http://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/stories/2004/12/06/daily34.html?jst=b_ln_hl

heath

A lot of studios have pledged their support for a camp, see:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35640

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/19/news_6125979.html

If you encode MPEG4 it will not take long and we'll have 1.8 inch high def DVDs, just like UMD or what you call discs in Playstation Portable.

Radek

Awww, check this out. The Blue-Ray disc folks want you to have an Internet
connection for media authenticity. In the case of authentification failure,
they'll lock up your player. Yeah, like, I'll buy one of those !

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050810_131820.html
Blu-ray makes unexpected, three-way DRM choice for high-def DVD

Scott M Fulton III

August 10, 2005 - 13:18 EST

Hollywood (CA) - In an announcement last night, the Blu-ray Disc Association, led by Sony, representing one of two competing high-definition DVD formats, stated it will simultaneously embrace digital watermarking, programmable cryptography, and a self-destruct code for Blu-ray disc players.

like everythign else, some clever guy in asia will reverse engineer it and break through the locking codes by hacking the bios of the unit to accept any disc thats thrown in it.. ...

im not too fussed, hell they did it with PS2, which was "unchippable" ... Not to mention the Xbox and even gamecube... whats to stop them doing it for any other unit?

these copy protection schemes DONT work.. when will they realise that? Instead, lower the prices and people WONT NEED to copy

>these copy protection schemes DONT work.. when will they realise that? >Instead, lower the prices and people WONT NEED to copy[/QUOTE]

I can't resist.

Ok. How low should the price be ? DVDs can be had for $10 at Walmart if you're willing to wait a few years. New releases cost $20, or $13 if you're willing to buy a used disk.

The price that people wnat to pay is only the cost of the media, although obviously, they're paying more than that right now. I've been through this process with ORIGINAL video material. There is no other source for this material, yet my friends want a copy.

Most of my computer-savvy friends think that all CD-Rs and DVD-Rs cost $0.20/each. When I tell them that the rest of the materials (plastic box, sheet of glossy photo paper, and ink to print on the disk and photo paper) cost me about $3/disk, they don't believe it. This doesn't even
involve the items used to burn and print the disk. DVD-burners and printers
don't last forever.

Great DVD burners are cheap, but a few years ago, I bought my first DVD burner for $400. No one understood why I paid that much money when CD burners were $60. A good photo printer costs about $400 and $100 for ink replacement.

Consumers do not value intellectual property, largely because it is cheap and easy to steal. Air is free. The radio and TV are "free". And, so should be music and movies, the masses think. The record and movie industries kinda dug themselves in a hole when they decided to reduce their own duplication costs.

The only reason a record
industry existed was that personal duplication was prohibitively expensive.
People are currently "paying" for DVDs. The cost is about $4 for a rental,
excluding the cost to transport the disk but including the selection experience.

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/jp/20050829_102600.html

Piuoneer shows Blu-ray DVD burner for PC

By Akihabara News Japan

August 29, 2005 - 10:26 EST

Would you believe me if I tell you that there is a Pioneer DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-+DL and BR (Blu-ray) burner and that it's called BRD-101A? Well, you'd better, and here's the proof! A Korean site (that gets its news from a Chinese site) provides us pictures that this internal PC Blu-ray DVD burner really exists. Noteworthy is that this burner does not support CD's and DVD-RAM's.

Not sure I want to know the price of that DVD recorder. Bleeding edge is never cheap. (That's why it's called bleeding edge. It bleeds your wallet. <g>)

http://news.com.com/Pioneer+to+sell+Blu-ray+drive+in+early+06/2100-1041_3-6010157.html?tag=nefd.pop

heath

No big suprise as there has to be a factory cranking out millions of BluRay drives for the Sony PS3 and I do mean millions. I'm just suprised by the HD-DVD comment as last I heard they did not even have a final HD-DVD spec.

http://news.com.com/Fiddling+with+format+while+DVDs+burn/2100-1041_3-6010288.html?tag=nefd.top

heath

Ok The article lost me with the $1,000 players. The Sony PS3 will play Blu-Ray with estimates of launch price ranging from $299 to $399 US.

