Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Three HD Layers Today, Ten Layers Tomorrow

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Jan 11, 2007 08:33 PM
from the screw-everything-we're-going-eleven-layers dept.
Data Storage Media Hardware
Marcus Yam writes "While Toshiba has publicly announced its achievement of developing a triple-layer HD DVD-ROM (read only) disc with a capacity of 51 gigabytes, Ritek is disclosing behind closed doors at CES its own achievements in multi-layer HD optical media. Ritek claims to not only have been able to produce a three-layer and four-layer HD optical discs, but to have successfully designed HD media with a full 10 layers. The company says that its multi-layer process can be applied to both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Three HD Layers Today, Ten Layers Tomorrow 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Ritek? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eric76 (679787) on Thursday January 11 2007, @08:36PM (#17567116)
    10 layer DVDs from Ritek?

    When I've seen lists of various qualities of CDs, Ritek was usually near the bottom.

    I wonder how they rank on DVDs. I've used Ritek DVD+RW and never had more problems with them than other DVD+RW media.

    • Re:Ritek? (Score:4, Informative)

      by excelblue (739986) on Thursday January 11 2007, @10:28PM (#17568170) Homepage
      Many of the lists are just quite picky. If you take a look, most of the good ones are extremely hard to obtain. Of all the ones you could easily find, Ritek is probably one of the best of them (with the exception of Taiyo Yuden).

      Their CDs come in about the quality of their DVD+RW's - that is, although they're not made to the quality of the best CDs, they rarely fail. Out of a spindle of 100 Ritek's, I get an average of about 2-3 coasters. Compare that with the average of 10-20 coasters per 100 of CMC's, or even more with the Moser Baer ones.

      So, they're not that bad of a company. When comparing media that you could generally find anywhere, they're quite close to the top.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by greylion3 (555507)
        When choosing which media to buy, you have to take your DVD-burner into account.
        I did that, and ended up buying Memorex 8x DVD-R with mediacode CMC MAG AE1, for my Hivision DRW3S121 (which is really a LiteOn 1213S with a slightly different firmware).

        I bought 200 of them, I have burned 110 or so by now, and I've had ZERO coasters. Of course, they were all burned with dvd+rw-tools in Linux(Debian), which might be why I have such good "mileage" with DVD-burning.

        This website; http://www.videohelp.com/dvdmedia [videohelp.com] w
    • They must be write-only disks

  • screams of bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by timmarhy (659436) on Thursday January 11 2007, @08:40PM (#17567152)
    another tech company crying to investment. take careful notice of the wording "designed" meaning they haven't made one yet.

  • -1 Redundant (Score:5, Funny)

    by kjots (64798) * on Thursday January 11 2007, @08:41PM (#17567170)

    While Toshiba has publicly announced its achievement of developing a triple-layer HD DVD-ROM (read only) disc...

    Wow, a read-only ROM. Who'da thunk it?

    </deadpan-mode>

  • a little misleading (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thedarknite (1031380) on Thursday January 11 2007, @08:46PM (#17567232) Homepage
    FTA
    "Ritek claims to not only have been able to produce a three-layer and four-layer HD optical discs, but to have successfully designed HD media with a full 10 layers."

    "While those numbers do sound impressive, Ritek officials point out that the real barrier to this advancement is the lack of reader and writer laser diode technology to support the additional eight layers above the current standard."

    I feel that the phrase I've highlighted kind of diminish their announcement. The summary implied to me that they were already able to prototype these new discs
    • Bah, it's easy to make a ten layer optical disk if you don't have to worry about the reader. Why all you need is ten regular disks, a ten ton press, some heat, and a can of soda (for refreshment purposes while you wait).

  • Mark your calendars (Score:5, Funny)

    by meta-monkey (321000) on Thursday January 11 2007, @08:50PM (#17567280)
    Combined with this story [slashdot.org], I declare today, Thursday, January 11th 2007 to be the greatest news day in /. history.

  • Going a bit too far here? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Constantine XVI (880691) <trash@eighty+slashdot.gmail@com> on Thursday January 11 2007, @08:51PM (#17567288)
    What on earth happened to thinking like "640k ought to be enough for anybody"? Sometimes I think that rapid advances like this hurt programmers. If we have 100 GB discs, what encouragement do we have to make movies in 2160p that fit in 15 GB?

