Multi-format DVDs (Blu Ray, HD DVD, SD DVD)

[Tom Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

At least WMVHD is out of the picture--too much confusion.

heath

WMV-HD was sort of a bridge format... something to tide us over until HD DVD came along. WMV-HD discs are very similar to a HD DVD in that they use VC-1 along with Javascript menus. I believe that WMV-HD discs will play in HD DVD players. HD DVD allows for a title to be written to standard DVD-9 discs, in the case where the content producer doesn't need the added capacity of an HD DVD disc... and this would be very similar to a WMV-HD.

In any case, there is never a lack of confusion amongst new standards in the world of video, or technology in general.

[George Ellis]

Originally Posted by Dave Campbell

I need NO new optical media!!! How often does not ever watch a movie twice?
Dave

Obviously, you don't have kids. :P We have many movies that get watched frequently. Fortunately, as they get older, they don't watch them 4 times in a row, only 3-4 times a week for the first two weeks. Then once ever other month. :D

[Emre Safak]

If a movie isn't worth watching twice, it isn't worth watching once :)

[Mike Sakovski]

I m sorry if it sounds rather damn, but im relatively new to HD and just want to ask you gurus here. Lets say i have a mpg2 (HDV) file on my laptop, the file is about 4G (which is under the full capacity of a typical DVD). How can i copy these 4G to a DVD. The reason i ask this is that MS Windows doesnt allow to copy more that 2G at a time. Maybe there's a software that by some magic overcomes this 2G limitaton. And then again, after i have my 4G copied to a DVD , which of any currently available DVD players would play it?
Well just basically walk me thru this process.
I'd greatly appreciate any help

[Giroud Francois]

you refer to DVD, but you should refer to the standard used for the DVD.
UDF is the standard for most DVD. and there are several version of UDF.
the latest allows for big files, so these days you can find vob files on DVD that are bigger than 1 or 2 gig.
if you burn a data DVD (just burning files on it) , you can use several format that could be incompatible with file naming convention or file size.
Nero is nice enough to warn you when you drop files into a DVD project.
If you go to video DVD, then you must use an authoring program.
This app. will reformat you video (since m2t is not HD-DVD compatible).
unfortunately, very few encoder can spit a decent HD-DVD compatible file.

[Mike Sakovski]

Ok , thank you for your answer. I dont wanna jump on any of the war fighting formats rite now. Stuff 's not generally available or very expensive to the point where i really cant justify the purchase solely for home use.
As it happens i got Avel Link Player2 and tried it out with my own HD 1080i content. The good thing it played HD mpeg2 beautifully. But on the other hand the DVD looked significantly softer than the original that i played for the comparison sake right off the HDV camera. I m curious if any of you know as to whether avlp2 can output full HD res or at least 1440x1080 (HDV res). The playback on avlp2 looked more like 720p. Not bad, mind you, still nice, but visibly softer, with all the original footage's crispness gone.

[Mark Goldberg]

I have followed this discussion for a while, and early on had an exposure to WMV-HD as a viable way to distribute HD content. I have also noticed that sales of music CDs are on the way down and that several local record shops including Sam Goody's and Tower Records have closed. People are carrying digital music players, but not 5" CD players. Hello!!!

As a maker of videos, I shifted to all HD production last spring and felt it was wrong to sell clients on this concept but have no way of delivering. I have a problem with the wait-and-see format decision. So far, the blanks for the two HD disc formats are prohibitive in cost, considering we go through about a dozen blanks in the course of release a wedding or event video. So WMV-HD has worked for me, and the cost of the HD disc players is comparable to HD compatible computers including the notebook similar to what I am using. Also, for about $1000 customers can get an HD camcorder like the Sony C3 or Canon HV10 and play back their events right from HDV tape. For less than 10% of the cost of a player, they can buy an external hard drive on which they can have their event video in a less compressed format than WMV-HD. Or we can put the WMV-HD video up to about 80 minutes on an old style DVD for direct play in Media Player, or transfer to their hard drive for similar play.

