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Data Storage Media Hardware

HD Recorder Can Use Standard DVDs 154

Posted by Zonk from the hd-on-the-cheap dept.
Stonent1 writes "Early next month Panasonic is going to release a DVD recorder that can store HD content on standard DVDs. The new device is expected to be a boon for the backer of the Blu-ray format; Blu-ray uses discs several times more expensive than standard DVD media. While the DVD discs won't have the capacity of a Blu-ray disc, the content will be of similar visual quality. 'The company said it will start selling three models of new DVD recorders capable of recording full HD programs on conventional DVD discs on November 1. The high-end model with a 500-gigabyte hard disk drive is likely to sell for 130,000 yen, Matsushita said.'" Update: 10/02 16:18 GMT by Z : Rewritten to clarify.
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HD Recorder Can Use Standard DVDs More

HD Recorder Can Use Standard DVDs

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  • Who cares how expensive the media is.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ISoldMyLowIdOnEbay ( 802697 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @12:10PM (#20824387)
    ....if the machine itself is so expensive?
  • There is no hardware/physical cost justification for a price that high.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RicktheBrick ( 588466 )
      I just purchased a 320G byte hard drive for $99. It cost $15 to make it into a usb drive. At that price one could not buy the equivalent storage in dvd-rw disks. The hard drives are more reliable and much faster transferring data. There is no limit on how many times one can erase the hard drive either as I know there is a limit on how many time a dvd-rw can be rewritten. It is much easier to find an indiviudal movie on a hard drive than to look through the 70-80 dvd that it would take for the equivalent
      • This is true and a good method as long as I didn't pay for the movies or if my harddrive failed there was a way to redownload all of them, kind of like Xbox Live Marketplace allows.
      • The DVD is just a convenient way to distribute the movies. Sure, there are much better ways for you to store and use it at home, but for many people today, discs are still the best way for them to purchase the media. For years, the first thing I have done with any CD I have bought is copy it onto my hard drive and burn a hard copy. Then I put the original away and, hopefully, never touch it again. But if my HD crashes, someone steals my disc, or I scratch it - I pull out the pristine original and copy i
  • I was under the impression that standard DVDs use a different type of laser for reading and recording than blu ray.

    So is this some type of hybrid/dual laser device? Or is it a blu ray that uses the blue laser to record on conventional DVDs? Or what exactly?
    • You have to wait a bit:

      Osaka-based Matsushita, the world's largest consumer electronics maker, also said it plans to offer the world's first DVD recorders that can store full high-definition programs on conventional DVD discs next month.

      As far as I can tell from the extraordinarily sparse FA, that's all we know. The article made less sense than the summary.

      Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )
        As far as I can tell from the extraordinarily sparse FA, that's all we know. The article made less sense than the summary

        Isn't that the slashdot equivalent of dividing by zero?

        OH SHI- [encycloped...matica.com]

    • Re:Would someone please clarify (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @12:48PM (#20824989) Journal
      So is this some type of hybrid/dual laser device? Or is it a blu ray that uses the blue laser to record on conventional DVDs? Or what exactly?

      It almost certainly has dual lasers, as do most recorders, but that has nothing to do with what it does...

      Until they release more specs I can only speculate, but the press release makes it obvious enough - This simply contains a perfectly ordinary DVD burner, to which it writes MPEG-4 data on a normal DVD using the FS layout expected by BR drives.

      Just as you can burn a DVD filesystem to a CD, you can just as easily burn a BR or HD filesystem to a DVD. They simply don't hold as much, requiring either loss of quality or limited duration (or both).

      Now, why anyone would want to buy a recorder that costs more than the difference in price of recordable discs over the practical lifetime of that player while burning only ultra-low quality content, ya got me. The coolness factor, I guess? Personally, I plan to wait for dual-format next-gen burners and for one or the other's writeable discs to drop a tolerable price.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by sukotto ( 122876 )
        >It almost certainly has dual lasers

        The frikken sharks are also very expensive

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tacvek ( 948259 )

        So is this some type of hybrid/dual laser device? Or is it a blu ray that uses the blue laser to record on conventional DVDs? Or what exactly?

        It almost certainly has dual lasers, as do most recorders, but that has nothing to do with what it does...

        Until they release more specs I can only speculate, but the press release makes it obvious enough - This simply contains a perfectly ordinary DVD burner, to which it writes MPEG-4 data on a normal DVD using the FS layout expected by BR drives.