And that's what will help things. I read in OXM (Official Xbox Magazine) the Xbox head in Japan wants the Xbox 360 to play back HD DVDs, but continue to use regular DVDs to put the HD games on...

heath

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060104/law072.html?.v=38

The first slate of BD titles encompasses a diverse mix of genres including The Fifth Element, in multichannel uncompressed audio Bram Stoker's Dracula, Desperado, For a Few Dollars More, The Guns of Navarone, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight's Tale, Kung Fu Hustle, The Last Waltz, Legends of the Fall, Resident Evil Apocalypse, Robocop, Sense and Sensibility, Stealth, Species, SWAT and XXX. Black Hawk Down and The Bridge on the River Kwai will also be available on 50 GB, dual-layer Blu-ray Discs Summer 2006.

There were some other studios that announced Blu-Ray movies, but the Blu-Ray players won't be out for several more months.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/entertainment/2006/03/15/sony-playstation-delay-cz_km_0315playstation.html

But the supposed reason for the delay raises as many questions as it answers. In February, Sony signed off on the specifications for AACS, the Blu-Ray copy-protection standard, and was ready to make licensing agreements with content producers. At the CeBIT technology show in Germany last week, Sony said it would be shipping VAIO computers with built-in Blu-ray drives by mid-2006, so why would the PS3 Blu-ray implementation take so much longer? Other companies seem to be on schedule with regard to the copy protection in Blu-ray.

The first consumer authoring software to offer HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc support. Capture, edit, author and burn HD content for the ultimate in picture and sound quality.
http://www.ulead.com/dmf/runme.htm
trial 81MB _http://ftp.ulead.com.tw/pub/Trial/Dmf5/dmf5_trialstn_e.exe

Sony will ship the BDP-S1 Blu-ray player at a price around $1000. It'll play standard DV and uses HDMI connections to enhance the image.

Sony Vaio laptops will also feature Blu-ray drives. (Not sure if it offers burning capabilities.)

The BWU-100A is an internal drive that can burn a 25GB blu-ray disc in about 30 minutes as well as burn standard dvds. The price of this drive has not been announced yet.

Sony will do Blu-Ray demos at 32 Sony Style retail stores and is running a pre-launch Blu-Ray campaign at sonystyle.com

more info can be found from: http://www.homemediaretailing.com/index.cfm?sec_id=2&newsid=8792

Oh to be able to burn Blu-Ray or HD-DVD's!

Sony releases worlds first note book computer with blue ray burner to sell later this summer. I wonder if it will edit 24p and how powerful it will really be, I did not see spec's on this system.
http://160.33.129.15/en/press_room/consumer/computer_peripheral/notebooks/release/22113.html

Editing doesn't have much to do with the hardware, that's mainly a software
thing. For discussion / rumours etc. on the laptop continue in the already
existing thread in our industry news forum:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=67519

I saw this in my inbox (http://www.live.sonylc.webcollage.net/server/compusa/sonylc-category-full-content-page/httpb?ws-action=http://www.live.sonylc.webcollage.net/_wc/enlarge.jsp?url%3d/www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/hpd/bluray/so_tester.swf%26width%3d1024%26height%3d600%26bgcolor%3dtransparent%26popwidth%3d640%26popheight%3d4 50~&ws-containerurl=http://content.webcollage.net/compusa/educational-content-page?topic%3dsonylc-televisions-showcase-bluraydemo&wcpc=televisions-showcase-bluraydemo&MarkupType=document&PresentationFormat=html).

hwm

I am goning to edit my Z1 footage by Vegas and then put the file in Blu-ray disc. Hopefully, 2 hour 1080i footage could be stored in a 25GB Blu-ray disc.

My question is :
Could I play back this Blu-ray disc by future Blu-ray desk player?

Do I need a authoring software to output my 1080i file and then burn this file to Blu-ray disc?

I heard that Canopus Edius Pro is able to edit Z1 footage and then output the file with its authoring feature so that the file could be played back by future Blu-ray desk player. Is it correct?

I heard that Canopus Edius Pro is able to edit Z1 footage and then output the file with its authoring feature so that the file could be played back by future Blu-ray desk player. Is it correct?

Edius Pro can edit and output 1080i HDV footage which should be trasferrable to Blu-ray discs in the future, but Edius doesn't currently support Blu-ray compatible disc authoring. Blu-ray authoring tools from any company are still in final development stages, so it may be a few more months before you can burn a fully playable Blu-ray disc.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/afx/2006/06/04/afx2791613.html

hwm

http://aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23649

heath

Hey, don't know if this is the right place to post this, might have been the DVD section, but oh well.

