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A Closer Look At D-VHS At DVDfile.com 201

Posted by timothy from the we-control-the-horizontal-we-control-the-vertical dept.
great throwdini writes: "Peter M. Bracke of DVDfile.com has written a more thoughtful piece on D-VHS (mentioned in the Slashdot article, Copy-Protected Digital VHS) based on his impressions of a press demonstration. Says Fox's VP of Marketing, Peter Staddon, 'If we thought it (D-VHS) was going to kill DVD, we wouldn't be doing it.' Peter has even put together a nice little factsheet on the format. Encryption may be absent on D-VHS tapes, but it looks like the practice of region coding may continue."
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A Closer Look At D-VHS At DVDfile.com More

A Closer Look At D-VHS At DVDfile.com

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  • You can't protect something... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stone Rhino ( 532581 ) <mparke@gm a i l.com> on Sunday February 03, 2002 @08:58PM (#2948311) Homepage Journal
    that has analog outputs. if there is a way to convert it to analog, it can't be copy-protected, etc. thus, this copy-protection, region encoding, etc. stuff is futile.
    • Very true. If it goes out on coax/S-Video/etc, it's already ready to be copied -- even by a computer.

      That goes for DVD players hooked up to a computer via a capture card. Don't need a DVD drive!
      • We have a new "copy-protection" (the term itself is misleading, it suggest that making copies is something evil in the first place) every month or so. It reminds me the situation with the new compression algorithms we have every few months.

        When will they learn? I mean, they should be the experts, right?

        • "When will they learn? I mean, they should be the experts, right?"
          I'm figuring most of 'them' have learned long ago already. It's just that they need to mention copy-protection because that's what the investors want to hear...

          "Copy-protection" has merely become yet another buzzword.
          • I'm figuring most of 'them' have learned long ago already. It's just that they need to mention copy-protection because that's what the investors want to hear...
            Probably you're right. I was laughing at Y2K problem, but I should've made some bucks "solving" the problem instead, like everyone else did.

            But there's something I find really amazing every time we have new copy-protection, compression, etc. Don't those people who invest their money, ever search for similar ideas from just few months ago?

            So, When will they learn? By them I mean the investors.

          • "When will they learn? I mean, they should be the experts, right?"
            ...
            I'm figuring most of 'them' have learned long ago already.

            What better business to be in than working on an impossible problem, and have extremely wealthy clients who refuse to believe it is impossible? Talk about job security.
      • Very true. If it goes out on coax/S-Video/etc, it's already ready to be copied -- even by a computer.
        Well, in fact even if it's a strong crypto from tape to screen I still can use a camcorder, like I can use a microphone to record sound. "Copy-protecting" anything I can see or hear is itself impossible.

        Maybe I don't get something here?

      • One word: Macrovision. It screws with video capture cards along with tape decks...maybe not all video capture cards, but certainly all the ones i've played with. You get a picture, but you also get nice lines in the picture and fun hue shifts :).
      • What's the point of ripping HD when programs don't support that many DPI?? This doesn't make sense. You try ripping at that resolution. People should just rip from vhs, it's cheaper.
    • Ever hear of Macrovision? Just try copying a Macrovision-enabled title on a conventional VCR using the analog outs. You'll get gibberish that looks like those porno TV channels that you don't subscribe to but love listening to.

      Macrovision takes advantage of inherent limitations of NTSC technology to embed scrambling and such into the NTSC signal. Taking advantage of the vertical blanking and other caveats, they can look just fine on your TV but will be unviewable if passed through another device. More info can undoubtedly be found on their website.

      Now, there are doo-dads that will strip Macrovision from an analog stream, so it's not too intrusive, but I'm sure the propellor heads at Macrovision are eager to try out some new technologies that will screw up the present day anti-Macrovision gadgets. We will overcome, of course, because Macrovision of any type degrades the picture quality -- not noticeable on most TV's, but very noticeable on projector systems and anything that scales/deinterlaces video.
      • The devices used to "Strip" macrovision were around before macrovison. They are simply RCA - to Coax connectors called RF Modulators you can buy them for $10 at Radio Shack. I doubt its true but someone once told me that VCR's with RCA inputs had include a macrovision chip to scramble the signal.

        • It's true: 17 USC 1201(k) (Score:5, Informative)

          by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @10:44PM (#2948682) Homepage Journal

          I doubt its true but someone once told me that VCR's with RCA inputs had [to] include a macrovision chip to scramble the signal.

          It's true. Page 4 of this LoC document [loc.gov] states that the DMCA requires new VCRs manufactured or sold in the United States to respond to automatic gain control and four-line colorstripe copy protection; both techniques are used in the Macrovision system. The relevant statute is 17 USC 1201(k) [cornell.edu].

          • (Disclaimer:) This is pure speculation based on some experience I've had in a field related to this. (It seems to me like a lot more posts on Slashdot should begin with this...)

            I work with some video production equipment from time to time, I'm pretty sure that this doesn't apply to commercial grade VCRs. All of the adjustments I've seen are done manually, like so many other pieces of professional grade equipment. (Having a deck without manual adjustments would be like having a version of Photoshop with automatic color correction only.) Not being able to adjust gain manually would drive any video engineer I know nuts. Plus, I've worked with new (I believe post-DMCA) S-VHS decks and have copied Macrovision protected tapes no problem...

            Which brings us to the (often quoted) next point: If one person can copy and share unprotected copies, what's the point in copy protection?

            • Just about nothing relating to copyprotection applies to listed commerical grade equipment. The law currently states that all digital devices have to comply with SCMS (serial copy managment system) and indeed things like minidisc players and the SoundBlaster Live do. Yet my pro sound card ignores it on the inputs and lets me set it as I please on the outputs.

