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DVD Forum Creates Further Confusion in RW 59

Posted by CmdrTaco from the pick-a-standard-any-standard dept.
lymax writes "In a recent PCExtremist article they attack the DVD Forum for its further splintering of the already fragmented DVD recordable specs. - Interesting article. " Finally something on the subject that isn't about DeCSS. I still look forward to being able to use DVD-RW as a storage device. . . for that matter, putting Duckpins and Hamster Havoc on a Collectors Edition DVD would be super 'leet ;)
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DVD Forum Creates Further Confusion in RW More

DVD Forum Creates Further Confusion in RW

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  • Rob,

    You just gotta make a third one. C'mon, the other two were great!

  • yeah, how bout it taco, i mean they made a scream 3, theres no reason u can't make a third masterpiece.
  • the DVD consortium is doing this to make it more difficult to copy dvds, now that they have realized that dvd writers are more important for illegal copying than are decoders.

    --

  • devedee (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @04:22PM (#1275629)
    'twould seem a calculated move: encryption is cracked, so the RIAA fakes some fracturing of the DVD market as a result. I also note most slashdotters failed to realize the quote in the interview with the RIAA head that they already have over 300 companies signed on that "reverse-engineering is bad".
  • ...under the name of VHS v. Beta fiasco. Oh well...

  • What we REALLY need (Score:5)

    by nels_tomlinson ( 106413 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @04:29PM (#1275631) Homepage
    is some sort of open hardware storage standard, NOT linked to movies/music/copyrighted-stuff. It seems that all of these problems and delays in high-capacity removable media are caused by copyright problems, as the entertainment monopolists try to keep their monopoly profits.

    I suspect that if some bright, cluefull outfit with a big research budget (maybe IBM?) were to bring out a 10Gbyte removable-media drive which wasn't too high priced, it would really sell. Once folks start keeping their home movies on these, using whatever format is handy, they'll sell like hotcakes. Once the hardware is out there, I think its just a matter of time before someone in the entertainment industry breaks ranks and starts selling their content on the new media. It might be old stooges movies, at first, but once someone starts making money there, the rest of the industry would have to follow, just as they've had to sell CD's even after CD-R's and MP3's came along.

    So, we need to let it be known to manufacturers that we want really BIG removable-media drives, and we need to work on some open-source standard ways to put video on them, so us folks at home can lead the way.

  • Noooo! (Score:2)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    The last thing we need is another "standard".

    In any case, this had all better be over by the time I get my DVD drive in 6 months. (I wanna use it under Linux so bad...)

    Oh well, this will suck. The same thing happened with CD-ROMs, except the media pushers weren't this scared before. Even then, it took us forever to get ATAPI...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].

  • DVD is great (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For watching crappy movies in great quality. Seriously, when was the last movie that was worth shelling out that kind of money for? If you say TPM or any SW movies, I suggest you go watch Spaceballs ten times. Not only was that movie funnier, it had real actors, doing real acting. With the exception of Harrison Ford and C3P0, the entire series has sucked.
  • All hail Dolly, the Reverse Engineered Sheep. All hail Tux, the Re-E Penguin. Wait a minute, you said that Re-E was bad and terrible. okok I get it! its alright to Re-E a living animal, but not software/hardware!??!!?? right-o! I say 'let the MPAA go to the cloned goats club.' I want my DVD-RW!

  • Yessss! (Score:3)

    by nels_tomlinson ( 106413 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @04:54PM (#1275636) Homepage
    The problem is that the present standard is all wrapped up in the copyright problems, and anything being pushed by the RIAA/MPAA folks will be just as bad. The reason I'm suggesting another standard is to get out from under their thumbs.

    It would be really nice to have a drive that would hold gigabytes, and no nonsense about "its crippled and you'll go to jail if you fix it". I agree with you about too many standards, but I think we're already past the point of no return for the DVD. That article lists four major standards before this latest split, which seems (when I read between the lines) to be intended to keep us from making professional content. And that is what the DVD problems are all about: keeping the entertainment industry's stranglehold on distribution, as that felow Valenti argued so eloquently in the intervi ew [slashdot.org] earlier.

    To ensure that prospective manufacturers aren't scared away by possible lawsuits, we should stay away from the movie industry's pet format. Think about the problems we're having getting cheap, portable MP3 players. They seem to come from fear of lawsuits, not just technical problems.