        Just as you can burn a DVD filesystem to a CD, you can just as easily burn a BR or HD filesystem to a DVD. They simply don't hold as much, requiring either loss of quality or limited duration (or both).

        Now, why anyone would want to buy a recorder that costs more than the difference in price of recordable discs over the practical lifetime of that player while burning only ultra-low quality content, ya got me. The coolness factor, I guess? Personally, I plan to wait for dual-format next-gen burners and for one or the other's writeable discs to drop a tolerable price.

        This seems likely. However, Note that while the DVD file system on a cd is legal, it is not maditory for the devices to support it. Some devices do (including computers generally), although a fair number of devices do not.

        The same will likely be true of this technology. What I would find much more interesting is the use of these Discs with only standard def content. The ability to have an entire season of TV show on one disc at Standard definition sound really nice to me. The standards have support for th

    • I was under the impression that standard DVDs use a different type of laser for reading and recording than blu ray.

      So is this some type of hybrid/dual laser device? Or is it a blu ray that uses the blue laser to record on conventional DVDs? Or what exactly?

      They do. However, Blu-Ray players also have the correct laser so that they can read conventional DVDs and CDs. I'm not sure if they do this with a totally separate diode, or if they have a diode that can be switched between two different wavelengths, or what. But it would be pretty dumb to make a "next gen" video disc player that wasn't backwards compatible.

      What this machine (the one in TFA) does, I think, is record a regular DVD-R with highly compressed HD video. This isn't that much of a trick; right now

  • Why Blu-Ray? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @12:15PM (#20824449)
    I'm guessing that this player just writes MPEG4 files to a DVD, which it can then play back. Why do we even need Blu-Ray. Couldn't a much cheaper device be made with no blu-ray capabilities that just records the HD Content straight to MPEG4 on DVD? That would actually big a major blow to both HDDVD and BluRay.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by be-fan ( 61476 )
      You don't get something for nothing. To fit the same amount of HD content onto a standard DVD with MPEG4, you have to use a vastly higher compression ratio, reducing quality significantly.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by frieko ( 855745 )
        True, but the dirty little secret of the nex-gen format war is that you don't need high capacity AND better codecs than DVD, you only need one or the other. A plain old DVD can easily store a high definition, high quality movie-length clip, if it's encoded in x264. The only benefit of using blue-laser discs for movies is that they can continue to charge the higher price for the discs long after they become trivial to manufacture.
        • you're absolutely right... Apparently a lot of people forgot about WMV-HD [wikipedia.org] the barely-available format that offered HD video from a regular old DVD disc. Of course these were only playable on your computer and all but one of the releases (terminator 2) was a discovery channel documentary.

          the MPEG-2 codec is as old as it is a hog and even with all that wasted space movie makers are still able to fit loads of extra content onto a DVD-9 in addition to the movie.

          There's no reason the "next-gen" of DVD coul

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by benwaggoner ( 513209 )
          Just a two-hour movie and a single track of audio, maybe (that's about 8 Mbps for video left over). But that would rule out multiple audio tracks, picture-in-picture, extra content on the disc, etcetera. So while you'd have a better picture than DVD, the experience wouldn't be as complete or interactive as DVD, let alone "real" HD DVD discs.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by aliquis ( 678370 )
          As long as you don't want better image quality, longer movies, more extras, various audio languages, more data or something else I guess you are right.

          Personally I like development so I'd take a new more spacious format any day.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

        You don't get something for nothing. To fit the same amount of HD content onto a standard DVD with MPEG4, you have to use a vastly higher compression ratio, reducing quality significantly.

        MPEG-4 (and H.264, while we're at it) delivers considerably better quality at a given bitrate than MPEG-2. IME, you can get comparable quality at 1/4 to 1/5 of the bitrate you would use with MPEG-2. At that rate, you can fit an average-length movie in HD on a single-layer DVD-R with quality indistinguishable (or nearl

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by yuna49 ( 905461 )
          I've got a number of high-quality 720p anime fansubs in H.264 with AAC audio. A 25-minute episode fits in about 350 MB, so a two-hour movie could easily fit on a standard DVD with loads of room to spare. I think the bitrates are pretty high, too. I've converted some of them to XviD+MP3 in AVI, and they easily deliver 1200 b/s rates in the second XviD pass. They look quite pristine even when I watch them on my 1280x1024 monitor at close range.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by qbwiz ( 87077 ) *
      It could be made, but it couldn't store nearly as much at nearly as high a quality as they can with a Blu-ray. Consider that a Blu-ray disc can store 50GB of MPEG-4 AVC (which I expect is a pretty common format), as opposed to 8.5GB of MPEG-4 AVC with this idea.

