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Industry Agrees On Next Gen Unified DVD Standard 339

Posted by Hemos from the making-it-all-agree dept.
scsirob writes "According to this press release the DVD recording industry will end the DVD-RW/DVD+RW/DVD-RAM mess and standardise on a new technology called 'Blue Ray'. Blue lasers are used to record up to 27 GB on each side of the DVD. This initiative is backed by all major players in the industry. The article contains many technical details." Several other people noted that the BBC has coverage as well. Yah for non-company specific industry standards.
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Industry Agrees On Next Gen Unified DVD Standard More

Industry Agrees On Next Gen Unified DVD Standard

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  • oOooO.. more fodder.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bo0push3r ( 456800 ) <boopusher@gmCOBOLx.co.uk minus language> on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @08:56AM (#3031228) Homepage
    In addition, the adoption of a unique ID written on a Blu-ray Disc realizes high quality copyright protection functions.

    wonder how long it'll take for some 15-year-old to be tried as an adult and tossed in the pokey for cracking this one...

    15 minutes.. a day maybe? :)

    • Don't CD-R(W)s already have unique IDs on them? IIRC, each writer is assigned one, and they are written to the disc.

      • I think they want to do something else with the disc ids, like: one standalone recoder can only play disc that were recodered by this recoder. If they use real cryptography for that they could maybe succed with that.
        • So, if my Blu-Ray burner dies, I can't restore any of my backups using a replacement drive!?!

          If this is progress, I don't want any, thank you...

        • Easy to crack.
          Just patch the firmware in your standalone and replace the if-code with a few NOPs.

          With future players running on more computer-like hardware and using Linux or Windows XYZ or whatever commodity operating system, you won't even need to have expensive electronics equipment.

    • Not for the casual copier (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ajs ( 35943 )
      The casual coppier who rips a DVD, converts it to divx:-) and sends it off to the world is not really the concern of the big studios. They want to own the Asian market, and right now it's owned by the bulk-coppiers.

      Of course, all a unique ID gets them is to know where the bulk coppier in question got the first DVD. I can see it now: "yup, we're certain that Mr. Smith bought this DVD with a stolen credit card from Amazon and had it shipped to a field in Thailand. We'll get right on it!" ;-)

  • Aaarrghhh.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by fegu ( 66137 )
    And I just bought a DVD+RW drive yesterday.

  • A new standard! Joy! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mlsemon2 ( 413798 )
    ...VHS vs. Beta for the digital generation. Will this become another competition between a) a cheap standard with a large, established base of customers and b) an expensive standard with higher quality but no installed customer base?

    My best friend was just telling me about how Blockbuster employees were smashing old VHS tapes with hammers instead of giving them away, just to keep the VHS/DVD market ratio more in favor of DVD. I wonder if they'll be doing the same thing for old DVD disks in favor of the new ones.
  • Initial sacrifice of karma: Yah? That's not very emphatic. Do you mean yay! That would indicate rejoycing over a good thing.

    Anyway, this is definetly a good thing for movies because... er... actually, I'm not sure what else can be fit on there. Perhaps more "control your own fate" type things like in those GI Joe books I read a long time ago.

    Games could definetly take advantage of this (FF games could get really huge, and no 3 disc sets, although they sometimes give you nice indicators of how far you are in the game).

    Maybe we'll start to see the games combined with the movies? Like you buy Gold Finger and it comes with 007 on it already? It seems like a logical leep - you get people to buy two products at once.

    How much are these babies anyway? I didn't see any price tags, but I'm assuming they'd be quite a chunk of change righ now.

    </rambling>

    F-bacher

    • Re:Yah? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dachshund ( 300733 )
      Anyway, this is definetly a good thing for movies because... er... actually, I'm not sure what else can be fit on there.

      HDTV.

      • HDTV.

        Hmm, if this [bbc.co.uk] ever gets off the ground, it might be VHS vs Betamax all over again. This one will be won or lost on backwards compatibility, but it's not as cut and dried as that. Availability is also important in capturing market share, but then again, I'd rather wait out DVHS because the random-access of a disc is inherently better than the serial access of a tape for most users.