    We wouldn't have to write new formats, unless we just weren't satisfied with the old. If we could just buy something like a Jazz disk that held 10 gigs for less than 20 bucks, we could use JPEG and MP3 or whatever to put stuff on it.

  • Wake up on the wrong side of the Buick this morning?

  • Re:Yessss! (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    Format them however you want, but don't start adding extra crap to the players *now*. I really don't want to find out that the DVD drive I bought last month doesn't have the extra laser it needs to view all the "new DVD's"...

    I also don't want the media to control the format, but people tend to naturally shy away from the proprietary solutions that cost them. And I know if it did, I'd hear about it on Slashdot first. I hope this whole stupid DeCSS thing blows over so I can watch The Matrix on my new computer. :)

    ...and look into ORB drives [castlewood.com]. I don't have one, but that's what I'd get, at the moment. At the moment, they're 2.2GB removable media, and I'm eagerly awaiting whatever the next generation of this technology will bring. Anyone who does have one want to share their experiences? I've heard it can be set up under Linux, maybe I'll buy one in a few months, or wait for something bigger. :)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Yeah, all we need is a replacement for CD's which hold 50 gigs, costs a quarter, is read/written faster than ram and all drives have open source drivers...

    Whew... reality setting in. Companies that spend the money to R&D these new formats want to recoup that money. Part of that is controlling your format, another is making your format useful for some market, be it the end user (Iomega zip & jazz) or content providers (CD & DVD's).

    Doug
  • OK, I must admit I breathed a sigh of relief when I followed the link and saw what "Hamster Havoc" was. For a second, I thought Rob had gone all Richard Gere on us ;-).
  • Run Lola Run. Watch it in German if you're in the mood to read, watch it dubbed if you're feeling lazy. And Rounders, because it's awesome.

    -ODB Jr.

  • Don't feed the trolls.
  • Those Orbs look neat. I guess that my point was that the whole DVD thing has gotten so fouled up that it's likely to go the way of Betamax, and even if not, whatever emerges will be full of artificial problems, so that we will pay the cost of maintaining Jack Valenti's monoply rents, in inconvenience and cash. That's why I'm talking about something like a harddrive, rather than like a CD.

    What I was calling for was giving up on the many DVD standards entirely, and moving on to something without the artificial limits. That would be rough on the people who have bought them, but given the current legal climate, I fear that's where we'll have to go to get what DVD originally promised.

    What I would really like to see is hobby directors putting movies on the web, small theatre groups putting their performances on the web, and so on, in the same format the big boys use. The current mess seems to rule that out. If we had an open standard which worked pretty well, the big boys could become irrelevant, just as cable and satelite made the big three networks shrink in importance.
  • Run Lola Run : Yes, a highly recommended movie, with a great soundtrack. Find a friend that has a beast of a stereo system (or yourself, if you're like me) and hook up the VCR. Best movie I've seen in the last few months. And watch it in german, dubbing is bad.

    -Flerg

  • Re:What we REALLY need (Score:3)

    by rgmoore ( 133276 ) <glandauer@charter.net> on Monday February 14, 2000 @05:19PM (#1275645) Homepage
    is some sort of open hardware storage standard, NOT linked to movies/music/copyrighted-stuff. It seems that all of these problems and delays in high-capacity removable media are caused by copyright problems, as the entertainment monopolists try to keep their monopoly profits.

    There's just one problem with this; the media industry would still fight it tooth and nail. They're smart enough to recognize that data is data, and you can cram a movie onto a 10 GB non-DVD optical removable medium as easily as a 9.4 GB two layer DVD. And they have considerable means at their disposal to make life unpleasant for anyone who tries to break their hold.

    For one very big thing, studios are already very tightly linked with a number of the biggest electronics manufacturers (i.e. Sony and Phillips), so that takes a number of possible players out right away. Second, they have considerable patent strength, which is going to make engineering something that doesn't infringe quite difficult.

    Third, they have close enough to monopoly control in existing media (and big enough bank accounts) to try crushing any attempt to break their stranglehold. They have the motivation, too, because they're not just facing the loss of their electronics sales but also pre-recorded media. They would probably be willing to sell their crippled recording technology at a loss for quite a while to forestall that, particularly because it's going to make the next company that tries to break into the market very wary.