    Making the box bigger makes it harder to think outside the box. Being unable to think outside the box kills creativity.
    • If the box keeps getting bigger, eventually the walls don't matter.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jerf (17166)
      Excuse me, did you just complain about movie bloat?

      If this is some sort of troll, you need to make it less plausible. This is Slashdot.

      If this is serious, you need to be slapped around a bit.

      Either way, I got a belly laugh out of it, so thanks.

        • Re:Going a bit too far here? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Jerf (17166) on Thursday January 11 2007, @09:36PM (#17567674) Journal
          Movie bloat isn't as stupid as you think. As I'm sure many HDTV pirates are aware, it's quite possible to fit a 720p movie onto a DVD by using decent compression. So why do we need these new, highly inconvenient disc formats? Is going from 720 to 1080 really worth going from $50 players to $500?
          Fine, I'll spell out why movie "bloat" is a stupid thing to worry about. Well, actually, since I don't want to type it I'll give it to you in algorithm form:

          1. Think of a reason program bloat is bad.
          2. Realize it doesn't apply to movies.
          3. Repeat until you run out of reasons.
          Pirates are in for a shock if they think the next generation of movies are going to compress that much better; one of the reasons for the new formats is that they are going to start out by using the same codecs the pirates have been using. No more shrinking a movie by 75% with minimal quality loss (although I can still tell the difference); you're going to have to make harder choices about quality vs. resolution. (Actually, I expect the pirates who are distributing the movies already realize this; I hope they're steeling themselves for the bitching to come when the next generation doesn't work that way...)

          Oh, and finally, there's a world of difference between "squeezing" a high-def movie onto a DVD, with visible quality degradation, and fitting one onto one of the new high-capacity disks, which at a decent quality still doesn't leave much room left over on the disk. Squeezing a DVD onto a CD is a cute parlor trick, and certainly works far, far better than it has any right to, but if you can't see the quality degradation you either lack the equipment or lack the discrimination. (I don't consider the latter to be a problem; in fact I tend to encourage people not to try to attain that sort of discrimination since it pretty much only leads to pain. Nevertheless, the differences are there.) And like I said, it's not going to be as big a win this time around; nothing will stop you from trying to squeeze a full HD moving onto a DVD5 or DVD9, because the codecs will pretty much let you use any bitrate you want, but it's not going to be without cost this time, and I expect most such movies will end up with their resolutions cut down in practice.

          • Re:Going a bit too far here? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by StikyPad (445176) on Thursday January 11 2007, @10:49PM (#17568366) Homepage
            No more shrinking a movie by 75% with minimal quality loss (although I can still tell the difference); you're going to have to make harder choices about quality vs. resolution.

            Unresampled HD movies are already all over the Usenet, at ~12GB each, which is about 7-8 hours of downloading on a 5Mbit connection. As connection speeds rapidly increase, this will become more of a non-issue.

            At any rate, your observation is a bit off. Say we compress a 16x16 (256 pixel) image to an 8x8 (16 pixel) image, that's 1/4 the size. If you are satisfied with that 8x8 image, then there's no reason you can't compress a 128x128 image down to 8x8 as well, and in fact, it will look better because there was more information there to start with, which makes the interpolation more accurate. It's the quality of the source material which determines the quality of the result. The higher the quality you start with the better any compressed material will look.
            • At any rate, your observation is a bit off. Say we compress a 16x16 (256 pixel) image to an 8x8 (16 pixel) image, that's 1/4 the size. If you are satisfied with that 8x8 image, then there's no reason you can't compress a 128x128 image down to 8x8 as well, and in fact, it will look better because there was more information there to start with, which makes the interpolation more accurate. It's the quality of the source material which determines the quality of the result. The higher the quality you start with

            • As connection speeds rapidly increase, this will become more of a non-issue.

              I agree, except with the word "rapidly". Having made the jump to "megabit", I haven't noticed my connection speed going up a heck of a lot since then; certainly nothing like my MIPs jumps.

