Lucas123 writes "Panasonic plans to unveil the thinnest Blu-ray Disc drive made yet at the upcoming CES show. The drive is 9.5mm high, which allows it to fit into standard laptop form factors instead of requiring manufacturers to redesign systems to fit high-def DVD players as they've been doing. 'Panasonic has already begun offering samples of the drives to laptop makers with the hope that the companies will build it into new PCs.'"
Currently the Blu-Ray drives are of a slightly different size, requiring companies (like Dell) to have non-standard sized disc drive slots that they are placed into-- meaning that only 'tailored' laptop forms can support internal Blu-Ray currently. This would make it so any current laptop mold could come with Blu-Ray.
Meh, not that I know of. Maybe for motherboard connections to the front panel (for desktops), but that's about it. If they ever had, it's a long way back.
at least the stuff made by Japan Inc works. Can't say the same for stuff made by USACorp.
Hey planned obsolescence [wikipedia.org] worked quite nicely for decades. Don't think our consumer psychology would be the same in the western world without it. Hell, some people still buy a new car/tv/whatever every three to five years because planned obsolescence has taught us that older consumer products are junk. The stuff works fine, just the way it was designed to.
Man, I was wondering what was taking them so long. The blu-ray disk is a standard size polycarbonate substrate, just like the CD and DVD. What is it about blue laser optics that's been holding this up?
Could it be the embedded computer that's built-in to the devices in order to do DRM? That seems like it'd take quite a lot of work to get working on small devices.
Not sure my post was modded troll; I'd really like to know the answer to this question. Blu-ray comes with a virtual machine to do DRM - with all that this entails. It has to have its own address space, interpreter, and microprocessor if it's going to fully support the blu-ray spec.
Does such a requirement ramp up the size or power requirements of these devices?
1) Most the DRM is not on the drive, but on the host (ie: your x86 proc) 2) Whatever needs to be done on the drive is just software that can be run on a micro-controller. Not much bigger than the one that already handle the ATA interface.
So the answer would be: NO.
It is probably just mechanical issues that might not be very difficult to solve but just take more time.
How fast can you read/write data on a Blu-ray disc?
According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps. However, as BD-ROM movies will require a 54Mbps data transfer rate the minimum speed we're expecting to see is 2x (72Mbps). Blu-ray also has the potential for much higher speeds, as a result of the larger numerical aperture (NA) adopted by Blu-ray Disc. The large NA value effectively means that Blu-ray will require less recording power and lower disc rotation speed than DVD and HD-DVD to achieve the same data transfer rate. While the media itself limited the recording speed in the past, the only limiting factor for Blu-ray is the capacity of the hardware. If we assume a maximum disc rotation speed of 10,000 RPM, then 12x at the outer diameter should be possible (about 400Mbps). This is why the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) already has plans to raise the speed to 8x (288Mbps) or more in the future.
While the media itself limited the recording speed in the past
The media itself limited recording speed in the past because the discs would shatter if you spun them too fast. It'd be nice if they let us know what has changed with BluRay that means that discs won't tear themselves apart at high rotational speeds. Are they not made of the same polycarbonate materials as HD-DVD/DVD/CD are?
I always assumed the "X" made the assumption that the disk takes as long to record as a CDrom could take to play. i.e. 1x is about 72 minutes (or 80 minutes) to record regardless of the format. Obviously, the higher capacity disks' 1x would have a higher data-rate, though.
The fastest is at 6x though there are no 6x media right now. These days most of new desktop BD drive products are 4x at $500. LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray Drive/HD DVD Reader http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140332/article.html [pcworld.com]
>The GGW-H20L is the first Blu-ray Disc burner to support 6X speed for writing to BD-R. >That's up from 4X on the GGW-H10N, and up from 2X on the early Blu-ray Disc burners > from Plextor, Sony, and Pioneer. In the PC World Test Center's evaluation, the > drive's performance reflected i
The new Dell XPS one machined have an option for the dual layer blu-ray drive built directly into its monitor. It's about time the announce one for standard laptop size drive bays.
