Is this the truth about Blu-ray Drives?

Blu-ray news

Some blu-ray news headed your way...

Feb 6, 2006 - Primera Announces Bravo XR-Blu Disc Publisher

Primera Technology, the world's leading developer and manufacturer of automated CD/DVD duplication and printing equipment, today announced its Bravo XR-Blu Disc Publisher. Bravo XR-Blu is the world's first automated burn and print device to support new high-capacity Blu-ray Disc recorders and media. The initial release of the Bravo XR-Blu utilizes single-layer discs to store up to 25GB of data. An upgrade will be available shortly after launch that will allow dual-layer media, which stores up to 50GB of data per disc. Since up to 50 discs can be loaded into the Bravo XR-Blu at a time, this gives a total native capacity of up to 2.5TB (terabytes) of data that can be published in a single session. The Bravo XR-Blu, which will be exhibited at CeBIT 2006, is expected to begin shipping in April 2006 and will sell for $5995.

Source:blu-ray.com

 

QFT.

Sony just wants to sell cheap movie players so that studios will support the format with the highest userbase.

 

!!!!!!!!!!

 

Off Topic, but Blu-ray wholesale movie pricing

If a mod feels it's appropriate, they can spin this off into a new thread, but anyway, Sony has announced wholesale prices for Blu-ray movies - seems they're only going to be a little more expensive than DVDs:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020800372.html

Also, they're going to start bundling UMDs with DVDs shortly, for a just a slightly higher price. They're considering similar things for Blu-ray.

Edit - some more from Video Business:

 

Cool, 15-20% more isn't a lot, considering what you're getting.

What worries me is that last night i watched Madagascar DVD on my upscaling HDMI DVD player and my HDTV, and it looked absolutely amazing. Not sure if the future HD version will look so much better to grant a purchase. I guess i'll have to see the real thing, but if it looks much better, i'll be very impressed, cause last night it was as close to HD as i've ever seen, without being HD.

 

I'd say you won't be seeing much difference between the image quality of SD vs. HD on a display that is 20"-30" something when viewed at a recommended viewing distance.

But on a big 50"+ screen I'm sure the difference is such you'll find it hard to watch sd material after that.

Good to see thje prices of Blu-ray discs won't be that much higher. As I get my front projector and a Blu-ray player there's no need to buy other than BR discs.

 

The best part of this is there a X1800 or 7800 with HDMI? I thought the only video card with HDMI was some prototype of a x1600 by sapphire.

 

According to Sony games years from now on the PS3 will be using Blu-ray disc just as much as the PS2 uses DVDs. That's what Kaz said.

 

An ordinary old 52x CDROM drive can easily reach 10000 RPM. There has been some tests done by hobbyists indicating that ordinary polycarbonate CDROMs can withstand about 23000 RPM before falling apart; at those speeds, when they do fall apart, it will take a several-millimeter-thick metal sheet to stop the shrapnel. Presumably, CDROM drives stopped at 52x for safety reasons rather than motor or laser limitations.

If you want maximum performance, CLV drive operation cannot possibly make sense unless you are limited by the data rate of the laser; you simply max out the rotational speed of your drive and stick to that speed across the entire disc. This does mean that you get more than twice as high data rates near the outer edge as you do near the center, but there is no reason why the motor or disc should be able to withstand higher rotation rates just because the laser is closer to the center of the disc.

 

Wasn't that test done by the Mythbusters? (I know I saw them doing some kind of test like that, and the expert they talked to said the only way to increase speeds from now on is with denser disks....which we are just now starting to see.)

 

Teh return of the 12" laserdisc media!!!

 

Perhaps, but I've known CDRoms to shatter in fast CD drives. That may due to flaws in the disk, but it happens, and it'd be expected that the faster you spin them, the more shattered disks you get.

 

QFF. (Quoted for Falseness.)

Whose salary do you think it is that dwarfs everything else? Why, it's content creation artists and programmers, of course. Paying the people that create the content is part of the cost of content.

And don't forget that content has a bit of shelf life... there have been several titles in history that had half of their art scrapped and recreated because the content created at the start of the project wasn't as good as the content created in the latter stages of the project. This can be due to both technical changes in what can be used as art, and the growth and development of the content team in talent and resources.

So "just filling up the disc" isn't as easy as you make it sound. There are innumerable games (most of them, actually) that have to cut their targets and trim their game assets in order to get the product out the door. If every developer took the time to implement *every* checklist item we'd have competition for Duke Nuke'm Forever.

Content is, far and away, the most expensive portion of game production. Anyone who tells you different is developing Tetris.

 

Try the experiments here: http://powerlabs.org/cdexplode.htm

Includes fun videos.

 

For an interesting alternative viewpoint, consider this: if they bring out games larger than 9 Gb, it won't be possible to make bootleg copies on anything other than BluRay.

 

Never managed an actual shipping game or seen a project budget I assume.

Art is cheap.
Level/world creation is cheap.
Dumping content on a disc is cheap.

Engineers are expensive.
Technology is expensive.
A small subset of game art is expensive - like character models or vehicles in racing games.
Salary is usually up in the 70 percent range of most console projects. The majority of that high percentage is engineers and senior artists.

Paying for artists to create hours of movies is cheap.
Paying low level artists and level layout people to crank out levels is cheap.
Filling up space with licensed music is cheap.
Filling up space with demos is cheap.
Filling up space with bonus making of, behind the scenes, production artwork or similar type of content is cheap.

BluRay discs will rapidly fill to capacity. Just like every format used by games has done in the past.

 

Blu-ray vs 12x DVD: read speed

Blu-ray vs 12x DVD: read speed
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=23916169&user=skektek

There is no doubt that Sony will have at least a 4x Blu-ray drive in the PS3. However, I think it will probably have a 6x drive.

 

There is not doubt according to who?
4x would be VERY VERY generous of them, a 6x one is just not going to happen.
Oh by the way, Gamespot is wrong. Bluray drives support both CLV and CAV and can switch at any one time depending on the situation. We even posted it in this thread.

 

Blu-ray and HD-DVD delayed, spring PS3 launch affected?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060214-6182.html