              I don't know what it takes for something to be categorized as commerical or professional grade, but when it's in that category, it can get around copy controls. S-VHS decks may all fall in this category, you don't often see them in normal setups.
          • I've been looking around for a legal case that could be used to challenge this, preferably under the fact that it restricts me from making an otherwise legal media transfer (from DVD to VHS, so I can watch the movie in a location that does not have a DVD player). But I have found what I consider to be a pretty good small claims court about the back-up issue.

            My child has just worn out of his favorite VHS tapes, which I attempted to make a back-up copy of because I knew it was going to occur. My contention is that Sony (the manufacturer of the Elmo recording) is responsible for replacing my worn out VHS because they chose to apply content protection that stopped from being able to make a back-up copy.

            My expectation was that I would be able to make a back-up copy because VHS tapes are known to fragile. Sony's decisions to put content protection on a tape that I personally own clearly kept me from performing a normal operation. Therefore they should be responsible for replacing the tape.

            The ability to make a back-up is important for several reasons. The most obvious reason is to protect the consumer's goods from normal usage and accidents. If the recording industry is allowed to kill off the ability to make back-ups, they could easily abuse the consumer by using cheap recording tapes that require regular replacement. Thus by Sony's actions in preventing the making of back-ups, and for the good of society, Sony should freely replace my worn-out tape.

        • The devices used to "Strip" macrovision were around before macrovison. They are simply RCA - to Coax connectors called RF Modulators you can buy them for $10 at Radio Shack.

          RF modulators will introduce signal degradation of their own (it's why when I recently snagged a TI-99/4A, I built a cable for it to pipe the composite video straight into a TV instead of using the RF modulator that came with it).

          There are other devices that take composite video in and spit out Macrovision-free composite video. They used to sell for $40 or so and ran off a 9-volt battery for about a year. Radio-Electronics magazine even published plans for such a device back in 1988 or so, so a trip to the nearest library ought to turn up those plans. (You could also search Google [google.com] and find all sorts of newer devices that do the same thing with composite and/or S-video.)

    • I get the impression the movie studios don't much care whether you can make analog copies; they are worried about the perfect digital copies.
      • It still presents the same general problem. While there is associated quality loss with an D/A/D conversion, it is minimal on quality equipment. I think most people looking for coppies would still find it adiquate, given that people are willing to watch VCDs these days, which look horrible. For example, I've tested doing an analogue recording of material with my pro soundcard. I just take the material, play it through my mixer, and record what comes back. Normalize the result when done to make sure the apparent volumes match. So far no one has been able to figure out which is the orignal and which is the copy. Now granted I have a bit better equipment than your average guy, but it's still not outrageous (the sound card was like $180). Also, only one guy has to do it. If I recode something into a file that has no restrictions, that can be distributed.

        Personally, I think the digital protections will just be cracked, it's easier. However in the event that is not possible, the analogue recopy is acceptable.
    • Completely true - if you can see it you can copy it so the saying goes. What ever way they try and stop you with, as long as there is a clean decoded picture infront of your eyes, you can copy it, even if it means filming it off the screen, or getting a paint brush, and drawing the entire thing frame by frame. This may become reality, if they figure out a way to make the transisters in LCDs decrypt data on the fly.. :(
  • What i'd really like to know is "is it compatible with my betamax tapes?"

  • I can understand copy protection even though I do not like not being able to make a back up (CDs, DVDs or tapes do not last forever). So although I am unhappy I can live with it. I have a region free DVD player because I think region coding is completely wrong and should be against the law. It goes against free trade and is simply a way of screwing extra money out of people for nothing in return. If I buy something cheaper elsewhere I should be free to use it. If I bought it I have not robbed anyone unless it is an illegal copy. So I think they have got it arse about face with this.
  • This is the second article today that I have seen the world "boondoggle" in. Is this the new media catchword of the week or something?

    Do I need to start using it in everyday speech??

    -Restil

    • From Dictionary.com (Score:2, Informative)

      by Rayonic ( 462789 )
      boondoggle (bndôgl, -dgl) Informal
      n.
      1. An unnecessary or wasteful project or activity.

      2.
      a. A braided leather cord worn as a decoration especially by Boy Scouts.
      b. A cord of braided leather, fabric, or plastic strips made by a child as a project to keep busy.
    • Yes, Its the work on the press's lips because they were afraid that we would end up in another boondoggle when we went after the Taliban, just as we did end up in a boondoggle in vietnam

      Thanks!

  • I'm going to wait for... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by prisoner-of-enigma ( 535770 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @09:06PM (#2948344) Homepage
    blue laser DVD's, which will probably boost capacity by at least 100% if past technological trends mean anything. Current DVD's look poor on HDTV equipment, limited by their 480 line resolution and MPEG2 compression.

    One can only hope that a blue laser DVD would get improved compression algorithms for fewer artifacts, better sound, and much better resolution (1080p anyone?). Unfortunately, I have a very funny feeling that Hollywood and the media moguls will not release any new DVD technology until they find something much, much stronger than CSS to safeguard it. We'll crack it, of course, but how long will it take, and how cumbersome will it be to do so?
    • Hello?!? DVD looks poor on HDTV? Ok, it might not be HDNet quality, but you watch Shrek on an HDTV screen (via DVD), and it looks amazing.

      Find a friend with a progressive scan DVD player, Shrek, and an HDTV screen, and you will think differently.
      • Well, it can certainly look decent, especially if you have a DVD player that does a reverse 2-3 pulldown to generate a progressive scan output. The compression artifacts are still somewhat disturbing though (varies a lot depending on a lot of factors: quality of telecine, compression ratios, video noise, film grain, etc.). Real HD looks a lot better, though, on a good, big screen. Of course, the compression there still bugs the hell out of me -- I'm spoiled by working in the industry and getting to watch some of this stuff uncompressed on high-end monitors (the kind that cost >$30,000) and good projectors (3 chip DLPs).

