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Toshiba, NEC Plan To Create Yet Another Optical Format 177

Posted by timothy from the bits-of-light dept.
selderrr writes: "Dow Jones Newswires is reporting today that Toshiba and NEC are planning to propose a new optical disk format to the DVD Forum that will offer four times more storage capacity than current DVDs. In February, a consortium of nine companies, including Sony and Matsushita, announced a new format that would offer 50GB of data storage. While the Toshiba/NEC option is smaller at 40GB, it is cheaper to produce. The two disc formats will not be compatible." Related, coryboehne writes "The New York Times has a great report detailing the history of the DVD. According to the article digital videodiscs and their players have now surpassed the VHS in terms of sales for the first time (In 2001, $10.3 billion was spent on movies, 52% of this on DVD's, now compare this to 2002, $12.4 billion total revenue with 65%, going for DVD's) . Funny considering that DVD's are only in about a third of American homes (about 30 million households, and consider that a quarter of these homes have more than one player), compare that to the unbelievable amount of VHS players (about 90% of homes in the USA have a VHS player) and it quickly shows just how popular the DVD has become."
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Toshiba, NEC Plan To Create Yet Another Optical Format More

Toshiba, NEC Plan To Create Yet Another Optical Format

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  • Actually... (Score:3, Informative)

    by jcoleman ( 139158 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @08:54AM (#4140270)
    DVD stands for "Digital Versatile Disc." In it's infancy it was known as a Digital Video Disc, but everyone wanted the format for their own purposes, so the "V" was changed to Versatile. Now you can have video, audio, data, etc. all on one format and not have a contradictory name.
    • DVD stands for "Digital Versatile Disc." In it's infancy it was known as a Digital Video Disc, but everyone wanted the format for their own purposes, so the "V" was changed to Versatile. Now you can have video, audio, data, etc. all on one format and not have a contradictory name.

      Can you (or anyone else) provide a source on that? I recall when Laserdiscs were at there peak talk of DVDs and that officially DVD didn't stand for anything. I can't find anything official saying one way or another what it stands for though.

    • Re:Actually... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 )
      No, it stands for nothing at all.

      Originally the DVD consortium created the TLA for "Digital Video Disk", but it was quickly realized that it would be used for more - audio, data, etc. There were a few attempts to use "Digital Versitile Disk", but they were stillborn and the official line is that it has no meaning beyond the three letter designation of "DVD".

  • 50 GB?!?!? (Score:2, Funny)

    by tps12 ( 105590 )
    Is this really necessary? With 100GB hard drives becoming more commonplace, I think we're at the limit of what normal users need out of hardware. There is just no use whatsoever for 50GB removable discs. In 10 years, we will all still be using DVD+RW. Drives will be a lot faster, sure, but history has shown that there is just no application that requires more than the ample 4.7GB of removable storage provided by DVD technology.

    • Re:50 GB?!?!? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Steve B ( 42864 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @08:59AM (#4140287)
      Is this really necessary?

      Of course not. Nobody needs more than 640K.

    • Try copying a 9 GB movie to a 4.7 GB DVD-R.

      Oops, looks like you're wrong. Shouldn't all computer geeks remember the 640K DOS debacle?

      bw
    • Wrong. See the link in my .sig and you will learn why. I have approximaely 1500 audio discs that I downloaded from etree. These discs all started off as .shn (shorten) files transferred from DAT. Can you imagine the storage problem I have?

      One concert takes up just a little over a gig, or two CDs of data and three discs of audio. A 50 gig removable disc would allow me to store an entire Phish tour in 16 bit 44.1 kHz CD quality audio on ONE SINGLE DISC. I can't wait.
    • That's right! And "no one will ever need more than 640k of RAM". =)

      I personally would like a high-capacity, transportable, cost-effective storage mechanism, and I am excited at the prospect of 40-50GB discs. I'm not looking forward to the fact that it'll take 27 days to fill one of these puppies up, but hey, progress marches on. Seriously, tho, for those of us who deal with very large amounts of data (e.g. databases), this backup platform would be of great interest. Not to mention the fact that one of these discs would contain the equivalent of 78 CDs (@ 640MB per).

      That would certainly make it much easier to hide the pr0n collection from the missus!

      • Re:50 GB?!?!? (Score:2, Funny)

        by Ryosen ( 234440 )
        Gah! Don't you hate it when you hit submit only to find out that a half-dozen other people already posted the same, tired, worn-out cliched joke that you thought was so clever just before the caffeine kicked in?

        I really need to learn how to type faster.
      • As a matter of curiosity, what software do you use to backup Databases? My predecessor used Dump it seems, but I don't like dump. Problem is, I can't find anything else to replace it for the database. I'm using TAR for the normal backups... But WTF can I do to back the database up?

        Kintanon

    • Re:50 GB?!?!? (Score:3, Informative)

      by PainKilleR-CE ( 597083 )
      Is this really necessary? With 100GB hard drives becoming more commonplace, I think we're at the limit of what normal users need out of hardware. There is just no use whatsoever for 50GB removable discs. In 10 years, we will all still be using DVD+RW. Drives will be a lot faster, sure, but history has shown that there is just no application that requires more than the ample 4.7GB of removable storage provided by DVD technology

      I think you just stated for yourself why 50GB optical discs would at least be wanted by some percentage of the population. They won't be needed for popular media (music/movies/software) for the most part (at least not for a while, who knows how much software bloat we'll see). However, when it comes to backing up data, do you really want your hard drive to require 10-20 discs to backup, or would you rather use 1 or 2 50GB discs to backup that 100GB hard drive?

