Blu-ray Proposes Incompatible BD-XL and IH-BD Formats 252
adeelarshad82 writes "The Blu-ray Disc Association announced upcoming specifications for high-capacity write-once and rewritable discs. The BDA proposed two new formats, BDXL, the name given to new 100GB and 128GB discs; and IH-BD, a so-called 'Intra-Hybrid' disc that will incorporate both read-only and rewritable layers. Specifications for both disc types will be published during the upcoming months. Both formats will be incompatible with existing hardware; however, new players designed to take advantage of the new formats will be able to play back existing Blu-ray discs, which are available in both 25 and 50GB capacity points."
Designed Obsolescence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:4, Informative)
FTFA:
"Professional industries have expressed a desire to find optical disc solutions that enable them to transition away from magnetic media for their archiving needs."
Not that anyone expects you to RTFA.
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:4, Interesting)
Why? Hard drives are fantastic, 1TB for $100 and have superior read/write characteristics. Why worry about WORM when you can digitally sign the data and replicate it offsite cheaply without having to invest in niche burning and changing equipment that would be necessary to switch away from hard disks?
Switching to optical media is like switching to tape. Unless you're already invested, I don't see why you'd want to get involved there.
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:5, Informative)
Are you serious?
No one has an answer for long term media over twenty five years. No one. CD-ROM has barely been around that long, tapes that old cannot be read in any current players, and hard drives back then used IDE, which I can still get adapters for.
The only realistic way to archive digital media is to have a planned rotation policy. So, if I were to start today I'd start with 1 or 1.5TB disks in bulk, in 3 years consolidate those 2:1 to 2 or 3TB disks, etc. And keep consolidating (reducing the number of disks while also storing the data at multiple sites) perpetually. That's the only solution that keeps your data yours, and not at the mercy of a technology that you know won't be supported in twenty five years.
And of course, just because I recommend hard drives don't mean I recommend throwing everything else out the window. Judicious use of ECC, storing archive data at multiple sites and even biting the bullet and storing data multiple times at a single site are all options that should be explored when determining your archive policy.
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which still are hit-miss when you want long-term storage.
In 2003 i burned a few CD-Rs, in 2005 those same discs where degraded to the point where i couldnt use them anymore (software installation, so like a backup, a few corrupted files screws the whole thing). These discs where stored horizontally out of direct light.
Granted, they werent the best discs, but when the use case involves "put disc in cabinet, wait 10 years", then i wouldnt really be all that confident that optical writeable media will work all
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:5, Informative)
I work full time IT, part time as a movie theatre projectionist.
Guess how all our digital movies arrive?
Hard disk.
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The BDA is going to have to do a lot better than a measly 100 or 128 GB if they want to make a viable alternative to magnetic media. You can buy cheap 1TB hard drives for $75 these days, and I doubt these new BD discs are less than $7.5 each. Plus, hard drives are fast, and you don't have to swap them out as often with their huge capacities.
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:4, Interesting)
And remember that as usual, by the time these things hit the market, hard drives will be comically larger. I commented on this problem way back when Blu-Ray came out. Basically, the comment was that 50 GB capacity would be great because I could back up my entire hard drive on just three or four discs, but that by the time they were actually available at a reasonable price, they would be worthless. They're still not affordable as a backup medium and at 50 GB apiece, it still would take nearly an entire 25-pack mini-spindle to back up my home machine (not to mention taking 12 hours with somebody swapping discs twice an hour).
It was the same story for DVD-Rs, and CD-Rs before that. The only difference in this case is that the format is already obsolete in terms of capacity and was just proposed. Anything short of a terabyte disc capacity at this point is a complete joke, and is a pretty clear signal that the optical media format is likely to fall further and further behind hard drives on the cost-capacity curve. In short, optical discs as currently designed are unlikely to ever be a viable backup medium. (Well, maybe holographic optical or something, but certainly not any optical discs that are remotely similar to what we have today.)
For anything other than distribution of fixed content (movies, computer games, etc.), optical media doesn't make sense, and those types of content really don't have much need for larger and larger capacities beyond a certain point.
Stick a fork in it. Optical is done.
