Apple To Back Blu-ray and HD-DVD?

[AppliedVisual]

I have one word for you Lossless.

Yeah, already work that way... I already have all my audio collection on a centralized music server. I wouldn't mind an iPod for what it is, but I'm also not the kind of guy that enjoys listening to music through cheesy little earbuds. I can do larger DJ-style headphones in a pinch, but I prefer to listen to my music loud on a good sound system where I can feel it. And if anyone else there doesn't like it, they can just leave.

However, I'd like to get back into developing games for a commercial platform and I'd be all over the iPod if Apple would open up an SDK.

 

[benthewraith]

Nope. Cheap always prevails when it comes to marketshare. The average consumer is fairly thick, when they walk along the aisles at Walmart and wonder which one to chuck in their shopping trolley the majority will go for the cheapest.

Thick or smart? The average consumer is NOT going to spend the amount of money for Blu-Ray player, when they can get HD-DVD for cheaper. Not everyone is as fortunate as you to put $1000 down on a player.

 

[stephenli]

I have already used 220GB on music / movie / photo
I dont want to use over 20 DVD DL to backup.... its terrible
so, give me Blu-ray disc please, Steve.

currently, a BD-RW drive cost around $1000usd
if Mac equip with this monster drive, the price must increase by more or less $1000....so, does Apple waiting for a drop in price for drives?

 

[Sweetfeld28]

Personally, i don't think this format war is very worth while to begin with. I mean Blu-Ray does seem to be the leading format, but i think i will rather wait for this Hybrid Disc to come out that uses the same Red laser that our burners already have:

Versatile Multilayer Disc [VMD]


ryan

 

[janstett]

High Def disc primer

For those who aren't intimately familiar with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, I've really gotten into it in the past few months so here's a quick primer:

Discs will be replaced by downloads? Let me know when I can download a movie in 1080p with lossless 5.1 sound in a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps to the iToons generation that thinks 128kbps sound is good you can live with downloaded movies, but for me I don't think CD is good enough (I'm an SACD/DVD-A geek). Likewise I don't think DVD is good enough, why do I want to go backwards (downloadable movies) instead of forward (HD disc)?

Blu-Ray is the superior format, on paper. No doubt. However, there are a couple of wrenches in the works.

First, both formats are actually 90% the same. The physical storage medium is based on the same principles (blue laser) but different implementation (mostly depth of the reflective layer in the substrate). Blu-Ray is slightly denser and offers a higher total capacity (50GB vs 34GB, something like that). Blu-Ray is actually sort-of a superset of DVD from there, once you get to what's actually on the disc. HD-DVD has a new encryption layer (they learned from CSS), Blu-Ray uses this same scheme and then puts a 2nd layer of encryption on top of it. Both use the same codecs -- MPEG2, MPEG-4 H.262, and VC1 (Microsoft's codec), and Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Pure HD, DTS Plus, etc.

I believe movie studio support determines who wins. The studios were split 50-50 pretty much. Then, something funny happened. Some HD-DVD studios announced they would ALSO support Blu-Ray. In my mind, that meant Blu-Ray wins.

The launch came, HD-DVD came out first and Toshiba led the way with a pair of chunky, heavy, PC-based players at $500 and $1000. Everyone hated the Toshiba players, they were slow, unwieldy, and have awful remotes. A few months later Blu-Ray launched with Samsung's $1000 player, and surprisingly this player was AWFUL, and the picture quality looks worse over HDMI than component because they forgot to turn off some video filtering. Worse, the Blu-Ray transfers thus far have been very poor quality. This seems to be because Blu-Ray is leaning towards old MPEG-2 HD transfers, while HD-DVD has embraced VC1 (which is the best of the 3 video codecs for quality and size) and gotten new encodings with Microsoft's attention. Then, Toshiba started putting out firmware updates for their HD-DVD players and suddenly their players didn't suck so bad.

So here we are; the only Blu-Ray player on the market is a Samsung, Sony has no presence. We're one month away from the launch of the PS3 (which will play Blu-Ray) and the X-Box 360 HD-DVD drive.

Right now, HD-DVD has all the momentum. The Blu-Ray titles are low quality, they have no $500 player, and HD-DVD is building a head of steam.

I know I'm the minority around here when I say this, but I don't own an iPod. Yeah, it's true... I personally don't care for the MP3 format and the lesser quality offerings of iTunes. If it isn't at least CD quality, uncompressed, I don't want it. And yes, I can hear the difference on my sound system which is a separate setup from my home theatre.