  • These could be excellent backup devices. (Score:4, Informative)

    by thesolo ( 131008 ) <slap@fighttheriaa.org> on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:10AM (#3031266) Homepage
    Provided there is ever a way to record these on your own like a regular CD (without spending thousands, that is), these could be excellent for archival purposes.

    Currently, my only solution for backups of my drives are other drives. Sure, tapes work, but they take far too long. Being able to dump the essentials from my hard drive (being a 3D designer, that's easily 30 gigs of textures, models, etc) onto one disc would be a lifesaver.

    Let's just hope these things aren't so crippled by the time we get them that their apparent benefits aren't overshadowed by idiotic "protection" schemes.
    • SuperDLT does 11 megabytes per sec natively, and 110gig per tape. AIT and LTO might go higher (I like the rock solid history of DLT over these competitors) throughput wise. SuperDLT does 39.6 gigs natively per hour.

      Tell me what the problem is with tape again?

      ostiguy
      • SuperDLT does 11 megabytes per sec natively, and 110gig per tape. AIT and LTO might go higher (I like the rock solid history of DLT over these competitors) throughput wise. SuperDLT does 39.6 gigs natively per hour.

        Tell me what the problem is with tape again?

        The problem is that SuperDLT drives are $4800 each. [pricewatch.com]

        I want a cheap, large capacity, and fast storage medium. The only thing that even remotely fits that bill right now are other hard drives.

      • Tell me what the problem is with tape again?

        Economy of scale.

        These next generation DVDs will have drives made in the millions and there will be an attempt to push them into every home. That means that within a few years of introduction, the drive will cost $100 for a cheesy model and $300 for a high-end superdeluxe version.

        If SuperDLT had some kind of "dual use" to make it appeal to the mass market in addition to people who bother to backup, it would be good. But it's just used for backups, which means it's sold in the thousands instead of millions. That makes it expensive.

        Heh, I remember when the whole point of tape was that it was an inexpensive way to back up... I was so smug and happy, having a $600 drive which could hold 4 Gigabytes (wow!!) on a $15 tape -- enough to backup my whole system in less than an hour. Nowdays, a suitable tape drive would cost more than all the other components in my machine(s!), combined. I wish tape guys could keep up with the hard disk guys...

  • FMD or Blu-ray first to market? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Novus ( 182265 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:10AM (#3031268)
    The interesting question is whether this will make it to the market before FMD [constellation3d.com] does. Both have roughly similar specs as far as size is concerned, but Constellation brags about transfer speeds of up to 1 Gbps compared to the 50 Mbps of Blu-ray (of course, the 1 Gbps figure is "potential" speed. Both should have hardware on the market in a year or two.

    Either way, I think that whoever is first to get a really high-capacity (tens of GB) consumer-level removable optical storage format on the market will be the one who defines the new standard, unless the later competitor is a lot cheaper or better.

    • Sorry, I will have to disagree with you there. The one that will win the market is neither the one who is first, nor the one with the best specs. It will be the one with the standard that is adopted, supported and implemented in the most units on sale. If you look at the companies supporting this standard, it are all the usual suspects: Royal Philips, LG, Sony, Hitachi, Pioneer, Matsushita, Samsung etc. These companies matter, they have got clout, marketing, production and sales-channels.

      Alot of companies forget when they introduce a new technology, that it is better to agree on the standard that is going to be used and to compete on the final hardware. Good examples here are the GSM-standard and VHS-standard. There are competitors of these standards, and sometimes they are even technically better, but companies or countries investing in these rival technologies have found they lost money. This was only because the winning technology was backed broader and offered more services. (yes VHS offered a premium service that some other didn't, Pr0n).

      • Sorry, I have to disagree with YOU.

        How do you explain the ZIP phenomenon? Here we have a company (Iomega) that wasn't any of the "usual suspects". They created a product that ended up as a huge success even though it was completely closed and proprietary.

        Ultimately, Iomega failed because they coasted on their initial success far too long but even today you'll find ZIP drives as options on every desktop and most laptops from major hardware manufacturers. There were even some programs released with ZIP disks as a choice of installation media.

        Cringley once wrote an article (I can't seem to find it at the moment) that talked about the 10x factor. If something is 10x better or 10x cheaper than existing alternatices, consumers will flock to it.