Okay, earlier today my family and I were taking some visiting relatives around the new Ceasar's Palace Forum section here in Las Vegas and I decided to step into the SonyStyle store they had there, primarily to look at their 1080p HDTVs. As I walk in, I start looking around at all the "Click" promo stuff all around and the DVD-looking cases with blue tops catch my eye. I go over to look and, yes, they're Bluray movies, pretty good lineup too. I didn't know if they had really come out yet or not, now I know. I then asked one of the people there if they had any of the movies playing on the TVs and they had a Bluray demo they were showing and I could watch a little bit of one of the movies on their Bluray-capable laptops there. So I did and House of Flying Daggers probably wasn't the best movie to show on a cheesy VAIO laptop screen, looked pretty noisy to me. So then I go to look at the demo and I'm just blown away by the difference in image quality. Granted, they were showing me this on one of their top 1080p televisions, but in any case it looked cool.

The big difference I noticed was in background images and minor details. For instance, the demo showed an SD and HD comparison of the Hatori Hanzo scene from "Kill Bill". There was a curtain next to The Bride that showed extra folds and whisps in the HD that were not apparent in the SD DVD version, in the background the swords on the wall rack were more visible as well, there was also a lot less noise in the overall image.

Looking at the prices for the Bluray titles currently available, it was $30, but that's probably the SonyStyle pricing hike so it would be about $20-25 at Best Buy or somewhere else, basic new DVD pricing. They had recordable discs as well, $25.99 for a 25gb disc. Not bad, reminds me of the first DVD+RW discs back when we got recordable DVDs for the first time.

I haven't seen any HD-DVD displays up and running anywhere, maybe they'll have something at Fry's when I go this weekend. But in any case, Bluray is looking pretty darn good. Does anybody else have any opinions on this subject? Has anybody seen both and already made their own comparisons?

I saw HD-DVD at my local Best Buy, my only point of reference was the HD I get off of my Satellite dish and my Sony HDV camera and it was certainly a cleaner picture than either of those.

http://aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23707

hwm

I am writing a letter to movie makers all over Brazil as to decide on the best option
cost wise for a HD video format to be chosen as a standard in Brazil´s Film festivals. So
far the festivals here welcome video. But they are usually displayed in DVDs and Betacam.
These formats are far from ideal to be projected on a large screen. Initially I believe
Blu Ray would be an option if we compare to HDCAM or DVCPRO HD as the costs of
copying tapes and renting a player are not everyone´s cup of tea. I also welcome
sugestions on Instalation projectors to go along with. Thank you all in advance this site
is amazing.

Alexandre

Here in the states it mostly DVD, Beta, and Digibeta(at least at the fesivals I've been to). The problem with migrating to BR is that nobody really has it yet. As far as Beta vs BR HD that's tough. Digibeta is like the ultimate evolution of SD, Blue Ray is going to use a heavy compression like mpeg2 but be HD. I think that if BR supported a format like DVCPROHD I'd choose BR, but it doensn't and for now digibeta looks awesome.

Interesting http://www.samsung.com/Products/DVDPlayer/HiDefConversion/DVD_HD960XAA.asp

Steven,

I saw that at Circuit City a little while ago. Two years ago, they had a DVD player that helped make DVDs with higher bit rates or masted in HD before going to SD look better. Didn't look any better to me (I bought and returned one and the tests were inconclusive to me).

heath

http://news.com.com/2061-10801_3-6092194.html?tag=txt%22

hwm

Yes, this could bridge the gap just fine.... Ricoh's device isn't a complete player mechanism itself, but does allow for the construction of a player that can re-focus the laser as needed to read HD-DVD, DVD and CD formats in addition to BluRay. It would be up to Sony and Toshiba to both issue licenses for their formats to any device/player that uses Ricoh's new component. If a company can accomplish that (obtain licenses for both formats for a player device), then universal players will become a reality.

...Now if we examine the unpleasant truth, LG as well as two other technology companies have developed universal player mechanisms already and thus far, Sony has refused to grant BluRay licenses to these devices. While it may be against the law for Sony to disallow a license because the device is or could also be licensed for a competing format, that doesn't mean they can't still disallow a license and simply state some other bogus reason like they don't feel it's of sufficeint quality or they don't approve of some manufacturing method of an individual part, etc..