      • Re:Why Blu-Ray? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jartan ( 219704 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @01:03PM (#20825263)

        It could be made, but it couldn't store nearly as much at nearly as high a quality as they can with a Blu-ray.


        Your statement is of course true but it's a case of 12 hours vs 2 hours. A pressed 8.5gb DVD is extremely cheap and plenty large enough to store a single HD movie at a level of quality that will please even a large portion of enthusiasts.

        The hardware to playback such levels of compression would be slightly more expensive but in general they wanted to change formats anyways on purpose.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by daBass ( 56811 )
          I have downloaded several 8.5GB 1080p movies and 4.25GB 720p movies in h.264 with AC3 sound and played them back on my 37" 720p LCD via my Macbook Pro's DVI output. They look stunning, way, way beyond DVD quality, not matter what the ACs replying to your post say. And as they were rips off HDDVD and Blu-Ray, studio produced files from the masters would be even better.

          I too wish they would have simply upgraded the DVD standard with an h.264 codec without changing the disc an be done with it.

          The only thing yo

    • Re:Why Blu-Ray? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lordofthechia ( 598872 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @12:53PM (#20825089)
      You mean like HD Divx Players?

      http://www.divx.com/products/hw/browse.php?c=7 [divx.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Deagol ( 323173 )
        Very cool. Do you know if Divx hardware players will play back xvid-encoded files, too?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Otto ( 17870 )

          Very cool. Do you know if Divx hardware players will play back xvid-encoded files, too?
          Very generally speaking, yes, they will, because the decoders are identical. The difference is in the way that the compression is implemented, not in the format of the data.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Tacvek ( 948259 )

            Very cool. Do you know if Divx hardware players will play back xvid-encoded files, too?

            Very generally speaking, yes, they will, because the decoders are identical. The difference is in the way that the compression is implemented, not in the format of the data.

            Codecs can be really messed up like this. We tend to think of a codec as being a compression format, but it is really the software. Any two codecs that have the end compression format can decode the results of each other. Both DivX and xvid yeild MPEG-4 ASP encoded video. That said, some DivX decoders are broken, failing to support some parts of the MPEG-4 ASP format. These may have trouble with xvid video.

    • The hardware described in the article is a Blu-Ray player that also records HDTV on DVD media. They could just as easily make an HD-DVD player that does the same thing, I suppose, but the point is that this particular device plays Blu-Ray.

    • 'm guessing that this player just writes MPEG4 files to a DVD, which it can then play back. Why do we even need Blu-Ray. Couldn't a much cheaper device be made with no blu-ray capabilities that just records the HD Content straight to MPEG4 on DVD? That would actually big a major blow to both HDDVD and BluRay.
      It can be done, but then your typical movie will start looking like the old CD-based Final Fantasies, four or five disks in a big-ass case.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by hypnagogue ( 700024 )
        Not so. H.264 can fit a typical movie on a dual-layer DVDR at 1080p24, and a couple at 720p24. But why even bother going dual-layer? Save your money, and use a single layer 4.7G DVDR and use 720p24 -- easily enough for a single movie. You need to spend more time playing with H.264, it is truly a wonder of technology.

        Compare that to Blu-ray, which is a "wonder why" technology.
    • Could there be a throughput limitation? I don't think so... even at "1x speed", a dual-layer DVD will give you 1.321MB/s, or 10.56Mb/s for about 2 hours. That should be plenty of throughput and capacity for a high-def movie - but not with MPEG2, which I think would require about 25Mb/s. Given the rule of thumb that MPEG4 can be about "3 times" smaller than MPEG2, this should leave plenty of bandwidth and capacity for a typical movie.

      My very uninformed $0.02...

  • Scru Blu (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 )
    The hell with Blu-Ray. That format has even more onerous DRM than HD DVD. If I buy into the HD technology at all (I probably will not until DRM is busted), then it would be HD DVD, not Blu-Ray.

    The Evil of Two Lessers, in my opinion.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dan Ost ( 415913 )
      What, exactly, are the differences in DRM between the two formats?

      I was under the impression that Blu-Ray adn HDDVD DRM were equivalent.