        I think Cringley hit the nail right on the head. ZIP drives came out right at a time where computer manufacturers were waffling on the subject of increasing floppy capacity. CD recordables were too new and expensive and no one needed THAT much storage. 100MB was perfect and fairly resonable.

        FMD easily exceeds the 10x factor. They will be the next Iomega if they can ever produce an actual product. It won't matter what the major players decide to do. People will all buy FDM drives and figure out a way to play video from that. Or they will make dual-use drives. Or people will have one FDM drive and one DVD drive just like most modern systems have one DVD drive and one CD-RW drive.

        27GB is nice, but it's not 10x better or 10x cheaper than existing options. People will gradually adopt them but the market is still up for grabs to anyone who can make the 10x factor.

        - JoeShmoe

        .
        • Zip is not a good example. Look around you and most people don't own a zip-drive. (at least not here in The Netherlands and what I have seen of western-europe) Everybody still has and uses a floppy drive for smaller sized files. For bigger files I use a cd-burner.

          Zip drives have now lost to cd-r and cd-rw. Why? You can use them anywhere and they store enough. The 10 time factor is probably correct, but the simple fact that you can share a burned cd with all and a zip disk with some made cd-r the standard to win. You have to add the factor that you need somebody to share it with. If you have a standard that is 10 times better and supported by all, then you win. If you're just 10 times better but there is a competitor that comes close enough and is supported by all. You loose.
    • Admittedly, Blu-ray isn't on the market yet, but the only real technological step being taken is the use of a higher-frequency laser. The rest of the technology is built upon proven DVD reader/burner techniques.

      FMD is still total vapor. Those guys have been hyping that vapor for over two years now [byte.com], but they still have nothing two show or sell. I smell a rat. I think that they've hit some technical hurdles that will keep them from producing anything.

  • Curious by its absence (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:17AM (#3031290) Homepage Journal
    Curious by its absence is any mention of DRM. Since I doubt that this new format will lack DRM, I would assume this ommision is because this new format will be locked down tighter than the Windows XP sourcecode repository against the states' representatives.

    What do you want to bet this time the "CSS" is designed so that it cannot be brute-forced, and that the manufacturer keys are better locked down?

    Lastly, I see lots of discusson on the Matsushita site about digital video, but none about raw data storage - I hope they didn't make the same mistake the CD folks did and not consider data storage up front.
    • Actually, the press release directly addresses the issue of Digital Rights Management. To quote:

      "It is possible for the Blu-ray Disc to record digital high definition broadcasting while maintaining high quality and other data simultaneously with video data if they are received together. In addition, the adoption of a unique ID written on a Blu-ray Disc realizes high quality copyright protection functions."

      • But, there is no mention of what the standard will DO with that "unique key" - no description of region locking of the drives, no description of CSS or anything like it.

        That is the point I am making - they have a chance to slip in "fixes" to all the "shortcomings" of DVD, and they are not talking about that.
    • Curious by its absence is any mention of DRM. Since I doubt that this new format will lack DRM, I would assume this ommision is because this new format will be locked down tighter than the Windows XP sourcecode repository against the states' representatives.

      The new format, the Blu-ray Disc, will store more than 13 hours of film, compared with the current limit of 133 minutes, - It is expected to come into its own as more viewers become able to record TV shows on DVD machines.

      I wonder if this is just for the media alone. Maybe the standard being agreed to is similar to layer 0 of the OSI model that you see in networking, the physical media.

      Which would leave DRM to be decided later.

      right now, I do not know who I would trust to manage my digital rights. [smile]

  • I just hope hardware manufacturers don't make the "mistake" of forgetting to add support for all the older formats (down to old-fashioned CDs), otherwise they will alienate customers.

    Yes, the existing base of DVDs isn't as big as, say the existing one of vinyl discs when CDs came out, but it does add several bases to it (CDs, and all the DVD formats (screw laserdiscs, though).

    From a customer point of view, the ideal hardware will be one that can play ANY digital disc.

