by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Tuesday May 16, 2006 @08:55PM (#15347571)
So, I work on Blu-Ray players(not for Sony), take that for what you will.
Aside from the article submitter trolling, I would like to state that Blu-Ray is more than just a laser. It's an entire format complete with a software virtual machine.
When we test content it comes on a DVD-R, we're testing layouts of files, VM access, decoding, video quality etc.
Now I don't know what was at the booth, but it is certainly possible that they were showing off their software Blu-Ray player with the content burned onto a DVD.
This is the kind of thing I was thinking. As fun as it may be to say "Sony is evil again!", there is no reason why this couldn't be a normal Blu-Ray title that was just edited. You could take a DVD edit out a certain chunk of the title and then it would fit on a CD without having to compress it more. This could easily be the same thing (especially if you cut out all the extra languages, special features, etc).
Who couldnt make HDTV rendering 3years ago, make it a 1080i mpeg2 file and most 2ghz PCs could play it, or dual cpu boxes. If you are that hard up on cpu cycles, then even MPEG2-IFRAME, ie M-JPEG, ie 25fps JPEG stills could easily do HDTV in 2001 CPU power. Since jpeg decoding is so fast.
Sure you would do only 10-20min on a dvd, but enough for a demo, and on a 20gig HD, easy to do a movie - resampled/digitized from a real print into full 1920x1080i or 1376x768 if your cheap.
Now I don't know what was at the booth, but it is certainly possible that they were showing off their software Blu-Ray player with the content burned onto a DVD.
Which would definitely constitute a rigged demo. We've had the ability to play high-bitrate movies from hard-drives for years, so why does anybody care about Blu-Ray? Because it's a removable optical media with enough capacity for full-length high bitrate movies. So if that's not what they were demoing, it certainly was a rigged demo.
but the disc itself plays no part in the quality of the image (assuming of course that it meets the basic requirement that it's possible to pull the data off it fast enough)
In most cases, the only meaningful demo of BluRay is going to be quality based, and therefore the physical media is irrelevant, so I don't see how it's "Rigged" if it's still showing BluRay content.
It all depends on what you believe the main contribution and technical risk of Blu-Ray to be. As I said, I don't think it's the codec, we have those coming out of our ears. If somebody showed up at a trade show to demo yet another video codec playing back from a hard drive nobody would even notice. Rather, I think the main question is who can really manufacture a high-capacity optical disc players and media, and do it cheaply. Sony's problems in getting this done are reportedly contributing to the delays and high cost of the PS3, which is intended to be the biggest-selling Blu-Ray player of the next few years. Yet if Sony is demoing Blu-Ray without a Blu-Ray drive, that implies to me that they aren't because they can't. Even if that's not strictly true, it looks very bad for them not to be able to demo their own technology.
It all depends on what you believe the main contribution and technical risk of Blu-Ray to be. As I said, I don't think it's the codec
Blu-Ray is *much* more complicated than just a codec. The spec papers for it are several hundred pages long for a compliant player(one can easily find portions on the internet with google). As I mentioned in my first post it has it's own virtual machine just for playing content. It also has AACS [wikipedia.org] a very highly technical cryptographic security system. Plus Blu-Ray spec suppo
At the beginning of April 2006 @Sony's Shinagawa plant, they had a Blueray system running right there in the waiting area on an HD display. I doubt any demo would be a fake given they already have the working hardware/software. Story just doesn't make sense.
More than just a laser (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from the article submitter trolling, I would like to state that Blu-Ray is more than just a laser. It's an entire format complete with a software virtual machine.
When we test content it comes on a DVD-R, we're testing layouts of files, VM access, decoding, video quality etc.
Now I don't know what was at the booth, but it is certainly possible that they were showing off their software Blu-Ray player with the content burned onto a DVD.
Re:More than just a laser (Score:2)
HDTV of Hd - 3yrs old (Score:2)
If you are that hard up on cpu cycles, then even MPEG2-IFRAME, ie M-JPEG, ie 25fps JPEG stills could easily do HDTV
in 2001 CPU power. Since jpeg decoding is so fast.
Sure you would do only 10-20min on a dvd, but enough for a demo, and on a 20gig HD, easy to do a movie - resampled/digitized
from a real print into full 1920x1080i or 1376x768 if your cheap.
So all these HDDVD demos could have
Re:More than just a laser (Score:3, Insightful)
Which would definitely constitute a rigged demo. We've had the ability to play high-bitrate movies from hard-drives for years, so why does anybody care about Blu-Ray? Because it's a removable optical media with enough capacity for full-length high bitrate movies. So if that's not what they were demoing, it certainly was a rigged demo.
Re:More than just a laser (Score:3, Insightful)
In most cases, the only meaningful demo of BluRay is going to be quality based, and therefore the physical media is irrelevant, so I don't see how it's "Rigged" if it's still showing BluRay content.
Re:More than just a laser (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More than just a laser (Score:1, Informative)
Blu-Ray is *much* more complicated than just a codec. The spec papers for it are several hundred pages long for a compliant player(one can easily find portions on the internet with google). As I mentioned in my first post it has it's own virtual machine just for playing content. It also has AACS [wikipedia.org] a very highly technical cryptographic security system. Plus Blu-Ray spec suppo
Re:More than just a laser (Score:2)
At the beginning of April 2006 @Sony's Shinagawa plant, they had a Blueray system running right there in the waiting area on an HD display. I doubt any demo would be a fake given
they already have the working hardware/software. Story just doesn't make sense.
H.