      Personally, I'm doing ok with CD-R for now, because the majority of my 100GB of hard drive space is fairly static (my CD collection in MP3 format, software and games that I can simply reinstall), and a minor amount of data that actually needs backing up on a weekly or monthly basis. However, if I was running a critical system that handled large amounts of customer data, I'd want to reduce the number of discs I needed to backup that data whenever possible. I don't need DVD+RW capability for my own personal use, but if I were managing a couple hundred gigs of customer data I would like to back that up with the largest storage media possible, short of putting it onto another magnetic drive.
    • A couple of points to ponder:

      1) Chances are this digital storage format would be used for digital video, and not for personal storage (at least on launch, how long was it from the launch of the DVD standard before consumer recordable devices were available?)

      2) Digtal video/audio quality/resolution can always be improved, as (eventually) displays will be able to handle a higher res than what DVD offers, and as such, a full-length motion picture will require more space. For that matter, many DVD's we're already watching are multiple disc sets, whereas with any of these new formats, the whole thing could be shipped on one disc.

      3) If you think 4.7gb of removable storage is enough, remember the 100mb zip drive? Remember when that was all the space most you ever thought you'd need to take with you? There are USB storage devices with almost this much space (or are there 128mb+ keychains available already?)

      4) I'd almost guarantee you we won't be using DVD+RW drives in 10 years, especially if these new formats are available. Considering 10 years ago almost nobody was using CDR for storage, and CDR as a storage format is pretty much starting to phase out already, being replaced by DVD media and such.

      Now to sit back and watch the electronics giants fight for supremacy and see which 'standard' is adopted...

      z.
      • 3) If you think 4.7gb of removable storage is enough, remember the 100mb zip drive? Remember when that was all the space most you ever thought you'd need to take with you? There are USB storage devices with almost this much space (or are there 128mb+ keychains available already?)

        Check out this [twinmos.com] for a 1GB USB thumbdrive-thingy.

        Anyway, I'll just say that I bought a DVD-writer a few months ago, and it has saved me time. Instead of spending time splitting up data to fit on 650 MB I now just have to split up data to fit 4500 MB. :)

    • Is this really necessary? With 100GB hard drives becoming more commonplace, I think we're at the limit of what normal users need out of hardware.

      Hardware. Users. Limit. It surprises me that people still use these three words in one sentence.

      There'll always be a use for new hardware and technologies, if not now, some time in the future it will.

      To stay on-topic, I would like to point out that we'll end up with yet another collection of incompatible formats, like with (re-)writable DVDs, although I doubt it will get that bad.
      • The "limits" now become time. What we really need are systems (available to Joe Average-Income ComputerUser)capable of reading and writing 1GB of data per second. Drives, fixed and removable alike, need to start improving the speed of data manipulation over the quantity. If they could make 9-gig DVD that burned in 15 seconds and a 50-gig DVD that burned in 2 hours, which would sell more units?

        Not that I don't think a 50-gig disc is great. We just need to focus on throughput and function a little more. 100-gig drives take WAY to long to format for the improvements in computing speed that have been made. While ATA-133 may offer great throughput, how many devices can use it up all the time; optical media, especially?
        • I wish I had one of these last week.

          HD was starting to fail and I had no reasonable method to get 40g of data onto anything for backup.

          I mean, what good is tape or CD? Even DVD would have required multiple discs.

          HD was the only solution, bought a 60 and prayed as it copied files. (Worked!)

          Now to send this HD back to Maxtor for replacement...
    • Is this really necessary? With 100GB hard drives becoming more commonplace, I think we're at the limit of what normal users need out of hardware

      Are you serious? And just how do you keep those 100GB drives backed up, except by buying another drive?

      DVD+Rs are already at 55 cents or less (US) per GB, and DVD-Rs are even cheaper. However, you'd need two dozen of them to do a decent backup of a hard drive that size. That's rather unwieldy, especially if you want to keep the backups reasonably up to date.

    • there is no such thing as a "normal user"

    • For only $17.99 ! Or from blockbuster previously viewed fro 10.99 ... Uh oh, do I hear the RIAA complaining again that P2P is killing their sales of 60 minute $17.99 lame audio cds? Awww...

    • ...history has shown that there is just no application that requires more than the ample 4.7GB of removable storage provided by DVD technology.

      Proof that you can't trust history books.

      Large-volume optical storage provides an excellent archival medium for large datasets. It can be kept in a near-online state with higher retrieval time for less work than traditional methods, e.g. tape.

      I know a company that was looking for exactly this (actually, hoping for 80-100G capacity) a few months ago; a small (~30 person) company but they crunch monthly databases running around 70G, which they would like to keep around without paying for and maintaining massive disk arrays, especially since old data is only needed on occasion.

    • On behalf of Anonvmous Coward I'd like to thank all the clueless, humorless folks who replied to tps12's troll drive. Thanks to you, kind posters that you are, hundreds of little trolls are growing fat and healthy, while laughing their balls off at your foolishness.

      Congratulations tps12, I look forward to your next troll drive.
    • One place where digital storage in such large capacities per disc becomes useful is in the storage format for movies shown in theaters with digital projection systems.

      Imagine instead of having to lug around six 35-pound spools of 35 mm film for a two-hour movie, the entire movie is distributed on 2-3 Blu-Ray DVD's. The packaging to hold 2-3 Blu-Ray discs will probably weigh in at most 2-3 pounds, compared to the 210 pounds for a single movie print; the shipping costs for distribution alone would save a huge amount of money.

      As the cost of digital projectors come down (as I expect will happen by 2010), you'll see more and more movies shipped to theaters on blue-spectrum laser optical discs as the primary distribution format.

  • DVDs success due to lack of competing formats? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jeppe Salvesen ( 101622 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @08:58AM (#4140282)
    Could anyone argue that DVD was such a huge success because there was no real competing format at the quality level? We didn't have to choose between two incompatible video disk formats. We just had to choose between a Panasonic or a Phillips..