      • Re:Scru Blu (Score:5, Informative)

        by Shrubbman ( 3807 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @12:39PM (#20824827)
        Blu-Ray has an optional second layer of DRM overtop the required AACS layer, BD+.

        Note the required bit I just mentioned, on HD-DVD the AACS layer is optional but on Blu-Ray it is a standard requirement for all commercially-pressed discs. I remember reading about this some months back about some smaller indie studios only releasing on HD-DVD simply because they could forego paying license fees to the AACS people (fees that cut into limited profit margins) and just release their discs DRM-free. That's not an option on Blu-Ray.

    • If I buy into the HD technology at all (I probably will not until DRM is busted)...

      Thus ensuring that the market forces that shape the final outcome won't include you. Brilliant!

      Reminds me of all the libertarians who swear they'll refuse to vote for anybody until a true libertarian appears on a major party's ticket, thus pretty much guaranteeing that one never will.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by h4rm0ny ( 722443 )

        Well I'm doing the same as the GP because DRM infested discs are not useful to me. Why would I buy them? I want to play my films on my computer and projector. If I can't do what I want with them, I'm not going to pay.
        • Mmm, yes, I understand.

          Now try this thought experiment: Amazon just started selling DRM-free MP3s over the Web. Would that have happened had Apple's iTunes store not made huge profits? Nope. The suits at Amazon, believe it or not, don't give a flying fsck about DRM and the consumer's "rights" or the RIAA's moral code or anything else under the Sun except making enough profit to get a fat raise this year so they can pay their kids' college tuition and still have enough left over to take a trip to Hawaii.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by h4rm0ny ( 722443 )

            Well it's possible that you're right, but I don't think it's a good comparison and I can explain very clearly why. You are putting this in terms of an improvement to what is currently available and thus a step toward our ideal state (with your argument being that the intermediary step is sadly necessary due to business interests or caution). But whilst the quality of HD to regular is verifiably better, on my terms, the movement of the system overall has been away from quality. The acceptance of DRM cripple
            • I'm not disagreeing about the detail of the path towards a new market. That's pretty arcane stuff. Usually it's only (barely) possible to understand why a market shifted the way it did long after the fact, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

              All I'm really saying is that, generally speaking, buying has a greater influence on the market than not buying. That's because cash actually in the bank has a greater psychological influence on people than theoretical cash that could be in the bank if X instead of Y

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by h4rm0ny ( 722443 )

                The principle is general: a sequence of real, small, repeated rewards starting right now have much more effective impact than a theoretical, large reward that may occur long in the future.

                I agree with what you're saying, but purchasing DRM infected media is rewarding something getting worse, not better. As I understand what you're saying it is: 1. You can't expect everything good to happen all at once. 2. Therefore you accept something that is not perfect but is a step toward it. Fine. Except that we ha

                • The difficulty is that you have two changes to weigh here: the HD and the DRM. Both are movements away from SD and non-DRM media. What you need to ask yourself is whether the positive (SD to HD) outweighs the negative (non-DRM to DRM).

                  But not positive in terms of your own dislikes. That doesn't matter. What matters is which step (SD to HD or DRM to non-DRM) is more difficulty for the industry to take, e.g. which costs more and requires more engineering and social cleverness, more motivation from the mar
      • "Voting With Your Feet" is still a valid concept. After reading the existing discussion, I side with h4rm0ny.

        And I disagree that companies pay less attention to "theoretical" money. In fact we have some good examples right now... the RIAA and MPAA. They have pissed off a large percentage of the U.S. populace by going after that "theoretical" money.

        The act of NOT buying CDs has brought us to the point that the music industry is now dropping DRM. People stopped buying over-priced CDs, and refused to buy

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by h4rm0ny ( 722443 )

          I believe that not buying DRMed video will have a similar effect

          I don't know if it definitely will, but it's a strong chance. At this point, we're still in the haggling phase of the HD market. They're making offers and seeing if we'll accept. If we hold out a little, the price will come down. After all, there's a huge momentum behind the HD formats, display technologies, etc. It's not as if the manufacturers are going to say "people wont meet our prices, lets stop making these TVs, DVDs, etc". In this cas

  • So HD content can be written on plain DVD's....cool..Now we only need DVD players that can read HD content off DVD's :p

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 )
      So HD content can be written on plain DVD's....cool..Now we only need DVD players that can read HD content off DVD's

      HD-DVD has been supported since the beginning on DVD discs. The format specification explicitly allows for DVD media. I have a dual layer DVD+R disc that contains HD-DVD format video and it plays fine on my PC. I've read on various video forums that those who own HD-DVD players have reported being able to play such discs. The only news here is that BluRay apparently is now supported on

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by in2mind ( 988476 )
        Well, I was actually joking that Standard DVD players (Not HD-DVD players) should now play HD content on Standard DVD.