I love iPods but I know I'm trading off quality for convenience. Meanwhile, I'm re-ripping all of my hundreds of CDs into Apple lossless format and putting the CDs in storage. It's not SACD, but at least I'll be back to CD quality.

 

[janstett]

NEC has developed a chip that can decode both, as you have hinted at. The optical technology is coming along (I saw something on Digg a little bit ago that noted some progress in that arena), but still not there yet.

I'm curious to see how that plays out. Samsung at first wanted to put out a hybrid player, as well as another company whose identity I forget; but apparently Sony's Blu-Ray licensing explicitly forbids combo players. So I don't understand, is NEC's chip a clean-room solution or did they find some other solution?

 

[janstett]

[merged posts]

 

[janstett]

[merged posts]

 

[nuckinfutz]

HD DVD is the superior platform. After perusing their specs a bit closer I find that:

1. There are more mandatory features in HD DVD players. Ethernet, secondary Audio and Video decoders, persistent storage that must play a certain amount of 1080p content at a given bitrate, Dolby TrueHD support is mandatory. Sure Blu-Ray can add these but they don't mandate them so as of today only one BD player(The pioneer) will come with ethernet.

2. Less DRM- HD DVD has AACS 128-bit encryption. Blu-Ray has the same but tosses in BD+ and ROM Mark. BD+ could prove to be problematic and gives too much power to studios.

3. Legacy support- Most people don't know but the current "flipper" Combo discs (DVD on one side HD on the other) are giving way to Twin Format discs which contain a DVD layer and HD DVD layer on the same side. This means disc art comes back but you still have the legacy support. Currently right now it's two layer so you can do 15GB/4.7GB discs. Three Layer discs are being tested by the DVD Forum for inclusion to the spec. This would allow for 30/4.7 or 15/9.4 discs. Sure legacy support sounds stupid but how many minivans and cars have DVD players as standard or optional equipment? It'll be a long time before you get HD in the car. Twin Format HD DVD will ensure you can view your movie on millions upon millions of players.

The networking features of HD DVD will impress people. HDi interactivity allows you to tap into the net for updates to trailers and bios. Or you can create a "playlist" of favorite scenes and send this to friends who own the same disc for playback. Voice annotations of scenes is possible as well. The key here is that the annotations or playlists contain syncing information for the disc. You never have to copy the actual movie content. The ethernet port on the HD DVD players can access your network using industry standard protocol.

We're all computer people and we should all be asking why we have to spend $1500 on a pioneer BD player to get network connectivity that is available on a $400 HD DVD player. Things that make you say hmmmmmmmm

 

[AppliedVisual]

I'm curious to see how that plays out. Samsung at first wanted to put out a hybrid player, as well as another company whose identity I forget; but apparently Sony's Blu-Ray licensing explicitly forbids combo players. So I don't understand, is NEC's chip a clean-room solution or did they find some other solution?

Ricoh already has the necessary optical elements for a dual format player -- they announced this two months ago. In addition to NEC, LG also has a chipset for a universal player. All the pieces are in place except the legal/licensing restrictions.

Samsung and LG both announced they would begin work on universal players, but once Sony finalized the Blu-Ray licensing, LG just disappeared and announced two Blu-Ray only players, the higher end model will sell under the Marantz label. Samsung, recanted and said they would not pursue a universal player at this time... You won't see Samnsung challenging Sony on any such thing -- these two now share manufacturing and technology for several products, including LCD panels.

Most likely, due to it's ties to LG and NEC, Philips would be the most likely to come out first with a universal player. But until someone finds a way around Sony's licensing restrictions, it isn't going to happen... Many don't think that their licensing is legal and constitutes an antitrust violation, but at this stage in the game the small market doesn't jsutify the effort. Ultimately, we will see universal players, it's a guaranteed thing. But I doubt Sony will budge from their licensing restrictions until they feel HD-DVD has lost the market... At that point they'll lift the restriction and like everyone else they'll release a BluRay player that can also play those "other" discs.

 

[sarge]

Hvd

Please, this conversation is so 2005...


November 17, 2005 (Computerworld) -- Turner Entertainment Networks has its lenses focused on holographic storage for the future of storing and retrieving its movies, cartoons and commercial spots. The network giant has completed a test of the cutting-edge storage technology, which it said will soon move the company away from tape- and disk-based storage.
"The holographic disk promises to retail for $100, and by 2010, it will have capacity of 1.6TB each. That's pretty inexpensive," said Ron Tarasoff, vice president of broadcast technology and engineering at Turner Entertainment. "Even this first version can store 300GB per disk, and it has 160MB/sec. data throughput rates. That's burning. Then combine it with random access, and it's the best of all worlds."