    Now, they are doing the betamax vs vhs thing again. I wish they would learn their lesson. In establishing standards, a bit of cartel may be for the better.
    • You forget the original DivX format. Quality was better than VHS, but not quite DVD.
      • the original DiVX WAS DVD, just with the quasi-rental/ownership system implemented. Many of the DiVX players in the last days of the system were DVD/DiVX combo units, in a stretch to try and sneak the DiVX system into homes.

        Fun fact: DiVX was originally slated to be carried by Wal-Mart and Blockbuster as well. At the time, Blockbuster was gearing up for an IPO setup, and decided that DiVX was going to be too large of a capital expense to risk when they were getting ready for their IPO. Quite literally overnight (really, everything was set the night before, then BB decided they wanted out), the entire setup went from a good business plan that really could have given DVD a run for it's money to nothing. Once blockbuster left, Wal-mart realized that the lack of rental/ownership market would torpedo the setup, and Circuit City was left holding the DiVX cards.

        Fun Fact: DiVX discs are literally worhtless now, in any sort of value sense. The authentication/charging server was taken down early last year, so the discs won't even play.
    • We didn't have to choose between two incompatible video disk formats. We just had to choose between a Panasonic or a Phillips..

      Um... what about laserdiscs and CED/Selectavision/Videodiscs [faqs.org]?

      Granted, they aren't digital, but they are"video disks." So are (s)VCDs, for that matter. I can't remember if VCD came out before DVD, though.
    • Not with DVDs you buy, but there's definite competition hampering the adaption of recordable DVD, DVD-R and DVD+R, which of course are incompatible.
    • What's interesting is that the DVD format was presented as a unified front very deliberately. There were originally two proposed formats. But the companies decided to compromise for the very reason you mention: format wars hurt the entire industry.

      Read more:
      http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#6 .1
  • A very long time ago (october 12th 2000) to be exact, I read a story on geek.com detailing new florescent disk technologies [geek.com], kinda reminds me of this technology.
  • According to the article digital videodiscs and their players have now surpassed the VHS in terms of sales for the first time . Funny considering that DVD's are only in about a third of American homes , compare that to the unbelievable amount of VHS players and it quickly shows just how popular the DVD has become."


    It just shows that most people who have a video recorder don't go out and buy a new one, just because there are new models out.

    Or it shows how gullible people are in repurchasing the same content that they have already bought in another format.

  • Stands to reason (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Citizen of Earth ( 569446 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @09:03AM (#4140313)
    In 2001, $10.3 billion was spent on movies, 52% of this on DVD's, now compare this to 2002, $12.4 billion total revenue with 65%, going for DVD's)

    These figures aren't all that surprising, considering that VCRs have more uses than just watching pre-recorded movies. Lots of people probably have VCRs mostly for time-shifting purposes. I, myself, only rent movies infrequently and don't buy a great number of them. Whereas, DVDs really only have one purpose, to play pre-recorded movies. They also offer higher quality and more convenience than VCRs, so it's not surprising that the sales figures for DVDs would be increasing, and although only a minority of households have DVDs, the ones that do would belong to the more hard-core movie collectors who are more likely to spend money on movies than average.

    I'd bet that a minority of households have 1.5GHz+ computers with the latest GeForce video cards, but that they represent a disportionately large share of video-game purchasers.
    • Not to mention that fact that as these hard core collectors move over, they are going to be purchasing more movies than might be typical, to replace their VHS collections. This would help explain the inflation in sales as compared to the number of players. My guess is that the percentages will stay pretty much the same, as the collector activity tapers off, the rest of the market will slowly ramp up and fill the gap -- then after a a period of 7 - 10 years, VHS will no longer be easy to find in stores, just as cassettes can no longer be found in music stores.
    • I can cite the following reasons why DVD sales have really taken off in the last 24 months:

      1. The price of players have dropped in price dramatically. You can get quite good players for under US$100 nowadays quite easily.

      2. The price of DVD discs are actually very reasonable considering the content on the discs. Many DVD movies that come on two-disc sets in the US$25-US$30 range contain audio commentaries, foreign language sound tracks and/or subtitles, and supplementary material out of the wazoo.

      3. DVD picture quality is excellent nowadays, especially if you can get a 480-line progressive-scan connection between the player and the TV set. Of course, DVD's have Dolby Digital and/or DTS surround sound tracks, which tremendously increases the enjoyment on appropriate home theater systems.

      4. DVD's have become a huge boon for foreign-language programs. The distribution of officially-licensed Japanese anime programs have moved to DVD very quickly, especially with the fact the DVD pretty much settles the entire sub versus dub arguement since you can have both on the same disc! =)

      I believe that despite what many people here on /. think about MPAA's anti-piracy policies, their decision to adopt the low-cost sell-through model of video sales pioneered by the Walt Disney Company has ensured high level of sales and low levels of movie piracy of DVD discs. I mean, why bother with a pirate copy of a movie when in 6-8 months after theatrical release you can see it at home on a high-quality DVD release?
  • It's not surprising that an increasing percentage of total video revenues come from DVD sales. They cost more than VHS. So even if you sell equal numbers of VHS and DVD, the DVDs are going to take a larger percent of the revenue. Plus the fact that they don't take up as much room as VHS tapes means people are more likely to have a very large collection without realizing they've bought so many.
    • Add to that, that it is probably also cheaper and faster to make a DVD than it is a video.

      I tried looking via Google to find any info that would back up this point of view, but I haven't found any pertinent information on the subject. If anyone has any hard figures, please post them here.
  • take a format, take an asymmetric mirror, and reverse the original format to create an incompatible new format. Repeat 42 times.
  • From the article: "Their new optical disc will have a storage capacity four times larger than that of the DVD. It will be capable of recording up to 25 hours of television broadcasts."

    They will have to confront the RIAA, MPAA and friends if they want to sell this gear. If the current legislation being drafted for HDTV and the DMCA are succesful, there will be nothing to record.