  • Hehe, I bought one of those Hamsters in a ball just because of Hamster Havoc! Didn't have rechargable batteries, so it's just sitting in the corner now :(

    Don't know if I can get a duck that goes bowling though, maybe Andover or VA could come out with a Hamster Havoc and Duckpins (+ sequel!) DVD, along with assorted merchandise! How about it?
  • The hardware doesn't have to be free, just a lot better (cheaper) than what's out there now. Iomega is keeping the price of its disks pretty high, but look at the 120M competitor. They're downright cheap. Similarly for the Jaz, there are several competitors out there which are a lot cheaper. As good bandwidth gets more common, we won't need or want to be able to carry these disks to someone else's computer, so the compatibility argument which is keeping Zip prices high will start to wear thin.

    Ultimatly, any technology will go commodity, and wind up cheap. If that never happens to Zip, it will be because Iomega stupidly allowed themselves to be superceded by a cheaper alternative.

  • Well, the main reason that CD-ROM, CD-R, and CD-RW beat other optical storage formats is that you really can't fight the economies of scale of the millions audio CD players produced every year, not to mention the media manufacturing and pressing equipment, and so on..

    In theory, DVD-ROM has the same advantages. However, if they continue to mung up the R and R/W formats, this may never be the case.
    --
  • The problem is that media companies and computer users have different requirements. Media companies need a disk that can be mass produced with stampers, like the current CD and DVD. Computer users need a disk that can be read/write on a sector level. The current CD-R is a clumsy hybrid of the two.
  • any g4 owners that got the dvd-rom scene have any comments on it as a removable media?
  • (This is sorta off topic.)

    If anything, the existing crop of DVD-ROM players show that the DVD consortium doesn't really understand computer peripherals and how to design them. Rather than choosing a 'closed' solution that would (in theory) be more difficult to crack, they cut corners and went for a software decryption/decoder approach, and then pushed the drives out into the market at very reasonable prices.

    Software decoding has done wonders for DVD's installed base (mostly in computers right now), but at the same time it's left the more savvy users scratching their heads. Here is a stream of data coming across the IDE bus, bouncing around the hardware and the OS, and eventually displaying on the computer monitor. The one huge problem is that the users weren't supposed access that data, and if that isn't a giant scratchable itch, I don't know what is.

    I can't stop wondering why they didn't just take the approach of CD-ROM players, which have normal audio-out leads right on the back of the drive. 99% of music CD listening is done through these leads and the sound card's analog mixer device. In fact, until a couple years ago, it was impossible to access the digital audio stream with most CD-ROMs, and people who ripped CDs generally did a analog-digital conversion with their SoundBlaster, resulting in a very noticeable quality loss.

    Likewise, the same approach could have been taken with DVDs -- normal data access through IDE/SCSI, and just leave a S-Video connector on the back of the drive (along with a CD-ROM style audio hookup) for movie viewing. All the decryption and macrovision crap could be done completely in hardware. Of course, you would need a video 'mixer' device of some sort, but cheap TV cards have been available for some time, and are supported on all platforms. Any 'Rip' would require a D->A->D conversion.

    Now, I'm not trying to give the studios advice on how to copy protect their movies, only trying to point out how short sighted they are. Any consumer writeable DVD format that come out will probably be designed just like DVD-Video was -- as much as possible will be done in software to reduce costs, and then a bunch of ill-thought out copy protection features will be kludged on at the end. Of course, you know the story from there on -- someone will want to scratch that itch and crack the whole thing open again, and then we are back to where we are now with DVD.
    --
  • Yes, but where's the progress? When the Jaz came out it was 1 Gig for about $600, and we all had 2 GB hard drives.

    Now the Jaz is 2.5 gigs for about $350 and we all have 18GB disks. Removable media just seems to keep falling further behind the storage sizes people expect.
    --

  • Color me confused. (Score:3)

    by bons ( 119581 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @06:05PM (#1275653) Homepage Journal
    I wish I had answers. Instead, all I have are questions.
    • MITI [miti.go.jp] (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) in Japan is supposed to prevent insanity like this. (Mostly as a result of Betamax vs VHS). Since their member corporations are on both sides of the line, has anyone heard of them taking a stand on this issue?
    • Does DVD +RW stand a chance at this point to compete with the DVD Forum's Products? Unless they can come out with a cheaper product that works with all existing products I have my doubts.
    • With C3D [c-3d.net] planning on having 1st generation products available by Q1 2001, will either group be able to move in time to make a difference. After all, it's not like most of us will have DVD-R loyalty in the next two years. (yes, some will, but will enough?) A lot of us went from floppy to zip to CD-R. With competing DVDs I'm willing to wait for C3Ds.
    • Does this mean the end of ISA? If you have a CD, CD-RW, DVD, and Hard Drive then you're full up. With DVD-R, DVD-RW (635ns & 650ns versions), DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM, I'm not sure I'll still be able to lug this thing to lan parties.
    • I got lost along the way. Are DVD+RW and DVD+RAM are both able to do partial writes and deletes?