So in other words we'll have to wait for the Chinese to step up to the plate with universal players as they don't particularly have much interest in licenses.

If that happens it could be just whats needed to push Sony and Toshiba into granting legal licenses.

http://aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23971

hwm

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060725005117&newsLang=en

hwm

Has Bluray won already? Where's the HD-DVD support announcements?

Has Bluray won already? Where's the HD-DVD support announcements?


Nope. Sonic will support both.

http://www.sonic.com/about/press/news/2005/01/hddvd.aspx

We already learned (here at dvInfo.net) that it is not possible to edit 1080i content and 720p content in the same file in Final Cut Pro. Now, we have a question about what the HD DVDs ("HD-DVD" and "Blu-Ray") can handle in terms of 1080i content and 720p content that are from different FCP files.

Here is our example situation:
We normally rent a second Sony Z1U when we want to do a 2-camera shoot. But now that we have purchased the JVC GY-HD100, renting a second camera has become much more expensive. Not sure why but it costs way more to rent the JVC. So we are thinking, "that's OK: We'll just do the two-camera shoots with two Z1Us, as we did before the upgrade to the JVC camera."

The idea is that as long as our DVD products are standard definition, we can easily create two different files in Final Cut Pro for editing -- one for the 720p work, and one for the 1080i work -- and then place the resulting portions of the production as separate menu items on the same SD DVD. The nature of our work is such that the 'originally 1080i' (Z1U) content can be kept completely separate from the 'originally 720p' content (GY-HD100), as separate menu items on the compressed DVD product.

But what about the future, when we may want to re-issue these products on Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?

If part of a production is shot in 720p and part in 1080i, can these two HD formats be place together as separate menu items on the same HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVD?

Hi,

When the time comes to purchase a Blu-Ray burner, what is the best way to export the timeline? Does Compressor offer a solution that isn't as time consuming as H.264?

Since Blu-Ray holds so much more info, I was hoping I wouldn't need to waste so much time sqeezing it down with H.264.

Does DVD Studio Pro support Blu Ray disks?

Not many replies huh?

So far I've found an "HD-DVD 30min" codec in compressor. It encodes the HD content using mpeg-2 instead of H.264. This should save time. I don't need the heavy H.264 compression sinch I'll have 50GB B/R DVD's to work with.
Still don't know if DVD Studio Pro will support Blu-Ray.

This sure is a fun conversation I'm having with myself :)

I'm not sure, but just commenting:

Wouldn't this be the same or comparable to having the "widescreen" version and full-frame version on a DVD? Or having a DVD that has 60i content and 24p content in 2 different tracks?

Couldn't you just encode 2 different tracks (one as 1080i and the other as 720p) so your menu options point to each track?

I received a Sony BWU100A drive two weeks ago…the box (with a very low serial#) arrived without the software disc. The “Cyberlink BD Solution 1.0” was mailed by Sony and I have been experimenting with it.

The drive will, of course, make CD, DVD and BD data discs without problems.

For video, I wanted to put my latest HDV project (1080x1440 30i) of 99 minutes on a disc with chapter buttons and further chapter marks for intervening scenes. The bundled software CAN import, add chapter marks and burn to BD-RE, but the menu making module was omitted for now. The software took my edited .avi file (From PremierePro2.0 + Cineform Access HD) of 87gigs (!) and encoded it to 19.3 gigs on BD-RE – about the same size/data rate as it would be on the source HDV tape. This was using Cyberlink Producer 3.3 – BD Edition, version 3.7.0.2824

The resulting disc played and looked stunning, using the included player: PowerDVD 6.6 BD Edition. When inserted into a Samsung BDP1000 on display at an accommodating nearby retailer, the disc WOULD NOT LOAD, and the machine had to be unplugged before eventually ejecting the disc. Of course, there is no way, at present, to tell if it is the Samsung or, more likely, the Cyberlink software at fault.

I also made a test disc with short segments, (including a resolution chart) in four different formats: HDV-1080x1440 16:9, NTSC-DV-480x720 16:9, NTSC-DV-480-720 4:3 and finally PAL-DV-576x720 25fps 16:9. The PowerDVD software played each in sequence, at the correct aspect ration and with only a half second flicker between each segment. If you were going to do this in a finished project, you would want to fade in and out of black and have no audio running over the transition. This disc would not load in the Samsung player either.

