturers typically produce devices at 70% yield efficiency. Since the glass substrates used to produce LCD devices are a little under a metre squared (600*700 mm), a single substrate should be able to produce 4 17" screens or 6 14" screens. It is generally accepted that LCD yields will never approach IC yields, which are typically around 90%. The upper theoretical limit for conventional LCD production is probably something like 80%.
A 1 in 20 failure rate would be a 95% yield. So, in short, we're looking at a 3 in 10 failure rate in real life with a 70% yield.
If you want to read the rest of my long-winded post, go on. If you've had enough, I suggest you go play your favorite video game.
People don't realize how complex an LCD is. The traditional example is two glass substrates surrounding a layer containing the liquid crystals, which is itself sandwiched between two polarized layers. Then there is a backlight and an active matrix of transistors used to address each pixel. Because contaminants will kill pixels in the display, this layer must be filled under ultra-clean, high vacuum conditions. The glass substrates (AND every single layer of the LCD)must be manufactured to precise planar dimensions to prevent dimensional variations across the screen. Since larger substrates approach a square metre in size, this is not an easy task. Advanced LCD technology has taken advantage of polymer coatings on each layer to separate them, prevent contamination, act as internal reflectors, etc. This adds more layers, and adds more complexity to the process.
The active matrix of transistors itself consists of a grid which is vapour deposited under ultra-high vacuum. This layer consists of at least three layers itself: anode, cathode, and at least one active layer, since active matrix LCD screens rely on field effect to twist the LCDs.
Perhaps it is not evident to the reader that high vacuum and fast manufacturing processes don't exactly mix. Even if you achieve vacuum, you are basically racing against time to complete your manufacturing/analysis before residual impurities hopelessly contaminate what you are working on.
This is why plasma and OLED displays (hopefully soon to be my research topic) are being pumped up with research dollars. The accepted theoretical limit (economically) for current LCD active matrix displays is 30", and the market is clearly looking towards very massive wall-mounted units in the future. LCD will probably dominate the POS, business and computing display markets as people become more enamoured with flat panel units, but due to sheer complexity, I think it's only a matter of time before they are eclipsed by either OLEDs or plasma.
This is long. whew. sorry, guys. pixel density was increased as a function of more efficient transistor drives for each LCD cell. It's relatively easy to pattern pixel densities that small (look at CRT monitors), but with better field effect transistors, the ghosting and cross talk present in early displays was eliminated. This was accomplished by adoption of amorphous silicon in the transistor layer as opposed to the original CdSe thin films. That in turn was enabled through advances in physical and chemical vapour deposition which allows manufacturers to pattern the transistor matrix more precisely.
That's the best I can do right now. I mainly regard LCD wrt to comparisons with OLEDs, which I am more familiar with, so I apologize for any screw-ups in here.
Actually, having done my undergraduate engineering thesis on this, and hoping to do my master's thesis on it, I think I'm informed enough to comment.
Screen printing: actually, Epson has teamed up with Seiko and licensed the cambridge display technology. I assume that the cambridge display technology is based on the early cambridge breakthroughs, many of which involved the 'baking' of a spin-cast liquid precursor to form the desired polymer (in the early days before copolymers were used, it was polyparaphenylenevinylene or PPV). Anyways, the point is that you could conceivably 'paint on' the thin films you need to produce an OLED, and Epson was recruited to utilize their inkjet printing expertise on a manufacturing level. So yes, eventually we would like to screen print OLEDs as it would be the easiest way to produce very large area displays.
speed to market: well, one telling graph uses this analogy. The common lightbulb is the minimum level of brightness we require for a viable light source. It has taken inorganic LED's almost 30 years to reach that level (and has leaped past it in the last ten or so), but since research has exploded on OLEDs, they have reached those intensity levels in approximately eight years. if this trend continues (and it will, because long-lasting OLEDs are right now the holy grail of the display technology world) I dont see why the engineering obstacles won't be overcome, by sheer effort if nothing else.
the ultimate display: yes, a book-like display would be nice, and work is being done on static writing pads utilizing TiO2 (because it is nice and white, basically). The concept involves charging or uncharging TiO2 particles so that they stick to a transparent substrate. It's essentially etch-a-sketch. But the thing is, the ultimate display SHOULD have a light source, because we pesky humans have disregarded the night for a long time now.
You could theoretically add a reflective layer to a display (a layer mirrored facing the display then microangled to bounce light off another reflective surface and to your eyes), especially with the advances in nano-reflective layers used in today's semiconductor lasers, but it would just add another layer of complexity and manufacturing costs for the sake of "niceness". It's not like monitors are totally unbearable.
wow, a pretty long posting for my first slashdot reply. hopefully it wasnt too full of crap.
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The problem is that the pirates in question (and most of them) had a DVD burner or array of them, whereas overseas pirates have actual DVD manufacturing capabilities. Therefore, they must have used DeCSS or a modern equivalent.
1:1 copying of course is what allows us to copy CD-ROMs whether they are encrypted or not because they simply copy all the data blindly. Right now it is impossible to copy a modern DVD using a 1:1 copy because most of them use a DVD-9, which has two layers and a maximum capacity of 8.5 Gb. If you do any DVD ripping at all you know that a typical 2 hour movie uses 6 Gb.
How do you 1:1 copy a 6Gb movie on 4.7Gb CDR? You don't.
So, you use one of Smartripper or one of the new DVD rippers (all of which are evolutions of DeCSS and break the DVD encryption) and copy the VOB's to your hard drive. You then transcode the DVD using Cinemacraft Encoder or a like industrial MPEG-2 encoding software to a smaller size. The picture quality hardly suffers at all because you use smart bitrate encoding.
