Shita

[Goosemaster]

:|

Bastards.

Link

Matsushita chief says next-gen DVD talks are dead

Yoshiko Hara
(05/20/2005 8:02 AM EDT)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163105945

TOKYO ? An effort to revive deadlocked talks aimed at unifying competing DVD standards has failed, according to the president of Matsushita Electric.

Kunio Nakamura said Thursday (May 19) the company will not budge from its insistence that a unified spec include a 0.1-mm cover layer. He emphasized that the Blu-ray Disc group's position has not changed and that the ball is now in rival Toshiba's court.

Despite the breakdown of the unification talks on a next-generation DVD format earlier this week, there were signs during during the week that a summit meeting involving Matsushita, Sony and Toshiba might revive the talks. Nakamura denied such a meeting is planned.

According to a source close to the Blu-ray camp, the sides decided last weekend (May 7) to seek a final management decision on whether to pursue unification talks. Neither side would yield, and the decision to end negotiations was announced in meetings earlier this week.

Toshiba first proposed unification talks in early March, according to the source. A test balloon to adopt the HD DVD spec for the ROM format and the Blu-ray spec for recording formats was floated at an industry meeting. At the time, Toshiba seemed to be groping for a compromise that would satisfy both sides.

While nearly all involved in the dispute agree that a unified standard is desirable, neither side appears willing to compromise on key technical points. For example, if 0.1-mm cover layer technology remains a precondition of a unification deal, as Sony and Matsushita insist, Toshiba would gain little and have a major problem persuading HD DVD backers to agree to a unification deal.

Memory Tech Corp., a member of the HD DVD camp, for example, has been focusing on developing HD DVD disk production technologies. A unification deal would present the company a serious disadvantage if the next-generation disk used a 0.1-mm cover layer.

While both sides claimed publicly to be ready to resume talks, observers agreed the unification effort is likely dead. If so, the HD DVD group will then begin making ROM products as early as possible in order to make the format a de facto industry standard for next-generation packaged media.

We were so close....

 

[deftron]

Isn;t blu ray bigger and better?

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: deftron
Isn;t blu ray bigger and better?

Who cares. All i know is that I want to play Mobile suit Gundam on ps3 and it uses bluray, so bluray I shall support

 

[imported_Phil]

So what's all the fuss about a "cover layer", and WTF is a "cover layer" anyway?

 

[Linux23]

Originally posted by: deftron
Isn;t blu ray bigger and better?

no.

 

[0roo0roo]

idiots. i want more space grr.
hd dvd is so full of sh*t, cost savings isnt going to be passed onto consumers..never are for media companies like these. course hddvd=easy chinese piracy though.. so i guess hddvd on ebay will be damn cheap

 

[deftron]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster

Originally posted by: deftron
Isn;t blu ray bigger and better?

Who cares. All i know is that I want to play Mobile suit Gundam on ps3 and it uses bluray, so bluray I shall support

Then why are you upset about HD DVD being deaD?

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Blu-Ray is technically superior, but that's completely irrelevant to success in the marketplace. Cost is always the determining factor unless there is a killer app that can only be run using the technically superior product. Case in point, VHS was cheaper than Betamax, there was nothing that the Betamax did that was so much better than VHS that people would have to choose it over the other. End result, VHS wins. It'll be interesting to see what effect the PS3 has on all this.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: deftron

Originally posted by: Goosemaster

Originally posted by: deftron
Isn;t blu ray bigger and better?

Who cares. All i know is that I want to play Mobile suit Gundam on ps3 and it uses bluray, so bluray I shall support

Then why are you upset about HD DVD being deaD?

Because I want Panasonic to make Blu-ray equipment too. That way Sony and Toshiba can't keep their prices high. Te market will not thrive until one capitulates or they agree.

I want my damn p3s and blu-ray HD movies NOW and for CHEAP.

 

[deftron]

Blu-Ray is technically superior, but that's completely irrelevant to success in the marketplace. Cost is always the determining factor unless there is a killer app that can only be run using the technically superior product. Case in point, VHS was cheaper than Betamax, there was nothing that the Betamax did that was so much better than VHS that people would have to choose it over the other. End result, VHS wins. It'll be interesting to see what effect the PS3 has on all this.