  • Yay! (Score:1)

    by shplorb ( 24647 )
    Hooray, when this comes out I'll have another reason to go spend more money on another player as entertainment companies will abandon DVD! Thankyou consumer electronics and entertainment companies!

    It's rather annoying really, DVD has just become established and now they want to obsolete it!? I bet that the media will be even more expensive than DVD's are now, which are even more expensive than VHS tapes (how it can be ~$10 cheaper to make a tape than press a DVD?)

    Though it does mean that videos and audio will be able to be stored with higher quality - which is a good thing because degrading quality sucks. IMHO they should not bring out another format until they can store 4 hours of video on a disc without resorting to lossy compression.

    • IMHO they should not bring out another format until they can store 4 hours of video on a disc without resorting to lossy compression.

      The way the lossless/lossy distinction is tossed around on Slashdot ("lossy sux0rz, lossless r00lz") bugs me. There's no such thing as "lossless" unless you reproduce the original film atom-for-atom, and even then, quantum effects will screw it up. It becomes a matter of how much loss a fellow is willing to accept. For most users, an 8 Mbit/s stream of MPEG-2 video + AC3 is more than enough, and that's what a DVD offers. If by "lossless" you mean "linear PCM video and audio", then even those aren't lossless, as video is typically quantized down to 8 bits per channel per pixel, and audio rarely goes deeper than 24 bits per channel per sample.

      Define your usage of lossless.

  • (In 2001, $10.3 billion was spent on movies, 52% of this on DVD's, now compare this to 2002, $12.4 billion total revenue with 65%, going for DVD's) . Funny considering that DVD's are only in about a third of American homes (about 30 million households, and consider that a quarter of these homes have more than one player

    DVDs are marketed differently than VHS. The prices are so low right now that there's an enormous incentive to buy rather than rent.

    One interpretation of these numbers is that lower prices == higher revenue. Betcha the RIAA doesn't catch on to it.

    • One interpretation of these numbers is that lower prices == higher revenue. Betcha the RIAA doesn't catch on to it.

      So, by your logic, if the RIAA were to market its products for zero dollars, it would recieve the maximum possible revenue. In fact, it would make more sense to attach a negative value to its products, in essence, paying people money to accept its products in order to maximize profits. I, for one, am completely in favour of this marketing plan. Your logic has a certain charm to it that modern business lacks :)

      Unfortunately, the industry-standard trick is to use various branches of mathematics (Statistics and Calculus, mostly) to determine the maximum point of the function of numCustomers * price. As price increases, the number of customers decreases, but this may be made up for in profits. As price decreases, more people buy the product, but profits diminish. In the end, there should be a mathematical sweet spot at which enough people part with enough money to buy a new pair of silicone breasts (or, to be fair, buttocks) for whichever star's popularity is in a state of decline. (Oh, and tack on a few dollars to each disc for extra measure...just in case :)
      • Unfortunately, the industry-standard trick is to use various branches of mathematics (Statistics and Calculus, mostly) to determine the maximum point of the function of numCustomers * price. As price increases, the number of customers decreases, but this may be made up for in profits. As price decreases, more people buy the product, but profits diminish. In the end, there should be a mathematical sweet spot at which enough people part with enough money to buy a new pair of silicone breasts (or, to be fair, buttocks) for whichever star's popularity is in a state of decline.

        It's seems obvious to a non-marketing-mathematician like me that the record industry's pricing equations produce results that are no more accurate than the data put into them. Since the industry rarely conducts nationwide-scale, long-term studies of demand at different pricing levels, it's hard to be sure how accurate their data is, and therefore their conclusions are questionable.

        It's not entirely inappropriate to note that while the majority of VHS movies are marketed to the rental market at high prices ($80), nearly all DVDs are marketed toward home consumers at a much lower price... And that, just maybe, some portion of the impressive sales revenue is due to a surge of consumer purchasing. Was this surge predicted by the industry's mathematical models? I don't have any evidence that it was or wasn't, beyond the fact that they never bothered to try it before. It's possible that this program created a new enthusiasm for purchased videos that was never reflected in previous price/demand estimates.

        Would enormous price-cuts improve CD sales revenue? I don't know, and until the record industry tries it, they have no idea what sort response they'll get from the public. It could create a golden-age of CD purchasing. Or people could react the way the industry's crude equations say they will.

  • Whatever storage, processing, memory you have you can never have enough. I used to write tracks that fitted on floppy disks (from the sampler and computer). Now they don't fit on CD-R anymore and I even give DVD-R a run for its money sometimes.

    Basically as you realise you can so something (ie use a whole 48Mb track to record just the hihat say) you push it more. I think that is a good thing as it means less compromise on silly techy issues and better sounding music.

    Computers are at last getting big enough to handle things without the pathetic error of not enough disk storage to perform that operation.

    I say roll-on the 1 Terrabyte DVD!!!

    (Well so long as the write rates go up, DVD-Rx2 is a little on the slow side)

    locarecords.com [locarecords.com]

  • link here [com.com]

  • People with money buy more luxuries? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @09:07AM (#4140336)
    Shocking, everyone can afford a VHS deck, while DVD players are considered more of a luxury. Sure there are $60 DVD decks, but mostly online and hard to find. While they have recently hit the affordable levels, VHS has been there for 10 years.

    Therefore, DVD, with its smaller penetration, has more penetration among upper income folks.

    Upper income folks buy more DVDs? Wow... Who would have thought.

    Video collecting is an expensive extravagance. While I enjoy my DVD collection (it gets used more than my VHS collection), I have more disposable income than most Americans.

    However, I can't imagine being shocked at DVD's penetration...

    Alex
    • Now really. BestBuy/CircuitCity/Walmart has DVD players for under $100.
    • Sure there are $60 DVD decks, but mostly online and hard to find.