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:4, Insightful)
The succession of newer, higher capacity formats stretches way back before blu-ray. Personally, I think that the fact that, since CD-ROM, there's been a focus on allowing older media to play in newer devices is a good thing.
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The succession of newer, higher capacity formats stretches way back before blu-ray. Personally, I think that the fact that, since CD-ROM, there's been a focus on allowing older media to play in newer devices is a good thing.
I agree. For most people, this is no different than the transition from CDs to DVDs, they are just trying to leverage the branding by sticking with the BD in the name.
What's worse - BD-XL with backwards compatible hardware or trying to read a 5.25" floppy disk on a 3.5" floppy drive?
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Depends on how many of the players can be firmware updated to deal with the formats.
The two formats they are talking about appear to be in pipedream stage. They will be obsolete before they are released, if they are released at all.
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Depends on how many of the players can be firmware updated to deal with the formats.
The two formats they are talking about appear to be in pipedream stage. They will be obsolete before they are released, if they are released at all.
No joke, and that's why I am having a hard time understanding the point of this. If you are just now going to start designing a new optical disc format, why only 100-128GB? Why not use ultraviolet lasers (or whatever else it takes) and aim at a 1TB optical disc? That way, by the time you have gone through the design, engineering, manufacturing, and marketing stages and finally bring a product to market, it will have a useful quantity of storage for backup and archival purposes.
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You've honestly never suspected 'planned obsolescence'?
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You've honestly never suspected 'planned obsolescence'?
I certainly did. Sometimes my intention is to raise a question and see if others independently come up with the answers that occurred to me. At least, I sometimes do that in cases like this, where no one has evidence either way so all of this is speculation.
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Because neither is really intended as a completely new optical disk format, they are incremental updates of Blu-Ray for specialized needs, where it is assumed that continued use of existing blu-ray disks in the same devices is important. One is essentially "BD-ROM plus BD-RW", the other is "High capacity BD-ROM".
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Because neither is really intended as a completely new optical disk format, they are incremental updates of Blu-Ray for specialized needs, where it is assumed that continued use of existing blu-ray disks in the same devices is important. One is essentially "BD-ROM plus BD-RW", the other is "High capacity BD-ROM".
True, but isn't that goal defeated by the fact that these new formats are already incompatible with existing players? If you are going to have to buy new hardware anyway, what's the point? A device that supports BD-XL/IH-BD with backwards compatibility for Blu-ray could also have been built to support a 1TB format with backwards compatibility for Blu-ray.
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No.
Expense, for one thing.
Maybe, maybe not. The proposed "different wavelength laser 1TB" format from GGP would involve less common hardware between the new
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, time to run out and buy all new stuff!
Seriously though, I hope movie studios recognize that this is part of the reason their movie sales are down. It's not just piracy. It's a variety of reasons, but I believe one of the main reasons is that people who buy lots of movies are collectors.
I say it as a collector: I don't really want to collect things that are transient in a way that makes them a huge money hole. Back in the day of VHS tapes, I bought a bunch of VHS tapes. When DVDs came out, I bought a bunch of DVDs, including repurchasing a couple of titles I had previously bought on VHS. Then came the MP3 revolution. I realized that it made far more sense to rip CDs to my computer so I could easily store, sort, and retrieve an enormous library, and I realized that those days would be coming for movies sooner or later.
By the time DVD ripping become easy and commonplace, we were into the format wars. I might have bought DVDs and ripped them for my computer, but I knew HD was coming, and so I'd wait it out to see if Bluray or HD-DVD won. Then Bluray won, but it was still expensive and hard to rip. Then there's iTunes and Amazon to contend with, that save you the trouble of ripping and tagging, but aren't compatible with all devices. Now there's new and incompatible Bluray discs? The whole thing just keeps getting more and more complicated, and it's more and more clear that whatever movies I buy today I'll probably need to re-buy later. The only way that they could make me more unlikely to buy anything today is by announcing they'll release a new format in 2 years that supports higher resolutions and 3D displays.
Sorry, it's a long rant for ideas that everyone has probably read before, but damn these companies need to get their crap together. They could stand to learn a thing or two from Gabe Newell [youtube.com] on copy protection.
