why the xbox720 should be using HD-DVD

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Better than BD? In what way? If they moved to blue lasers they would have the same cost structure for manufacturing masters and need almost the same tolerances (actually they are a little worse off because of the buried layers). Nothing which makes their tech cheap now would survive the transition AFAICS.

PS. hell I seriously doubt replication for high volumes is cheaper now for VMDs compared to BR.
 
Better than BD? In what way? If they moved to blue lasers they would have the same cost structure for manufacturing masters and need almost the same tolerances (actually they are a little worse off because of the buried layers). Nothing which makes their tech cheap now would survive the transition AFAICS.

PS. hell I seriously doubt replication for high volumes is cheaper now for VMDs compared to BR.


According to Anthem Pictures, it's cheaper than both HD DVD and BD.

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6440324.html

Anthem cited the low cost of producing on the format as a reason for backing HD VMD over HD DVD and Blu-ray.

“HD VMD is the medium for the independent film labels, allowing us to have the same worldwide presence as the major studios in the [high-def] marketplace,” Anthem Pictures CEO Charles Adelman said.

As part of its deal with NME, Anthem will serve as an authoring partner for the HD VMD format on the West Coast.

“Independents cannot afford to use the competing formats, and this is why we have such following in Europe and in the rest of the world,” NME U.S. president Alexandros Potter said.
 
According to Anthem Pictures, it's cheaper than both HD DVD and BD.
One and a half years is a long time considering all the replication houses doing BR for independents had only just bought their machines and their manufacturers had only just finished creating them.

Also he said production cost, I don't think he was just talking about manufacturing.
 
QL VMD discs have a very, very poor yield and NME are subsidising the production of said discs. Any disc technology above DL is pretty dodgy at best, hell even DVD-18 was bad and that was just dual sided DL!

As for independent studios in Europe, well, 8m PS3 users and 2m player owners would be a better market for their movies than 20-30k VMD owners.

Seriously, VMD is a ridiculous product that will go the way of the dodo. The whole thing is completely unfeasible as it doesn't use DVD style optics (making the drive more expensive) and the discs are sold at below cost to studios/publishers to gain traction in the market. That sounds like a bad business model to me. Hell Blu-ray did the same thing, but they had the PS3 and marketing muscle of Sony/Disney/Fox pushing it. What does VMD have, a few Chinese publishers based in HK and NME?

Also, I don't know what 100 layer discs you are talking about, I have seen 10 layer demonstrated, and theoretical "papers" on 20 layer discs but never 100 layer ones. In any case, Ritek have demo'd 10 layer BD at 250GB, and last I heard from TDK (which was admittedly a while ago!) they have got some funky variation designed for private studio use working at 50GB per layer SL, 33GB per layer for DL discs. Just to go through the maths, 20 layer VMD is 100GB with a max read speed similar to DVD while BD has a potential of 250GB at 10 layers (though I personally doubt anything will come higher than 50GB, but for the sake of this argument I will ignore my misgivings) and a theoretical maximum read speed of 16x which works out to 72MB/s. I know what I would pick...
 
QL VMD discs have a very, very poor yield and NME are subsidising the production of said discs. Any disc technology above DL is pretty dodgy at best, hell even DVD-18 was bad and that was just dual sided DL!

As for independent studios in Europe, well, 8m PS3 users and 2m player owners would be a better market for their movies than 20-30k VMD owners.

Seriously, VMD is a ridiculous product that will go the way of the dodo. The whole thing is completely unfeasible as it doesn't use DVD style optics (making the drive more expensive) and the discs are sold at below cost to studios/publishers to gain traction in the market. That sounds like a bad business model to me. Hell Blu-ray did the same thing, but they had the PS3 and marketing muscle of Sony/Disney/Fox pushing it. What does VMD have, a few Chinese publishers based in HK and NME?

No offense but your whole post sounds like FUD with nothing to back it up. I also sense a tone of FEAR of VMD in your post...why? Why does MS potentially using a proprietary VMD derived format matter to you? Why are you so afraid of it? If you have a source for the poor yields please share it.