      Walk into your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart. You would have a choice of several sub-$100 DVD players.
    • Sure there are $60 DVD decks, but mostly online and hard to find.

      What a coincidence! I bought an Apex 1200 DVD player at SEARS on Saturday for $60. That's SEARS, folks. Can't get more mainstream than that.

      I have my complaints about this...it's the unhackable version that's VCD crippled, so it's not entirely roses and candy. It can play DVDs without having to boot a computer, which is basically why I got the thing. Just pop the disk in and off you go. It played my "Princess Mononoke" DVD which is perhaps the most elaborate DVD I have. It makes ATI Cinemaster choke, so I use it as a test of what I can or cannot do with a given DVD player/software.

      BTW folks...advance word on the Daria "Is It College Yet?" DVD is that it, like the "Is It Fall Yet?" DVD, is DEFACTO REGION FREE. The box is marked Region 1, but the disk will play in any region so long as your TV will understand NTSC signals. From what I understand from my European friends this is not a problem.

    • Sure there are $60 DVD decks, but mostly online and hard to find.

      Simply not true

      Walmart sells $60 Apex units. I'm not a big fan of Walmart, but they pretty well blow your theory to shreds.
  • First, Sony announces a new DVD burner that supports the two leading DVD-recordable formats. The peasants rejoice.

    In response to this, two brand-new incompatible DVD formats are put out in the hopes that competition breeds better business. What will the consumer gain from this? The Sony DVD-R/DVD+R/RW100 and two new abbreviations to play with. How are they going to manage to fit this all onto the faceplate of one multifunction device?

    • How are they going to manage to fit this all onto the faceplate of one multifunction device?

      The version of Slashcode currently installed on Slashdot will strip out any plus-or-minus sign (±) that I try to insert. Taco put it on when people were abusing Unicode bidirectionality overrides and making parts of the page look more like Hebrew than English. Thus, when you see a # sign in the following paragraph, imagine an underlined + sign.

      It won't be hard to fit the necessary logos on Sony's "DVD#RW" drive, which stands for DVD plus or minus RW. Do you really think it'll be that hard to fit the "COMPACT disc ReWritable High Speed" logo, the "DVD ( o ) RW" logo, and the "RW DVD+ReWritable" logo on the face of the disc tray?

  • dvd vs. vhs market share (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonjNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday August 26, 2002 @09:10AM (#4140345) Homepage Journal
    The reason dvds have so much market share compared to vhs is because the movie catalog rollout to dvd. People with DVDs who love Godfather will re-buy the title on DVD, even though they already have Godfather on VHS. People are replacing thier movie collection in the new format.

    I'll be doing it for of the newly released special edition Pulp Fiction DVD.

    I'm not a *new* buyer. I'm a *repeat* buyer of the same movie. Naturally, this is not sustainable. Ad DVD adoption increases, and as the back catalog is filled out and people have replaced their collection, DVD will be no different from what VHS is. I doubt VHS is going away soon.

    Of course, when VHS *does* go away, and the DVD catalog is complete, and the everyone has replaced their collections -- the movie introduce an "all new" format and start the cycle over again.

    For accurate head-to-head measurements, check unit sales of LOTR on VHS vs DVD.
    • check unit sales of LOTR on VHS vs DVD

      This is a rather unfair comparison this day and age. With stores like Circuit City no longer selling VHS, and other stores like Best Buy reducing their VHS stock and/or moving out of high traffic areas in stores, the VHS format is not being presented in the same fashion as the DVD. You'd have to look at titles from, say, 1999 or 2000 to get a fair comparison; one example that would could to mind are movies like The Matrix or Chicken Run, both that had good simulatenous VHS and DVD releases ca. 2000.

      And as for the next repeat cycle, I don't necessarily see it as rebuying the DVDs all over again, speaking only from a technical standpoint (there's other issues that may be at work, but...). As this article implies the new techs are still using the standard 5" circular platters for the storage medium, so a reader for those can easily include the additional programming or laser to also read DVDs, just like how most current DVD players can also read CDs. When the enhanced DVDs come out with 20000 extra hrs of footage for a movie, I would reconsider buying those for movies that I love, but not all of them.

      • Ah, but if you look at titles from 1999 or 2000, your comparison between DVD vs. VHS is also flawed. We are looking at market penetration *today*, not in 1999. More people own DVD players today than 3 years ago. The point of the article is that DVD is becoming as ubiquitous as VHS. Sure, Worst Buy and Circuit Shitty are pushing DVD over VHS, but that's because DVD makes them more money. Not to mention that those who own DVD players are more likely to purchase movies than those who own VCRs only.

        So the comparison is fair. Movie sales are increasingly DVD-based, and that is the point.
      • And as for the next repeat cycle, I don't necessarily see it as rebuying the DVDs all over again, speaking only from a technical standpoint (there's other issues that may be at work, but...).

        I meant "new format" in the same vein as the switch between VHS and DVD.
    • I don't see that this is going to be very telling as far as true market share. LOTR is going to be a movie that is bought by a peticular market, most of whom ( I IMAGINE ) will aready have DVD's. IMHO, you need to do this on a movie that had great theater reviews, execlent revenew, and had much larger appeal to the general public as a "good flick".
    • Let's first consider what is being released on DVD's nowadays.

      Primarily, the most prominent releases are those of recent theatrical releases. This is being done primarily to not only ensure that moviegoers who liked the movie in the theaters will see it again at home, but also ensure that movies that didn't do so well in theatrical release make their money back in video release. For example, Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire was considered a failure in theatrical release, yet it did make a profit for Disney due to the well-received DVD release.