    -----
  • Can somebody post/translate this thing in english, cus like the font is FUCKEN SMALL, i know i'm on a 1600x1200 display at 19", but I've got preferences in netscape so most fonts read well.. but this is like , 2 point.. for fucks sake , what gives with the people that make these web sites, trying to make their users go blind ?
  • any g4 owners that got the dvd-rom scene have any comments on it as a removable media?

    It's slowwww for use as normal removable media, but boy is it a sweet device for backup.

  • Hmmmm, but still to prevent pirating, the hardware have to prevent the IDE/SCSI chain from transmitting any bits that belong to a copyrighted movie, without restricting non-movei data. This is unlike current CD-ROMs which can give you direct access to all data on the CD, including CD audio. Also, everyone would have to get some sort of new video card which would support this new input from the DVD drive, since I would imagine that some people watch DVD's on their monitors.

    Of course, I have digital audio outputs from my DVD player proper, and I would demand the same out of a DVD drive in a computer. I would also demand a digital output for my new digital television. Suddenly, the D->A->D conversion is no longer what it used to be.


  • The MPAA and what is happening to DVD is a prime example why big conglomerate companies are a BAD THING for the consumer. Remeber when SOny came out with BETAMAX?? At that time sony didn't own any media outlets.. so they didn't care what the big media outlets wanted.. they cared about what the CONSUMER wanted.

    No Sony owns Studios, record companies etc etc... so now their primary concern is to protect those assets. Which is in conflict with what the consumer wants. Time Warner-AOL same deal. Remeber when AOL wanted open brodband/cable access to peoples PC (because they said it would benefit the consumer). Do you think they care now that they own TimeWarner and the RoadRunner cable service? I think NOT. (not that they cared in the 1st place.. but at least it would have been beneficial to the end user)

    These big conglomorates simply can't be good for consumers because of major conflicting interests.

  • Re:I've seen this story before... (Score:4)

    by K8Fan ( 37875 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @07:37PM (#1275660) Journal
    ..under the name of VHS v. Beta fiasco. Oh well...

    Actually, it's not DVD vs. Beta (both of which were successful for a time) as it is the usual "Sony does something, so Panasonic does something different" thing. Sony introduced their "Memory Stick", so Panasonic introduced their "SD Module". Why? Because they wanted to have something that was NOT Sony. Sony introduced the Mini-disc, Philips introduced the DCC (remember that?). Sony is as guilty. In the consumer video market, the DV format is universal and wel like. But in the Pro market, Sony came out with DVCAM, Panasonic came out with DVC-PRO, both with limited downward compatibility. The laughable part? Neither format is actually better quality...both are the same level of compression as the consumer product!

    This is about each Japanese manufacturer and Philips trying to push their own format and make a huge pile from being the winner and licencing their format to the losers. What we need is a format that they can all agree on and put the patents into a pool.

    • MITI [miti.go.jp] (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) in Japan is supposed to prevent insanity like this. (Mostly as a result of Betamax vs VHS). Since their member corporations are on both sides of the line, has anyone heard of them taking a stand on this issue?

      MITI has been out of favor for the last several years, primarily because they didn't do what they were supposed to do: keep the Japanese economy booming, and keep beating up on the Americans. Thus, today MITI is in no position to leverage any of the Japanese corporations. Too bad, so sad.

    • Does DVD +RW stand a chance at this point to compete with the DVD Forum's Products? Unless they can come out with a cheaper product that works with all existing products I have my doubts.
    • With C3D [c-3d.net] planning on having 1st generation products available by Q1 2001, will either group be able to move in time to make a difference. After all, it's not like most of us will have DVD-R loyalty in the next two years. (yes, some will, but will enough?) A lot of us went from floppy to zip to CD-R. With competing DVDs I'm willing to wait for C3Ds.