              If you are satisfied with that 8x8 image, then there's no reason you can't compress a 128x128 image down to 8x8 as well, and in fact, it will look better because there was more information there to start with, which makes the interpolation more acc

          • ... but if you can't see the quality degradation you either lack the equipment or lack the discrimination. (I don't consider the latter to be a problem; in fact I tend to encourage people not to try to attain that sort of discrimination since it pretty much only leads to pain.

            A depressing insight. True for most anything in life, I'm afraid.
          • The long and short of it, what you're discussing is the finer points of the extreme high-end. Do you know what a native 1080p24 MPEG2 TS / H.264, 720p reencode, HR (540p) reencode have in common? They all eat DVDs for breakfast quality-wise. A HDTV movie (1920x1080) is about 6x the pixels of a DVD (720x480). A DVD-rip of a HDTV movie is about 6x larger than a CD (4.3GB vs 700MB). That too "works far, far better than it has any right to". Yes, you'll see some degradation compared to the original, but the DVD
            • Well, personally, I'm pretty happy with straight DVDs upsampled to 1650x1050 (my laptop screen), so I don't really disagree. But there definitely is a quality difference; the one HD video I've ever watched (not "HD-DVD" per se, just a high-resolution video file) was definitely an improvement over up-sampled DVDs. It's just... I don't really care that much.

              (The interlacing is annoying, especially in cartoons like Futurama. Going to "p" from "i" would be enough to make me happy.)
    • If we have 100 GB discs, what encouragement do we have to make movies in 2160p that fit in 15 GB? Making the box bigger makes it harder to think outside the box. Being unable to think outside the box kills creativity

      Don't underestimate the "bandwidth" of FedEx. Cheaper delivery to the home than fiber.

      The audience doesn't go shopping for the programmer's bleeding-edge tech. The audience goes shopping for a movie.

    • > what encouragement do we have to make movies in 2160p that fit in 15 GB?

      The maximum amount of data we can transfer per second from those units.
      I've read everywhere that current HD DVD drives are slower than DVDs, and you're
      limited by USB/Firewire speeds anyway for some upcoming computer-connectable players.

  • 10 Layers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nick_davison (217681) on Thursday January 11 2007, @08:56PM (#17567316)
    And all I want are two... One blu-ray, one HD-DVD, both on the same disk. Then this whole stupid war can finish already.

    • Re:10 Layers? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by timeOday (582209) on Thursday January 11 2007, @09:09PM (#17567462)
      They can dump both HD-DVD *and* Blu-Ray, for all I care, and movies in general. Just give me a reliable, high-capacity, cheap removable storage for my own data. Coupling the storage media with the content just turns it into a food fight between huge companies, and makes it ten times harder to move from one format to a superior one.
      • Coupling the storage media with the content just turns it into a food fight between huge companies, and makes it ten times harder to move from one format to a superior one.

        Catch-22. If the content is not tied to a media (or is it the other way around), then that media will not likely be popular enough to become affordable. There are lots of optical formats that simply flopped, the only ones that have become affordable are CD and DVD.
        • Catch-22. If the content is not tied to a media (or is it the other way around), then that media will not likely be popular enough to become affordable.
          Hard drives seem to do just fine.

  • Ritek Quality (Score:5, Informative)

    by BillGatesLoveChild (1046184) on Thursday January 11 2007, @08:57PM (#17567330) Journal
    Someone asked about Ritek's media quality. There is a huge variance in quality of recordable media. Usually you don't find out until you lose an archive :-o. Ritek aren't the worst, but they're not the best either. Check this link:

    http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm [digitalfaq.com]

    51 Gbs is better, but still far short of my 320Gb HDDs for backup (and I've got 1Tb of disks). A losing battle. Maybe Blockbuster will just give up and fill the ailes with Seagates to rent by the evening?

    • "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." -- Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1996). Computer Networks. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 83. ISBN 0-13-349945-6.

      Damn, I just did the calculation today, and I can fit 124.55 TB of DVDs in the back of my Jeep without removing the seat. The 750GB and 1TB 3.5" hard drives make that number go up. Now I have to re-do the calculation using 4-layer and 10-layer HD DVD media? When will this madness end?

      Unfortunately, hard d

  • Which, considering the current state of U.S. patent law, might be every bit as accurate...

  • Who will be the first to implement a DVD with enough layers to implement the OSI network model?