        Of course, I'd still rather watch it on film, though a good DLP setup looks better than bad film projection.

        • Why would you rather watch it on film? Ugh. I mean, film is full of icky artifacts, smudges, marks, tons of stuff.

          I'd think that uncompressed (or artifact free at any rate, which isn't too hard to do, if you do dynamic bitrate tweaks and suggest sections of the picture of more careful compression, which imho is what should be part of making a good DVD) digital would be far superior to something that hit film at any stage. Or, at least, to anything that wasn't pulled off of film immediately in the production process.

          You sure your name isn't filmfan? :)
          • Well, notice that I said that good DLP projection is better than bad film projection. I'd be willing to bet that you haven't seen really good film projection. There just isn't anything that can come close to producing either the resolution or the dynamic range as film currently.

            That said, it is much more important to originate on film than it is to project on film -- it's at the front end that you really really need all the latitude that you can get. There's at least 7 or 8 more stops of latitude available on film than on video (HD included). It would be much easier to show you why that is important than to try to explain, but suffice it to say that you have to be very precise about what tiny slice of image you want to capture (in terms of luminosity) and hope that you made the right decision about what information you are throwing out, whereas on film you can delay that decision till post production when it is no longer a destructive one.

            • Point taken. Like, don't round off until you're done the equation, so the errors don't propogate.

              The only way I notice film is when it's bad, and it seems to be very often. Almost every time I go to the theatre I see a ton of noise in the picture. Even when I saw FotR three days after it opened, this picture was bad, and this was in a Silver City (fancy theatre chain) which I'd assume should look better than most other theatres. But I guess the issue here is with the film stock they distribute it on, not the film they shoot it on.
    • Hmmm, I've never heard of this, but based on my physics knowledge, I'd assume:

      from 'light.cc'
      --
      light redLight, blueLight;

      redLight.setWavelength(700nm);
      blueLight.setWavelength(400nm);

      redLight.getResolution();
      blueLight.getResolution();

      --
      % light.exe | decipherResults
      Red light has a large resolution
      Blue light has a very small resolution
      -Therefore blue light methods allow more compact data storage on an optical disc-
      %

      I apologize for this post...too much caffeine in me...
      • Use of a blue laser would be a hardware change in the DVD player. However, the parent means that the industry would take advantage of this wave of brand-new players to insert a replacement for CSS, and cracking that would not be nearly as trivial as your example.
    • remember...

      All you need is a trully bored cracker with his favorite new DVD format copy-protected...

      My guess - even the most heavily copy protected new DVD format wouldn't take more then 30-60 days to be hacked...
  • How does that work on tape?

    Do you have to play the beginning of the tape to prove to the player that that the tape is valid?
    Or is there something built into the case of the tape that the player sees?
    Or is there a code embedded in the information at all times?

  • Region Coding (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Renraku ( 518261 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @09:09PM (#2948356) Homepage
    Region coding is the biggest ripoff I can imagine. Traditionally, you could go to other markets to buy things at a cheaper price with some items. With video games and DVDs already making items from other regions inaccessible to hardware in this region, it cuts that off. As an added bonus, the producers of the video games, DVDs, and their respective systems are trying to make it ILLEGAL to modify the hardware so that it will play games or DVDs from another region (aka mod chipping). This is one of the more noticible ways corporations are trying to make it illegal to not buy what they want you to buy.
    • Its called Capitalism. You forget, they have the _right_ to sell what is, technically, their property, for as much or as little as they like. They have the right to choose when and where they sell it. And they also have the right to exploit 3rd world childeren to make their products in dangerous and repressive working environments. Since they own the hardware (DVD player whatever) that you bought (oh, whats that? you didn't read the small print?) They also have the right to stop you from modifying it in any way. Now, although they don't technically have the right to change the law, they have got the right to make COUGH donations, to various people who can change the law. Looks like they've got you by the balls lol.

      As the saying goes - "America screwed it up... now the rest of the world can live with it" :)
      • Ugh. No, it's not capitalism. That's the whole point. If it was a true capitalism, someone would buy the DVD in the cheap country and ship it to the expensive country if the price differential were high enough. They'd also be selling DVD players without region coding, completely against the will of the studios.

        But I can't tell if you were saying that too in a sarcastic way or not.
    • Is that all this capatalistc stuff got it's start from trading things from where they were plentful (and cheap) to where they were scarse (and expensive). The Silk Road, the Hanseatic League and so on were all around so that good could be traded all over. Now that we have the technology and systems in place to have world wide trade and since corperations now span the globe, they want to go teh other way and create artifical scarisity.

      Creating the very thing their ancestors sought to eliminate :)

  • Nobody knows what mlife is. You know why? Because they thought "Hey, if we buy some ad time for the SuperBowl, we could get a billion hits on the website", but didn't pause to think "What's gonna happen to our servers if we get a billion hits?"
    • seriously - it's hard down! bwahahahahahaa

    • Re:OT - mlife? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Lookie here for some info on mLife

      http://www.internet news.com/IAR/article/0,,12_966711,00. html

      Remove the spaces and watch out when cutting and pasting with commas
  • The DVHS factsheet [dvdfile.com] linked from that article [dvdfile.com] mentions that the $2000 recorder has iLink, "but not FireWire" ports.

    Isn't iLink just the Sony name for FireWire?

    • Nope, they're slightly different, FireWire being the more flexible of the two.

