BR/HD-DVD Thread

[Deepak]

Microsoft Says Longhorn to Be HD DVD Compatible

So it means XB2 "will" feature HD-DVD??

 

[thop]

I don't see the connection.

 

[Deepak]

But MS is supporting HD-DVD and definitely will not support BR, and also if Sony puts BR in PS3 then MS might have no option but to put HD-DVD in XB2.

 

[jvd]

I don't see why they wouldn't put hd-dvd in the system. I think this is a no brainer. THe drives should be about as cheap as a dvd drive . The xpensive part would most likely be the hardware to decode and play the video.

THe xbox 2 hardware should be more than capable of this though.

 

[Guden Oden]

Why would you need "support" for BR?

As long as the drive conforms to ATAPI/SATA/whatever specs, windows will detect it and use it, regardless of the media size and format.

This is stupid nonsense, talking about "microsoft will not support BR", how could they NOT support it?

 

[cthellis42]

But MS is supporting HD-DVD and definitely will not support BR, and also if Sony puts BR in PS3 then MS might have no option but to put HD-DVD in XB2.

Microsoft would undoubtedly be supporting HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, and anything else that's viable, wouldn't it? They wouldn't opt to put the likes of Blu-Ray in Xbox 2 since it would help Sony out, but they could scarcely ignore anything high-tech and viable in their OS. And certainly not something backed by Dell and HP.

 

[aaaaa00]

If a blue laser drive shows up as a compatible IDE or SCSI block I/O device, Windows will detect and support it just fine.

In fact, that's exactly what Sony's "Professional Disc For Data" blue laser format is:

http://www.sony.net/Products/MO-Drive/ProDATA/

It shows up as a standard 23.3GB drive, with 512 or 2048 byte sectors, that you can format to UDF, NTFS, FAT or whatever filesystem you want.

Though Sony themselves recommend you use UDF:

http://www.sony.net/Products/MO-Drive/ProDATA/compatibility/index.html

Note that use of the UDF file system is highly recommended because it was designed expressly for high-capacity removable discs.

But, this drive is NOT a Blu Ray drive:

http://www.sony.net/Products/MO-Drive/ProDATA/faq/index.html

Q. Is this Blu-ray Disc technology?
A. No. It has been specially engineered for professional use.

Q. Why wasn't Blu-ray Disc technology used for these professional drives?
A. Because professional users require higher transfer rates than those available with Blu-ray Disc technology.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Isn't it quite logical Microsoft wants to support as many mediums possible?

 

[PC-Engine]

http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/sho...id=TWNQBAOIAHNQWQSNDBGCKHQ?articleId=25600557

HD DVD poised for prime time in Japan

By Yoshiko Hara
EE Times
July 26, 2004 (8:00 PM EDT)

TOKYO — Promoters launched a three-day "HD DVD Showcase" here Monday (July 26), starting with a gathering of executives from about 150 entertanment companies and announcements about several products release plans.

Pony Canyon, a major Japanese package software company, kicked off the campaign by announcing plans to release the first HD DVD software in almost the same price range as DVDs.

Toshio Yajima, Microsoft Corp.'s senior adviser in Japan, said Microsoft will include HD DVD specifications in the future Longhorn version of its Windows operating system. However, Blu-ray Disk specifications have not yet been delivered, and the format could still slip from Longhorn unless developers responded soon, he added.

The HD DVD showcase used Toshiba and NEC's prototype players and software. Several titles were encoded in VC-9 and H.264 at 8 to 12 Mbits/s data rates. They were shown on a 250-inch digital light-processing screen and also on a 61-inch plasma and a 57-inch liquid-crystal-on-silicon monitors.

Toshiba and NEC said they intend to introduce HD DVD products with both player and recorder functions during 2005. The launch date depends on completion of the format by next year. "To achieve high picture quality, Toshiba wants to introduce an HD DVD player and recorder together" with surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) TV sets, said Yoshihide Fujii, president and CEO of Toshiba Digital Media Network Co.

SED displays are a type of field-emission display being jointly development by Toshiba and Canon.

Proponents said HD DVD would also incorporate the recently completed Advanced Access Content System, (AACS) the next-generation copy protection format. Masato Otsuka, senior manager of engineering development at Memory-Tech, said the company's HD DVD disk lines will comply with the new copy protection format soon after the detailed specifications become public in August.