  • This is positive news ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by FonkiE ( 28352 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:27AM (#3031335)
    For those who bought either DVD-R(W) or DVD+RW nothing changes. Todays players (standalone and DVD-ROMs) can play your discs fine. DVD-R plays everywhere, I have found no player, where it doesn't work.

    To the future: This new format is a next generation format. 27GB per layer is a very cool capacity. Combined with MPEG2 and AC3 whole seasons of 'startrek' may be on one disc. But on the other hand: have you looked at the sizes of DVDs lately: they are big like nearly 9GB. Viewed at 27GB from this side it's actually small. It's the bare minimum ;-)

    The physical problems with DVDs are scratches. The more capacity there is on the disc the more problems you get.

    What I like about this announcement is that all major players are on the list, this is positive: nobody will have choose the "better" format, this is also the negative thing ;-) They will have full world-wide control over the format, things like region-protection will probably be better enforced, because of their monopoly in the market.

    To those who need DVD-R right now, nothing has changed, buy a player, I've seen discs as cheap as $3 ;-) And the DVR-A-03 is very cheap too.

    For those who want a DVD-video recorder: WAIT for this new format, this will really enhance the VCR experiance: direct access and capacity ...
    • The physical problems with DVDs are scratches. The more capacity there is on the disc the more problems you get.

      I always wondered why CDs/DVDs didn't come in a cartridge form. You slap the cartridge into the reader and the CD pops out (kind of like how VHS tapes/cartridges work). That way you never touch the disc and introduce scratches.

      Of course if discs stayed in perfect condition, people wouldn't REBUY their old CDs and DVDs, which means the media companies lose money. They are better off giving you a fragile format.
      • The early cr-recorders used cartridges. So did most of the Bernoulii-type MO disks. People didn't like the cartridges.
        • People didn't like the cartridges.

          No, people objected to having to pay $5 - $12 for the CD caddies at the time.

          I personally loved the cartridge, I just didn't like having to pay the high prices to encase every CD-ROM I bought.
    • The physical problems with DVDs are scratches. The more capacity there is on the disc the more problems you get.

      Once upon a time, caddies were required for CD-ROM drives. They were bulky peices of junk that didn't typically come with the CD itself.

      The thing is... if you scratch your DVD, the average customer is just going to replace it and that's another sale for the movie/record companies.

      Sure they are going to argue that the cost was too high, customers didn't like them, etc. In reality, the extra plastic required to make a simple cartriage would be less than the cost of making the DVD itself. A more complex cartriage like those seen on iomega disks would be more expensive however, but if all you want is to have your DVD not get scratched when you drop it, it's not exactly necessary. Dust will be a problem though.
    • I would certainly take this with a grain of salt. While we all WOW to the capacity it is still to be seen when _recorders_ for this format will show up. Please also note that only at the end of the article they mention the "future" use for data. On the other side count the number of appearances for "brodcasting...video compression....copyright protection....". So I wouldn't hold my breath to wait for the next burner to save my dear pr0n^H^H^H^H data on such a disk.

  • Unique ID's.. oh JOY (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DarkEdgeX ( 212110 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:29AM (#3031345) Journal
    In the press release, they make mention of provisions for a unique ID (aka: a serial number) on each disc to help curb/stop piracy.. this, to me, is the media's biggest problem. I imagine that unlike CSS (which the studio's botched) they'll do the smart thing and use the unique ID to somehow watermark the data and/or video content of these new discs. Some might see this as good (if the studio's actually do the logical thing and allow fair use copying again, unlike DVD), but I can see a situation where the studio's turn this around and use it to track down offenders for individual prosecution. (Something that I've never seen them do, but when you've got these kinds of smoking guns (the watermark being found in some DiVX ripped copy on the net), you gotta wonder if they can really contain themselves from blasting people into the afterlife with their "lawyer death ray"...)

    Otherwise I love the technology, I've been hearing about blue-laser technology and optical discs since I was a kid (I'm in my mid-20's now), it's good to see it finally coming of age.
    • cant be done...

      Let's see press 1 million copies of that same movie. Now we make a master and press the living crap out of that. this digital watermark id? a new master must be created for every pressing.

      so we just made that $19.95 dvd cost $199.95. now noone will buy them and this watermarking fails a horrible miserable death.

      they cannot do it, it's impossible to make each disc 100% unique when you are trying to make mass quantities unless you are willing to spend enormous amounts of money and make production take months instead of weeks.