This past week we installed Verizon FIOS TV with an HD DVR box. We learned that we can upgrade this to accept streaming video from any of the computers in our house, and that includes WMV-HD.

So I am telling my clients to consider integrating a computer with their HDTV and look to technologies other than disc. I have questions as to whether HDDVD or Blu-ray will ever be commerically viable.

[Gene Brockhoff]

Originally Posted by Emre Safak

If a movie isn't worth watching twice, it isn't worth watching once :)

I love this quote!

[Paul Leung]

You will see it next week.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070104/...arner_dvd_dc_1

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Originally Posted by Paul Leung

You will see it next week.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070104/...arner_dvd_dc_1

I'll believe it when I see a viable shipping product... But I'm all for it if they can make it work. I just have a hard time believeing that a major studio comes out of nowhere with a patent on layering multiple formats and then succeeds in producing a disc format that many electronics manufacturers like LG who are not specifically affiliated with either camp (and one of the primary proponents of dual format players) has failed to do. I wonder who their disc engineering and production company is that developed this (if it's true). I hope it's not just some announcement and we still have to wait months (or never) for such a disc to materialize. But I'm somewhat skeptical that such a multilayer disc can reliably play in current HD-DVD and BluRay players. The reflectivity requirements for BD and HDDVD are nearly identical, but by placing BD layers behind the HD-DVD layers (or vice versa) how do they expect current players to be able to adapt to the proper focal length and see through the primary two layers.

OTOH, I saw this same thing referenced elsewhere today and the "insider source" indicated that the discs will be BluRay on one side and HD-DVD on the other and not the multi-layered disc as previously discussed. That would make a whole lot more sense even though it wouldn't be quite as cool.

Anyway, if they can do it, I say bring it on! Let's get this whole HD disc format "war" over with and move on with our lives.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Originally Posted by Mark Goldberg

So I am telling my clients to consider integrating a computer with their HDTV and look to technologies other than disc. I have questions as to whether HDDVD or Blu-ray will ever be commerically viable.

Mark, that may be a workable interim solution, but also not as convenient for many people. BluRay and HD-DVD will be commercially viable rather soon. BluRay players are now priced as low as $649, with LG/Philips releasing models under $450 here in the next 10 weeks. I think a lot of people forget that we're now seeing all the nay-saying we saw with DVD 10 years ago. Oh, it will never work, oh it's too expensive, blah blah blah... The first DVD players were $1600 from Sony and Pioneer. It took longer for DVD to come down in price than BluRay has.. In fact, DVD players didn't break the $600 barrier until nearly 18 months after their initial debut. Sony claims they will have BluRay players in the $300 range by January '08. Toshiba is claiming HD-DVD players less than $200 by then.

As for other alternatives such as downloadable / on-demand. iTunes type systems, etc.. That day is approaching, but it won't replace purchasing of video on disc for a while. In fact, it hasn't really done away with purchasing audio on CD either. I still prefer to buy albums on CD if I in fact want the entire album. Why? Superior quality compared to MP3/AAC and I don't have to deal with all the DRM restrictions and issues of what I buy throu ITMS can't be played on my PDA or my Sonos without annoying work-arounds (burn to audio CD, then re-encode to MP3 or whatever - loss of quality over the inferior quality to begin with). Same with video. We're starting to see video through ITMS and similar at "near-DVD" quality. Right now, the bandwidth and delivery methods just aren't there on a large enough scale to set up millions of potential customers on a site like iTunes where they can download the same quality of movies they can buy on HDDVD or BluRay. And that won't happen for a while. We still have tens of millions of people in the USA on dial-up because that's still all they can get (or all they're interested in) because their only other choices are shoddy wifi solutions (neighbors sharing T1s and all that) or satellite.