Voila, a 6gb movie on a 4.7gb DVD-R. But impossible if you didnt transcode the DVD in order to recompress the video. And how do you rip the encrypted video in order to transcode it? DeCSS.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but THIS IS ILLEGAL. Not to say we shouldn't be doing it: we are being ripped off by the MPAA and RIAA. And those of us who do own the media should be entitled to replacement media. On the other hand, those companies do have a right to make a profit and the artists deserve to earn royalties for their work.
The logic on both sides of the issue is equally irrational. My real point is the DeCSS is an integral part of a DVD burner based pirating system. Unless you possess actual DVD pressing/manufacturing capability, you have to break the DVD encryption to either recompress or split the video in order to fit the smaller capacity of a DVD-R.
LCD manufacturing yields must be over 40% in order to make a profit. Volume is generally not a problem because most of the existing fabs are overbooked. The recent introduction of Taiwanese manufacturers into the Japanese dominanted LCD manufacturing industry was seen as being sucessful (read: profitable) when they reported yields of 50%. Japanese manufacturers typically produce devices at 70% yield efficiency. Since the glass substrates used to produce LCD devices are a little under a metre squared (600*700 mm), a single substrate should be able to produce 4 17" screens or 6 14" screens. It is generally accepted that LCD yields will never approach IC yields, which are typically around 90%. The upper theoretical limit for conventional LCD production is probably something like 80%.
A 1 in 20 failure rate would be a 95% yield. So, in short, we're looking at a 3 in 10 failure rate in real life with a 70% yield.
If you want to read the rest of my long-winded post, go on. If you've had enough, I suggest you go play your favorite video game.
People don't realize how complex an LCD is. The traditional example is two glass substrates surrounding a layer containing the liquid crystals, which is itself sandwiched between two polarized layers. Then there is a backlight and an active matrix of transistors used to address each pixel. Because contaminants will kill pixels in the display, this layer must be filled under ultra-clean, high vacuum conditions. The glass substrates (AND every single layer of the LCD)must be manufactured to precise planar dimensions to prevent dimensional variations across the screen. Since larger substrates approach a square metre in size, this is not an easy task. Advanced LCD technology has taken advantage of polymer coatings on each layer to separate them, prevent contamination, act as internal reflectors, etc. This adds more layers, and adds more complexity to the process.
The active matrix of transistors itself consists of a grid which is vapour deposited under ultra-high vacuum. This layer consists of at least three layers itself: anode, cathode, and at least one active layer, since active matrix LCD screens rely on field effect to twist the LCDs.
Perhaps it is not evident to the reader that high vacuum and fast manufacturing processes don't exactly mix. Even if you achieve vacuum, you are basically racing against time to complete your manufacturing/analysis before residual impurities hopelessly contaminate what you are working on.
This is why plasma and OLED displays (hopefully soon to be my research topic) are being pumped up with research dollars. The accepted theoretical limit (economically) for current LCD active matrix displays is 30", and the market is clearly looking towards very massive wall-mounted units in the future. LCD will probably dominate the POS, business and computing display markets as people become more enamoured with flat panel units, but due to sheer complexity, I think it's only a matter of time before they are eclipsed by either OLEDs or plasma.
This is long. whew. sorry, guys. pixel density was increased as a function of more efficient transistor drives for each LCD cell. It's relatively easy to pattern pixel densities that small (look at CRT monitors), but with better field effect transistors, the ghosting and cross talk present in early displays was eliminated. This was accomplished by adoption of amorphous silicon in the transistor layer as opposed to the original CdSe thin films. That in turn was enabled through advances in physical and chemical vapour deposition which allows manufacturers to pattern the transistor matrix more precisely.
That's the best I can do right now. I mainly regard LCD wrt to comparisons with OLEDs, which I am more familiar with, so I apologize for any screw-ups in here.
Actually, having done my undergraduate engineering thesis on this, and hoping to do my master's thesis on it, I think I'm informed enough to comment. Screen printing: actually, Epson has teamed up with Seiko and licensed the cambridge display technology. I assume that the cambridge display technology is based on the early cambridge breakthroughs, many of which involved the 'baking' of a spin-cast liquid precursor to form the desired polymer (in the early days before copolymers were used, it was polyparaphenylenevinylene or PPV). Anyways, the point is that you could conceivably 'paint on' the thin films you need to produce an OLED, and Epson was recruited to utilize their inkjet printing expertise on a manufacturing level. So yes, eventually we would like to screen print OLEDs as it would be the easiest way to produce very large area displays. speed to market: well, one telling graph uses this analogy. The common lightbulb is the minimum level of brightness we require for a viable light source. It has taken inorganic LED's almost 30 years to reach that level (and has leaped past it in the last ten or so), but since research has exploded on OLEDs, they have reached those intensity levels in approximately eight years. if this trend continues (and it will, because long-lasting OLEDs are right now the holy grail of the display technology world) I dont see why the engineering obstacles won't be overcome, by sheer effort if nothing else. the ultimate display: yes, a book-like display would be nice, and work is being done on static writing pads utilizing TiO2 (because it is nice and white, basically). The concept involves charging or uncharging TiO2 particles so that they stick to a transparent substrate. It's essentially etch-a-sketch. But the thing is, the ultimate display SHOULD have a light source, because we pesky humans have disregarded the night for a long time now. You could theoretically add a reflective layer to a display (a layer mirrored facing the display then microangled to bounce light off another reflective surface and to your eyes), especially with the advances in nano-reflective layers used in today's semiconductor lasers, but it would just add another layer of complexity and manufacturing costs for the sake of "niceness". It's not like monitors are totally unbearable. wow, a pretty long posting for my first slashdot reply. hopefully it wasnt too full of crap.