      • Yeah but this is definately a process they can automate-- if they can take the time to generate a Unique ID, they can certainly take the additional few minutes to encode the movie/video/audio with a watermark of some sort. Realize that they won't be re-encoding the content (MPEG2 compression is quite time consuming, if this were the case I'd agree with you), but watermarking content should be quite fast. All they need to do is change their production methodologies and ramp up, and they'll probably be able to churn out discs with 100% unique content at nearly the same price as current DVD movies...
      • Can't be done.... Now we make a master and press the living crap out of that. this digital watermark id? a new master must be created for every pressing.

        Imagine how it could work, rather than stating it can't. You are probably right (probably) about not being feasable to make each set of content unique. (But don't assume.)

        Assuming you are right, one way it could work is thus. The content is not watermarked, as recorded on the disk. The bits on each disk are identical. But the hardware that plays it will only extract, even at some low level, watermarked data. That is, as the data comes off the disk, the drive watermarks it, even before it ever leaves the drive mechanism and hits your ide cable.

        It works kind of how CD Audio and CD Data are different. Data is recorded on the disk differently from "a movie". You must issue one command to the drive mechanism to read sectors of data. You issue different commands to the drive to start the streaming transfer of "a movie". The streaming movie comes out of the drive watermarked with the disk's unique id.

        This is just one hypothetical scenerio. I'm sure clever slashdotters could imagine other horrors that these terrorists could embed into our drives.

        He who controls the hardware, controls the universe! -- Maud Dibb (or something like that)

  • What has caused this? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Beautyon ( 214567 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:32AM (#3031360) Homepage
    I wonder what pressure caused this voluntary unification to take place?

    Normally when a company has large commercial sucess with a proprietary format, it simply "goes with it" and the competition be damned. Perhaps the sucess of each of these formats was far less than expected, forcing this collaboration.

    Certainly it will mean cheaper media and drives for everyone, less consumer confusion and A Better Ride®.

    • Re:What has caused this? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Masem ( 1171 )
      With the number of DVD recording specs (4, I believe) with no single spec having better support for the other, the market is fractured, and profits, while still made, aren't great. As one example, if I, the consumer, bought a Phillips DVD recorder, and used that extensively, then I'm very limited in what models I may select from when I have to upgrade my hardware as to ensure my existing media continued to work. And if I don't like the features or find a feature lacking on the models of Phillips recorders when I'm ready to repurchase, I may not purchase anything at all. Add to this the mess that 4 difference blank DVD media disks would incure, and it's not a pretty picture. Also, what would happen if Phillips got out of the market? I'd be screwed if my hardware should die.

      With a standard, there's more of a profit to be made as now consumers will be able to shop and compare features across a number of different makers, will not have to worry about which type of DVD disk to purchase, and will be insured that their recorded media will work on any other DVD recording hardware device regardless of maker. While this is all beneficial to the end user, this is also beneficial to the electronics makers since they will see more sales as a whole as a result of unification.

  • How do you think this will affect DVD movies? Will we see:
    1. More bonus video footage
    2. More lame Flash games (see Shrek DVD-ROM extras) that are cross-platform compatible but claim they're not, or...
    3. A full copy of Windows XP DVD Edition to run our DVD players, download the latest movie trailers and transmit our viewing habits back to MS (I watched Snatch 5 times on Monday... wonder how they'd interpret that).
  • Does it strike anyone else as strage that while they are pushing this media as a new standard:

    Nine electronics manufacturers have developed the discs, which they hope they will become the standard format, getting rid of the differences between those currently made by individual companies.

    while, as the same time:

    ... the manufacturers also said they were developing discs that could hold up to 50 gigabytes.

    How strong of a new standard are they trying to create if they're already working on a sucessor?

    It sounds like this new format will be of greater use to the emergine video hobbyist market (such as who the iMac w/DVD writer and video editing software is targetted at) as opposed to joe blockbuster. According to the press release, the video format is still MPEG2.

    Of course, the DVD pirates out there are going to love this... 3-6 entire DVD's from the video store ripped and stored on a single disk.