AACS requires the use of a unique ID code for each disk. Memory-Tech will start disk production on four HD-DVD lines by August, with a monthly capacity of 2.8 million. Yield are almost comparable to DVDs.

http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0407/2601.html

Tokyo - Toshiba Corporation, NEC Corporation and Memory-Tech Corporation today announced a three-day "HD DVD Showcase" that will present the latest advances in the HD DVD format to 1,000 key executives from 150 companies in Japan's entertainment industry. The three companies, proponents of the High-Definition DVD format ("HD DVD"), will host the event from July 26 through 28, 2004 in downtown Tokyo, providing leaders from major Japanese movie studios, animation film creators, the broadcasting, music and publishing industries and the retail sector, with a total venue for experiencing the impressive advances HD DVD has achieved as it moves toward its 2005 launch as the next-generation DVD standard.

The Tokyo Showcase will shine a light on the very latest hardware prototypes supporting the format, including HD DVD players and PC ROM drives. It will include demonstrations of film clips from major studios authored and recorded on to HD DVD discs for technical evaluation purposes, and also deliver an update on disc manufacturing status, all in preparation for the volume launch of HD DVD hardware and discs when they are commercialized in 2005.

Japan's largest DVD distributor announces support for HD DVD

On the eve of the Tokyo event, Pony Canyon Inc, Japan's largest distributor of DVD titles, became the first company in the world to announce its clear support for HD DVD. "HD DVD is a promising format that will secure continuous growth of the DVD industry as well as bringing about fresh innovation to the consumer experience," said Hideki Oyagi, General Manager, Visual Entertainment Headquarters, Pony Canyon. "We very much look forward to launching HD DVD titles at an early stage of 2005, in line with the expected launch of HD DVD players and recorders." The initial titles for release include "Moonlight Jellyfish," a Japanese Hi-Vision movie.

Commenting on Pony Canyon's decision, Mr. Yoshihide Fujii, Corporate Senior Vice President and President and CEO of Toshiba's Digital Media Network Company, noted: "We are pleased by this formal announcement of support for the HD DVD format by Japan's largest supplier of DVD titles. This is a clear sign of recognition of the benefits and potential this advanced format offers the entertainment industry as the most affordable, the most realistic package media for inheriting and building on the legacy and success of the DVD industry. We are confident we will see a number of major studios and software companies launch titles to coincide with our release of HD DVD products in 2005."

Continuity: Extending the successes of today's DVD industry

DVD burst on to the market in November 1997. Toshiba introduced the world's first DVD player in Japan, while a number of international movie studios launched a handful of DVD titles. The rest is history, as the DVD market has grown explosively, to embrace and change the entertainment, consumer electronics and computing industries.

More than 60 million DVD players and recorders were produced worldwide in 2003 alone, and an estimated 800 DVD disc production lines manufacture now produce more than 240 million discs a month. Digital Entertainment Group of the US reports that 649 million DVD titles were shipped to retailers in the first six months of 2004 in the United States, a huge 52 percent increase over the same period a year earlier. In the US and Japan, DVD revenues exceeded movie theater ticket sales in 2003.

By adopting the same, fully backward compatible design concept as current DVD, HD DVD is the only practical medium that can secure seamless continuity and the sustained success of the current DVD industry. The new HD DVD format also assures maximization of business opportunities offered by the appearance of high-definition programming and content that is accompanying the transition to digital broadcasting in the United States and Japan and the exponential market growth in large-sized flat panel screens.

"HD DVD, the successor of DVD, will further encourage the convergence of PC and audio visual products, as it realizes crystal-clear picture quality in the personal computing environment," commented Mr. Hiroshi Gokan, Executive General Manager, NEC's Computers Storage Products Operations Unit.

ROM: Key for momentum in the next-generation format

"The success of today's DVD industry clearly indicates that the timely release of movie and audio titles on read-only memory discs will be key to triggering the take-off of the next-generation DVD format," predicts Mr. Shiroharu Kawasaki, President and CEO of Memory-Tech Corporation, Japan's leading disc replicator. "We are working with almost every major studio in the United States and Japan to establish the HD DVD format through extensive joint evaluation, and already getting strong, positive feedback from many of these companies."

Memory-Tech installed HD DVD disc mass production line at its Tsukuba plant in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan in May 2004. The facility has a capacity of 1.4 million discs a month, and an authoring and mastering system that is already available for comprehensive disc creation. Production yields have already reached 90 percent, a level practical for volume production of commercial discs and comparable with the 95 percent yield rate of current DVD discs. The flexible convertible line can switch between standard DVD and HD DVD production in five minutes. Memory-Tech's Kofu Plant in Yamanashi Prefecture will also be ready for HD DVD production this August, doubling the company's total capacity to 2.8 million discs a month.

In order to support and expedite the early diffusion of this promising format. Memory-Tech and Toshiba are preparing to disclose and provide expertise on disc manufacture to major disc replicators around the world, starting in late August.