Yeah but blu ray is bigger so it can hold more film at higher resolution.


I'd say that's a killer point.


Anyways, after either gets into mass production ... costs will dramatically fall

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: deftron
Yeah but blu ray is bigger so it can hold more film at higher resolution.
I'd say that's a killer point.
Anyways, after either gets into mass production ... costs will dramatically fall

If the difference is between 12 hours of film and 14 hours of film will you really care? What if it's between 12 hours of film and 24 hours of film and HD-DVD media is only 1/3 of the price? It's not like you're going to go through 24 hours of film in one sitting anyways.

Originally posted by: Phil
So what's all the fuss about a "cover layer", and WTF is a "cover layer" anyway?

It has to do with the optics of the disc itself and the thickness of the disc. One problem with the 0.1mm cover layer is with scratches. Anything deeper than 0.1mm will affect the actual recording material. On top of this, if you have a thicker cover layer slight scratces are further away from the recording layer and thus are "out-of-focus" and don't really effect the reading/writing as much.

Think of looking through a moderately dirty window. If you're looking at something far away, the imperfections in the window don't have a huge impact on the image you see. On the other hand if you're looking at something at the backside of the window you notice the dirt right away.

 

[MustISO]

Toshiba also claims they have a 45GB HD-DVD which would be very close to Blu-Ray. I really wish they would just settle this already.

 

[arod]

There are also reports of a 100 gig blueray disc in development.

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/05/19/tdk/index.php

with ps3 doing blueray I would think that blueray would never lose no matter how much more it costs. Wether it actually is used by hollywood for movies etc remains to be seen.

At CES this past january I had a feeling HD-DVD camp was much better prepared.... (they were showing real media (not just the movies but how extras encorporate [had the video of the commentary in a little overlay on the screen so you could see the director or whoever talk and not just the voice, it was a really cool feature]) and blueray didnt have a whole lot other than its manufacturers showing off 1 demo (you could tell it wasnt going to be around this year) where you got the feeling hd-dvd was much further along.

 

[Koing]

Originally posted by: arod
There are also reports of a 100 gig blueray disc in development.

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/05/19/tdk/index.php

with ps3 doing blueray I would think that blueray would never lose no matter how much more it costs. Wether it actually is used by hollywood for movies etc remains to be seen.

At CES this past january I had a feeling HD-DVD camp was much better prepared.... (they were showing real media (not just the movies but how extras encorporate [had the video of the commentary in a little overlay on the screen so you could see the director or whoever talk and not just the voice, it was a really cool feature]) and blueray didnt have a whole lot other than its manufacturers showing off 1 demo (you could tell it wasnt going to be around this year) where you got the feeling hd-dvd was much further along.

Yup read that also

I don't care who wins as long as I can play GT5 ont he PS3 online

Sod HD stuff until later and whent he HD Blu Ray/ HD becomes cheap

Koing

 

[anxi80]

Originally posted by: arod
There are also reports of a 100 gig blueray disc in development.

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/05/19/tdk/index.php

pffft. 100gb is small potatoes. sony to announce experimental 8 layer 200 GB blu-ray discs

 

[SSP]

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
It has to do with the optics of the disc itself and the thickness of the disc. One problem with the 0.1mm cover layer is with scratches. Anything deeper than 0.1mm will affect the actual recording material. On top of this, if you have a thicker cover layer slight scratces are further away from the recording layer and thus are "out-of-focus" and don't really effect the reading/writing as much.

Think of looking through a moderately dirty window. If you're looking at something far away, the imperfections in the window don't have a huge impact on the image you see. On the other hand if you're looking at something at the backside of the window you notice the dirt right away.

I'm guessing Sony and Matsushita is sticking with .1mm for cost issues?

How big are the cover layer in dvd's? I know they're also very sensitive to scratches.

 

[Bateluer]

BluRay better win, its superior to the HD-DVD standard, but as history has taught us, its cost that will prevail.

 

[Ornery]

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
Blu-Ray is technically superior, but that's completely irrelevant to success in the marketplace. Cost is always the determining factor unless there is a killer app that can only be run using the technically superior product. Case in point, VHS was cheaper than Betamax, there was nothing that the Betamax did that was so much better than VHS that people would have to choose it over the other. End result, VHS wins. It'll be interesting to see what effect the PS3 has on all this.