    --Cycon

  • New Region Encoding Standards (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ukab the Great ( 87152 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:37AM (#3031384)
    The next version of DVD's will most likely go with a new region-encoding system that divides your house up into different regions. The living room will be officially declared a seperate region from your kitchen. In order to watch "The Matrix" while making dinner, make sure that you buy the kitchen-region encoded dvd and you have a respective kitchen-region DVD player to play it back.

  • The standard is a BAD idea (for consumers)... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by @madeus ( 24818 ) <slashdot_24818@mac.com> on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:37AM (#3031388)
    Of course standards are generally very good ideas (both for consumers and for every-other-company-bar-the-current-market-leader) .

    BUT, I suspect there is more to this 'standard'. I suspect that this is an attempt not only to standardize a format for burning DVD's but also to create a standard that makes playback impossible on normal DVD players, allowing publishers like Sony et all to "put the genie back in the bottle" (the genie being that DVD burners are now easily affordable, and soon the blank media will be very cheap as demand is rising).

    I strongly suspect that the intention is that consumer DVD writers (in IBM Compatible PC's and Macintoshes) should be able to burn this standard and that should be it - and at 27 GB a side, they are very clearly not going to be playable on home DVD players.

    This means we cannot record and save our own shows (at least no as easily as we currently can with VHS) and we won't be able to make our own DVD's and give them away (this being an attempt to stop piracy, though I'm sure the don't care much for our ability to publish our own DVD's legitimately).

    This seems logical because:

    1) This standard will ONLY work with the aid of companies like Sony, Panasonic, et al because THEY an other market leaders will need to impliment it in their hardware for it to be a success.

    2) IF companies like Sony and Panasonic are involved (which they must be, see point 1) then they are going to do there damnest to design a system that prevents or hinders privacy of regualr DVD's.

    As always a carrot and stick approach is required by them in order to get consumers to agree to purchasing and going with a new system when actually taking something away from them:

    - The carrot is more storage (27 GB a side).
    - The stick is that I'd be almost certain you won't be also able to uses these same burners to create DVD's that will play in standard set top DVD players.

    This would in line with previous attepts and content control, such as the ATRAC 3 music format on Sony's Memory stick:

    - The carrot is it's better quality and uses less space than MP3.
    - The stick is that you can't copy them freely.

    If that "stick" is enough to put you off moving from the MP3 format, then it should also be enough to make you wary about the proposed limitations 'standard' until the public get's it's hand on shipping unit's.
    • 'Standard' DVD players wouldn't be able to play DVDs created with the blue-laser DVD technology, standard or not, as the wavelength of the lasers in current DVD players is too large to resolve the information on the new DVDs. It's like trying to fit a wide-gauge train on a narrow-gauge track. Blame physics for this, not industry standards.

  • Why bring up DVD-R,DVD+RW,DVD-RAM? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PhracturedBlue ( 224393 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:41AM (#3031404)
    These reports say nothing about replacing the current DVD-recordables. It certainly doesn't look like this will be compatible with current DVD (different wavelength seems to imply forward-incompatibility...though they'll probably make the drived CD/DVD capable). In any case, DVD-R/+RW/RAM is already breaking into the $300 markcet, and will probably hit the $200 market by years end. People want to record movies they can watch on their DVD players NOW, not need to buy new players just to watch new discs (and god knows if this will hit the MPAA or the PC world first...The MPAA folks would shoot themselves in the foot to uproot the DVD standard which is just finally beginning to overthrow the VHS market now)

    Anyhow, bringing up DVD-R/+RW/RAM is a Red Herring.

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by jonr ( 1130 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:42AM (#3031409) Homepage Journal
    It will have more accurate region coding, now every disc will be unusable outside your county/city.

  • In other news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NiftyNews ( 537829 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:44AM (#3031422) Homepage
    In other news: Low budget 3rd-party developer SuparKool Tek has already announced that it will be the first to forget to encrypt the new standard's anti-piracy features, with an accident date set for mid-June.

  • No changes that I see... (Score:2, Informative)

    by nedron ( 5294 )
    It looks to me as though this is just talking about the underlying storage medium, not the mechanisms used to lay data within the storage area.