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:5, Insightful)
But that is the point. You (as a customer) are the antithesis of what they want. The want people to keep re-buying things all the damn time, in fact in an ideal word, the MPAA/RIAA would charge you for every time you set eyes on a movie or heard one of their songs. Failing that they probably would not mind a rental modal where people pay forever to be able to access the content. As such DRM is designed to fulfil these goals, which is why it ends up being so frustrating that enough people put their heads together to break it.
Ideally they want the transition from one medium to another to be impossible. Failing that, making it so complicated that the majority of people just re-buy it all is an acceptable alternative. Once you realise this, why they implement DRM the way they do (or at all) and their general attitude make a lot more sense.
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Funilly enough, with both DRM and constant cycles of "here's the same thing again but now in a new and improved format" the Movies (and Games) industries are causing more and more people to get burned by going with DRM-restricted/new-format media and thus teaching even the less technology-savy people to be weary of both.
Just like the GP, more people are thinking-through their buying decisions due to painfull memories of "what happened last time".
Me, I'm sitting on the sidelines and aplauding every time I se
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Minor point, but Amazon has never placed any restrictions on their MP3s, hence why I buy them.
Now that I have bought them, I probably will have no qualms downloading FLAC versions of the albums if I ever want better fidelity. Same goes for my DVD and blu-ray collection. I have bought Star Wars on DVD as well as VHS - and I bought a couple of things on blu-ray after previously getting the DVD, but I suppose I may as well just get a decent sized HDD and rip or download copies of all the movies I own onto it i
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How many Blue Ray players am I supposed to buy before they stop coming up with new formats? I bet they keep this sh!t up until the next video format wars. Asshats.
If they don't compete with themselves, then some other alliance of companies comes in to produce high capacity discs.
Screwed if they do, screwed if they don't.
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the new format, go ask the BDA what it's for, but I doubt they intended or expected it to supplant the existing and set-in-stone 25/50Gb disc formats. More likely it's for data storage or something exotic which has no bearing on consumer kit.
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Shhhhh - you're cramping all the Sony haters' and sensationalists' styles with you logic and general lack of ignorance!
Natural development (Score:2)
Since when did you think current Bluray was the final stage of development on optical disks? Most likely it's physically impossible to get old players to play new 100GB disks, they are just not built for that. On the other hand it makes sense that these new 100GB players will be able to play regular Bluray disks. Where is the problem? Your Bluray movies will keep on playing on all Bluray players, only when you want to have writable Bluray with 100GB capacity you need to buy a new player.
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As many as they can make.. Feed the beast and be happy about it.
Incompatibility? What incompatibility? (Score:2)
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. I don't remember that. They've had game add-ons for decades, nothing particularly crazy about selling it online.
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And yet, we nerds keep buying the "latest greatest" technology and enabling them.
Really? Is it us nerds? I've been thinking of Blue Ray as a home entertainment thing for people with hd televisions. If I end up with something like that for a computer it will be because I need a dvd reader/writer and they don't exist anymore to buy. In short I don't have it because I don't need it, don't want it, and haven't been compelled in any way to get it.
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Don't forget that any media sales that the market wont bear will be blamed on piracy =/
This is physical media, not copyrighted content, so I think this is the one case where they won't try that one.
It may even be the opposite. Those countries which place a tax/levy on blank media and then send that money to the copyright cartels are assuming that at least some of those blank media will be used to make copies of copyrighted works. So if these new blank media don't sell because of another needless format war, they would be blatantly contradicting themselves if they blame that on piracy. I
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It would be amusing to watch them try. It might even create a "boy who cried wolf" situation where any laments about piracy are no longer taken seriously by anyone.
I thought that already happened.
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You make a very convincing argument. I'd like to tell you why that couldn't happen but unfortunately I can't because I think you're right. I have to concede that your scenario there is more than plausible. I know of only one thing that weakens your prediction, but does not contradict it: at least s
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Highly unlikely this is intended for movies. This is almost certainly designed for backup storage only. Given the exceptionally low penetration of BD on computers, it's fine.
Had there been no format war I doubt this would be the case. Apparently they haven't learned that lesson and now we again have two competing formats. In terms of customer adoption and marketshare, this deserves to fail in order to send the message to companies that "useless format wars" == "financial losses". What else would provide a strong enough incentive for them to cooperate long enough to reach agreement on a single good standard?