      The only loyalty I'm apt to have will be to the technology that I've already invested in -- a DVD player. If it won't read my existing DVD media, and write media that is compatible with my existing system components, I won't be buying it. As an individual user (even with too many computers to back up) I just don't need to backup gigabytes of data on a single disk. As an IT professional, I might have a different opinion, but none of the technology is anywhere close to affordable yet.

    • Does this mean the end of ISA? If you have a CD, CD-RW, DVD, and Hard Drive then you're full up. With DVD-R, DVD-RW (635ns & 650ns versions), DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM, I'm not sure I'll still be able to lug this thing to lan parties.

      Well, you can have up to 8 IDE devices (4 controllers, 2 devices per controller) in a Wintel machine, presuming that your case is big enough, and your power supply is big enough. Don't worry; no doubt someone will figure another kludge to allow more than 8 IDE devices coexist.

  • Damn Straight. I personally could care less about watching movies on DVD either on my computer or my TV, VHS is just fine for me. What I do want and need is big, fast, affordable removable storage. I personally would have been just thrilled to death if no one had ever gotten the idea of watching DVD movies on computers so the whole DVD Forum would never had gotten worried about copyright protection and had simply come out with a single DVD-R/RW standard for computers first that worked, and stuck to it and let the MPAA people work out how to distribute movies all on their own. Just my thoughts, for what they are worth.
  • It was already fractured long before CSS was cracked.
    ---
  • I can't stop wondering why they didn't just take the approach of CD-ROM players, which have normal audio-out leads right on the back of the drive. . In fact, until a couple years ago, it was impossible to access the digital audio stream with most CD-ROMs, and people who ripped CDs generally did a analog-digital conversion with their SoundBlaster, resulting in a very noticeable quality loss.

    Well, if you look on the back of some CD-ROM drives made in years >=1994, you'll find, right beside the trusty AUDIO_OUT plug, an SPDIF plug. Until recently, SPDIF was the best way to transport digital music losslessly. There are some new schemes now for the hifi nuts... And you've got the "noticiable quality loss" part right--I've NEVER heard a CD-ROM with anything better than barely acceptable quality on the analog outs. Most are unusably bad. Everything from power supply noise to over-filtering the highs. Dont think about playing audio in realtime over the IDE cable, either (at least with any MICROS~1 OS) you'll hit "stop" in a hurry due to bursts of clicking (lost data? no error correction?). But then, how much can one expect from a CD player that costs under us$50?

  • Well, isn't the next standard on the way? I refer you to a article [slashdot.org] that show us that DVD is nearly on the way out already anyway.

    Question is, what sort of encryption/copy protection will we see on the new media? Will we see regions etc like DVD had, or will they drop it this time?

  • This is unlike current CD-ROMs which can give you direct access to all data on the CD, including CD audio.

    Yes, but with early CD-ROM drives it was impossible to access the CD Audio data layer. I don't know if this was by design or not, but a DVD-ROM could be designed by our movie industry friends to hide the video bits from the IDE/SCSI bus.

    Of course, I have digital audio outputs from my DVD player proper ...

    All of this stuff has the MPAA's copy protection schemes built right into the hardware. It's certainly not the computer industry philosophy of pushing digital bits where ever you want.
    --

  • Re:The problem with Computer DVD - cost vs protect (Score:3)

    by havana9 ( 101033 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2000 @12:03AM (#1275668)
    The basic question is that the CD-audio player technology was developed *before* the CD-ROM reader technology, actually the CD-ROM are a clever hack based on audio gear.
    An audio CD reader has basically the reading and error correctin mechanism that provides a serial stream of bytes representing the audio data and a syncronyzation system. The serial data is then feed into the DAC. There are also sub channel informations but these are another serial stream normally sent to the microcontroller of the player and used to set indexes and so on.
    The CD-ROM hardware of the first readers was built over the audio gear, taking the digital stream and sending on the SCSI bus.

    The audio stream is basically serial, not random access, like an analog record. To fit into the idea of computer how work a data devices they addess in the CD-ROM stream marks with begin and end of block and block number information.
    On audio CD there aren't such blocks(because audio is a serial stream).
    So is explained why older CD-ROM had great difficulty to read audio data, not finding the block marks they normally are loosing syncronysm after few frames.
    Newer CD are smarter and maybe can manage the sector syncronization before the ECC mechanism. The BMG not standard recording technique to prevent reading of their CD maybe garble the sector information before ECC, making more difficult for newer CD-ROM to remain in sync, and old CD-Audio players too, I think depend how ECC circutry manages errors on these units.
    On DVD they started to a digital format and added video data as files.
    Techically make a system like CD-Audio for CD video is more costly, because the data is compressed with a complex algorithm, requiring a powerful CPU, and not a simple DAC. But is feasible anyway (and useful, because you could see your favorite video on DVD even on a 486).
    And MPEG compressed data has less self-correlation respect an uncompressed audio stream, making tools like cdda2wav less able do deal with loss of sync.

