blue ray not as good as it was hyped to be.

[korgoth]

Sony decided to use the 11 year old mpeg-2 format that is used on standard dvd's now instead of the newer microsoft mpeg-4 avc and vc1 which will be on hd discs.

they claim its good enough, but the actual pixel per line of resolution is less. This doesnt mean its less quality, but what the hell. What a crooked company. Why hold back for no reason? because they know they can, and then rerelease the better formats later so you have to rebuy everything again.

plus the have a drm (digital rights management) on the new disc that will limit the amount of freedom we have, much more than the dvd's we have now.

sony is loosing a lot of respect, especially since their virus scandal that just happened when they embeded spyware viruses into audio cd's.

if it wasnt for the ps3, i think i would boycot BR discs. im not going to upgrade any type of dvd for a while, but ill probobly wait for the maxel holographic cd's to come out in september 2006. i can stick to renting and watching it on my ps3 until then.

 

[Hi Ho]

I hope the holographic discs grab some attention. They have so much more potential!

It sounds like Sony doesn't want to cooperate with Microsoft in any way. It makes zero sense to use a decade old codec. Just another thing to add to my "why not to buy Sony" list.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Where are you getting this information from? I hadn't heard that the final standards for Blu-Ray had been decided upon by the BD committees or that a single CODEC was ever going to be a limitation.

I know MPEG2 was always PART of the spec, but where have you heard that MPEG4 CODECs were definitely not part of the spec?

 

[MDS]

As far as I know, mpeg2, mpeg4, and VC-1 are all required. That means that players must support all of those formats. It doesn't mean that content producers must produce discs with content in all of those formats.

 

[Hi Ho]

I found THIS article through Google News, no definitive answers but at least the first discs will use MPEG2.

 

[darien87]

I swore off Sony a LONG time ago. It seemed like EVERYTHING Sony I bought, took a crap, (Mobile ES amp, Receiver, Walkmans). I'll NEVER buy Sony again.

 

[w.e-coyote]

Holographic disks

Just wanting to pich in here. What in heaven's name would anyone want to do with holographic disks? The capacity is around, let's say, 300 GB as opposed to 30-50 GB for HD-DVD and BD. Both of these formats (HD-DVD and BD) support full res HD content.

This means that either:
* you can store several movies in HD format on a single disk (somehow I do not envision Disney putting out the "Ultimate Disney Collection" with ALL their movies on a single disk),
* or you have 250 GB left over that you can fill with Bonus Material.
This basically rules out such disks as being a medium to distribute (pre-recorded-) content.

OK, let's use it as a storage medium then. In this case it will have to compete with HardDisk storage which offers the same if not higher data capacities. In a consumer environment HD is pretty established and working its way into the living room (DVD HD recorders for example). This paired with the increasing penetration of wireless home networks sort of moots the point of the storage being portable.

Only application I can imagine is in professional archiving. Some high volume market that is.

I for one am not going to hold my breath waiting for next-next generation optical storage devices.

 

[MACCA350]

I was reading somewhere that the new digital cinemas will be using HDD for storing the movies to be played as they will be compressed from the Hi-Def Digital masters down to about 200GB. They said that the uncompressed video file for a HD Digital movie is larger than 1TB add to that an uncompressed Multichannel Audio track and that holographic disk is looking pretty small until they hit their goal of 1TB. So I doubt that extra storage would go to waste, It just means were getting closer to having master quality at home(If they decide to use them for movie distribution)

cheers

 

[johnu]

Just wanting to pich in here. What in heaven's name would anyone want to do with holographic disks? The capacity is around, let's say, 300 GB as opposed to 30-50 GB for HD-DVD and BD. Both of these formats (HD-DVD and BD) support full res HD content.

This means that either:
* you can store several movies in HD format on a single disk (somehow I do not envision Disney putting out the "Ultimate Disney Collection" with ALL their movies on a single disk),
* or you have 250 GB left over that you can fill with Bonus Material.
This basically rules out such disks as being a medium to distribute (pre-recorded-) content.