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What else would provide a strong enough incentive for them to cooperate long enough to reach agreement on a single good standard?
Pah, you forgot that the good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!
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What else would provide a strong enough incentive for them to cooperate long enough to reach agreement on a single good standard?
Pah, you forgot that the good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!
Haha.
Seriously though, when they are interoperable open standards this isn't a problem. The problem is that if you want to make a Blu-ray player, you need Sony's blessing in the form of licensing agreements. Not to mention that Sony has no incentive to make Blu-ray compatible with anyone else's standard. This makes it more difficult to economically produce a hardware device for which supporting several multiple standards is only a matter of firmware.
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that if you want to make a Blu-ray player, you need Sony's blessing in the form of licensing agreements.
China, don't fail me now.
(waits impatiently for the first Sorny All-in-one Blu-ray player to hit the market)
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This is modus operandi for Sony. They think like engineers, not customers, and are constantly tinkering with their projects:
- Betamax I became Betamax II which was the new standard for store-bought movies. Early adopters couldn't play these movies on their Beta-I machines.
- SuperBetamax increased the resolution to broadcast quality, and although Sony claimed it was a compatible standard, in reality it created strange white lines on older machines.
- Umatic became Umatic SP and Betacam became Betacam SP, wh
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Hopefully since these are both proposed by the same association, they'll pick one to go ahead with before any hardware is on the market. They won't want to be competing with themselves, they just want to shop both formats around a bit and see if there are any bites.
The problem is that if this association is one single block of harmony, it would be quite rare among trade groups. That there are two formats already tells me that there are at least two factions within this association who disagree about design decisions. If they don't come to a consensus before hardware is manufactured it will be their declaration to the rest of the world that they are not only too stupid to learn from history, but could not even learn anything from extremely recent history.
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Sony doesn't set movie prices.
I don't understand why Best Buy and other retailers keep trying to charge $35 for a BluRay movie, when Amazon.com has tons for $15-$20 or less. Blame retailers and studios for jacking up prices.
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Sony doesn't set movie prices.
I don't understand why Best Buy and other retailers keep trying to charge $35 for a BluRay movie, when Amazon.com has tons for $15-$20 or less. Blame retailers and studios for jacking up prices.
Sony doesn't set movie prices? So who sets the prices for Sony Pictures releases then? If you think Sony doesn't have a vested interest in high BD prices, you're wrong.
That being said, they're just plain stupid for not realizing there's a LOT more money to be made by selling a lot of BD disks at LOW prices than there is at selling fewer at high prices.
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Sony sets prices on their movies, but Sony Pictures isn't exactly Disney, Fox, Warner Brothers, etc.
Sony doesn't control ALL movie prices.
You also completely contradict yourself. You suggest Sony is part of some massive conspiracy because it is in their best interest to have high prices, and then immediately after say it is in their best interest to have low prices.
Retailers ultimately set prices. And most retailers are being stupid because Amazon is massively undercutting them.
Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't call it conspiracy, I would call it collusion. It's reminiscent of the USA cellphone industry. For example, text messages cost next-to-nothing for the carrier of a CDMA network, and absolutely nothing for the carrier of a GSM network. Yet despite multiple competing cellphone networks, none of them have text message pricing that remotely reflects the actual cost of delivering SMS.
It's not difficult to understand why. It benefits all of the cellphone companies to continue overcharging for this service, and the one company that undercuts the competition and forces all of them to lower their prices is going to ruin the high profit margins for everyone, itself included. No conspiracy is required; they didn't have to get together and plan this ahead of time. Each company only has to realize that changing this status quo will result in less profit, and they can realize this independently without consulting the other companies.
Until and unless they start losing serious sales volume because customers feel that the price is too high, the movie producers have no incentive to engage in competition that they know will reduce their profit margins. Unlike the cellphone providers, they are not even directly competing with each other because of the monopoly nature of copyright. No one but Sony can produce and distribute copies of a movie for which Sony owns the copyright, so if you want a movie made by them you cannot purchase that same title from a competitor. So there is even less competition for each unique movie title than there is among cellphone providers for mobile phone services. That means there is even less incentive for any one company to rock the boat with aggressive pricing.