Optware is now neighbors with its only other U.S. competitor, InPhase Technologies Inc., which is also in Longmont. InPhase said earlier this year that it will begin shipping its own 300GB drive by the end of next year.
Holographic disks can attain far higher density of data storage than standard magnetic disk drives, which store data only on the surface of a disk. Holographic disk technology allows data to be stored as a holograph throughout the polymer material that makes up a disk.

Optware also plans to release a holographic disk product for streaming video that's targeted at the film and broadcast industries, and a consumer disk product that is about the size of a credit card with 30GB of capacity.

 

[IlluminatedSage]

Please, this conversation is so 2005...

Optware also plans to release a holographic disk product for streaming video that's targeted at the film and broadcast industries, and a consumer disk product that is about the size of a credit card with 30GB of capacity.

hah, so funny, but then again, it has taken alot of time to make blu-ray hope this could come faster.

but.... it all depends on pricing. will holographic storage be cheaper? more reliable.

if so... sign me up. alot of us just want reliable storage.

but... with turner movies using it. sounds like a professional tier product, not consumer yet

 

[minnesotamacman]

It has been said here already, but Apple is smart to back both. I have a feeliing that HD DVD is going to win out in the end. Sure Sony is going to Blu Ray everyone, but not many people over 30 are going to get a PS3...

 

[nuckinfutz]

With the new codecs Sony can barely justify 50GB discs for movie distribution. How in the world can you justify 300GB discs?

HVD or something like it would be keen for an Ultra HD format or a 4k format in 10-15yrs but right now it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist for movie playback.

 

[AppliedVisual]

With the new codecs Sony can barely justify 50GB discs for movie distribution. How in the world can you justify 300GB discs?

That's easy... The next video format, which is already forming alliances within the industry. Currently known as SuperHD or Super Hi-Vision with 4K and 8K resolutions.

Or... We can put all 6 Star Wars films on a single disc in full 1080P glory.

But seriously, the new codecs aren't that magical and even with VC1 or H.264, it's pretty easy to run into a barrier with a 25 to 30 GB disc size. Sony shouldn't have any troubles with fitting films at full quality on a 50GB disc. Also keep in mind that the layer substrate within BluRay is a lot thinner than DVD/HD-DVD discs and they claim that a disc could potentially hold up to 12 layers... Sony has done lab tests and industry demonstrations with prototype 4-layer discs, but the exposure has been very minimal.

Also Holographic storage is going to be the next form of optical media, almost surely anyway unless something incredible comes out of nowhere. It has a lot of room to grow as a format as well and as capacities increase, we will begin to move from compressed video to uncompressed and/or lossless codecs. So when the 3.6TB holographic storage media hits, we'll be able to put full HD res 1080P24, uncompressed 32bit color transfers of features plus full uncompressed 8 channel audio on a single disc with room to spare.

HVD or something like it would be keen for an Ultra HD format or a 4k format in 10-15yrs but right now it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist for movie playback.

Yep, but I think that day will be here quicker than 10-15 years. While there will be a move to continue to push HD resolutions higher as I mentioned. I think we're going to see an even bigger push to max-out the quality of the image resolution we can deal with now. Current HDTV sets are shipping with the ability to display a full 1080p uncompressed signal. While BluRay and HD-DVD do a fair job of using this ability there's still noticeable compression artifacting and color limitations, black crush, etc.. Just imagine what would be possible with an uncompressed or lossless codec.

 

[nuckinfutz]

But seriously, the new codecs aren't that magical and even with VC1 or H.264, it's pretty easy to run into a barrier with a 25 to 30 GB disc size. Sony shouldn't have any troubles with fitting films at full quality on a 50GB disc. Also keep in mind that the layer substrate within BluRay is a lot thinner than DVD/HD-DVD discs and they claim that a disc could potentially hold up to 12 layers

Therein lies the issue. HD DVD's first titles had an avg bitrate of 16-20Mbps with peaks of almost 30Mbps. Batman Begins just shipped with an avg bitrate of 13Mpbs and it's PQ is top notch. That translates to roughly 6GB per hour so it was pretty easy for them to toss this 2.5 hour movie onto a 30GB disc and have it consume only 18-20GB for the picture. Add in your lossless audio track, Dolby Digital+ and IME linked to the extras in that final 10GB and you're fine. Speaking with some Microsofties about their VC-1 they believe they can get down to 9Mbps for HD material and 11Mbps for "comfortable" material so there's still room for improvement. 50GB is cool for movies that just have a huge amount of extras though.

so Holographic storage is going to be the next form of optical media,

I doubt we see another widely distributed movie format on disc. Both Blu-Ray and HD DVD can integrate network content along with the disc syncronized. This is just the precursor to downloading the whole movie without a physical medium. It'll take a decade to get last mile coverage to rural areas but broadband speed and pervasiveness will ensure that warehousing packaged discs goes the way of the dodo.