      The second most prominent releases are from the movie back catalogs. A lot of old movies that people loved are now coming out on DVD, which will provide an often substantial surge in revenue to the movie company. Who wouldn't mind two-disc DVD sets of movies like Citizen Kane and The Third Man with high quality video, clear sound, and lots of movie production information out of the wazoo?

      A new category that is becoming popular are complete TV seasons on DVD. It's hard to argue with the success of The Sopranos and Star Trek: The Next Generation on full-season DVD sets.

      By keeping DVD's reasonably priced (looks like the MPAA learned from the success of Disney's low cost to consumer sell-through model), the movie companies are making a lot of money and keeping piracy to relatively low levels.

      The high-quality sound and picture, plus the longivety, of DVD's is the reason why everyone is buying them big time, along with the reasons I cited above.
  • Even if a full backup fit on one disk, I'd still want an autochanger so I could easily make duplicate backups.

    When CDR's became available, it only took a few disks to backup a typical disk. Now it takes 115 to backup a single $83 disk drive.

  • Too bad that by the time everyone (not naming names or 4 letter abbreviations) looking out for the "well-being of intellectual property" is finished, we wont have any audio or video to burn onto a dvd.

    Personally, I would have to go out of my way to fill up a standard dvd the way it is. Most of the cds I have burned have huge chunks of unused space.

  • It'll be a while before there's a market for this type of disc, assuming we aren't talking about a 40 gig DVD-R, here.

    HDTV hasn't widely penetrated yet, so that potential use for the extra space isn't there. And the fact that studios aren't likely to want to put more stuff on single discs (because people won't pay that much more for it) means that at current resolutions, the market isn't there.

    Unless we're talking about RECORDABLE discs for computer use, this won't go anywhere for a while. And the Toshiba one will be most likely, since any drive will have to be compatible with as many options as possible to be competetive.

    Still, nice to know that when the market wants it, the tech will be ready.
    • HDTV hasn't widely penetrated yet, so that potential use for the extra space isn't there.

      HDTV hasn't penetrated, in part, because there's a lack of high-def source material. The release of HDTV discs would neatly solve that problem, especially if it coincided with the availability of under-$1000 HDTV sets.

      However, I imagine that the industry will wait a few years, if only so that they can force everybody to re-buy their movie collection once again...

    • But just think, now they can include even more useless audio so you can get all the insightful commentary about how cameraman #3's use of crack-cocaine influenced the making of the movie.

    • Unless we're talking about RECORDABLE discs for computer use, this won't go anywhere for a while. And the Toshiba one will be most likely, since any drive will have to be compatible with as many options as possible to be competetive.

      Frankly, with 8mm backup tapes going for $50.00 a pop and 100GB/200GB LTO tapes costing $100.00 a pop, with all of the headaches associated with tape backups, something like this would be a godsend for the tech industry.

      We already backup to DVD-R where it makes sense (database dumps, etc), and having daily archives on a stable medium that go back years (CD-R) has come in very, very handy more than once.

      Imagine being able to backup and archive your entire fileserver that way.

      That is what interests me in the 100GB optical media we keep being promised, or even the 27 GB media these folks are promising us. The ability to backup every night to a stable, randomly accessible medium from which restores are trivial, fast, and accessible for each day going back as far as we need to.

      The day we can replace tape backup with inexpensive optical backup, a la today's DVD-R or CD-R media, is the day this sort of thing will have a very wide market in the computer industry, irrespective of what the entertainment industry wants or needs.
  • So does this mean that I can get everything in the 2DVD Abyss on one disk, but still pay the same price? Actually it doesn't make much difference to me, except that I don't have to take out disk1 and put in disk2 to view the story boards.

    Buying DVD is a much better value than buying a lame VHS. Especially for movie crazed people who watch kung-fu flicks until the tape wears out (not that I've ever done that a half dozen times). Why doesn't the music business realize the huge market here? They could easily fit all the music on a DVD and include all sorts of commentary by the musician as well as behind the scenes footage. MTV and VH1 already do a lot of behind the scenes shows on bands. Why can't they include that on the same disk? It would definitely go a long way to make it more attractive to me.

    I'd rather not pay 16-18 bucks for a music CD, but I would be willing to pay 24.00 for a DVD with extra features and content. They don't even have to make new content. They could just cherry pick interviews, concert footage, music videos and other existing stuff. Oh well, the music execs suck. End of story.

  • Different marketing strategies (Score:4, Interesting)

    by odie_q ( 130040 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @09:16AM (#4140373)
    Like many others, I own both a DVD player and a VHS recorder/player. While I occasionally buy films in the VHS format (even less frequently now that I have my DVD player), I bought my VHS player primarily for watching rental films and for recording stuff on TV. DVD, on the other hand, has been heavily marketed as a player of purchased films, and although I now rent films in the DVD format, I bought my DVD player primarily to watch purchased DVD films.

    The DVD may have better image quality, and room for more hi-fi audio channels (stereo sound quality on the VHS is excellent, though), but the main reason I prefer DVD is media durabilty. Every time I watch one of my VHS films, it wears down. Image and sound quality deteriorate over time and with use. I'm reluctant to let people borrow my favourite VHS films. With DVD i have no such hesitations.

    I think this accounts for a lot of the difference in sales. The VHS is marketed as a recorder, the DVD is marketed (at least in Sweden) as the hub of your home cinema. While all newer films are available on rental DVD, purchasable DVD's are much more visibly available than their VHS counterparts.

    Excellent marketing by the filmmakers. They recognised that the change of technology generations gave them a chance to push for a change in consumer patterns.

    It would be nice if they see the advent of Internet media distribution as an opportunity as well, and not a threat.
  • ".....planning to propose a new optical disk format to the DVD Forum that will offer four times more storage capacity than current DVDs"

    Gee, like DVD was supposed to have been all along? Not gonna buy into it. Wouldn't be prudent at this junc-ture.