If Sony's wholesale price for copies of its movies is X, then Amazon cannot charge less than X for those titles and expect to remain in business. That's why Sony's influence on the ultimate retail price is quite strong and should not be so quickly dismissed. I would venture that Amazon's lower prices have more to do with sales volume and the fact that they don't have the expenses of maintaining brick-and-mortar stores.
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There could be massive price fixing in the industry if everyone was in fact charging $35 for movies. But the problem is that Amazon often has a $15 BluRay that Best Buy wants to charge $35 for.
You're correct in that Amazon won't price far below their wholesale prices. (It isn't uncommon however to take a small loss on a movie to encourage other sales.) However, if Amazon can afford to sell that same movie for $15, then the wholesale price (which again, Sony only controls their studio) can't be more than $15
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I don't mean this as a personal attack against you; but I see this sort of thing a lot and it always annoys me.
You've got this big 'evil'/'greedy' entity that everyone seems to agree is out to make money, even if that means screwing over the customer. And it's normally not just one evil/greedy thing; it's a whole lot of them, fighting, to get customers (to screw over) because really, all they want is money.
But then, in the same breath, we get people (like you) who seemingly have found a BETTER business mod
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I think you're giving these companies too much credit. Companies are ultimately run by their executives. These people aren't geniuses, or even extremely in-touch, in most cases. They're just regular people who have worked their way up the ranks by ass-kissing, going to the right college, belonging to the right country club, etc.
There's a lot of truth to the old argument that people bought more stuff during Napster's heyday than they do now. Do the record company execs care? Probably not. They're not h
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Re:Designed Obsolescence (Score:5, Informative)
I place Blu-Ray along with DVD... if I can crack it and use it like I want, I'll deal with it. AnyDVD HD seems to work pretty well for me, so I don't mind getting movies on Blu-Ray. If that stops, I'll stop getting Blu-Rays (I already don't pay more than $15 or so for them. Screw new release prices). DVD has encryption on it just like Blu-Ray. Using one but not the other seems like a meaningless protest, along the lines of "get off my lawn!"
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Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't there all sorts of ways to limit the rights of the consumer with DVDs? And even VHS before that? And before that, even the old Cassette Tape had copy protection.
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Yes, DVDs have region coding, and CSS protection. However, these are trivially easy to crack, unlike the protections on BDs.
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Disabling CSS is pretty trivial too. Just enable the "Develop" menu in Safari, then select "Disable Styles".
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Not really.
Your PC won't be able to read the physical storage media of the future without upgrading it's hardware. Likewise, given enough time, your PC will be unable to meet the requirements to play the media.
It'd be like trying to watch a high-def/blu-ray movie on a 486 DX2. The old CRT won't properly display the video anyway, and even if so, it'll be choppy and crappy because the 486 can't handle playing the movie.
But sure - if you keep upgrading your PC - yeah - you can handle anything. Unless they c
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That depends. In a sense, I'm using the same PC I was back in 1991. I've been upgrading it over time of course, but I never bought an all-new PC. I'd upgrade the hard drive, then the motherboard, then the case and power supply, then the hard drive again, a new monitor, etc.
DON'T YOU GET IT? (Score:4, Funny)
HDDVD lost the format war because it had way too many syllables!
Everyone! We've been Had! Blu-Ray is exerting its dominance by proposing 4 or more syllable formats, forcing technical speak to be less groovy and savvy, making it once again disasterous to be a nerd, instead of the hip trend Apple was starting.
Quick, someone start an internet petition (because those always work) to rename the formats to something catchy!
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Re:Am I Missing Something Here? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The trick is we make sure that the we and the people whose tech we oversee make sure that the people don't gobble that shit up.
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Your looking at this from the point of view of a consumer.. From a media companies point of view, a single disk that can hold 100GB of HD disney movies, that your child will utterly destroy the first time you turn around, is a new revenue generator. You have to buy another disk, unless someone can finally will a lawsuit saying they should replace broken disks if they are really just a "license to use"
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Re:Am I Missing Something Here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nevertheless, the point still stands: when people buy a DVD of "Avatar", do they buy a physical product, a plastic shiny disc, that happens to have the movie "Avatar" on it, or do they acquire the license to watch "Avatar" in DVD resolution that happens to be accompanied with a plastic shiny disc?