      Firewire provides power over the bus. iLink doesn't. So, any FireWire _or_ iLink device can be plugged into a FireWire port and should theoretically work fine, but FireWire devices that draw power from the bus won't work from an iLink port.

      < tofuhead >

      • Re:iLink == FireWire ? (Score:2, Informative)

        by Kz ( 4332 )
        Maybe that's what the article writer means

        But the truth still is that the IEEE standard defines both 6pin and 4pin connectors (with or without power, respectively)

        iLink and FireWire are only the brand names. Of course, Sony uses only 4pin ports, and Apple sports 6pins everywhere... (althought I think the original documents Apple sent to IEEE did include both types of port)
      • "Does 1394 have a formal name?

        The name FireWire, which was coined by Apple, is still used by a few vendors. Others have adopted the name i.Link, which is trademarked by Sony Corp., and has become a popular moniker for 1394-enabled products and technology in Japan."

        Guess it could be a little out of date then and iLink is now equivilent with 4 pin, Firewire with 6 pin, but I don't think that's been put down anywhere as official names. The IEEE standard defines both though, 4 pin being without power and 6 pin with.

        Kjella
  • I have to question anyone who continually refers to movies on DVD as "software". Also:

    So, is there any real benefit directly for the consumer with D-Theater? Yes. Aside from offering a copy protection studio safe enough to compel the studios to release HD material as prepackaged media at all

    The studios shouldn't be compelled by encryption, they should be compelled by consumer's desire for their product. If consumers are not the #1 driving factor behind a product aimed solely at consumers then there is a problem here. Someone has gotten so big that consumer desire will exist regardless of what they do.
    • Nothing competes with the DVD (except maybe the big userbase of VHS players) and the movie companies themselves. The only reason they could have for releasing it in HDTV is the same reason they wanted to put it on DVDs in the first place, to give you some new "value" so they could sell it to you all over again. The ideal customer saw a movie in the cinemas, then rented the video, then bought the video and is now buying the DVD, maybe someday the DVHS version too (because it's HDTV) and then even later the HD-DVD version. If you don't believe it then think twice about why the Star Wars videos come before the Star Wars DVDs...

      What the movie industry realizes is that this is the last time they can do this. Maybe we're there already with DVD. DVD audio never took off and simply won't, because the CD is "good enough" (considering that most people find 128kbps mp3 good enough, well...)

      Kjella
  • This guy is gushing. I mean, come on:

    Ever the skeptic, I greeted the announcement yesterday and went into the demo with tremendous trepidation. I have devoted every single day of the last four years of my life to the DVD format, and have hundreds of well-earned discs to prove it, so how could I not greet the arrival of a new format with anything but a nervous gulp? ... HD is simply the Holy Grail of home theater and the demos bore this out.

    Sounds more fanzine-ish [aint-it-cool-news.com] than serious journalism. But I guess slashdot is like that on other stuff [apple.com], so I shouldn't be too surprised.

    • I've met Peters Bracke and Staddon (although I've not really had a chance to chat with Peter Bracke) and believe me, they geek out on film and DVD at least as much as /. readers do about Linux. When Staddon took over, Fox were releasing non-anamorphic, overpriced, featureless, less than wonderfully mastered discs like the original Die Hard releases. Now we have many of the best discs in the world from them thanks to Peter's team of experts - you only have to look at the great five star edition that replaced that original release to see that.

      These people are great at what they do, but they do it because they love it - you can't say that Martin Scorcese is a bad director because he loves film, so why should those who work in other areas of the industry be any different?
  • DAT

    How many people do you see walking around with portable DAT players? Not many. Whoever concocted the idea of D-VHS forgot the number ONE feature of DVD, that's even better than the quality:

    You don't have to rewind a TAPE!
    • The existence of this product just indicates one thing: storage density and cost still favor tape so long as you can live with the limitations (lack of random access, mechanical complexity, wear). For example: DDS-4 tapes (4mm computer tapes that hold about 20G uncompressed) cost about one-fourth of what a 20G hard disk costs. Recordable CDs are cost-competitive, but you need about thirty of them, which makes them impractical for an application where you need high storage density.

      It's inevitable that random-access (disc/disk) technology will catch up. Rewriteable DVD stores 4.7 Gbytes on a relatively affordable disc now, but that's only one-quarter of the available storage on one of these D-VHS tapes. Presuming that it takes a few years for a suitably large random-access medium to emerge, I imagine that D-VHS will fill a hole in the current high-definition market for a while.
  • These tapes store enough to the entire run of most TV shows on one tape. If the MPAA was smart, they'd make it so I could buy an entire series on one tape for like $150 -- $200.

    I know they'll never do this, but if they did, it'd negate the need to use Morpheus/Kazaa/Clone. I think the main reason that people do download TV shows from it is that they cannot be acquired otherwise. If they made the whole series avaialable, well then I'd understand their case to prevent Morphues from being used legally.
    • Something like this has always been an option to both the MPAA and RIAA. MP3 and DivX:-) are compression schemes, which means there's always going to be a loss in quality in those recordings that just can't compare to CD audio and DVD video.

      The reason that neither group are going with this idea is that they see themselves more in control of the content than the medium and use the content to force you to buy what they want you to buy. CD quality audio would be a great thing, for instance, if I didn't have to buy albums with one song I like and 12 songs I don't like (which is what makes CDs so cost-ineffective in my book to begin with).

      Until media companies start saying "we own the right to stamp this work onto X medium" instead of "we own the work," this just won't happen.
      • I'm pretty confident that the album business model will collapse in the next few years. The main problem is that the MPAA and the RIAA aren't flexible enough to provide formats that we, the consumers, want.