    Mike
  • CD-ROMs were developed after CD Audio, but not much after, so they must have been aware of the computer applications through the design phase. Early multimedia specifications from Apple and others just played Red Book CD Audio through the analog jacks -- playing audio files from the CD was considered to complex or too slow.

    (It's kinda like saying that writable DVD standards were developed after DVD-video -- technically true, but throughout the DVD development process everyone was fully aware of the computer applications. In fact, this standards war has in fact been brewing for years, and grew out of an earlier "Treaty of Versailles" that allowed a standard DVD format to ship in the first place.)

    Anyway, thanks for the technical explanation. It just strikes me that the content/consumer electronic industry would be so stupid to produce something that looks like a computer drive, and acts like a computer drive, and then be amazed when the users want to use it like a computer drive. They should just stick to black boxes until they are ready to play the convergance game according to the existing rules.
    --
  • I went out and bought a DVD-RAM drive, mostly on the basis of Panasonic's previous history with writable optical media (I've been using their rewritable optical drives for 6 or 7 years without problems). It was also partly out of ignorance -- I wasn't aware of DVD+RW or any other writable DVD standard at the time. The question is, did I make the right choice? Which do people think is more likely to prevail. I would have said DVD-RAM, but recently DVD+RW seems to be getting a lot more press. Does anyone know any technical reasons to go for one format over another?

  • And kudos for NSA/FBI/etc. for that! (Score:3)

    by oren ( 78897 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2000 @03:55AM (#1275672)
    This is just a guess - I've no special access to the "media companies" decision making process. But it seems to me that we've got to thank all the anti-crypto agencies for saving us from the more severe forms of copy protection.


    Consider the ideal copy protection. The data on the DVD is strongly encrypted. The player has some protected hardware which is able to access the encrypted media, and decrypt it. It never sends out the bits in clear text, though.


    The display device (monitor, or maybe just the video card) also has protected hardware. The player and display negotiate a key (using a zero-knowledge protocol) and the data between them is exchanged encrypted using this key.


    This means you can only play the media on a certified player and using a certified display device. You'll never have access to the unencrypted bits; sniffing the trafic between player and display device gives you nothing.


    You can physically replicate the media, right, but a certified home writer would insist on taking unencrypted movies and encrypting them before writing to the media. No way you could replicate movies this way, but you could burn your own DVD of the last ski trip.


    Everyone could build a factory which replicates media, but there's no helping that. This is a whole separate issue - it is more international politics then technical difficulties.


    This does not prevent anyone from providing other forms of media (e.g., a large hard disk) which are large enough to store the movies. But you'll never be able to play a copy of an encrypted movie of such media; the data is encrypted and only a certified player will decrypt it. And no such player will read from a hard disk.


    The up side is that you'd be able to play such media on Linux or other open-source systems. It is just a matter of drivers, all the encryption is in hardware. The down side is that you'll never be able to make a backup copy. Seems a perfect tradeoff for an industry which want to sell more movies then players...


    So why don't they do it? Besides the cost of something like a smart card in both the player and the display device, that is?


    Imagine a would-be terrorist in Iraq, burning a DVD with a video message to his partner in the USA. He just has to hook up his computer with the Panasonic player to the internet, and have it talk with his partner's computer with the Diamond display card. Instant secure communication. And that's before considering him taking apart the players and using the smart cards directly...


    This keeps the NSA awake at nights. Of course, the possibility that the same terrorist would use PGP instead doesn't cross their minds. Sigh.


    Thanks to such far sightedness, we get both PGP to encrypt our E-mails and DVDs with encryption which one must break to play on Linux (which seems fair use under current law) - hence, in effect, no encryption at all. So we have secure E-mail and can make backup copies of our DVDs. The best of all possible worlds! (Given a favorable court ruling, that is).


    One day they'll notice the HDTV spec requires broadcasting the movies in unencrypted digital format which puts DVDs to shame. Imagine a TiVo like system for HDTV... The fuss they make over DeCss would be mild by comparison. Why do you think they flatly refuse to define a standard for sending HDTV over cable?


