"Blu-ray" DVD's...

[fewtch]

Anyone here think they may not catch on? The current DVD format is already pretty entrenched, and more so with every DVD they sell. If everyone has to upgrade their player to play new DVD's after 2003, who knows if people will do it. A couple attempts have been made to 'upgrade' the current music CD format too, with little success.

Personally I don't see much need for it. The current formats do quite well with 2 discs for even the most feature-full movies... who needs the extra copy protection... :rolleyes:

[trbarry]

I want one! :)

If I put my own movies on them then I wont have to copy protect them.

- Tom

[tenebrenz]

Where I work only around 1/3 of the people have dvd, the rest are fairly content with vhs, though i expect around 2/3 will have dvd by the end of the year. I can't see how it is possible to change to another format so quickly when they are still trying to convert so many people to DVD.

[Zarxrax]

Personally I think the video quality on most dvds kinda sucks. Sure, there are some out there that are mastered quite nicely, but a lot of it looks really crappy to me. I owuld hope that this new format could allow them to use higher bitrates so we dont get all that nasty mpeg-2 artifacts.

[wmansir]

This appears to be to DVD what SVHS was to VHS, designed for superior recording and playback on high-end machines that are backwards compatable (the machines not the media) with the old standard, which most commercial releases will continue to use.

It's basicly a way for consumer electronics manufacturers to market high priced models for the enthusiasts, at a nice markup. Of course, the new media also has a nice markup, and for the studio's there will be special editon releases on the blu-ray discs with superior A/V (al a 'superbit'), more extras, ect. available at a nice markup.

I would expect this from CE manufacturers because look at the price of DVD players now, they are only slightly above VHS machines of comparable construction quality. They need something to drive the up-scale market. The enthusiasts will love it, and prehaps righly so, but it won't gather enough momentum to become the next big thing.

Of course, the digital apsects (digital recording, data backup, ect) give it a better chance at main steam adoption than SVHS, but I don't think it's advanced enough to replace DVD before something even better comes along. Unless the studio's push it heavly, because of it's copyright features, and start releasing titles only in the new format.

(I'm still battling the flu so please excuse any mistakes above, up to and including my main point.)

wes

[Doom9]

I wouldn't bet all my money on that standard replacing DVD. Take a look at DVD audio for instance. The mass market is clearly satisfied with regular Audio CDs and despite content provider being enthusiastic about the new format (of course, they got their fair use lockout;), joe average hasn't jumped on the DVD audio bandwagon and probably never will because his CD player suits him just fine. With DVD we could have the same situation. Prices are really low and there's more than enough software to make buying such a player worthwile. What to do with 27GB? Currently the space on a DVD isn't even properly used, there's just too many discs that has been encoded setting an average bitrate and running a simple multipass encoder over it, without any manual intervention. Robshot (www.robshot.com) has shown that when properly done you can put 2-3 movies on a DVD-5 in a quality that you cannot discern from regular DVD-9s as you can buy 'em in the store. Of course, manually optimizing would increase production cost, but you can justify a higher price by putting more extras on the disc as you get more free space when optimizing the encoded content.

So, while having 27GB on a single disc is certainly nice we have to ask ourselves: Do we really need that much space? I don't even see the use of recordable DVDs except to store movies, so why do we need a media that can store 5-6 times as much? And besides DVD video the DVD format isn't really that popular. Computer games, to just give an example, still come on regular data CDs, and normally have very shitty video clips and animations on it even though it would be no problem at all using high quality DVD video content and use a DVD to store the data instead of multiple CDs.

[trbarry]

I personally don't see the use as a stand alone DVD player replacement but I don't use a stand alone player now. So that part doesn't matter to me.

What matters is that increasingly my TV caps are digital or even HDTV at higher quality and there is a quality improvement to be had by using more pixels and more space. Heck, I'm even starting to encode my Buffy's at 704x528 now.