        For example, I want to buy lower quality versions of movies on a DVD format like that used on the Game Cube. It'd require using a lossier format like DivX, but it means the discs are more portable. Less bulkier, and the quality loss would be acceptable for this portability.

        Too bad they're not more open to these ideas. They'd rather sue me for implementing this myself.

        • For example, I want to buy lower quality versions of movies on a DVD format like that used on the Game Cube. It'd require using a lossier format like DivX, but it means the discs are more portable.

          What point would there be to making it smaller other than to make it handheld or otherwise wearable? And why would you want to make a medium that requires a user's full attention wearable? Movies aren't like CD audio, which a fellow can listen to while walking down the street.

          Less bulkier

          The box for a DOL disc is the same size as the box for a DVD. (DOL discs are the Nintendo GameCube's optical medium.) This shows that DVDs are already "portable enough" in that you can easily move them from one DVD player to another.

          • "What point would there be to making it smaller other than to make it handheld or otherwise wearable? And why would you want to make a medium that requires a user's full attention wearable? Movies aren't like CD audio, which a fellow can listen to while walking down the street."

            For a few reasons:

            1.) I want it to fit in my pocket. I need a really big pocket to fit a CD player, but halve the size and now you're talking.

            2.) I can carry a bunch of disks with me as well as the drive. Again, this has to fit in my pocket. Why? Because I want to take this with me when I travel.

            3.) Less likely to skip during a bumpy trip. This, of course, is theoretical, but I'm pretty sure that since the disks are a lot smaller, they are less likely to wobble around when it gets bumpy. This is another must-have when travelling.

            I never said anything about wearable, I just want more portability. I have RSI so my wrists hurt when carrying something like a heavy book around, so I want my devices to be pocket sized so I don't have to hold them. Today I can buy a portable DVD player, but it doesn't fit in my pocket.

            "The box for a DOL disc is the same size as the box for a DVD. (DOL discs are the Nintendo GameCube's optical medium.) This shows that DVDs are already "portable enough" in that you can easily move them from one DVD player to another."

            I honestly don't follow this comment at all. If you are talking about the box that the disc comes in, aka the box that is sold on the shelf, then that has nothing to do with the discs being 'portable enough.' It has to do consumers recognizing that Game Cube games are just as good as PS2 or XBOX games. Nintendo could very easily fit a GCN game into a Game Boy Advance box, but that'd likely confuse people into thinking that they're getting a GBA game instead.

            If you mean the CD case for these discs, that's not very conclusive either. I want these things to fit in my pocket without concern of breaking them. That is not an unreasonable desire. Nobody has ever complained about technology making things smaller as long as the interface is good.

  • But it's still a tape format, correct? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Sunday February 03, 2002 @09:26PM (#2948426) Homepage
    D-VHS may be superior, but it's still a magnetic tape format, like VHS is, correct? One of the things that I like about DVD is that no matter how many times I play a movie, it will never wear out. I'm sure we've all expirenced haveing an audio or video tape lose quality from overplaying. CDs and DVDs don't have this problem, so why would I want one? The DVD format could just be amended, like audio CDs/computer CD hybrids (CD-XA?) were ammended to the origional audio CD format. Plus if this is indeed a tape format, then you don't get that great near instant seek of DVDs. Is there anything to prevent these tapes from degrading?

    All I can say is that I never watched movies much. I don't like going to the theater for a large variety of reasons. I did watch movies on VHS (sometimes) but I found it somewhat inconvient. Having to rewind, the slow fast-forward, the bad picture quality you can get (especialy when paused). But when DVD came along, I fell in love with movies again. The quality is fantastic (and I'm using a PS2 to play them on a 27" analogue sony TV, so it's not like I'm useing $50,000 worth of equiptment). I like being able to jump anywhere in the movie, how the screen is crystal clear when the movie is paused. I love how I can watch movies on the road with my laptop and all the interesting extra features that can be added to DVDs (deleted scenes, little almost "pop-up-video-esque" info like on the Akira DVD, etc). D-VHS may look good, but it seems to me that it might end up as just another laserdisc. Used by moviephiles, but not by the public at large. Maybe it will even become the Betamax to DVD's VHS, a different format that's good, and is used, but not as much. It will be interesting to see.

    As for the here and now, I see three problems: first and formost, I don't have $2000 to blow on something that I can't rent movies for at my local blockbuster. Second, DVDs already have a huge install base and are a goliath to go up against. And third, very few people (remember that /.ers are disperportionatly techy) have HDTVs. So for someone with only a normal, analogue TV like me, would I see any benifit over DVD?

    Just some random museings.

    Ready... Set... Moderate!!!

    • I'm sure we've all expirenced haveing an audio or video tape lose quality from overplaying. CDs and DVDs don't have this problem...

      Are you so sure? What's the oldest DVD you have? Are you sure it will be still playable in 25 years? The lifetime of the technology has yet to be proven, since it hasn't been around long enough to wear out. I remember reading somewhere that the estimated lifetime of a CD or DVD was around 20 years, but I can't remember where that was. If someone would post the information I'm sure it would be useful to this thread.
    • It's not $2000, it's $2000 + the cost of a HD TV. That's probably more like $6000-12000 right now.
    • OK, I don't have a DVD player, but I do own a good number of CDs. You can say what you like about video tapes overstretching and wearing out over time, but there's this phase between the ages of 1 to 4 years where children love to play with everything. Video tapes, while not indestructable are fairly robust and can take some beating from kids.

      CD's on the other hand are just DESTROYED by kids. Finger prints, weird scratches, you name it. If it's a kids educational CD and they have access to it and think they can play with it, it'll get wrecked.

      I guess it's all perspective on longevity...
    • Ok.. a couple things you forgot to mention.