We'll see. If yet another disc format comes out I want to see

10-bit per channel RGB
4:2:2 color sampling
huge bandwidth
3840x2160 resolution

 

[AppliedVisual]

Therein lies the issue. HD DVD's first titles had an avg bitrate of 16-20Mbps with peaks of almost 30Mbps. Batman Begins just shipped with an avg bitrate of 13Mpbs and it's PQ is top notch.

While it's neither here nor there, I watched Batman Begins last night on HD-DVD. The PQ was pretty good, but not the best I've seen out of HD-DVD. The PQ wasn't any better than Serenity (which is also quite good) and I thought wasn't as good as The Corpse Bride. I was somewhat disappointed with some of the banding and edge artifacts on white/bright objects. High contrast edges tended to show some halos at times. But yeah, either way, the PQ coming out of HD-DVD is great.

I doubt we see another widely distributed movie format on disc.

You may be right about the disc part... Upcoming storage media technologies are taking various other shapes. Many of the holographic applications being researched now take various shapes from cards about the size and thickness of a credit card to a 4cm cube. Not all are based on a spinning disc implementation.

I think there will always be a tangible medium for delivering a hard copy of music or movies. Consumers want it. People were saying this very same thing about music 10 years ago... Here we are today, CD sales continue to hold steady even with online buying options. Even for what people download, most still want a type of media to store that on and not necessarily hard drives or their iPod being the final destination.

It may take time for another format to supplant HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but it will happen. 1080P HD delivered via a compressed data stream is hardly the pinnacle of potential for our current display technology, let alone upcoming display systems. Sony and Runco are already shipping 4K projectors at prices lower than 1080P/2K projectors were selling for only 3 years ago. TI is ready to ship full 2K DMD systems for DLP TVs and are applying their wobulation technique to build 4K DLP systems, expected sometime next year. And even as broadband access continues to grow and serve more areas, newer technology will need to come about to increase speeds and overall bandwidth.

We'll see. If yet another disc format comes out I want to see

10-bit per channel RGB
4:2:2 color sampling
huge bandwidth
3840x2160 resolution

Er... How do you figure 30bit RGB and 4:2:2?

Current HD-DVD and Blu-Ray standards allow for 10bpc as does the ATSC broadcast standard. And you would want full 4:4:4 representation for that 10bit color stream.. Why cripple it? While were at it, since we're hypothesizing a new format with huge capacity and ample bandwidth, why not just go full on 16bits/channel 4:4:4, lossless, 4K resolution. I figure that optical/holographic media that could reliably and affordably handle that sort of data requirement is probably about 10 years off. Or about where HD-DVD/Blu-Ray were 10 years ago - just a sparkle of hope in some lab demonstration as the DVD format was just starting to show up. Oh, wow, has it been that long? Yep, almost... I bought my first DVD movie in '98.

I agree on the 4K resolution, though.

 

[sarge]

Oh there's a need alright

Right now, we have a 2k sqft vault lined end to end w/rolling racks filled w/tape and have effectively run out of room for anything else. That represents 10 years of 24/7 programming. Now imagine archives that are 50 - 100 years old and you've got serious issues to contend with. Our whole operation is going to move to tapeless in the next 5 years. If I go out now and shoot native 720/24P on my HVX, one hour of footage costs me 32G's worth of drive space. 24x32=768Gigs per day!!! For me, those drives cannot come fast enough.

Also, all those films that are coming out on DVD now were made from 35mm prints which allows for the beautiful image quality you're getting on your home theatre. This is why we need a digital format with enough integrity to move into the future with.

I second that 4:4:4 color space!

 

[AppliedVisual]

Ah, a fellow HVX user. Hooorah!

Bring on the BluRay recordables and holographic storage... Tape archives are killin' me too.

 

[Symtex]

As long as Sony will use MPEG2 for their blu-ray release, they will fail. The first BD50 release was done last week (Click) and the PQ is still subpar compare to HD-DVD. THere is no excuse for such a poor release.