  • Why is the medium so important? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @12:23PM (#20824573) Homepage Journal
    We're talking about a digital world, where the medium is far less important than the codec. Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, whatever -- they're all about taking digital information, decoding it, and displaying it.

    Since most of our movies are XViD (including our homemade videos), we've generally stopped using disc formats entirely. If I burn the XViD to CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray, it's still the data and codec that counts, not the medium.

    Yes, people want to know if a given disc will work with their player, which is one reason why we need medium formats. Yet in a relatively free market, you'd see many multi-medium drives that work with almost anything (see most $49 DVD players today), so I'm guessing the number one reason for making new medium formats is control and DRM.

    Is there any market reason for worrying about the medium, rather than the CODEC?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shados ( 741919 )
      Its mostly because the people who made those formats WANT people to think its all about said physical medium, for their bottom line.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by pilgrim23 ( 716938 )
        At one time there was a thriving business in the Nile Delta. People gathered up papyrus stalks, flattened them, wove and glued. In the early days, this was the most common data storage medium. Then some bright lad figured out how to grind, bleach, and flatten pulped sawdust mixed with linen. A bitter standards war erupted with both sides claiming theirs was better for reasons ranging from historical use, to long time archival quality.
        Finally, the pulp and linen product, dubbed with

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JustNiz ( 692889 )
      I was thinking exactly the same thing, and wondering why they would even need to make a new device. I can't really even guess what could be different about it compared to a normal DVD player, if the Mpeg stream was encoded as 1920*1080 the decoder should just pick that right up.

      I came to the conclusion that it can't require any change to the DVD drive itself (unless it was to speedit up to get higher transfer rate for sustained HD). It more likely the supporting electronics that decode. Perhaps their normal
    • Say "CODEC" to the majority of consumers of this sort of technology, and get your answer in the blank stare that comes back.
    • How much HD content can a standard DVD hold?
  • Blu-ray format, which currently uses discs several times more expensive than standard DVD media

    It's important to clarify: The article talks about dual layer DVD-s, that's not standard DVD media. I can find single layer recordable DVD over here for less than a dollar. But dual layer recordables are ten times more expensive (for whatever reason).

    Now something else: if I got my math right (can't guarantee I did), this means around ~950kbit/s for HD content on a dual layer DVD. They'll definitely need to use MP
    • >to achieve acceptable quality for 18 hours of content. And I don't know if it'll look good still.

      Why would anyone need 18 hours of content on a budget medium? Knock it down to 3.5 hours or so and you've got a nice mpeg-4 disc that plays in your machine. Only a few movies are over 3.5 hours. That leaves plenty of room for extras.
    • Can someone comment how ~950kbit/s fares for HD content. For standard DVD-quality video I use at least 500-600kbps on MPEG4 derivative, so I'm doubtful.

      In my opinion, 950kbps often isn't very good for SD content, even with AVC/VC-1. 1080p trailers encoded in MPEG-4 AVC need to be at least 8Mbps otherwise the screen gets messy with blocks with a lot of action. The DVD format allows for about 10Mbps max, though I usually see 3 to 5 as average values.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      The article is extremely poorly written. It said 381 hours on a TB drive, which works out to 6Mbps. The "18 hours of content on a dual layer disc" was in reference to BD disks, since that too works out to about 6Mbps. Then there's a third claim, that it can store to regular DVDs as well. If you use the 6Mbps figure, it works out to 3h20 on a dual-layer disc and 1h40 on a single layer disc, which is enough for TV series and even shorter movies on single layer, and longer movies on dual layer. It's the only e
  • Head to head Blu-ray vs. HD DVD comparison [diffen.com]

  • bastard format ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by scharkalvin ( 72228 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @12:42PM (#20824867) Homepage
    If I read this correctly it will record on standard dvd media using the blue ray laser.
    This may be possible, if the dyes used on standard media will respond to the blue laser.
    It would enable the pit size to be smaller and fit more data. I would suspect that it would
    also work with single layer media, but hold about half as much content. The disks might not
    be playable on a standard blue ray machine (without a firmware update).