      1) D-VHS is cheap to record to, DVD is not. At least for the time being that is. I happen to own a , and can make perfect quality duplicates from my satilite dish, for little more than the cost of a tape. [jvc-victor.co.jp]

      2) It does not cost $2000. Not even close. In fact, when I bought my deck 2 years ago, I paid $300, as long as I subscribed to a year of sattilite TV (which by the way, I am still using).
      I'm sure this technology can be made cheaper if you get rid of the sattilite reciever.

      3) Tapes are still here. Yes, they will be done with within the next 5 to 7 years. I have a collection of over 200 VHS tapes, and replacing them all with DVD's is not an option (I don't run a software monopoly). Sure, I will probably never buy another tape in my life, but I still need something to watch them on. Granted, not everyone wants or needs a new VCR, so I can understand if they don't want one.

      4) THIS IS NOT MEANT TO REPLACE DVD!!! This is meant for an alternative for people who don't want to abandon thier massive tape collection (well, they can keep thier VCR and buy a DVD player, but face it, can the average person hook both up at the same time?) and at the same time want high-quality movies. Also, this makes a good "middle-step" for those who don't want to dive into DVD recorders (and who would until a real universal standard is reached?).

      Just some replies to "random museings" (sic.)

  • DAT (Score:3)

    by Heem ( 448667 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @09:27PM (#2948430) Homepage Journal
    Remember the Digital Audio Tape? No? Exactly my point.

    • DAT's are still very widely used in the audio recording field due to their superior quality and track capacity over standard analog tape recorders. Many studios utilize DAT's for recording, and DAT recorders are quite commonly used by musicians to record band practices etc.
  • It seems to me (though I'm not sure anyone really knows) that it may not be the production companies backing the d-vhs effort. That is- if the hardware companies are willing to develop the technology and use their own distribution channels for it, then the major studios currently involved can piggy-back on their efforts fairly easily. If they form a small coalition to handle the fairly specific demands of the small number of interested consumers, there is minimal expense to the studios. They could ship direct, or the could have only major stores buy only major releases, and take other orders on a demand basis. Therefore, I think it might be very worth their while. The hardware companies, on the other hand, may be getting screwed with the risk.
  • What compression scheme are they using, if any? MPEG-2? Windows Media? :-)

    Will data on tape be encrypted itself? Or will the copy protection just be a few bits indicating a flag to permit/prohibit copy, like DAT? If the latter, then expect for this to be broken quickly, like the DAT copy protection scheme.
  • In the early digital music age Philips launched a low end version of the DAT-tape , the DCC (Digital Compact Cassette). It stored the digitised audio by encoding it (it used some older mpeg codec) and squashing that onto a "normal" tape. This reduced the cost of the player, wich used conventional heads instead of Sony's rotating DAT-head and it could also playback old analog tape... It never made it however. It still required winding tape if you wanted to skip a song so Minidisk and cd-r took its place. This was caused by a lack of adopters other than Philips & Co and a very bad marketing campaign (if any).
    When are these guys are gonna see that TAPE IS DOOMED!!! for most common uses anyway... Think microdisks, optical, flash, whatever but please: FORGET ABOUT TAPE!!!

    • Easy way around this (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      "It never made it however. It still required winding tape if you wanted to skip a song so Minidisk and cd-r took its place."

      This is the 21st century. There's no need to have direct access between the tape and the viewer. You put in a hard drive to buffer the tape (think Tivo), have the tape read at speeds that we currently associate with "fast forward," and by the time you're finished watching the stupid FBI warning and trailers the movie is already on the hard drive. Viola: random access.
  • DVD Players are just now becomming as common as a regular VCR. I don't think too many people will want to shell out a few hundred more dollars for something that plays tapes.

    I think the reason most people like DVDs better than VHS tapes is the picture quality, it is smaller than a tape, you can start at any chapter immediately instead of fast forwarding for about 10 minutes, and no need to rewind it when done watching it.

    The MPAA would get a whole bunch of people pissed off at them if they killed DVD. And I would be one of them.


  • ...Lets face it, all these formats have been evacuated from the rectum of a bull. DVD, D-VHS, PAL, SECAM, NTSC - All formats that shouldn't be in use, but are. They are crap! Why? in the name of all that is not bull shit, would anyone want a format that won't let you watch something in another country. Why would you wan't to waste money on a decryption system that is useless. is 4GB really that much more than 640MB? no. As for the last three. They are 50 years old for crist sake! why are we still using a format that is 50 years old??? Any child of 5, can get a few compression buzz words, stick it on a disk and think "hey, lets also put some outakes and interviews on, that'll be fun". We need a format that is open, scalable, and high quality, and most of all, protected from tampering with by those bloody corporations.

    Ok, lets build one: Disk or Tape? What happened to those new multi-layer disks that were gonna start at 50GB each? gimme one of those. Compression? lets go with mpeg, seeing as everyone else has. Encryption? yes, you can encrypt disks with PGP or whatever. Type in a password to watch, that will stop people looking at the secret spy-work i've been filming, no sorry Holywood, not for you, you can't encrypt anything. Obviously the disks need to be recordable (hmm, or maybe we'll use tape). Put some basic interactivity in -> html, bit of java script, maybe even swf, but nothing that will let anyone take control of your player though. Region encoding? go stick it up your ass, ok, now all we need is some basic file structure, let you include subtitles, multi-sound tracks etc. etc. and we're away, one last thing, lets encode films _at_ 24fps! then watch them, not on tvs, but on decent screens that can actually display 24fps (or double or triple refresh rate or whatever) with out having to either speed the film up (pal) or put it through a NASA supercomputer to do some sort of time-stretching pull-down qauntum magic (ntsc).