I think that one day streaming media will become a true alternative to disc for movie-goers. I truly think that the optical disc as we know it will die with BluRay and HDDVD though. There are other technologies coming down the pipeline that will offer vast improvements and don't operate off of a spinning disc approach. As I posted (perhaps it was here somewhere) before... The choice of blue diode lasers to create higher density disc media was somewhat strange. 50GB ROM in the same size of a CF card can be manufactured complete with data in place (manufactured that way and not burned or written to, it's originated ROM not PROM or FLASH which would be ungoldy expensive in such a capacity right now) and we're talking production costs of $15 per 50GB ROM. Yes, that's hugely expensive considering manufacture costs of BluRay discs are still pennies. But if some industry like Hollywood would invest into such a technology pricing would change drastically almost over night.

[Heath McKnight]

Also, from imdb.com:

;End of the Hi-Def DVD Format War?

Warner Home Video may have found a solution to the format war between the Sony-developed Blu-ray and Toshiba's HD DVD high-definition video discs: a hybrid disc that it is calling Total HD. Today's (Thursday) New York Times reported that the one-disc-fits-all development will be announced by Warner Bros. Chairman and CEO Barry Meyer at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, which opens on Monday. In an interview with the Times, Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group, described the new disc as an elegant way for studios to make their content available more widely "in a way that is not conceding defeat" for whichever format they have been backing. Initially, the Times observed, the new disc would add a fourth DVD version of every available movie or TV show, but Warner is seeking to find a method for incorporating the standard DVD format on Total HD, thereby combining all formats on a single disc. Meanwhile, South Korea's LG Electronics, said on Wednesday that it plans to unveil a player capable of playing either Blu-ray or HD DVD discs at the CES. The company provided no further details other than that the players will become available during the first quarter of this year.'

heath

[Bruno Donnet]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kilgroe

But I'm somewhat skeptical that such a multilayer disc can reliably play in current HD-DVD and BluRay players. The reflectivity requirements for BD and HDDVD are nearly identical, but by placing BD layers behind the HD-DVD layers (or vice versa) how do they expect current players to be able to adapt to the proper focal length and see through the primary two layers.

The reflectivity requirements for BD and HD-DVD differ enough to be combined on the same face of a disk. The distance of the point of focus is totally not the same: 0.1mm for a BD and 0.65mm for a HD-DVD.

But it's not clear today if the Total-HD proposition made by Warner uses a dual HD format on a same face, or one HD format on each face of the disk.

Wait and see...

On the paper, it's even possible to combine the DVD SD format, the HD-DVD, format and the Bluray format on the same face of a disk: the HD-DVD norms allow to have DVD SD layer (at 0.6mm of distance) readable by the red laser of a standard DVD player, combined with a second layer, not in DVD SD but in HD-DVD (this format is called by the HD-DVD consortium "Twin DVD" --approved in the v1.2 norms of HD-DVD--).
Why not creating a 3 layers disk combining a "Twin DVD" + Bluray on the same face? The costs of production seem today a litle to high to allow this solution... but even at a raisonable cost, the marketing guys of the Studios will be not happy: they want to keep the 2 segments separated, the existing DVD SD market, and the HD market. Like that they are more sure that the consumers will pay a second time the news HD version of their favorite films...

[Yi Fong Yu]

sounds like it's only HD-DVD&BluRay only, no SD.

but even with that in mind, i doubt they can do DUAL layer HD-DVD AND DUAL layer BluRay at the same time. with 3 layers to work with, they can do single layer on one format and dual on the other or just single layer all around and pick+choose format.

what's screwed up is how this is a "fix" to the obvious problem of having a unified format IN THE FIRST PLACE!

the thinking is, let's see how the limited market is going to accept both formats. the response is, meh. the reply from the industry to that reponse is, ok let's combine both formats... AFTER THE FORMATS are out in the market. *sigh*. so.very.stupid.

[Peter Ferling]

It doesn't solve the 'real' war, the need for one format to dominate and be a quarantee of widespread distribution. One program, one disk, single solution. Otherwise, you're still having to support both formats in front end. Nothing changes. In fact, you now may have to entertain two formats on two disks.

"You more you mess with the plumbing, the easier it is to clog."