    Kinda pricey, but if Panasonic can get the cost down this would be a big boost to the blue ray camp.
    Note that it should be even easier for the hd-dvd guys to do the same thing.
    • Okay, NOW I understand TFS.

      This reminds of drill an extra hole in a 3.5" 720KB floppy diskette.

      Or RLLing an MFM drive.

      Only with ECC. And light.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )
        But it was so much easier to just use a hole punch on a 5.25" floppy . . .

        hawk
        • Yes, but the hole punch in the floppy did not increase storage density; rather, it allowed you to use the other side of the media.

          That's totally different.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hawk ( 1151 )
            Not really all that different.

            Once upon a time, companies actually produced single and double sided, and single and double density 5.25" disks. As time passed, all were double sided, and also DD that failed would be sold as SD, and so forth. Fairly quickly there weren't enough that failed, and passing disks were sold as a lower configuration.

            When you punched an extra hole, you were betting that the back side of the disk was good enough (unless you had actually bought DS disks). When you drilled that 3.5"
    • This isn't a new physical format; they are using a red laser to write to standard DVD-R media (4.7GB single layer, 8.5GB dual layer). But when you write Blu-ray logical format to a DVD-R (aka BD-5, BD-9) you can use HD video.

  • Shiny String (Score:3, Interesting)

    by huckamania ( 533052 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @12:48PM (#20824993) Journal
    I'm not trying to sound like an old man on the porch, but who cares about all this cruft? Is Higher Def going to make a bad movie better? Does Lower Def make a good movie worse? I can understand the arguments against Pan and Scan, as you literally are not seeing everything. However, I don't see much of a difference between HD and SD.

    Someone told me that after watching things in HD for a while, that they can't watch things in SD without noticing a difference. Is that a good thing? Am I going to be in a bar watching a game and be annoyed because it is in SD? Or over at a friends house and decide not to watch a movie cause they don't got the fancy, schmancy HD set up?

    I'll probably like it when I get it, but I just don't see what all the fuss is about.
    • Before my Dish HD receiver died on me two weeks ago I actually watched (GAWD, I'm ashamed to admit it) Enterprise. There I said it. I stopped watching movies on Starz just to watch Bladerunner and 2001: A Space Odyssey over and over. I even watched The Good American and World's Fastest Indian over and over. Not to mention things like Smallville which I had never watched before. Don't get me started on ESPNHD and Monday Night Football and DiscoveryHD and Planet Earth.

      So, yeah, High Definition can make

  • What can it record? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @12:58PM (#20825167) Homepage Journal
    Most HDTV recording options require access to the compressed data. In other words, an ATSC broadcast, unencrypted QAM, or encrypted QAM with a cable card. If this device takes decompressed HDTV (e.g., component inputs) and compresses it in real time, then that's the part of this device that's really interesting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )
      Since I never read the linked Slashvertisements, I don't know for sure, but what do you want to bet that it has a cablecard slot and does not do real-time HD video compression?

      If it did, I would agree heartily that its a very interesting device simply for that reason and probably worth buying.

  • Storage Capacity? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Aladrin ( 926209 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @01:01PM (#20825241)
    I see nowhere that states what the data storage capacity is, so I thought I'd check the numbers.

    "The one-terabyte hard drive can store up to 381 hours of full HD programs."

    So if 1,000 GB is 381 hours, 1 GB is 2.62467191601049868766 hours. Yeah, 2 and a half hours per GB. Hmm... What sounds like that... Oh yeah, xvid.

    The trick here is not that they are getting more capacity, it's that they are using a different codec. (Not necessarily xvid, it's just a LOT more compact than mpeg, and made a good example.)

    Nothing is actually said of the visual quality at that storage rate, either... It probably has horrid lossy-ness. But it's 1080p! lol Just another marketing trick to fool the unwary.

    So even if this device uses a normal laser, it's gonna get 10+ hours per DVD at '1080p'. Using the blue laser is just a gimmick, I'm betting.

    • Re:Storage Capacity? (Score:4, Informative)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @02:48PM (#20826789) Journal

      So if 1,000 GB is 381 hours, 1 GB is 2.62467191601049868766 hours. Yeah, 2 and a half hours per GB.

      You flipped that over -- it should be 2.6 GB per hour, not 2.6 hours per GB.