 

[KnightBreed]

Blu-ray Disc Information Seminar in the United States
July 28th, 2004 at the San Jose Double Tree Hotel

Blu-ray Disc Information Seminar in Japan
August 3rd, 2004 at the KOKUYO HALL in Tokyo


I don't expect much new information from the BDA seminar, but it's still interesting how they consistantly try to one-up each other.

 

[jvd]

well whoever wins is going to make a ton of money.


Personaly i don't really like either.

THey aren't big enough jumps to me to warrent it.

Wait another 3 or 4 years and then push something new.

Or go with hd-dvd as it seems it will be cheaper off the ground and work on bluray till its a much bigger jump

 

[MfA]

Im more interested in Riteks 100 GB per disc red laser system, pity we have to wait till 2007 for that ...

 

[Guden Oden]

Personaly i don't really like either.

THey aren't big enough jumps to me to warrent it.

No, 50 gigs on one disc sure isn't "big enough"...

 

[jvd]

Personaly i don't really like either.

THey aren't big enough jumps to me to warrent it.

No, 50 gigs on one disc sure isn't "big enough"...

Nope it isn't .


Right now i can put 4.7 on one side of the disc. For 80$ i can go get a dual layer giving me 9.4gigs. I can get a dual sided dual layer disc and put 18.8 in the future.

so 50 gigs is a nice jump from 4.7 as its almost 11 times as much. But its only a little over 5 times more than dual layer dvd and and 2.5 times more than double sided dual layer discs .

Its not a great leap.

Now a 100 gigs we are talking.

 

[rabidrabbit]

50 gigs may not be much for personal data storage, but for games, movies and multimedia it is.
BR and HD DVD are not meant to replace hard discs.

 

[jvd]

50 gigs may not be much for personal data storage, but for games, movies and multimedia it is.
BR and HD DVD are not meant to replace hard discs.

I'm not talking about about replacing harddisks.

I'm talking about replacing dvd .

I don't think either are a big enough leap to justify it .


THe leap from cd to dvd wasn't that big either. But it was big enough to give us better than vhs quality at a time when vhs was aging .

I just don't see the same happening with blueray right now.

 

[wco81]

Looks like no content deal announcements. Or rather, a deal involving a major studio.

It would be great if both formats come out with recorders right off the bat so we don't have to deal with + and - R and RW balkanization.

Hardware prices are also an obvious concern.

And is AACS a done deal? It sounds like it would enable the content-owners to turn on Divx like features. Unique Disc IDs? So it can track how many times you've watched a particular disc and decide if you should pay for a new license?

 

[jvd]

Im more interested in Riteks 100 GB per disc red laser system, pity we have to wait till 2007 for that ...

yes this is really what i want to see.

I feel that going to the new laser is a step they didn't need to make if a red laser can fit a 100gbs onto a disk.

 

[nondescript]

I was at InterOpto`04 in Chiba (by Narita) ltwo weeks ago...since it was a optoelectronics trade show, so neither Sony or Toshiba were demoing their drives. But I was able to glean some information:

The flexible convertible line can switch between standard DVD and HD DVD production in five minutes. Memory-Tech's Kofu Plant in Yamanashi Prefecture will also be ready for HD DVD production this August, doubling the company's total capacity to 2.8 million discs a month.

BR and HD-DVD both use the same mastering process. A e-beam writes the ROM in resist, its etched then metal sputtered. The metal mold is then used to press disks. So I can`t see how HD-DVD or BR could have significant cost differences - except for maybe the caddie, but then again, I don`t see anyone complaining about the cost of plastic CD cases. (EDIT: and I can`t see why Pony Canyon couldn`t switch to BR production just as quickly)

Sony Semiconductor is now in the creating its second generation BR recording laser diode - SLD3233VF, 120mW max power at 408nm. It has also produced multi-beam laser diodes to allow playback of multiple formats with one read head.

Perhaps more interesting is the development of a read-only BR laser diode, the SLD31, with only 5/10mW max power. It is slated to go into production in Q3 of 2005 (calendar year). Could this be a PS3 component?

There were no HD-DVD laser diodes presented at InterOpto`04, so I cannot make a comparison.

 

[a688]

IBR and HD-DVD both use the same mastering process. A e-beam writes the ROM in resist, its etched then metal sputtered. The metal mold is then used to press disks. So I can`t see how HD-DVD or BR could have significant cost differences - except for maybe the caddie, but then again, I don`t see anyone complaining about the cost of plastic CD cases. (EDIT: and I can`t see why Pony Canyon couldn`t switch to BR production just as quickly)

The disc arn't made from the EXACT same materials for one thing. Just because they are mass produced in a similar way doesn't mean that actually goes on isn't different.