Pionneer to proceed with dual layer recording

[kheops]

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.asp?RelatedID=4206


The first measurements on the two layer DVD-R discs showed that the jitter for the fisrt layer is 9.34%, the reflectivity 17.3%, while the same measurements for the second layer were 8.08% and 19.5%, respectively. Playback compatibility with the current DVD players is expected to be high.

Although the limited information about the technology background, dual layer DVD recording is definitely a major step beyond and expected to boost the sales of DVD writers.


great news !!! :D

+

[Toona]

what about Blu-ray (sp?) whats the latest info on that technology???

[alexnoe]

Am I the only one who thinks that the movie industrie is not going to like this (regardless whether the first dual layer recorders are - or +)? And not long ago Sony said those burners were far too expensive to hit the market soon.... but well, 'somewhen 2004' is not 'soon' :)
what about Blu-ray (sp?) whats the latest info on that technology???They are planning 3 incompatible standards.

[Doom9]

I'd be careful with that news item.. as I mentioned in the news.. it is uncorraborated and it doesn't tell you a lot. Philip's press release is much more revealing, and they will publicly present their technology as early as next week, allowing everybody to verify Philips' claims. If Pioneer were ready to do that, I'd expect a press release gloating about the new capabilities as well... those things are a PR dream.

Am I the only one who thinks that the movie industrie is not going to like this No, they'll do whatever they can to prevent those drives from entering the market. As they have done as far back as the LP, they have always tried to stop new technology (tapes, video tapes, recordable CDs (Thomson's CD-MO was ready years before the first PC based CD burner was spotted), and DVDs as such.. anybody remember the DIVX system?), but most of the time they have given up the opposition and embraced the possibilities of a new system. I doubt they'll be able to prevent the next evolution in DVDs for the simple fact that hardware manufacturers have a strong interest in it happening. Currently, VHS owning households present a huge untapped marked for DVD recorder manufacturers. In order to really get into that market, prices are only one argument. Another is offering similar capabilities as the existing format and currently they can only offer 2h of recording at standard quality. Using dual layer they can almost double that, allowing people to put two full length movies onto a single disc, as they used to with VHS tapes.
As for the Sony rumor.. I actually had a news item that I never published... it concerned dual layer burners being shown at IFA in 2002. But since I was unable to verify the report with 3rd party sources, I never mentioned it, and I only mentioned the Pioneer things since the last few weeks were kinda rough on the DVD-R people.. I still consider it an uncorraborated rumour and nothing else.

[alexnoe]

It has already happened that cdrinfo got information from some strange places which were not intended to be released (either for marketing reasons, or because the manufacturer of the potentially new hardware could not really give a date).

This has for example happened with the announcement of the Plextor 4824TA drive.

However, even if that this is true.... 17.<blah> percent reflexivity would be below the 18% required for dual layer dvds :eek:

[windtrader]

Another is offering similar capabilities as the existing format and currently they can only offer 2h of recording at standard quality. Using dual layer they can almost double that, allowing people to put two full length movies onto a single disc, as they used to with VHS tapes.

I'd offer a different angle on the need to have 4hr optical media. In the VHS world, there is no interim storage mechanism. You have an incoming video stream, be it a movie on a second VHS or a baseball game beaming down from satellite or cable. It plays and you have to record it on VHS tape to see it later. If it's a crap show, then throw the tape back into the pile to be reused.

Today, the Tivos and other HD based video storage technologies allow a user to capture the movie or whatever in some internal cache, review it at a later time and decide to keep it there, or delete it and make the space available for additional recordings. For those shows that the user wants to keep, it can then be compressed and offloaded to DVD for offline storage and later playback. Given this technology scenario, I would offer that the current storage capacity of recordable DVD media is probably not a barrier for the majority of users.

I don't keep up on the STB market; maybe there are already Tivo/DVD-+R devices available. It would be interesting to see the sales figures.

I would concede that the consumer perception that they need at the same storage capability as old VHS tapes is an entirely different topic for another day.

[Doom9]

It has already happened that cdrinfo got information from some strange places which were not intended to be released (either for marketing reasons, or because the manufacturer of the potentially new hardware could not really give a date).
Nobody is denying that, but until there is official confirmation, we should proceed to treat it for what it is: an unsubstantiated rumor. Other sites even have a special news page for such stuff, and even though they have good sources and sometimes their news items are correct, they still treat it as rumours (my favorite example being the rumor mill at thedigitalbits).

@windtrader: I'm not sure if the majority of users out there is ready for the additional complexity of HD recording yet. Most people can't even set their clock on their VCR. Of course, from our perspective, HD recording is already something we do with our eyes closed (but due to the lack of cable and satellite in our house, and really bad reception on the house antenna and the 4 channels we get, it's not an area I'm entering any time soon), but we are not the standard customer.

[alexnoe]

I'm not sure if the majority of users out there is ready for the additional complexity of HD recording yet. Most people can't even set their clock on their VCR.And that will never be resolved without a vocal interface

[SeeMoreDigital]

From a technology stand point I like the idea of dual layered DVD blank disc's being released.