Unfortunately, the “capture” function in PowerProducer would not work on any camera (DV or HDV) or from any mode (DVD or BD). While this port on the moterhboard (TI-OCHI) and its Microsoft driver are flawless in PremierePro, it crashed the entire OS if tried in PowerProducer……But then I was not planning to use that function. Also, it would not import the mpeg2 file Cineform makes for exporting back into the camera. There it just crashed the application, not the OS.

For those of you into the details, here is the logical layout of the disc:
Only folder: BDAV
Sub folders: CLIPINF with a tiny file 00001.clpi
PLAYLIST with a tiny file 00001.roks
STREAM with a file 00001.m2ts of 19.336 gigs for 99 minutes

Cyberlink’s PowerToGo “DeskData” application was used to copy the above disc, and that too played in PowerDVD software but we did not try it in the Samsung. There is no explicit “Copy BD movie” tab.

So, at this date (Sep 14, 2006) you CAN put HDV on Blu-ray, but without a menu but you will have little assurance it will play in a Blu-ray player. I expect Cyberlink, with Sony’s urging, will get these features working soon. I certainly hope we have something better from Adobe soon – we don’t need every advanced feature of BDjava menus working for a first version.

http://www.twice.com/article/CA6380066.html

I can't wait for the first prototype.

I've been trying, with no luck, to burn 1920x1080 HD files to the Sony blu-ray burner using their bundled cyberlink power-producer software (Mpeg or avi files made from Premiere Pro 2, using mainconcept pro HD for mpeg attempts). Using a PS3 as the player.. it works great with commercial blu-ray titles. I upgraded to the latest power-producer 4 software.. PP4 imports the files OK and then appears to burn OK, and I can see the the m2ts file when exploring the disk (so burning is at least partially working), but it will not play on the PS3... the PS3 does recognize the file & it's title, but gives an unsupportable format error. Cyberlink's support info for burning any type of files other than HDV camcorder imports is next to non-existent.. just says it accepts mpeg and avi files for burning. I've tried many mpeg file formats from Premiere and also tried hdv format.. I suspect the problem has something to do with making the right codec/mux/rate choices for the avi or mpeg file creation in premiere, but haven't found the secret.

Has anyone had any luck finding a reliable workflow for getting true HD exports from Premiere burnt to blu-ray using the Sony burner?

Doug - Most likely PP4 is reencoding your Premiere Pro assets to MPEG2-TS. So the variable of whether you are using .avi's, mpeg-2, or HDV MainConcept isn't really the issue. I've tried burning files in PP4 and have been able to confirm compatibility with a Sony set-top Blu-ray player but haven't tried it in the PS3 yet. I might get access to one this week.

The bad part about the MPEG2-TS files that PP4 creates is that when viewed on a high-definition TV it shows huge ugly digital compression artifacts. I don't see these artifacts though when viewing on a computer monitor. Why is there that difference in picture quality?

BTW, The one iffy variable that is specific to my burning scenario is the use of Panasonic 2x discs.

~Eugene
www.filmtransfer.com
eugene@filmtransfer.com

Well, I have a Sony BDP-S1 player and it does a beautiful job on purchased BD-ROMs, but playability of my own BD-RE discs will have to await the firmware update in early 2007.

http://esupport.sony.com/perl/news-item.pl?mdl=BDPS1&news_id=163&mdl=BDPS1

Although I have never gotten confirmation anywhere, I believe the "un-playability" of user content all stems from a late Spring'06 decision for user-created content to be written to folder BDAV instead of rights-management endowed BDMV folders that Hollywood discs use. Thus Cyberlink and other recent software is doing it exactly as the Blu-Ray Association demands. It is the players that need updating.

As an aside, the above post complained that the PowerProducerForBluRay crashed when presented with .m2t (transport stream) files. The solution is to return them to "elementary streams" with ReMux_TS from this helpful spot. These already encoded files then went onto Blu-Ray at disc speed (48 minutes for a 99 minute project).

http://www.yamabe.org/softbody.html

I have a Canon XH-A1 and I have a Sony PS 3 at home that plays Blue-Ray disks. Although my clients still only need SD files and my local stations only accept SD, I am still curious about taking my HD Skills to the next level.

Since my A1 shoots HD, I am thinking about purchasing a Blue-ray burner to start to learn that side of things (I have the HDV for web down just fine).

Does anyone have any suggestions on which burner is the best? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.