Movie studies are the owner of the licenses. They need to decide which kind of merchandise their product is.
It's either a physical thing and then they have no say about how the customer uses it, but when it's damaged, it's gone - or they sell a license and the customer has the right to make a backup, not lend it, not publicly show it but get another copy if one gets damaged.
Currently, they're trying to eat their cake and have it.
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Its not about media cost or even common sense. These are the media giants, and their only goal is to screw the consumer.
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Harddrive = 2TB/$149 = $.07/GB
1 DVD gets scratched = 1 DVD of data loss
1 2TB Harddrive failure = the end of the world
I still use harddrives for my backups, but it's because it's easier and less time consuming, not because it's inherently the cheapest method, especially for movie rips. (And yes, I should have priced out dual-layer discs too but this was already 30 seconds of shopping too many)
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I seem to recall a planned DVD disk format that was supposed to degrade of its own accord within a week or two but that died a death as quickly as it was suggested.
You're thinking of DIVX [wikipedia.org]. (Not to be confused with DivX).
And with Netflix and company streaming the whole movie online, there's little need for such a format today. The DIVX people had the right idea, they just underestimated the delivery mechanism.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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So, let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously?
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No, they are proposing two different BD variants intended for distinct use cases that don't really overlap (one is a pure "higher-capacity storage" version, the other is a "fixed content plus rewritable"), both of which would be used on devices that would also
yay (Score:4, Interesting)
I like technology, but it seems to me that the media companies are pushing newer technologies faster than ever and are then wondering why they are performing badly. CDs, DVDs and other technology (hell, even colour television) took a while to take off, and it wasn't until the market was effectively saturated, and the technologies became affordable and commonplace, that other technologies were introduced.
First it was High-Def and HDMI compatible vs compliant. Then it was HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray.
Blu-Ray disks are finally starting to become affordable, but they come with the required HDMI upgrade of all your connecting audio/video hardware.
With the RealD 3D televisions and associated content as well, especially with the competing players/technologies coming out soon after HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, it is unclear how things are going to pan out -- for example, are there going to be 3D Blu-Ray disks that require new hardware?
To me, the home entertainment hardware is looking fragmented, and will continue to become even more fragmented as time goes on.
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are there going to be 3D Blu-Ray disks that require new hardware?
Yes, "full-resolution" 3D Blu-Ray discs encoded with H.264 MVC need new players, they are just becoming available, such as the Sony BDP-S470 and the Samsung BD-C6900.
Some of the new 3D sets will be also able to use a side-by-side or top-bottom "half resolution" / "frame compatible" modes that are likely going to be used by satellite and cable providers for the time being. Some independents might release "half resolution" 3D content that work
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For BDXL, I agree.
For IHBD, if its not for video (for storing playback preferences, later premium downloadable features, etc., with the original video) and videogames (for storing savegames, later premium DLC, etc.) back to the install media, so that those can be tied back to the original medium rather than a player device, I don't see the use case for it at all.
Wallet voting (Score:2, Insightful)
BD-XL = blu ray version of Super Audio CD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD [wikipedia.org]
Hopefully people will refuse to oblige Sony and instead let the new format remain uncommon, lest Sony finds the practice of removing features from customers' devices as the normal thing to do.
-The PS3 has lost features throughout its life
-If SACD had been widely adopted, regular CD's would've become obsolete and would've been a waste of money for consumers
-if BD-XL and the like become widely adoped, regular blu-ray will be
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I already voted with my wallet, I'm sticking with DVD until they are done playing games.
Haven't bought a new television for HDMI, haven't bought an HD-DVD or Blu-ray player and you know what? I didn't even buy a PS3, Wii or XBOX 360 for the same reason.
You can't say its a standard or a feature and then change, remove or force me to upgrade anymore. I'm done with that stuff.
I'm satisfied with my standard television, my standard DVD and my standard gaming on a PS2 (more of a PC gamer anyways) and what's more,
Dear Corporate Overlords, (Score:5, Funny)
Specifications for both disc types will be published during the upcoming months.
Don't you realize that publishing specs hurts your bottom line?!?!