  • DVD can be done today (Score:4, Interesting)

    by OYAHHH ( 322809 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @09:55PM (#2948539)
    Forget D-VHS or whatever it is called...

    The box manufacturers could make a DVD system today that would store enough data to record a movie and all the associated goodies in HDTV.

    All they gotta do is make a plastic shell (which represents one movie for instance) that holds two or three (ever how many it takes) DVDs that hold the data.

    Then they build a DVD player that swallows that shell, reads the first DVD and plays it until it detects it is within lets say a minute of finishing the first half of the movie. The DVD player then buffers the last minute or so in RAM.

    Then using the same technology that allows for CDROM switching in, lets say, car stereos the DVD player switches to the second DVD and buffers in the first minute of it as well.

    With the last minute off the first disc buffered in and the first minute off the second disc buffered in there is no reason why a smooth transition couldn't be made and no glitches appear in the movie.

    It's a fairly simple proposition, somebody just needs to sit down and do it.

    I cannot remember the guy's name at Sony (I think it was the President, CEO, or whatever they got) who came up with the shirt pocket size diskette, the walkman, etc. but that's the kinda person who needs to get the ball really rolling.

    Not some pinheads who cannot see past the end of their rich, conceited, lazy noses.

    Thanks for listening
    • It sounds just like an automated changeover the movie theatres used to handle 20 minute reels. When one reel was nearing the end, the second projector would pre-roll to come up to speed, then a changeover would take place and the first projector would shut down. The reel would be rewound and the third reel would be mounted for the next changeover. Original Nitrate (Flamable) film was limited to 20 minute reels and they were placed in enclosed reels on the projector. To save the amount of film handling after safety film came out, most moviehouses used 40 minute reels, holding 2 20 minute reels spliced end to end and placed on one larger reel. Now multiplex theatres use the platter system where all 6 to 8 20 minute reels are spliced together onto a platter. (Make-up) On a platter system, the film pays out from the center of the reel so there is no need to rewind between showings. After the week or two of showings, the film is taken apart and put back onto 20 minute reels for shipping. (Break-down) If you go to an older movie house, look for the 3 or 4 small windows. They were for the 2 projectors and a place for the projectionist to check the focus. The windows were small as part of the fire protection. Newer places use larger windows as nitrate film is no longer used. Sometimes you can see the single projector and the platters in the window. This window is noise protection only, not fire protection.
  • The article made a most useful point. I hadn't thought about it before (since HDTV is currently way out of my price range), but once it becomes mainstream I'll be awfully annoyed if I have to downsample the picture to NTSC to save a program. Now I'm sure DVRs will be more commonplace at that point too, but it will be an incredibly long time before those are useful for long-term storage. For now, this format fills a gaping void, and I would think that as HDTV becomes more popular and comes down in price, this will too.
  • I assume that almost all of the people with the comments like "tape sucks, why would I want this?" have never seen an HDTV broadcast..

    It's all about quality. Ever since I got my HDTV, I find it difficult to watch standard (Lo-Res) TV. After watching High Definition movies on HBO-HD, DVD's look poor by comparison.

    I will probably buy one of the D-VHS units, because I want the best quality I can get. I would rather have HD-DVD, but I'll use D-VHS for the five years until HD-DVD arrives.
  • Sure...it's a tape format. And sure there "may" be encryption issues. But D-VHS stands to be the first solid, consumer/prosumer format available to print HDTV into the real world.

    Blue laser DVDs have yet to approach the $2000 level, so we'll count them out for at least over a year. Also, they'll suffer the same flaw as the early DVD crop of being record only. If you just want to watch movies, that's great.

    But D-VHS offers a way to not only playback but also record high-def. D-VHS is the tape (yes...it's a tape format, but it's a digital tape format which makes all the difference) but the deck offers Firewire as possible I/O. Currently, the IEEE 1394 works great to pass compressed HD signals. Within a year or so, the spec should be up to handling a full 1.5 Gb/sec, which will allow it to pass uncompressed HD on consumer-grade equipment.

    Home PC based editing software (like Final Cut Pro) is quite capable right now of working in High-Def resolutions...the downside is the inability to export this to anything but a file format. Push it through firewire, layoff to D-VHS, and you've got a whole new reach.
  • I want my HD DVD, now. I don't want this tape format, but I could see some people buying it if they don't get HD DVD off the ground soon. If the players were cheap enough I'd pick one up and rent movies for it...but I'm not buying any movies on tape.

    There should be an HD DVD standard coming out SOON! It would have been nice to have had HD support in from the first day and just start using it when needed. That way they could release movies in standard definition with tons of extras, or use the space for an HD version. I'd love that.

    It sucks that movies on HBOHD look better than those on my DVD player.

  • Sure, why not? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Sunday February 03, 2002 @11:01PM (#2948743)
    So long as I want to record television I'm going to have a VCR. Period. TiVo is nice for short-term storage, but that still doesn't allow me to have a collection of Enterprise or whatever the hell else the Betamax decision lets me do with what comes into my TV.

    As for DVDs, even if DVD recorders eventaully trickle down to the home entertainment market, unless some true genius figures out how to make holographic recording cheap and easy recordable DVDs will always be half-capacity compared to commercially stamped ones. You can buy a two hour movie but can only record one hour of television. Sure, you could cut the quality of the recording and squeeze more in, but you could do the same thing to a 120 minute tape at twice the capacity.

    I've already got time and effort devoted into a VHS collection and, no matter how big my DVD collection may get, I won't be getting rid of my tapes. So long as this new digital VHS standard is recordable like my old VHS recorder, I see no real reason not to get this (beyond the cost factor that is).

