Already feeling the pinch of a mere 25GB per layer on a Blu-ray disc? Neither are we, but it looks like Sony and Panasonic have been busily working on ways to boost capacity nonetheless, and they've now devised a new method that seems to be on the fast track to becoming a standard. The best news is that it doesn't involve a change in Blu-ray optics, but rather something called the Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation evaluation index (or i-MLSE -- the "i' is just for kicks, it seems), which is a new means of estimating the read error rate of discs on the fly that has apparently be made possible thanks to "recent hardware advancements." According to Sony and Panasonic, that should now allow discs to hold up to 33.4 GB per layer, but it's not exactly clear what that means for existing Blu-ray players (a little firmware assistance seems to at least be a conceivable option, though). There's also no timeline for a rollout just yet, but Sony is reportedly now set to propose widespread adoption of i-MLSE to the Blu-ray Disc Association, of which it just so happens to be the leading member.
posted January 2nd 2010 10:27AM
@(Unverified) thats wrong. cheaper price per mb on hds BY far vs bluray or dvds actually
Ahh if this was released two years ago, maybe the Japanese voice over in MGS4 was gonna be available on the american version. Back in 2007 they said it couldn't fit on a 50GB blu-ray. :(
Until I can get non-compressed-to-hell-pixelated-garbage video and lossless audio via Netflix or other *legal* streaming methods I will be happy to stick with Blu-ray.
As for downloading my stance is this: If you aren't comfortable walking into a store and stealing a movie then you shouldn't be comfortable stealing it online either. The internet is full of anonymous a**holes.
@DizWhiz
I'm not saying that downloading movies illegally is right. But its not the same as outright stealing a movie from a store.
When you download, you aren't depriving anyone of physical property, you're being freely given a copy. And you don't get all the pretty packaging, ect.
@shanoboy See you're rationalizing! Stealing is stealing because somewhere someone isn't getting paid for that file you downloaded.
Hundreds of people rely on residual income from the sale of DVD/Blu-ray discs/Legal downloads (not just producers, directors or ego-maniacal stars) because it's their job to make movies. Sure you aren't hurting a local business but you are still stealing wages from Grip's, Costume designers, Editors etc.
I stand by my statement about anonymous a**holes.
@DizWhiz
I agree that you are depriving someone, somewhere of wages. And I agree with your statement about anonymous aholes.
But the other side has an argument. If one was to either A) not watch it at all, or B) download it, who looses? And again, if you take it out of someone else' hands, its more of a sense of stealing.
By your logic, it would be illegal to rent the movie from a rental place. Since the rental place only pays for one copy, but then pockets the money from many people viewing it. Boom, a few hundred views of the movie, and only one copy sold. (Of course, at the risk of sounding naive, I stand behind this point neglecting the fact that the rental place pays some fees, as not all rental outfits do. Major ones like Blockbuster pay a tonne of royalties, but your local, low profile convince store doesn't.)
Hundreds of people do rely on that income. And thousands don't. Ever seen MTV Cribs?
@DizWhiz
You can't argue that in every case. A lot of people only download things they wouldn't actually buy anyways. And if its good, lets say that person were to talk up how good X movie or X game is, maybe it would spur someone to buy it, or even that person who downloaded it to buy it because it is THAT good. I'm SICK of buying games that are nothing that they're hyped to be, nothing that you payed for them to be, and everything you never wanted them to be. A lot of pirates will claim that they usually end up buying things after having downloaded it and realizing how good it is. This is especially true for music. How much music is out there? With all the mediums to get this music, I think only one offers convenience and possibility to get to all of them. There is no way someone could buy all the music to see what they like best, they couldn't afford it. And it takes a lot of time to filter through all these sites with 30 second samples which are nearly useless or going through ad's to listen to the full songs to determine if you like the music. illegally downloading is the only way to accomplish that, and if that specific person's intent was to buy the music they liked after they eventually found it, then the artist's and those involved who deserved the money will get their money.