I don't WTF this DVD format war is about, but I DO know allabout the Beta/VHS battle. It was idiot consumers who gave us the FAR inferior VHS format, thanks to marketing the longer play time of VHS. Nevermind BetaMax standard play time was 3Hrs VS VHS 2Hr standard play. Our consumers are total fvcktards! :|

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: Ornery

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
Blu-Ray is technically superior, but that's completely irrelevant to success in the marketplace. Cost is always the determining factor unless there is a killer app that can only be run using the technically superior product. Case in point, VHS was cheaper than Betamax, there was nothing that the Betamax did that was so much better than VHS that people would have to choose it over the other. End result, VHS wins. It'll be interesting to see what effect the PS3 has on all this.

I don't WTF this DVD format war is about, but I DO know allabout the Beta/VHS battle. It was idiot consumers who gave us the FAR inferior VHS format, thanks to marketing the longer play time of VHS. Nevermind BetaMax standard play time was 3Hrs VS VHS 2Hr standard play. Our consumers are total fvcktards! :|

Well duh.

 

[0roo0roo]

If the difference is between 12 hours of film and 14 hours of film will you really care? What if it's between 12 hours of film and 24 hours of film and HD-DVD media is only 1/3 of the price? It's not like you're going to go through 24 hours of film in one sitting anyways.

not at hd resolution. let alone 1080p once that gets around. look at dvd, it seemed big so long ago. look what happened, lotr se editions are spanned over two discs grr and superbit releases that have to sacrifice all special features grr

 

[Tab]

What do they both disagree with it specifically? Hopefully it will end up just like the CD-RW and the CD+RW. Manufactures will release two format that will both read and burn them.

 

[jiwq]

I never knew there existed CD+RW

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

If the difference is between 12 hours of film and 14 hours of film will you really care? What if it's between 12 hours of film and 24 hours of film and HD-DVD media is only 1/3 of the price? It's not like you're going to go through 24 hours of film in one sitting anyways.

not at hd resolution. let alone 1080p once that gets around. look at dvd, it seemed big so long ago. look what happened, lotr se editions are spanned over two discs grr and superbit releases that have to sacrifice all special features grr

LOTR: SE is an exception and it was known long ago that if you wanted something that long it would be a problem.

JUst to give you ballpark figures for 1080p on a single-sided disc. The DVD format is 480i@60Hz, which is the same as 480p@30Hz (not really, but for the purposes of this talk it's close enough). The top-end HDTV format is 1080p@30Hz, so we'll consider the frame rate to be irrelevant for the time being.

so we're really talking about moving from an encoding at 640*480 to 1920*1080. In terms of pixels we would need 6.75 times as much capacity to store this on an HD format if everything was held constant. However, VC1 and H.264 are almost twice as efficient for video encoding as MPEG-2. So assuming we keep the same PSNR in our new format, we only need an increase of approx 3.4x to retain with the same recording length at 1080p.

So far we have ignored changes in audio quality, but let's assume for the sake of simplicity that audio also requires 3.4x more space for more channels, better quality and whatever else you like.

So seeing as an 8.5 GB dual-layer DVD holds roughly 240 minutes of film the 30 GB HD-DVD spec would allow for... just about the same amount of film! The recently announced 45 GB format would hold about 375 minutes of film. That's over 6 hours of full resolution 1080p video. For anything more than that, I don't think that it's unreasonable to change discs after watching 6 hours of film. For reference, LOTR:ROTK SE is 251 minutes long.

Now since BD-ROM uses the same video compression algorithms (H.264 and VC-1), everything we have said also applies to it. Meaning that on a first-gen product at 50 GB you have almost 7 hours of film and on the recently demo'd 100 GB disc you have almost 14 hours of 1080p video.

I can see why you'd want this kind of capacity for a computer drive, but I cannot for the life of me see what you'd need 14 hours of 1080p film on a single disc for. So I ask again, Blu-Ray is the superior format but how many killer apps will need capacity beyond the 45 GB available in HD-DVD?