    I know, I'm giving the "bad guys" ideas, so I'd better stop now :-) I really pity them, though. Being squeezed by the NSA on the one hand and by the open source movement on the other, how can they do anything else but lose?

  • The problem is that DVD is rapidly becoming an installed base. I am developing CD-based multimedia presentations for a company, and it's very convenient to be able to produce full test versions in-house, and even to do our own duplication for small runs. As soon as this technology is available for DVD then we'll start using it. Another standard would be useful for backup and archive, but unless standalone readers are available too, then it will never catch on for general use. All shrinkwrap PCs (at least in the UK) now come with DVD readers, so DVD is the obvious choice for next generation multimedia titles. And even for backup and archive, part of the attraction of CDR is the fact that it can be read virtually anywhere. To have that convenience at 10-15 times the capacity would be amazing.
  • Point taken, but actually the professional formats have higher bandwidth than the domestic DVs (there are several) and use better (i.e. more expensive) compression algorithms than their domestic counterparts, reducing artifacts etc.

    Offtopic, sorry :-)
  • I agree with you. That's why I was thinking in terms of something like a removable media hard drive, such as a cheap Jazz or Syquest. Whether it's magnetic or optical or a screwy hybrid, if it's cheap it will break their stranglehold. A big outfit like IBM or Fujitsu could afford to sink some bucks into R&D, and would be hard to push around. Companies like those two have some pretty good patent strength, too, and very deep pockets.

    Yes, the studios and record companies will fight it, but how do you fight harddrives? It will be pretty tough to paint Ma and Pa as evil hacker pirates for buying one of these hypothetical "giant floppies" to store movies of the grandkids. I really think that once we have the media, the content will follow. Why do we put music on CD's? Because storing an hour of music on magnetic media in that data format would cost too much, not because there is something magic about optical media.

    Think about the sort of content that will become possible in the near future. As 64bit machines become affordable and common, animation via ray-tracing will become possible for the really dedicated hobbyist. Eventually artists will ba able to do anime as easily as comic books. An amateur theatre company with a good graphics editor will be able to mix their performances with special effects, as in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I think that once these giant floppies become cheap enough, there will be plenty of content on them, and the big studios will become a lot less relevant.
  • What is wrong with 4.6 GB Magneto-Optical drives?
  • Actually this sounds a lot like what happened with the Digital Audio Tape format. When that format came out on the market, the RIAA and record companies went ballistic, claiming that it would unleash a flood piracy that destroy them. So they fought long and hard against the medium, both on a technical level and at a political level. In 1992, they succeeded in passing the Audio Home Recording Act, a part of the Copyright law which prevented anyone from selling a digital audio recording device without 1) incorporating a copy control mechanism and 2) without paying royalties into a fund for the copyright holders. This process took so long and tied up the the sales of DAT to the point that no one used it except for in computers (which they did not have to pay royalties on). This is also the same law that the RIAA went after Diamand for the RIO MP3 player.

    So, it sounds like copyright mafia is at it again.

    robjob
  • Offtopic????? You gotta be fucking kidding.

    Troll? Yes.
    Flame-bait? Yes.
    Redundant? Yes.

    Offtopic?

    If you're going to moderate me down for that, at least get the fucking reason right.

    Suppose confusion might have been caused by my lack of clarity. Should have read 'I'm going to completely ignore DVDs in all their incarnations until they've settled down into a single open standard that everyone's using.' to completely remove misconceptions.

    Sigh, I suppose this'll get moderated down now for Trolling as well, when there are so many more blatant real trolls out there who could use a -1 much more.

    K.

  • Does this mean the end of ISA? If you have a CD, CD-RW, DVD, and Hard Drive then you're full up.

    (I presume you mean IDE. ISA is already dead)

    Mobo makers will keep adding more IDE ports. My current mobo has two "classic" IDE ports (four devices) plus two UDMA/66 ports (four more devices). Windows 98 seems to think that the UDMA ports are "SCSI" devices. Whatever. The drive I have there works. It boots, then the 4 other devices on the classic IDE ports come in at higher drive letters.

    I'm thinking of replacing my 1.2G drive E with a stock CD, though. My DVD cannot read CDR, meaning that I cannot "photocopy" CDR's. I can only do first-generation copies. As you say, it starts getting heavy to bring to the LAN parties.

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