HVX-200 and HD-DVD

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

I'd say we're looking in the wrong place if you want to say there's a conspiracy afoot.

True now. But think 2-3 years out. BR will be much, much cheaper as Chinese plants come on line. Just like MiniDV tapes got much, much cheaper as supplies come on line.

Now Sony would say, and they are likely correct, is the media needs to be extra rugged.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Does anybody care for a mini Blue Ray disc HD camcorder? Now that would be a good idea.

I think Sony should take note.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

Now Sony would say, and they are likely correct, is the media needs to be extra rugged.

Works for me: I've never trusted unprotected discs where the active surface can easily be damaged or dirtied during normal use. I was surprised to find out how little XDCAM discs cost today for what they do, and hopefully they'll drop in price even further as blue-laser technology becomes commonplace. Even at current prices XDCAM isn't bad for archiving the master recorded copy, e.g. compared to the cost of putting an hour of DVCProHD footage on an inexpensive hard drive.

[Dan Euritt]

Originally Posted by Mark Donnell

Thus DV is undergoing a roughly 3:1 compression when it is converted to MPEG-2 and recorded on a current DVD. This is very obvious if you have ever hooked up both a DVD player and a DV camcorder to a high-quality TV. The DV picture is very visibly superior. At least with the new high-def DVDs we should be able to have nearly lossless conversion of DV to high-def DVD, since the 36 Mbs data rate will easily handle the 25 Mbs DV data.

interesting, i never thought of it quite like that... but there is another alternative.

it's very typical for people on this forum to try and define everything by bitrate, as you've done there... however, the attraction of hd dvd isn't with it's higher bitrate, rather, it's the use of superior codecs that holds the most promise.

for instance, if you encoded that 25 Mbs dv stream into a 25 Mbs vc-1 or h.264 stream, it would be difficult for you to tell the difference between the camera original and one of those copies... either of those codecs is a far superior alternative to using mpeg2 on a dvd.

so when people are putting that hvx footage onto a disk, they won't have to compromise it's picture quality with mpeg2.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

This is the first I've heard anyone claim for sure that blue-laser players of either type will play HD content placed on red-laser discs. This is something which would be of great usefulness to many of us, as it would negate the need for expensive new burners or discs until customers care enough for that to matter. But I can't think of any reason why the Toshiba players would be able to do this and Sony players not, since both have similar technical hurdles to overcome to do so. Can you provide a published reference addressing this issue?

AFAIK, the HD-DVD video standard has provisions to allow any of its supported video formats to be played from any compatible media type. However, it is up to manufacturers to produce players that can do this as this is not a requirement. I would count this functionality right along with DVD players that offer MP3 and WMV playback from CD-R and/or DVD-R or players that can play MPEG1/2 VCD and SVCD video formats from either type of disc.

[Aaron Hopkins]

I recieved this information from a document on the offical website of the DVD Forum, as linked to in my original post. It is a full part of the specs, not an optional extra like MP3 or JPEG support available on some DVD players on the market now.

Here it is again:
HD DVD - A Technical Introduction

Another document is available which also references this part of the HD-DVD specification:
HD DVD White Paper 1.0

The first paper is available in other languages on the official DVD Forum website, for those that prefer to read in their native tongue.