      So a dual-layer DVD will hold about 3 1/3 hours. If they're getting more than that, they must be doing something different (disclaimer: I didn't RTFA and have no idea what they're claiming).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Aladrin ( 926209 )
        lol Lesson learned. Don't do math at lunch. Everyone is indeed correct, I have it backwards. Even a simple look at it shows how stupid that was.

  • What do we need Blueray for then? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DarthBobo ( 152187 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @01:24PM (#20825531)
    Perhaps this will cause some of our brain-addled technology media "journalists" to start noticing that HD-DVD and Blueray aren't about high definition video (my 2 year old Oppo DVD player does that just fine, apart from the fact no one will sell me a movie in DivX format), nor really about increased storage. Its really about moving to a format with a more functional DRM system.

    There is no reason that standard 2 hour movies can't be distributed on a double-layer DVD using a modern compression format -- which are supported in just about every $99 DVD player I see at Circuit City. I don't have a problem with the big media companies moving in this direction - its their content, they can pick their format. I do have a problem with the fact that not a single journalist sees fit to note in their articles that the media companies public rationale for the switch is specious.

    • HD-DVD and Blueray aren't about high definition video (my 2 year old Oppo DVD player does that just fine, apart from the fact no one will sell me a movie in DivX format),

      You can put high def video on a CD too... Just as you can put a 11megapixel JPEG on a floppy disk.

      What people like to completely ignore is that lossy codecs will happily use whatever data rate you give them... It'll just look like crap if it's not enough. And even if you have enough space that you don't notice artifacts, doesn't mean it

  • Compression vs storage space (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @01:36PM (#20825729) Homepage Journal
    I've got 1920x1080 DivX of Naruto's 3rd movie. Total size - 2.2 gigs for 94 minutes of video and audio, with four different language subtitle choices. All on one DVD.

    I'm glad I have a high-def DivX-capable standalone player. Screw these more expensive formats! Hooray compression technology!
  • Take 720k and punch them to fool the PC into thinking they were 1.44.

    Not overly reliable to run something over spec, i think ill pass on it for anything i care about.

  • Format Medium (Score:2, Insightful)

    by flash_aaah ( 1165967 )
    According to my opinion that's how it should be. A "file format" is independent from the medium. Why not store mp3's on DAT or MD? :-)

  • I'm Really Confused (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheoMurpse ( 729043 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @02:39PM (#20826647) Homepage
    How is a third format going to be a "boon" for Blu-Ray? Wouldn't it just weaken Blu-Ray by providing a cheaper (media-wise) alternative to Blu-Ray?

  • HD on DVD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DECS ( 891519 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @03:10PM (#20827125) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft earlier tried to push VC-1 on standard DVDs; it would make a lot of sense for consumers to deliver AVC on DVD. It would not do much for producers and studios however, because DVDs are already easy to rip and the format is falling in price. Once "good enough" movie downloads start, the ability to market HD discs will become far harder, just as MP3s killed any real market for SACD/DVD-A.

    Origins of the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD War [roughlydrafted.com]
    Blu-ray vs HD-DVD in Next Generation Game Consoles [roughlydrafted.com]
  • I'm am currently experimenting with H.264 and finding that you can put three full length movies (my example being the Matrix trilogy) on a single layer DVD with virtually no loss in quality (there will always be some loss between formats) in the 832x352 resolution used on the DVD (it's not really 720x480 because DVDs use non-square pixels and generally have black bars encoded in).

    There is no reason you should not be able to fit a single full length movie in 720p on a dual layer DVD if you are using H.264 to

  • Panasonic maker Matsushita Electric Industrial said it ... plans to offer the world's first DVD recorders that can store full high-definition programs on conventional DVD discs next month. ... The company said it will start selling three models of new DVD recorders capable of recording full HD programs on conventional DVD discs on November 1. The high-end model with a 500-gigabyte hard disk drive is likely to sell for 130,000 yen [US$1127], Matsushita said.

    That's all they say about the DVD recorder that

  • Obvious, obvious, obvious (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @04:05AM (#20834243)
    I burn H264 vids to a DVD. It stands to reason that some hardware device would eventually get around to doing the same. The more important question is where the hell does it record its HD content from.

  • karma whore (Score:3, Informative)

    by sqldr ( 838964 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @05:29AM (#20834629)
    130000 yen = $1126.84 oh yes.. give me those mods!! haha!

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