  • The spec can't be changed now (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Wesley Felter (138342) <wesley@felter.org> on Thursday January 11 2007, @09:52PM (#17567820) Homepage
    The HD-DVD spec was finalized a while ago. HD-DVD players can only read two layers, therefore no movie can ever have more than two layers. All this talk about more layers is just PR wanking.
  • A machine that makes $25.00 coasters, instead of $0.25.

  • Title is a little misleading... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AusG4 (651867) on Thursday January 11 2007, @10:19PM (#17568066) Homepage Journal
    There really is no three layer HD-DVD media. It's not part of the standard. They don't expect it to be a part of the standard until the end of 2008 at the earliest. Even still, Toshiba would likely need to decide between making current players obsolete, or reserving three layer HD-DVD for 'desktop' purposes, like backup and data storage.

    This technology isn't likely going to ship with any Hollywood movies on it anytime soon.
  • It's one thing to have a prototype 10 layer disk, another to be able to read it, and another to write to it, another to be able to mass produce it and another *actually* mass produce it, and the required readers/writers.

    We had 10 layer DVD-s too years ago, but not surprisingly, non of them made it out "in the wild".

  • Pricing model (Score:5, Funny)

    by professorfalcon (713985) on Friday January 12 2007, @01:36AM (#17569678)
    Maybe they should go with the pizza pricing model: a base price for one layer, and $1.99 for each additional layer. Discount if you get a salad with it.
  • I'm reminded of the 1975 Saturday Night Live parody commercial about a three-bladed razor, "The Remco triple-track. Because You'll Believe Anything!".
    • Me too. But DVD-Rs were also supposed to be multi-layer and yet the only ones available are the single layer, so why will the HD-DVD market be different in that only commercial presses will be the only ones to make use of multiple layers for more storage?

      Indeed, my at home archival solution of 4.3 GB DVD-Rs is becoming painful just for my data. If I figure $25 dollars for a case of 50 DVD-Rs, I can archive about (4.3*200) 860GB for $100 which isn't including time spent burning and the hassle labeling/brin
      • What rock have you been hiding under? I have a dual layer dvd+/-r burner in my powermac. It came equipped with this drive well over a year ago when I bought it. And Apple was late to the game with dual layer burners. Dual layer media is still a bit expensive for my taste, so I usually use single layer discs - but it's certainly EASILY available. Go to any staples or best buy and you'll see tons of these things.
        • I have a dual layer dvd+/-r burner in my powermac. It came equipped with this drive well over a year ago when I bought it.

          You might want to double-check that drive of yours - chances are it only supports dual-layer DVD+R, not DVD-R like the OP was talking about. Dual-layer DVD-R discs are a much newer spec than DL DVD+R.
          • Dual layer dvd-r was introduced in 2005. It's not all that recent. That said, I can't check my powermac at the moment because I'm 800 miles away, and I don't recall the exact model of drive that shipped with the machine.
          • That and the main problem is that you can buy dual layer disks, +/-/whatever, who cares, but they are 5 times the price of a single layer disc, so it's not that economical. It's a little more convenient, but most of the time 4.7 GB is enough space for your data.

            • It's a little more convenient, but most of the time 4.7 GB is enough space for your data.

              I have more than 160GB on my hdds. If I go through all of my files and delete those I think I may not need anymore I may be able to reduce my backup needs to 100GB, so I'd still need 20 single layer dvds to backup everything. And when I finally get a dslr camera my storage needs will be a lot higher. Now I realize not many people have these storage requirements, but there are some who do.

              Falcon

      • Me too. But DVD-Rs were also supposed to be multi-layer and yet the only ones available are the single layer, so why will the HD-DVD market be different in that only commercial presses will be the only ones to make use of multiple layers for more storage?

        You can get double or dual layer dvd drives now. Unfortunately I've only been able to find any for Windows and Macs but none for Linux, which I have been looking for.

        Indeed, my at home archival solution of 4.3 GB DVD-Rs is becoming painful just for my

    • 170 gigs per disk? Make it writeable/cheap and I'm on that train/boat/whatever.

      Make them rewritable and cost not much more than wr disks are now and I'll board. Ooh and have a driver for Linux.

      Falcon

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.