Also, I don't know what 100 layer discs you are talking about, I have seen 10 layer demonstrated, and theoretical "papers" on 20 layer discs but never 100 layer ones. In any case, Ritek have demo'd 10 layer BD at 250GB, and last I heard from TDK (which was admittedly a while ago!) they have got some funky variation designed for private studio use working at 50GB per layer SL, 33GB per layer for DL discs. Just to go through the maths, 20 layer VMD is 100GB with a max read speed similar to DVD while BD has a potential of 250GB at 10 layers (though I personally doubt anything will come higher than 50GB, but for the sake of this argument I will ignore my misgivings) and a theoretical maximum read speed of 16x which works out to 72MB/s. I know what I would pick...

I'll just ignore that part, too much nonsensical garbage to dig through.

What's yours? MfA says: 'if they move to blue laser, they'll have the following problems:' you say 'but red lasers are cheaper, look what this guy says'.

Yes, because moving to blue laser isn't a problem. It's the same manufacturing process and same type of disc. It might be slightly more expensive than red laser VMD similar to how HD DVD was more expensive than DVD but since the red laser version is cheaper than both HD DVD and BD even though it used different technology the blu laser version should be competitive. Of course this is all conjecture on my part but that's my take. If someone has more inside info that can be varfiied I'd like to hear it.

For those interested.

http://www.nmeinc.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=65
 
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No offense but your whole post sounds like FUD with nothing to back it up. I also sense a tone of FEAR of VMD in your post...why? Why does MS potentially using a proprietary VMD derived format matter to you? Why are you so afraid of it?

Afraid? Of what? VMD! Having a laugh, right?

I'll just ignore that part, too much nonsensical garbage to dig through.

Fine, that's up to you, but I would like to see these 100 layer disc proposals, are there any white-papers I could read? Thought not...

Yes, because moving to blue laser isn't a problem. It's the same manufacturing process and same type of disc. It might be slightly more expensive than red laser VMD similar to how HD DVD was more expensive than DVD but since the red laser version is cheaper than both HD DVD and BD even though it used different technology the blu laser version should be competitive. Of course this is all conjecture on my part but that's my take. If someone has more inside info that can be varfiied I'd like to hear it.

There's the money shot.

You really have no idea...
 
Afraid? Of what? VMD! Having a laugh, right?

Your posts speak for itself. ;)

Fine, that's up to you, but I would like to see these 100 layer disc proposals, are there any white-papers I could read? Thought not...

Why would you like to see them. Nobody claimed they existed. :LOL:

There's the money shot.

You really have no idea...

I take it you don't have a source for your "extremly bad yields" FUD, but that's ok you're still a noob. ;)
 
Your posts speak for itself. ;)



Why would you like to see them. Nobody claimed they existed. :LOL:



I take it you don't have a source for your "extremly bad yields" FUD, but that's ok you're still a noob. ;)

As for sources on the poor yields, I really don't need one. QL tech is in its infancy and Toshiba for all of their technological prowess couldn't get TL51/45 discs working for HD DVD, and they had a hell of a task getting TL13 DVDs manufactured in 2001.

You implied the existence of 100 layer VMDs, not me.

Anyway, this is getting waaay too off topic. I don't feel threatened by VMD, in fact I don't care enough about it to feel threatened by it, I just found it amusing that anyone would suggest it for serious use...
 
So you want me to dig through 35 pages to find "something".

Also I didn't imply 100 layer VMD existed, I said the technlogy from what I could remember claims to be able to put "up to" 100 layers onto a disc. I noticed that they say 20 layers are possible on their website so maybe that 100 layer thing was from some other technology that I mistook for VMD. Still 20 layers is a lot using blue laser with 15GB per layer.

I don't see why VMD can't be seriously considered as a viable option when people here are talking about using HD DVD. Heck I doubt anybody will be able to burn VMD since there are no recordable discs or drives which makes it a better physical antipiracy format than HD DVD. The fact Toshiba had problems getting TL HD DVDs out of the lab has little relevence to what NME is doing with VMD. NME already has a 4 layer 24GB red laser disc on the market with a cheap player to play them, it works. Much easier to go from 4 layer red laser to 4 layer blue laser than to go from 2 layer red laser to 3 layer blue laser, the latter was what Toshiba were trying to do.