This is what happens when Sony wins (Score:4, Insightful)
They will do pretty much as they please, especially when it comes to perpetual changes, "new patents" and royalties galore. I'm wishing HD-DVD won the war. I saw it coming with Sony pushing Bluray.
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also sony and all those other companies are part of the dvd forum as well so what makes you think that hd-dvd wouldn't have this kind of problem?
Erf, shades of DVD-R incompatibilities. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh man. I thought we got away from this after we left the incompatibility of DVD-R/RW with most commercial video DVD players behind. Currently I can author my HD videos to Blu-Ray recordables and they play just fine on any Blu Ray player. Hallelujah. Fortunately I don't have much of a reason to use higher capacity discs, my videos aren't 6 hours long. At 12 GB / hr I can fit plenty on a stock Blu Ray disc. As a data application, this is probably OK, but hard drives are so cheap these days there's no point in doing optical backups. This might be used for 4k video and other very high end formats in the future, however.
And if you say that there is no need for physical formats, you're wrong. At least in the USA, our level of broadband is not capable of delivering 25 mbits / sec video to the home, on demand and with everyone on your block doing same. With large LCD, plasma and DLP screens, that data rate makes all the difference in quality. Compare satellite HD to the same content on Blu-Ray and you'll see an enormous difference. Most Sat HD feeds I've seen are practically unwatchable due to compression artifacts.
-M
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What's it for? (Score:2)
We already have HD video on Blu-Ray. I don't know any software package that needs more than 50GB of media (so there probably aren't that many). They say this is for archiving and backups? I switched to hard drives and flash drives several years ago because optical was such a waste and the rewritable ones were less reliable than USB memory sticks.
This will come in handy... (Score:3, Funny)
... for those extended versions of the Lord of The Rings that will finally be coming on BluRay next year.
"Oh, this would have required so many discs with that old BluRay technology, you know, we just used these new BDXL discs and actually reduced the cost of the box set for you, the customer, by having less discs! Just don't forget to pick up one of those new players on your way to the cashier."
I kid, I kid, they would never do such a thing.
No not sony! (Score:3, Funny)
They would never do anything like this.
I mean I love that I can still use my old memory sticks
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That make sense, except for the part where the already have made write-able blue-ray disks available.
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There's still such a thing as converting media, it'll be no problem.
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I have a feeling that BD-XL is about exactly what they say -- supporting industries with needs for higher-capacity archival storage.
IHBD might be used a number of ways, most that involve incorporating user data that "goes with" published content on the same bit of media, so that the user content "follows" the published content. This could be used, e.g., to save user preferences or state back
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IHBD might be used a number of ways, most that involve incorporating user data that "goes with" published content on the same bit of media, so that the user content "follows" the published content.
Homemade Pr0n, now starring you and ms. whoever?
It's more for large data sets (Score:3, Interesting)
Low coast, loanable, disposable, large data sets. Think more of like medical imaging archives, and regular FULL backups. The need for this is great in the corporate world. Spinning disk is nice, but it's also hard to loan out, and expensive. Networking a 1.5G study is rough, requires a lot of upload bandwidth, and if you look over some patients histories they may have >20 studies that a doctor wants to see YESTERDAY! Burning a patient's whole history to 1 usable disk would be great!
Unfortunately, it
Parkinson's law (Score:2)
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Thanks for pointing that to me, now I can quote it for projects in the future! I've not seen that before.
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Considering that it's going to be $10+ for a disk, if they ever hit the shelves... you're still gonna be ahead of the game using mag disks. Optical is dead.
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Well, that sure puts them in their place. LG can now only expect to sell 7,849,999 players in 2010 instead of the prior estimate of 7,850,000.
(LG Sales Projections [digitaltrends.com])
Re:goatse (Score:5, Insightful)
This summary is misleading. There is little need for more capacity given the current specs for HD and the current utilization on a typical BD movie. These disks will target storage, and the only people who would need to upgrade would be those that needed these higher density disks. It was known before the spec was certified that higher capacity media would be in the pipe. That was one of the strengths of BD-Rom; it had lots of room to grow.
From TFA: "In general, the two new formats will be geared toward broadcast and document archiving, both industries that need to record and store massive libraries of digital content. But consumer versions will be available, 'particularly in those regions where BD recorders have achieved broad consumer acceptance,' the BDA said."