    You'll also note that nowhere in the article does it mention DVD other than the general "12cm CD/DVD size disc". Do you know why? Because nothing can be called a DVD until the DVD Forum [dvdforum.com] says it's a DVD. That's why DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM can be called DVDs and DVD+RW cannot.

    Even if the DVD Forum were to accept the new Blu-ray disc, we'll most likely still have the same "problem" we have now (which really isn't a problem).

  • slow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alanak ( 451478 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:55AM (#3031461) Homepage
    Let me check my calculator here.

    1) Large recording capacity up to 27GB:

    and
    2) High-speed data transfer rate 36Mbps:

    Means 100 minutes to burn 27Gigs. That's a long time to sit around doing nothing.
    • 100 minutes to get through 27Gb at 36Mbps sounds fairly reasonable. If this is intended to be used as a next-gen DVD format, then it had better be good enough to store Hi-Def films on. The current DVD standard is for a 9 Gb disc to hold film with a maximum data rate of 10Mbps, on a picture format of 480 pixels high. For Hi-Def you need between 2 and 5 times the screen real-estate so they have basically increased capacity by 3 times and maximum bandwidth by 3.6 times to cope.

      It may be 100 minutes to burn at 1x, but how many weeks do you expect to wait before the first 2x drive arrives? My DVD reader is ancient (in the first year of the format) but does 5x nontheless.
      • 100 minutes to get through 27Gb at 36Mbps sounds fairly reasonable. If this is intended to be used as a next-gen DVD format, then it had better be good enough to store Hi-Def films on.

        Broadcast 1080i is encoded at only 19 Mbps, and it's visually stunning. So 36 Mbps would be overkill.

        On the other hand, this opens up the possibility of 1080/24p DVDs, which are largely indistinguishable from film, at least for the average viewer. Once we start building monitors that can sync a 1080 frame at 96 Hz, we'll be in business.

        See, if your monitor refreshes 24 times per second, or once for every frame, the flicker is pretty unacceptable. Movie theaters get around this by opening the shutter twice for every frame, for a refresh rate of 48 Hz and a frame rate of 24 Hz. Double that again and you're refreshing the screen four times for every frame (96 Hz) and you've got yourself a very pleasant viewing experience.
        • That's good information thanks. But what is this overkill thing? I believe there is no such thing when it comes to unavoidable standards. I don't care how much it costs when it comes out, I don't care if I have to buy movies again (because I will just rent them), I just want high-def movies so bad!
          • But what is this overkill thing? I believe there is no such thing when it comes to unavoidable standards.

            I work with high-def and film resolution media all day. Last year I watched the Super Bowl in broadcast high definition on a friend's 8' screen.

            We were in his home, but we were using a quality projector and screen. I couldn't see a difference between that viewing and a reference screening room with stacked Barcos.

            "Overkill" means spending money without getting results. Like de Mille said, spend every penny, but make sure it ends up on the screen. If you can't see a difference between 20 Mbps and 40 Mbps, you shouldn't spend the extra money for 40 Mbps.

  • Price vs Hard Drive? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @10:04AM (#3031505) Journal
    By the time that this becomes viable in terms of price and support, hard drives will be a much cheaper alternative. I don't see this catching on at all.

    Combined with high speed links (including wireless), there will be no need to have a solution that you can store like current DVDs and CDs. The industry is just trying to hedge their digital rights management problem.

    They are dead in the water.
    • Hard drives? You can't be serious. I am assuming that you are not talking about someone selling you or renting you a hard drive with a movie, and are talking about people downloading movies to watch them. Toshiba will probably come out with the first player about a year from now. I just can't forsee people downloading 27GB very easily in a year. This will catch on, and it should be pretty obvious to people by now.

  • X-Ray Disk (Score:3, Funny)

    by Aceticon ( 140883 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @10:10AM (#3031535)
    Why didn't they just jumped over a couple of generations to the X-Ray Disk?