    I'm already thinking about getting a new VCR anyway since I'd like to at least have one in stereo. My next big purchase will probably be a digital television (the idea of having a 36"+ computer monitor makes me moist) and maybe an HDTV receiver. Right now I don't intend on getting a new computer because come May my PS2 will be able to do everything I would have wanted a new PC to do. So, really... why not?

  • Macrovision (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xkenny13 ( 309849 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @12:01AM (#2948927) Homepage
    One word: Macrovision. It screws with video capture cards along with tape decks...maybe not all video capture cards, but certainly all the ones i've played with. You get a picture, but you also get nice lines in the picture and fun hue shifts :).

    Macrovision is defeatable. I have a device right now that strips away the macrovision signal and replaces it with a regular video signal.

    Why do I have this?

    My TV only has one RCA input on it. In order to select my DVD from my IR remote, I have it hooked into the system through one of my VCRs. In doing so, I fall into Macrovision's trap, and my DVD's video signal get's goobered by the VCR. I don't want this to happen, since I'm not actually taping the DVD, I just wanna watch it with convenience.

    Last I heard, devices such as these were legal to buy, legal to own, and legal to use ... so long as all you were doing was viewing a program (this was in pre-DVD/pre-DMCA days though). There are certain brands of VCR/TV combinations that respond to a Macrovision signal on a VHS tape, despite there being no second VCR to muck up the video ... and this device allows them to properly view their legally purchased VHS tapes.

    If your intention is to take a Macrovision protected VHS or DVD and pipe it into a Video Capture card that repsonds to Macrovision, then there is no reason that a similar device shouldn't be able to "fix" the video signal for you.

    FWIW, I bought mine out of a "Radio Electronics" type magazine ... way in the back, there was an ad for one. You can buy one ready-made, or you can probably find the schematics on-line and build your own. If I recall properly, I paid ~$20-$40 for mine. Totally worth the dough...

    And yes ... a device like this *does* make it possible for you to copy a commercial VHS tape, or a DVD that's protected with Macrovision. However, a friend tells me you could have always done this ... if you dump the signal to say, a (high-end) Beta machine. :-)

  • 44GB of data on a single magnetic tape with digital format sounds like a great backup media to me. If it catches on as a consumer product, readers/writers and blank media would be dirt cheap (as opposed to things like DLT).

    OK, the 140GB disks around the corner mean it wouldn't be a perfect solution, but it would still be a very attractive one.
  • Given that there are several companies working on largeer DVD formats, tape will die out. I read recently at Computer edge [computoredge.com] that Toshiba, Sony and Pioneer are all creating a new format with blue lasers that will blow away CD's and DVD's in size. Toshiba's will be 30-to 35 gb in size. This size can store 3 hours of video on them in raw format.

    This could also have the effect that codec wars would die out as well. Why use one when you could record raw onto it? (well except for those Dr Who marathons) A DVD player that would not need decryption/encryption is cheaper to make.

    As data backup it would be great I could store approximately 450 CD's in MP3 format on a single disk. Imagine a portable player for that baby! I'm drooling already.

    Unfortunatly this tech is still about 2yrs away. I can't wait!

    There is a small consolation however - I've seen a new DVD-RW drive showing up here. It's a HP CD-RW [hp-at-home.com] drive recently advertised at $599us. Hm.. wonder if it does VCD's as well.

  • I wonder how long it'll take for some intrepid soul to gerry-rig one of these D-VHS VCR's as a (relatively) inexpensive backup medium? Whilst the cassettes are bulkier than DLT and such, 44GB per tape ain't bad at all.
    • You can afford to lose a few bits in a digital video stream...a couple pixels will be wrong or there will be an barely-detectable pop in the audio...basically, nothing that will significantly impact the viewing experience. Now, losing a few bits out of the middle of a document? Or a database file? That's a lot harder to recover from.

      Of course, I could be totally wrong on this...it's mostly dependent on the quality of the tape involved...but judging the average quality of videotape out there, I'd say I wouldn't trust it for backups.
  • Didn't they try to kill the CD or something with a smaller form of DAT or something similar to that. I just remember seeing regular sized audio tapes with digital information on them (which really doesn't seem like a bad idea for data storage actually)

    Crashx99

  • Carrot and stick (Score:2, Interesting)

    by linklater ( 150763 )
    so let me get this straight... This new format has:
    • No random access
    • No interactive features
    • Strictly licensed creation/copy hardware
    • Region coding
    • Encryption
    • Can't be watched on PCs
    OK, so it has a better quality picture (whoopee fscking doo). But that's an awful lot of negatives for something that is meant to be new and improved. I can't help thinking that the main reason for this new technology is to stop people being able to manipulate the data with a standard commodity PC. All methods of duplication and decryption are tightly controlled (at the hardware level). If this takes off, who wants to wager that you will never be able to buy this hardware for a general purpose PC ? We'll be back to the dim days of analog tape and single point playback - oh, but wait, at least it will be high resolution servitude.
  • Otherwise JVC would be silly to make this technology available at all. A cynical manufacturer might offer what looks like solid encryption, just to ensure the distribution of movies using the new D-VHS format. Of course the D-VHS player is both expensive and inconvenient; not especially useful. It's just another piece of digital media crippleware, at least for the time being. After the movies become available, the encryption gets cracked, the price of D-VHS players drops, and JVC tells the copyright industry, "Sorry, it got hacked. But then again, you are no worse off with D-VHS than you were with the cracked CSS you had with DVD!"

    Consider the radar detector. Some of the same companies who make the detectors are the same ones who make the police radar guns. For every police radar gun they sell, they sell 1000+ detectors. Would anyone manufacture laser radar guns, UNLESS there were laser detectors ready to ship in 6 months?

    IMHO, there is not much of a market for unhackable, undefeatable hardware.

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