@DarrellJ88
I would also like to add, the faces of these products we buy are pretty ruthless themselves. I know a lot of people have discs from their 360's that get screwed all to hell, especially when 360 is standing up and with decent vibration it makes the disc move inside which creates a scratch on the disc rendering it useless. My Madden 09 disc is like this. Will EA replace it for me, given the fact that the only money they would be losing is the physical media and the handling/packaging? Will Microsoft replace it? No, neither of them will, and neither of them will even charge a reasonable fee. It's upwards of 20 or 30 to replace discs from just some of the companies who will replace them at all. Sorry, but a lot of these companies are no better than the "anonymous a**holes" you speak of.
@celebbbb Good point about the rental business. I know the VHS era (yes I'm old and worked at Blockbuster years ago) they paid royalties per/rental but not so much with DVDs. At least you can say someone bought a copy at least =).
My biggest point is that with the dawn of the internet age we make more and more concessions on 'right' and 'wrong' and especially 'legal' vs 'illegal'. If you thought "Man I-Robot sucked so I will just go to Walmart and steal a copy, wasn't going to buy it anyway!" most of you would think that is ridiculous. Take the same scenario, add the net and anonymity and suddenly you can justify it to yourself and off you go with your free download.
I'm just glad I got a discussion going on this so bonus points for everyone for joining in.
@DarrellJ88 Hey life isn't fair and corporations are evil, what else is new? Does it suck? Yep. Does it have anything to do with illegal downloads? Nope.
@DizWhiz
Actually, it does have something to do with illegal downloads. It is their products being illegally downloaded. Same companies crying foul over their products being illegally downloaded are the same ones shafting the people who legally buy it. The question I ask myself then is, why bother supporting such a company? And there is a difference between stealing from a store and saying "Well I wasn't going to buy it anyways" vs downloading it and saying the same thing. The store loses the disc, who knows how much it costs them to replace it, the publisher also loses the disc, I'm sure it costs them less to replace it but still costs them nonetheless. illegally downloading, the only "loser" is probably the ISP's, but even then, they essentially authorize that amount of bandwidth passing through both users, it would be no different than sending the same amount of legal data vs illegal data, just most people don't have reason to send that much legal data.
@DizWhiz
If I steal a copy of I-Robot from WalMart, I am adding costs to WalMart, their insurance company, and the distributor who supplies WalMart. If I borrow a digital copy from the internet, no one is being deprived, because had I not had access to the 1080p rip on the internet, I would not have watched the movie anyway.
Although it's true that it's not 100% legit indeed, I do not believe it is anywhere as big of a deal as people make it out to be. Ask anyone if they've seen a movie, and chances are they'll only see it at the theater, rent the DVD/BR, or buy it - whether the disc, or PPV. Who actually downloads movies? Nerds and geeks like us who probably wouldn't watch the movie any other way anyway. Most people wouldn't even know how to download a quality copy of a movie in a method that's not just a method for the recording association to commit felonies against people (infecting their computers with virii, trojans, corrupting their data, etc). The real crimes are being committed by the MPAA and RIAA. They need to be reeled in and ignored.
@DizWhiz are you kidding me? show me where anybody is getting paid royalties.
publishers pay the the manufacturers to make the disk and then sell it to us through various channels. the only payment the publisher sees in the initial sale to the distributor.
@DizWhiz Yeah, I remember people like you saying the same thing about MP3s & other music downloads.
How's that working out again??
Now if only my Mac could play blueray (sigh).
How am I the only person who looked at that graph and immediately wanted a Nerd Rope. Anyone? I can't possibly be the only one who sees it.
You know what I don't get, Engadget HD still thinks all these proposed Blu-ray developments are going to trickle into the Movie industry... when they're not. These upgrades in disc media is meant to try to spurn on adoption in the storage industry, which disc media has become a thing of the past for the most part. These upgrades are an attempt to stay ahead of the SSD and Flash Media storage devices which offer far greater compatibility and usability pros than any disc media out there. Over the past 3 years I've seen promises of 90GB, 120GB, 250GB, raging all the way up to a potential of a 1TB Blu-ray disc, how many of these discs have I seen on the market zero, zilch, nada, a big fat goose egg. These discs are pipe dreams concocted by companies who have invested billions in Blu-ray only to see it flounder in their primary target market and not see it take off in the secondary markets.