  • Blu-ray DVD Specs (cartridges?) (Score:4, Informative)

    by rtos ( 179649 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @09:19AM (#4140385) Homepage
    Here are the Blu-ray DVD specifications for those who are interested. And pay attention to that cartridge dimension spec give above, for the "easy to use optical disc cartridge [that] protects the optical disc's recording and playback phase from dust and fingerprints." The fact that they use cartridges was news to me.
    Blu-ray Disc Specifications

    Recording capacity: 23.3GB / 25GB / 27GB
    Laser wavelength: 405 nm (blue-violet laser)
    Lens numerical aperture (NA): 0.85
    Data transfer rate: 36 Mbps
    Disk diameter: 120mm
    Disk thickness: 1.2mm
    Optical trasmittence protection layer: 0.1mm
    Recording format: Phase change recording
    Tracking format: Groove recording
    Tracking pitch: 0.32um
    Shortest pit length: 0.160/18.0/19.5 Gbits/in2
    Recording phase density: 16.8/18.0/19.5 Gbits/in2
    Video recording format: MPEG-2 video
    Audio recording format: AC3, MPEG-1, Layer 2, etc.
    Video and audio multiplex format: MPEG-2 transport stream
    Cartridge dimensions: Approx. 129x131x7mm

    Source: EE Times [eet.com] February 25, 2002

    For reference, current DVD disks employ a 650-nm red laser, bond 0.6-mm-thick disks and specify a 0.6 NA according to the same article [eet.com].

    The companies supporting Blue-ray are: Hitachi Ltd., LG Electronics Inc., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Pioneer Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corporation, Sony Corporation, and Thomson Multimedia.

    • Laser wavelength: 405 nm (blue-violet laser)
      Up until this, I was against blu-ray as the next widespread optical data format. Mostly because I was hoping FMD [c-3d.net] would win that honor. But if this means companies will start mass producing bulk quantites of 405nm laser diodes, I'm all for it ;-)
  • From the article: "Their new optical disc will have a storage capacity four times larger than that of the DVD. It will be capable of recording up to 25 hours of television broadcasts."

    Geez, now I can rec..., er, indefinitely time-shift a whole season of Babylon5 on a single disc? (tosses old DVD writer out the window).

  • Is there some mass conspiracy to confuse customers? If it's not a "DVD" why the hell do they call it a DVD!
  • Ok, now go make those 50 Gb beasts writeable for a really small cost and include the drives with new PC's so we can finally move on from those bloody floppy disks!
    • What i need is a: small in size (smaller than the current CD), cheap as dirt, speedy, encased medium. And everybody needs to have one as well! so far.. Zip, Jazz, LG-drive and others: not cheap. rare. Minidisk: could have been, but haven't seen any for ps's. brobably incompatable, slow or whatever. CD: not encased/fragile,too big for real portability. floppy: too limited, frequently broken. There is a huge market awaiting!!! But all i see is bigger and bigger / faster than fast. There is more to succesfully succeed the floppy! Maybe USB-key-chains will fill up the nice.
    • (better formatted)
      What i need is a:
      small in size (smaller than the current CD),
      cheap as dirt,
      speedy,
      encased medium.
      And everybody needs to have one as well!

      so far..

      Zip, Jazz, LG-drive: not cheap. too rare.
      Minidisk: could have been!, but haven't seen any for pc's. likely incompatable, slow or whatever.
      CD: not encased/fragile, too big for real portability.
      floppy: too limited, frequently broken.

      There is a huge market awaiting!!! But all i see is bigger and bigger / faster than fast.

      There is more to succesfully succeed the floppy!
      Maybe USB-key-chains will fill up the nice.
  • Of course people with DVD players buy more videos than people with VCR's. First, people who have DVD players have more disposable income. I spent $350 on my first DVD player, and didn't bat an eye. I think the total bill that day was over $500 when I included a few movies. Compare this with the person scraping together $59 for a VCR.

    But that should be modded 'redundant'.

    Here is the insightful part:

    What consumer cares how cheap the discs are to create? The savings will NOT be passed on to us. The savings will get divvied up amongst the distributor, presser of discs, and the owner of the source material.

    Don't count on data either. At the very least, Valenti and the gang will be pushing for some sort of blank media tax.

    The only way these get onto consumers' shelves is if the profit taking potential for the entities I mentioned is so great that they essentially subsidize the players.

    • "Compare this with the person scraping together $59 for a VCR."

      The best DVD player I own, the APEX AD1600, cost me $59.23 after sales tax.
      • That's pretty impressive. Last I looked a few months ago, the $99 jobs seemed to be cheapest.

        But I'm not surprised. Ever taken a look inside a VCR? Tons of moving parts. DVD player is nothing by comparison. Similar to cassettes vs. CDs.

        Was reading an older Computer Shopper today at the PT office. Saw a column by that moron Dvorak, where he extolled the virtues of the tape drive, and mentioned the CD as a $50 option. I wonder what planet this guy lives on. Tapes sucked hard, even back in the day. The CDRom would be cheaper than a tape mechanism, and perform better in every conceivable way.

  • lousy pirates (Score:4, Funny)

    by gosand ( 234100 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @09:40AM (#4140489)
    According to the article digital videodiscs and their players have now surpassed the VHS in terms of sales for the first time

    No doubt because people can easily use their VCRs to pirate movies. I guess Jack Valenti [cryptome.org] was right after all.

    • That's interesting.. I thought the whole concern with digital technology was that it was easier to copy at high quality. DVD's are easy to rip, divx looks better than VHS and fits on a CD. Sure you can get a box to strip macrovision out of a vhs and run two VCRs to dub a substandard quality vhs, but any consumer level PC out there now with some free software will rip a DVD. I would even believe that DVDs are pirated at a far higher rate than VHS tapes. How does this fit in with that theory?

