News Universal Music backs Blu-ray

Hey I'm ubergeek and I don't know the difference between + and - with DVD formats. I know I have a +- DL burner and that my DVD player (though I watch most of my movies on my comp, reencoded to xvid) hasn't had a problem with the -R media that I tend to use.

Though for what it's worth I helped some guy figure out what router to buy while showing my uncle which one to get and then trying to convince him to spend half as much at Newegg. The guy noticed I wasn't wearing a Best Buy shirt so obviously I actually knew what I was talking about.

I just started working at the local video store and have noticed some people still rent VHS. Not many at this point, which is fairly relieving. Mostly old stuff that's not on DVD but not entirely. Given the fact you can get a DVD player for $40-odd (not a great one, but functional at least) and DVDs don't degrade quality over time... no excuse.

Anyways, with a new format that, regarding movies, offers the new buzzword of hi-def, I'm not that excited. I've set my 19" CRT to 1080p res, and played one of the WMVHD sample clips. And it looked exactly the same quality as my re-encoded Xvid movies (700-1000MB for the full film), let alone the original discs. The only difference I noticed was I didn't need to use some stupid third party DVD software to play it (yay, but that's only because it was a sample) and my CPU usage was spiking like mad. Yes, high-def is the new buzzword in TVs and whatnot, but in my firsthand experience, there's no noticible difference, let alone one enough to justify the higher price.

Now as far as having 50GB on a single disk, w000t! Lemme tell you, backing up 16 seasons of The Simpsons isn't too healthy for the DVD spindle. I'm totally out of all media right now, and all of my hard drives (5 in my desktop) are about 90% or more full. Sure it'll be expensive when it first comes out, but within a few months, burners will be down to about $60 and media maybe 50c a disk in a 100pk, going by DVD stuff (I bought a 4x DVDRW for $100 just when it broke that mark, I more recently got a 16xDVDRW 4x DL for $50, and a 100 spindle is about $25).... cheap storage. Hopefully reasonably fast, but I won't expect much other than what's to be expected from the higher capacity as a result (spindle speeds still can't increase past whatever RPM that's ~52x for CDs and 16x for DVDs). I won't expect hard drive fast by any means, but, what is it.... 25GB for a single layer... you're talking about $100 for 2.5TB if my estimates are right, with a burner.

long, but woot. I figured it was in the bag with the PS3 thing, but this is a nice touch. Hopefully it's totally decided before it hits shelves. I'm too young for the VHS/Betamax thing but I still know I don't want the same problems.

 

Well, the prices on burners won't go down if people aren't purchasing them, and to the average consumer, 25gb on a single layer is not needed. Plus people are happy with standard hi-def movies and dvds. It's simple, the consumer has no need to upgrade, and won't until how many years down the line you can get 1080p tvs, blu-ray burners, and ultra hd movies for cheap. And the whole PS3 thing is really dumb, it will slow the loading process, since blu-ray won't be out of the 2x stage by the time of release. Instead of increasing performance, it will lengthen load times in comparison to the 360. And 90% of games released never used more than 3gbs!

 

Not so... when you quintuple the data density, your read speed also increases by quite a bit. For arguments sake, take a pair 7200rpm HDDs - both single platter, one 80GB and one 400GB. In one of the 120 times it rotates per second, five times the data has passed under the head. Of course it's not THAT simple (especially not with hard drives, as there's no single platter of 400GB that I've heard of!) but simply put, the more data in the same area, the faster you can read it at a given rotation. Assuming of course you're still talking about rotating media of sorts, that certainly doesn't apply for solid-state stuff.

 

That's right - there's a bit of give & take: the console will be asked to load large, HD textures, but the vastly increased areal density means more data per second passing the laser, as per Firehed's explanation.

It's all speculation at this point, but if future games include HD video for intro sequences or in-game use, that will likely chew some space. If you take a look at this page: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx
and ignore for a second that it's WMV, you will not only get to sample the crispy goodness of HD video, but you'll see the following text.

"The sample clips have data rates between 6,384 Kbps and 10,440 Kbps"

DVD video is typically only 6Mbit/s so with HD up to 10Mbit/s, you're talking 75MB per minute of footage. Depending on the extent of its use, you might well see games using more than you suggest 3GB.

For example, we are seeing a trend of games following DVD movies with Making Of documentaries and other behind-the-scenes footage etc. I personally would love to play something like Gran Turismo PS3 and then watch interviews, makings of etc for an hour on the same disc. In HD

I'm not sure that Xbox 360 will "suffer" if they stick to standard DVD, especially if they can use Dual Layered 9GB discs, but you may see double disc games where the Bonus material is on the second disc. For PS3 developers, if you've got it, use it.

 

In audio its sacd and dvd a that are causing the confussion.

You can get many dvd and sacd players better than cd players. take for example the townshend new multiformat player first dvd player that is suppoused to come close to vinyl.

Thats just rubbish

Excuse me?
For starters music isnt recorded in true stereo (as in no changes by a sound engineer other than people placement from the two microphones), infact i know only one label (naim) who record in true stereo other than classical performances. You go to any studio and they record the elements seperatley and then mix them together to give a vauge stereo image.
It also would not require an overhaul of the industry, the equipment is already there.
Also high end audio gear has been available in multi channel for a long time eg krell, naim, linn, etc
Infact a stereo insurgence is currently happening to try and take back some of the multi channel market.

edit: (sorry for going off topic)

 

that'd be lying though, i do have about 400 dvd-r's in my room