@3dpenguin
+1 SDXC cards will start showing up on the market this quarter in 32GB & 64GB. Granted they won't hit their 2TB limit anytime soon, but with faster transfer rates and constantly increasing sizes, higher capacity BD doesn't have a chance at going anywhere outside the lab.
Didn't HD DVD have a per layer capacity bump on deck before the plug got pulled? Well this bump is just about as relevant as that one was, which is to say not very.
@webdev511
My point exactly...
Here's the kicker though...
USB 2.0 (The most common type of flash media now) has a maximum transfer rate of 480Mbps vs Blu-ray's video transfer rate at 54Mbps and data at 40Mbps, the next generation of USB is going to be nearly 10x faster than 2.0, and even without a dedicated USB 2.0 board you can still get speeds faster than Blu-ray and its high transfer laser can handle.
The future of storage media, which is and was the entire intent with the Blu-ray format, is bleak. DVD Forum and many other groups have stated that Optical media was dying before HD DVD came out but they went ahead with the format because they thought it could be used to transition people from one media to another. Sony, one of the primary developers of Blu-ray, on the other had would have nothing to do with a transitional media and they wanted to try to replace DVD with another optical format. What's happened with that? They've gotten to the point like almost every other company in the industry of offering their movies on down loadable digital formats, and even give them out for free with purchase of their movies, in Sony's case only Blu-ray.
Is Hollywood interested in extending the life of optical media? No. Why do they keep supporting it? Because people still buy it and as long as that happens they will sell it, people stopped buying VHS and they stopped making it. The music industry, which includes most of Hollywood's big studio players, hasn't exactly been secretive about their support of digitally downloaded content in a controlled situation, and CDs, Sony's former big money maker, have taken a hit for it.
The future is digital file content on a none optical media, how will that be delivered I'm not the person to ask, but several of the players in the HD DVD/Blu-ray war are now looking at forms of delivery or have already adopted one.
Sony and Microsoft - Both offer rentals and purchases from their respective networks
Toshiba - Still working on an alternative delivery method.
DVD Forum - also working on an alternative delivery method to cut out the distributors to reduce the cost of distribution.
Shoot even your disc manufactures all have interests in seeing flash media and SSD take off, they are all looking for ways to increase capacity or speed them up.
@webdev511
"+1 SDXC cards will start showing up on the market this quarter in 32GB & 64GB."
Yes, at what price? 4gb at Microcenter is 11 dollars. 4gb DVD blanks much cheaper. You see optical media will always be cheaper.
@3dpenguin
"DVD Forum and many other groups have stated that Optical media was dying before HD DVD came out but they went ahead with the format because they thought it could be used to transition people from one media to another."
Link to back up this statement???
Since when has the DVD forum been the end all decider on the life of optical media?? Seems that most consumers are happy with optical media.
I believe most of the members of the DVD forum jumped ship from support of HDDVD to BD. If I remember correctly Toshibia was one of the only members of the DVD forum making a player. The rest of the forum must have disagreed since they started making BD players early in the life of the product.
"Is Hollywood interested in extending the life of optical media? No. Why do they keep supporting it? Because people still buy it and as long as that happens they will sell it,"
- Isn't this why most companies sell product? To sell the items they make?? That's like saying that Mcdonalds continues to make hamburgers because people continue to buy them? Duh!
@towergrove
No, it's not going to be cheap from the start, but SDXC is a medium for transfer, not what you're buying. Just as a refresher, the process goes like this....
1. Bring your own SDXC (or Secure USB Flash Drive) to BestBuy, Blockbuster, Redbox, etc.
2. Select the title you want to Buy/Rent
3. Load title on to media
4. Go home
5. Plug Media into PS3, Xbox, BD-Player w/usb port and watch it.
6.
a) if you bought it, transfer it to your media server
b) if you rented it and want to keep it, go on the web to unlock it then transfer to media server.
c) if you rented it and don't want to keep it, delete it.
7. Put your SDXC card back in your pocket and load it up the next time you hit the store.
As far as the DVD forum and optical media goes, the whole "The next optical format will be the last because flash will be more than ready in ten years or less" argument was brought up in the DVD forum BEFORE the split by the Blu-ray camp. Those that left for Blu either didn't believe it or didn't like where the licensing was going.