    Possible advantages are:
    - Unbelievable data storage capacity (X-Rays wavelength is around 1/10000 of the one for blue light - this means 10000 times more data or 200TB per side).
    - X-Ray Disk is a cooler sounding name.
    - X-Ray Disk players would be almost impossible to steal (they would weight a ton, most of it being the lead anti-radiation protection)

  • So it triples DVD capacity. Two hours of HDTV content sounds nice, but why mpg2? I already see chips coming out for mpg4 encoding/decoding at reasonable prices in large quantities, it shouldn't be that far off.

    http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/em8470serie s. htm
    http://investor.indigovision.com/indigovision plc/i v_rns/1868432
    http://www.lsilogic.com/products/co nsumer/dvr_time shift/domino_popupwin.html

    Personally I think the only reason they're waiting for these DVDs is because they're afraid of mpeg4 players. But they're coming anyway, and I dare to say that a mpg4 normal DVD (9gb) is better than these mpg2 superDVDs (27gb). Of course the DVD industry is seeing what the CD industry already has. People will pay for a cd "full" of wav files but not one with 1/10th fileed with mp3s, nor 10x the price for 10 times the mp3s, so we need to fill the 27gb disk with something. If it was 270gb they'd fill it with uncompressed avi and say it's soooo much better.

    Kjella
  • company that makes fmd [c-3d.net]

    The technology to make far larger storage on the same physical size disk exists for at least three years now, or longer, I can't remember.

    The technology is called FMD, Fluorescent Multi-layer Disc.

    One can guess at the reason this is not marketed yet, but I think a combination of big-industry interest in current disc technology and capital is the answer.

    This tech is some years old now, probably a 12cm disc could hold 1 Terabyte or more with current state of the art tech, but I don't think you will see Sony, Philips and the others agreeing on a standard for that size, no, on a lowly 27 GB...

  • Serial Numbers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rworne ( 538610 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @10:42AM (#3031697) Homepage
    They can easily check who bought what with serial numbers.

    At one of my forays to Fry's to purchase an X-box, they not only took my money, but also entered the serial number of the box into their system. Since this was paid for by a credit card, they have all the info necessary to track the item back to me.

    Now I understand paying with cash can help solve the above problem, but if resellers are forced to track the serial numbers, they will -- no matter now many John Smith 123 Main St USA they have in their database.

    Considering how things are going with IP and the draconian measures being taken, I would not doubt that blanks and drives, when they become available, must be sold as a traceable item.

    If the whole thing is too onerous, simply making the players/recorders "call home" a'la TiVo would serve the same purpose.

    The next step is to tie the consumer's identification in a traceable manner. The only way to do that is to tie the consumer to the serial numbers. That way they can know what we record, and possibly what we watch.

  • There's some real danger here. If they're changing the track format, it requires a new player. This means that they have the opportunity to select a new codec as well. Will the standard codec for the next generation of optical video discs be Windows Media? If so, the free world is truly f**ked.

  • What about HDTV? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by spitzcor ( 67377 )
    /.ers. What about HDTV? Current DVD media is not big enough to hold a feature length movie in high definition. With 27Gb that will be possible.

    But, will Hollywood let it? They don't want you to be able to buy a HD-DVD - play it back on you 50" plasma + home theater and never go to the movie house. They don't want you to take that same HD-DVD and make 50 copies for your friends. They don't want you to copy the DVD to your PC and share it with the world on the Internet. You can bet they won't let HD enter this media. And that's too bad because what else are you going to put on your Scream XI DVD?

    True there is already D-VHS. But who wants to mess with the size of tapes with no random access! Besides, I've heard they movie studios are trying to kill D-VHS too.

    -spitzcor
  • The official announcement [matsushita.co.jp]
    In plaintext for the paranoid http://www.matsushita.co.jp/corp/news/official.dat a/data.dir/en020219-4/en020219-4.html
    In addition, the adoption of a unique ID written on a Blu-ray Disc realizes high quality copyright protection functions.
    Yah for non-company specific industry standards?
    This is a Cartel of Nine companies, it may be "an open standard" but we will have to wait and see how free (as in freedom not cost) it is.
    Licensing is expected to start around spring 2002.

    The Register is also carrying this story [theregister.co.uk]

  • Blu-Ray (Score:3, Funny)

    by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @03:18PM (#3033404)
    Bluray? Darnit! I got a DVD player because I wanted more clarity!

    /pun

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