      Its a bit more probable that people with movie collections on DVD have more disposable income and will buy DVD's for their extra features and higher quality, whereas many family with only a VCR wont have the same spending power, and tend to rent tapes, or watch tv.
  • Does this new format support HDTV signals? I just got my new TV and satellite decoder hooked up this weekend, and I was just plain awestruck by the 1080i demos I saw.

    Truly getting closer to looking through a window...and regular TV looks fuzzy.

    My progressive scan DVD player looks pretty good too, but an HD-DVD type player would be really wild.

    Is that what this new media will ultimately do?

    (on the downside most of the HD stuff has no business taking up HD time - old movies? The Young and the Restless? What's the point?)
  • Whoopee! Yet another format for the MPAA and RIAA to force digital "rights" managment onto! Managing their so-called "rights" by managing all of ours into nothingness! Let's all help them out by running out and buying it like the lemmings we are!

    "Funny considering that DVD's are only in about a third of American homes (about 30 million households, and consider that a quarter of these homes have more than one player), compare that to the unbelievable amount of VHS players (about 90% of homes in the USA have a VHS player) and it quickly shows just how popular the DVD has become."

    That is odd. Why aren't more customers running out and buying the newer technology with all its new features? Features like the inability to fast-forward through commercials or FBI warnings. Features like the inability to make archival copies as guaranteed by copyright law. Features like region coding. VCR's don't even have a cartel like the DVD Forum to eliminate all competition through their strong-arm tactics! Who the heck wants to record television broadcasts, anyway? As we all know, that's both amoral and illegal!

    I used to have a DVD player, but then I got rid of my PlayStation 2. If they want me to buy into a new technology, they can come back when they stop trying to do through technology what they can't do legally. Of course, trying to put out a better product in a capitalistic market is a completely alien concept to them...

  • What we really need is a format with less dictatorship-like licensing. I don't mean the whole DeCSS thing, which was dictatorship enough, but the general DVD licensing scheme. If you want to even sell a product that has a DVD drive it is $10,000. It is another $10,000 as you all know to make the software to read DVDs, another $10,000 if you want to manufacture the DVD. So the Powers that be have made $30,000 off of every single DVD player ever made. Isn't that a bit steep? I know $30,000 is a drop in the hat to big companies, but that rules out small inventors from even making and selling a DVD rom based product. Isn't ONE $10,000 fee for the manufacture of the drive itself enough? If I buy an object shouldn't I have the right to resell it anyway I see fit without paying an extra $10,000? It's not like I can still use it after I sell it. There are alot of DVD players out there, millions. You'd think that 10,000 millions would be enough without the DVD consortium feeling the need to triple it.
    • Oops, sorry about that bad math, they don't make 10,00 on EVERY DVD player sold obviusly, I haven't had my morning coffee yet! :)
  • Wow, I can't even recall the last time I used the VHS player to actually play recorded media.

    Since I bought a DVD player, it's just been the TV tuner.

    As for the "new formats", *YAWN*. By the time the RIAA and MPAA get through with them, they'll require biometrics and a telephone jacked into the UberMegaCorp's databases. Remeber DIVX?

    Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the MPAA/RIAA facists change the law they wrote to label anyone they believe has misuesd their copyrights as an enemy combatant.
    • Quick Rant:

      Oh, and since the SS can now interrogate your librarian under the misnamed "Patriot Act", DIVX style dial-ins would allow Goebels ( aka As*croft, you know, the facist who lost the election to a DEAD guy ) to review your viewing habits for "un-american" or suspicious activity.

      Watching any 'Star Wars' films could get you on the "person of interest" blacklist in a flash. ( Guess what group Lucas fingered as the inspiration for the Empire )

      Between the RIAA/MPAA and Goebels, no constitution loving American will buy into the ultimate revised new DVD format. It's a goner.

    • Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the MPAA/RIAA facists change the law they wrote to label anyone they believe has misuesd their copyrights as an enemy combatant.

      They have already hinted at P2P users being terrorists, have they not? Also, don't forget that while they want to be able to hax0r you, they are intentionally placing themselves behind an exemption to the hacking==terrorism talk that has been going on in the legislature. In other words, they can do anything to you that they want, but if you use countermeasures, you are a terrorist.
  • Since HD content at broadcast-level bitrates (19.2Mbps) require 8.6GB/hr, these discs would be the ideal format to use for HD-DVD. Even three hour movies would comfortably fit on the 40GB version, with plenty of room for DD5.1, DTS, a couple commentaries, and plenty of other extras.

    Heck, for most movies you could even match DVHS's bitrate of 28.2Mbps (12.7GB/hr) comfortably.

    Sure sounds better than the red-laser "solution" the studios have been pushing.
  • It will take a poster-sized wall chart just to summarize the basic formats and their compatibility.

    Consumers will just refer to them all as DVD!@#*&!!

  • while I am no fan of competing incompatible formats, I do see a need for improvements over the current DVD. The number one thing I would like to be able to do is back up a miniDV tape to one inexpensive disk. A miniDV tape holds roughly 13.5 GB (4.5min=1 GB, 60 mins per tape). Thus one needs three or four 4.7 GB DVDs to back up the video data. Cutting up the file is a pain, and the disks aren't exactly free. It would be nice to be able to back up multiple tapes!

    Of course, the next step would be backing up full HDs, currently 80 to 100 GBs. But given the rate of growth of HDs, I can't imagine anything keeping up.

  • So if by the time it hits the mass market the 40 GB disk costs $1 to manufacture, and the 50 GB disk costs $2 to manufacture, exactly how much difference can we expect to see in the $15 - $20 price of the final product that gets sold in stores?

    Then again, given that they'll be packing whole seasons of a show onto one disk, they may be charging about $50 - $150 for it.

    How much cheaper is the 40 GB version supposed to be that the end consumer will see any difference?

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