Blu won the format war, but BD and profile 2.0 players aret going to feel the heat from flash (SDXC to be specific) well inside the above predicted 10 years. on the upside, we've got a very solid format to hold us over until 2013 or so.
@webdev511
"Those that left for Blu either didn't believe it or didn't like where the licensing was going."
Which was most of the DVD forum. Remember Toshibia was one of the only major electronics companies making HDDVD.
You also didn't mention that the new high capacity and transfer rate SDXC cards require a new memory card reader that most PC dont have yet.
@towergrove
Actually it was only a handful of DVD Forum, DVD Forum contains more members than BDA, and the ones that backed Blu-ray, they didn't leave DVD Forum, were all in the electronics industry, and supporters of what Sony was feeding them, there would be more profits from Blu-ray because of the reason why limited profits for DVD was removed, they allowed format controlled branding, which DVD Forum didn't, all logo's, naming, and the like had/have to be approved through DVD Forum, and no trademarking beyond manufacturer/company name was allowed without pre-approval from the forum, thus the everything generic naming function came about. Blu-ray is the opposite, yet none of these patented and copyrighted devices and brands ever hit the market because the price dropped out from under them thanks to Sony and the PS3 and then competition from cheaper players later on. Sony's promises were empty just to protect their already failed interests, Blu-ray has failed once already back in 2001.
New readers for the SDXC cards what shall we do??? It doesn't matter the readers are cheap, and you know how many SD card types have been released already, and everybody upgraded to those. Standard defence against emerging technologies, "but... but.. but... we'll have to buy something" yet you can't face the facts that the same goes for Blu-ray, a format which is OLD technology.
This signals it, blu ray is going away in 2-3 years, and it's replacement will not be backwards compatible. Crystal radio sets for everyone.
I got an idea, sony could buy up the patent for HD-DVD and introduce that as bluray-HD , I hear it's on a new-year clearance sale.
While this is nice, seriously, who cares?
@Olternaut
All the person minus
a) people that don't have a full hd screen.
b) people that don't own or have a blu-ray (obvious).
c) people that download from the net.
d) people that (ilegally) download from the net.
e) people that think that dvd is fair enough.
f) people that think that cable/satellite is enough.
g) people that think that analog tv is enough (70% of the population).
Optical is dead. Only Hollywood cares about it. The discs will never get cheaper they have already been around for years now and still remain humorously expensive. The burners are still expensive and will remain expensive. The data transfer is slow. The capacity is low.
@dicobalt:
Optical is far from dead. Most people prefer having something physcial over something downloaded. Discs could be cheaper, but they make more by keeping prices up. By having DVD around they can price more than DVD to make it look like it's worth more and better(even though it is better). Hollywood would love to push downloaded content to you, then they can DRM it to hell. They can lock it down to one or a few devices instead of allowing you to buy a disc to let all your friends borrow. They would make more money as they wouldn't have to produce the media - yet they would charge just as much.
There were only 2 movies I wanted to see this year. Bluetoothyray be damned. Good movies on bad medium are better than HI Def surrond sound crap.
I'm all for increased capacity for physical media, but I don't think the current market can handle a change for the next 8 years.
Consumer formats should have multiple revisions. Don't fragment the base.
@spin cycle Er, shouldn't have multiple versions. Whoops.
maybe now they can put the extras and the movie on one disc, at least untill they need the space for 3D
would be nice to have a mini mini mini blu-ray for my netbook instead of having to buy a stupid external DVD writer for $60 a few months ago...what are they waiting for, dammit...
These new proposals are as meaningless for blu ray video as they were for HD DVD and the reason is obvious. The 50Gb disk specification has been defined and players have implemented that specification. There are too many players, many of which almost certainly cannot read the new format.
The only way I could see being useful is exclusively for PS3 games where a single vendor controls the hardware and presumably can upgrade the firmware to ensure all models can read the disks.
For video though - forget it.
Or they can sell every sucker a new player and make a billion.
They pulled stunts like that before in the industry.
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