Well, you could probably store a complete season of a hi-def TV series on a single disk instead of multiple disks like current DVD's. Or, for some sort of collection set, everything would fit on 1 disk. This would save a lot of money on duplication and packaging costs for the studios, as well as shelf space for the retail stores.

And what if you have 250 GB left over? The studio cost for the blank disk is the same whether they have 299 GB left over or the disk is completely filled.

Assuming the hardware and disks become available on schedule, getting the cost of blank disks low enough to compete with the other formats is likely to be the biggest problem.

 

[claudermilk]

300GB on a single disk?! Once PC burner drives & affordable media would be available I'd SO be there! Ever heard of digital cameras? DSLRs (especially when set to RAW mode) create an amazing quantity of data. I'd kill for that kind of capacity, DVD-Rs just don't cut it any more and the DL-DVD-Rs are still too expensive. I'm already up to 23 disks for this year's shooting alone.

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

Holographic disks cost over $100 each! They are going to be used for storing TV and movies, but by TV stations who have terrabytes of programming already on decaying tape. I highly doubt anyone thinks people are going to pay $100+ for every Adam Sandler movie.

On the other subject: Blu*Ray players are still going to accept MPEG-4 and VC-1 as well as MPEG-2 features (otherwise they wouldn't be backwards compatible). SONY did say their 1st gen. HD titles are going to be encoded in MPEG-2. This would make sense considering the re-dipping of titles they expect consumers to pay over and over again.

1.Single layer MPEG-2 BRDs (Blu*Ray Disks). some flippers, no special features
2.dual layer BRDs. some special features
3.Dual layer dual disk BRDs. more special feautres
4.multiple layer BRDs (the technology allows for 8 layers and 200GB) for even more special features.
5.Multiple disk, multi-layer BRD boxsets. Like TV series or director's films boxsets
6.UDTV announced, start all over again.

 

[claudermilk]

Holographic disks cost over $100 each! They are going to be used for storing TV and movies, but by TV stations who have terrabytes of programming already on decaying tape. I highly doubt anyone thinks people are going to pay $100+ for every Adam Sandler movie.

I guess I'll have to wait a while. (I won't even spend $10 for one of his movies!)

 

[korgoth]

Where are you getting this information from? I hadn't heard that the final standards for Blu-Ray had been decided upon by the BD committees or that a single CODEC was ever going to be a limitation.

I know MPEG2 was always PART of the spec, but where have you heard that MPEG4 CODECs were definitely not part of the spec?

sorry i havent kept up with the replies.. i read it in an article that their official decision was for this format.. others will be supported, but this is the format they keep as standard.. if studios want to use other formats it will be fine.

 

[korgoth]

I guess I'll have to wait a while. (I won't even spend $10 for one of his movies!)

prices wont be that high forever. i just read an article saying 30 gig holographic memory cards for 1 dollar in 2006. Im not sure how valid that claim is but even if the movie studios dont come out with holographic media. You can potentially use them to back up your movie collection. if the studios do decide to switch over.. that would be even better, but i highly doubt they will anytime soon, especially since they both just signed with either sony, or toshiba.


http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050608/105586/?ST=english

it also says players are around 1500 bucks. and player/recorders are around 75000-85000 bucks.
but im sure those prices will drop as well.

 

[Jack Hammer]

prices wont be that high forever... it also says players are around 1500 bucks. and player/recorders are around 75000-85000 bucks.
but im sure those prices will drop as well.

Is that correct - $75-85K. The prices will have drop substantially before most people can afford to buy. I'll wait until the players are in the $150 range, then maybe get a "nicer" unit for around $600.

 

[claudermilk]

Wow. Again it will be a while before I see any of that technology in my home. However, seeing that the PC upgrade I'm speccing right now will have nearly 1TB of drives, it won't be forever (I remember the days when 16KB, yes that is 16,384 bytes, was thought to be huge).