I have been wondering for a while whether their delay has been due to piracy concerns more than anything else. I wonder too, if DVD burners capable of writing to such disc's will ever make it to our PC's. I get the feeling that they will end up as a stand alone device with built in hard drive!

The same goes for blu-ray recorders, in my opinion!

Cheers

[Topaz]

I haven't actually seen this info before about pioneer making a dual layer burner but I´m pretty sure it is true. Unless someone just made up these numbers ;)

I did read about the Philips press statement so the format is coming although I´m sure it will not be 'til next year ?

The one thing that makes me a little sad though is that I just bought a new pioneer 106D burner like a few months ago or something and NOW I hear about this. DAMN DAMN DAMN

But I always had the belief (because the technology must have been there) that the dvd manufacturers and the movie industry had an understanding about these dual layer burners. But I guess that is not so or what do you say guys ?

[alexnoe]

I did read about the Philips press statement so the format is coming although I´m sure it will not be 'til next year ? An no one knows if it is january or december what they have in mind ;)

[windtrader]

Hey, it's clear higher capacity is here today via blu-ray and more is soon to arrive via dual layer DVD-R. I'm plain excited. Of course, the initial units and media will carry premium pricing and the technology will bring its own set of new problems. Today, we have commoditized DVD-+R pricing and availablity but pervasively consistent quality remains elusive.

The ability to record all current dvd-9 programs with no or just the slightest compression will be a nice step forward in my books.

Meanwhile, keep picking and shrinking. :-)

[Doom9]

well.. I'd say the Philips engineers know it will take some more time to launch the product, hence the only available info is 2004.. that way they have up till January 05 until they're late. Once they actually start producing drives we'll have a better release estimate.

@Topaz: I buy new hardware and sell off old stuff all the time.. in fact my "old" stuff is so new I still get a reasonable return for it. So I can buy myself an 8x DVD burner and sell off the 4x one for Christmas, and get a dual layer burner a year or so later without bad feelings. If you're into computers you should know that whatever you get is going to be outdated in 0-3 months anyway.. thus you should write off your investment ASAP. If you can get around to writing off 50% of your investement the day you make it, it doesn't hurt if you sell it again for half the price in a year ;)

[alexnoe]

When I bought my Pioneer A03, it had not been outdated 3 months later :)

But that might have been the only thing...

[spath]

> I'd be careful with that news item.. as I mentioned in the news.. it is
> uncorraborated and it doesn't tell you a lot. Philip's press release is
> much more revealing, and they will publicly present their technology
> as early as next week, allowing everybody to verify Philips' claims.
> If Pioneer were ready to do that, I'd expect a press release gloating
> about the new capabilities as well... those things are a PR dream.

Exactly. The problem is that most consumers are uneducated about the
development cycle of a DVD product, and therefore get easily fooled by
such pre-pre-preliminary announcements. For instance you can find some
people arguing that + and - tie in the speed race just because the
preliminary A07 version has been "leaked" (and despite the fact that
8x + drives are in shops for a month).

Now this cdrinfo 5 lines statement is not very surprising, since we
had in the past several evidences that Pioneer PR can whenever they
want pick up the phone and simply dictate news and articles to these
guys. What is more surprising is the awkwardness of Pioneer to decide
to publish such improvised random figures, just to say "hey, we too
can do it". As you said, if they really had something to show, it would
have been much smarter from them to write a little document about it
over the weekend and publish it monday. I will believe it the day I
see an announcement on Pioneer site that they will sell dual layer
- burners.

[alexnoe]

Took them longer than a weekend, but they wrote the article :) (see the main page)

[Doom9]

the editors at cdfreaks must not have translated the entire press release for their October 3 news item (I suppose Pioneer made the first press release in Japanese.. either way it is dated 10/3 so the news was correct all along. Guess I need a few Japanese speaking people checking out Japanese newssites and company HQ sites.

[alexnoe]

They don't "translate" much at cdfreaks. They usually try to babelfish it, and with japanese, it's not easy...

[Benji99]

According to cdfreaks:

Mitsubishi and Ricoh show dual layer DVD+R media and recording is demonstrated by Philips on a PC drive. Dual layer products are expected to be launched in springtime 2004 in Europe and USA.

Maybe not December 2004 afterall :)

[spath]

> the editors at cdfreaks must not have translated the entire press
> release for their October 3 news item (I suppose Pioneer made the
> first press release in Japanese.. either way it is dated 10/3 so the
> news was correct all along.

What do you mean ? CDFreaks has no news item from 10/3 related to
Pioneer and the news item of 10/6 contains exactly what has been
posted on pioneer.co.jp.

Anyway this does not change the nature of this press release : it was
still improvised as a reaction to Philips announcement, and it does
not say much about how far Pioneer is with this technology (compare
this to Philips' pdf and this week's demonstration at CEATEC) or
if/when they plan to build actual burners with it (spring 2004 for
DVD+R9 burners).

[alexnoe]

Maybe they wait and see how well Philips performs against the movie industry :sly:

[Hells Delight]

Are there any new informations like release date, pricing, aso.?

Thanks!