The tech is obviously better than DVD/HD DVD allowing many more layers so it's not unrealistic that when they switch to blue laser VMD it won't be an issue since the tech allows for at least 4 layers. DVD/HD DVD tech can't even reach 3 layers. QL VMD is well understood and it's been out on the market for about a year already not in some lab like TL HD DVD.
 
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The hardware itself is liscensed from toshiba.

I'll take your word for it, but unless it's called HD-DVD and carries the same specs right down to the supported codecs and distributed by Toshiba, it's not HD-DVD. Of course, the name itself wouldn't hurt :rolleyes:

I followed the format war from a studio point of view like everyone else.
 
That's only because there isn't much need to hack a PS3. Hackers go after the easier target, in this case the 360, which gets them the bulk of the games anyways. It's the same with Dishnet and DirecTV. Dishnet was the easier target so the hackers went after that and got the bulk of the content there. Everything is hackable, there just has to be a need and/or demand. Blu-ray movies are in demand and there is no real easier target, so they got hacked.
1. There's just as much need to hack a PS3 as there is for 360...for starters more PS3's are sold outside the US, where piracy is more common.
2. The 360 isn't really hacked, they can only flash the firmware of some DVD's that were used. Those 360's aren't on sale anymore, all new 360's DVD's are not hackable.
3. BD production facilities are tightly controlled. No one can press a BD disc without BDA approval, and each disc has its mark indicating where it was pressed. The BDA does not let anyone press BD's like Toshiba allowed with DVD's, since this resulted in rampant bootlegs. BD drives can easily tell whether if a disc is pressed or recordable, and easily disallow games being played from it.
4. Movie studios are happy as long as pirates cannot press BD's...ripping the data and putting it on the internets is not a big concern, due to file size and ease of trackability.

I'm saying even the 360 is secure once they fixed the DVD issue. Piracy won't be much of an issue next gen, so it'd be in MS's best interest to use blu-ray for the next xbox.
 
I'll take your word for it, but unless it's called HD-DVD and carries the same specs right down to the supported codecs and distributed by Toshiba, it's not HD-DVD.

Sure it can.

HD DVD was divided into multiple specs just like any other optical disc standard: physical spec, filesystem spec, presentation spec, copy protection spec, etc.

It can be argued that as long as the physical spec is the same, then the discs will work in both kinds of drives and they're really the same thing, since almost everything above it is just a matter of the host system and whatever software it is running.

Well except for copy protection, but MS would probably have their own copy protection spec for any hypothetical HD DVD based XDISC format anyway, and the Chinese want their own too.
 
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It can be argued that as long as the physical spec is the same, then the discs will work in both kinds of drives and they're really the same thing, since almost everything above it is just a matter of the host system and whatever software it is running.

Right, but my point was in reference to HD-DVD's existence as a movie distribution format with the given specs there.

Hypothetically speaking, if MS used similar tech, they'll call it anything but HD-DVD since it's a dead movie distribution format. Of course, I still stand by what I said and it's more likely that they'll use BD due to cost issues.
 
I'm sure there are, just like there are some still trying to crack DirecTV, if anything just for the sport of it. But it's just not critical that either get cracked since the alternatives are already cracked and in plentiful supply. If there were no 360 though, I would bet you a million internets that the PS3 would have been cracked by now. Just look at blu-ray movies with their super sophisticated piracy measures. There is no alternative to blu-ray so every hacker turned their sights to it and poof, cracked. Makes no difference how complex something is, the protections always fall.

It is critical, there is a piracy market that wants to earn money on PS3 games. The same effort that was done on the other consoles is done on the PS3. It´s just protected way better. Blu-Ray just had a shitty protection system. But even that is constantly getting updated and unlike DVD will be a hassle for years to come.
 
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