And computers are faster than a couple years ago so now they can keep up with displaying a higher data rate. As long as I can store that data rate cheaply then to me it is a good thing. I only got a DVDR drive about a month or so ago when the prices came down. But again, once the prices come down I'd like to be burning 29 GB Blurry DVDR's.

So I still think it's nifty if they actually come out with these things.

- Tom

[Bugs Bunny]

I think the blue-laser "base" standard that was just announced is for the next gen of DVD-R, primarily for recording rather than playback. There is nothing that was said for compatibility, which implies that it won't be used to distribute movies. Studio releases aren't like tech advances; it takes years for them to move to a new standard. The DVD standalone is just starting to catch on with consumers this past Christmas.

Since tech advances are fastest with PC-based solutions, we'll probably see these things as PC drives first, mainly as backup & video digital recording devices, then migrate on out to the consumer electronics. That was how it was with CD-R/RW adoption. I would be surprised if the drives won't be backward compatible with the current red-laser units, or even with CD-RW units.

What this means for the common bloke is that if you aren't satisfied with the 4.7G cap of current DVD-R's, wait two more years (2004) for the hi-cap DVD-R's to show up. As of now, it's just an agreed-upon "baseline" standard, i.e. on paper only, not yet even in prototype stage.

As for whether we'll need the extra space, remember the infamous B. Gates' "640K is enough for anybody" quote.

Hardware beeswax: My main box with the OC'ed Athlon flaked out. I'm getting periodic reboots, even with a clean software config and nothing running. I tried lowering the speed to lowest, and the reboots still happen (the temp gauge does seem to go a bit higher than normal). I'm hoping it's just a loose heatsink or something, as it's 100 clams for another Athlon. Argh. I'm starting to hate AMD chips now.

[zeb7]

Hi all

I have not keep track on blue ray over the last 2/3 months (so may be i'm wrong)
but , i've been waiting for this format ever since css was cracked , i knew that
the studio's were desperate need to upgrade the encryption ,but how recalling DVD drives
not an option, The studio's would just have to ride these bad time's till the next planed media
change blu-ray ( which was named HD-DVD back then)

Blu-ray may have been speed up because of the release of Decss DOD DVD Speed Ripper , thanks guys :)

Ok i will get to the point;

HD-DVD (up to D5 resolution it may be used to replace film in the cinema! )
8 channel surround sound (SDDS)
Starwars (and lot's of other classic's that are held back)

zeb

BTW; most studios master the films at D5 then
scale down to D1 for DVD
my point being their are D5 transferes of films
sitting in archives somewere.

[Taric25]

Seriousley, if one has 7.1 surround, where do you put the 7th speaker? on the ceiling?

[Bugs Bunny]

>Seriousley, if one has 7.1 surround, where do you put the 7th speaker? on the ceiling?


Nope it's two jell-filled sacs ya placed under yer butt cheeks. They jiggle as ya pass currents thru em. Great for enhancing those subsonic rumbles that yer subbie can't quite recapture.

Ya heard it here first: Multi-channel audio is moving into the realm of tactile output, amplifying the user's experience by aggregating multiple sensory channels into a cohesive whole.

Next up: A vibrating penile wrap with light electro-shocks addon kit for those Extreme Encounters. Female users will have an interface option for their already existing implements.

Hah, and I bet you think I'm making this all up.

[zeb7]

"Seriousley, if one has 7.1 surround, where do you put the 7th speaker? on the ceiling?"

no the ceiling speaker are next year :) just joking ,

L, LC, C, RC, R, Sub, SurL SurR = 8 channels
(that's to many speakers for my living room)

Actually i'm happy with the sound on DVD's i think the next big leap will
be Mpeg7 audio .

It has been hinted that SDDS may go on DVD ,
its technical possible , but with decss and all
mabe it will go on Blu-ray.

Its a balance , if the studios think they will
lose cinema profits by letting SDDS on to HD-DVD
then we will not get SDDS in the Home.

http://www.sdds.com/


Yeah i know of tactile output also ,I dont want to completly destrory the house watching JP3 :)