After a google search, it definitely looked like one to me. Sony has had BD in laptops for a while now, I would be very surprised if they couldn't make drives sized for the standard laptop unit.
Best prices on NewEgg: Blu-ray is $10 per 25G = 40 cents per gib. Hard drive is $100 per 500G = 20 cents per gib. I'd love a BDR, but as long as hard drives are cheaper, it's just stupid.
On top of that, BD disks have the recordable goo on the bottom side, which makes them less durable than both CDs (goo on top) and DVDs (goo in the middle).
Which would be why blu-ray discs that aren't in caddies have special coatings on their bottom surfaces that make them MORE durable than both CDs and DVDs (unless they themselves are treated).
The coatings really do work quite well. They don't make the surface completely unscratchable, but they do make them far more durable than a standard CD/DVD.
Even laptop hard drives (that are more expensive) have a degree of thickness to them that precludes things like mailing in envelopes - with a Blu-Ray drive I'd keep using hard drives for primary backup, but probably switch to Blu-Ray discs for copies beyond that. Great for more widespread offsite distribution.
AFAIK, all currently available Blu-ray drives were 12.5mm-high: that is the height of most laptop optical-drive units (for nearly every consumer-oriented laptop), whereas those that are professional-oriented (Lenovo and HP) are 9.5mm high. The question is that HP has been offering a Blu-ray drive on some of its laptops (8510w and 8710w) for several months, meaning that Blu-ray 9.5mm-drives have been already available for at least several months...
You are indeed correct, the standard laptop optical units are indeed 12.5mm high. The 9.5mm high ones are for sub notebooks and the ultra slim models. Though I would note that Toshiba do a 7.6mm DVD drive that they include in their Portage R500 range.
Is it just me or does anybody else find this extreme thin fetishism to be a little bit out of control? I can see how thin, in the absence of other considerations, can be desirable from the standpoint of it takes up less space in my pocket or on my desk. However, we see device manufacturers producing products which overheat and die because they wanted that last 2mm of thinness instead of a long lasting and stable product or they put a really small battery in the device, substantially reducing uptime when running on battery, simply to save that few millimeters again. I wouldn't even mind so much except that it is becoming difficult for people like me, who value other qualities besides just "thinness", to find the electronics that we want at a reasonable price instead of planned obsolescence consumer grade junk that sacrifices the functional characteristics of the device for the physical looks and dimensions of the device (among the least important characteristics in my opinion).
My laptop, and its Ultrabay devices, is 5 years old. It is just over 1 inch thick. I carry it every day in my backpack, etc. and will not buy another laptop thicker than this. The only way to make a laptop as thin as this with an optical drive is to use the 9.5mm form factor. In the 5 years of heavy use, I have not had an optical drive failure nor have I heard of one. It certainly doesn't overheat at all. On a related note, I'm getting increasingly annoyed with the computer case manufacturers for not includi
I think the main reason they were making them this small was to fit in existing form factor products. For instance, now you could simply check 'blu-ray drive' when designing your laptop at Dell and they'll give you one instead of the standard DVD drive. This makes it interchangeable without having to design a special laptop housing just for the blu-ray drive.
However, we see device manufacturers producing products which overheat and die because they wanted that last 2mm of thinness instead of a long las
I guess that's a bit too late to make an appearance at MWSF in January. Then again, as long as they don't have a recording function, who needs Blu-Ray in a Laptop anyway.
There's bound to be some software distributed on BlueRay (or HD DVD) sooner or later. And there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to watch a film on your laptop. Or should you always buy both the DVD and the BlueRay versions (assuming you decided to go with BlueRay) ?
The parent poster didn't even bother to RTFA:
The drive supports 2X writing to single-layer BD-R (write-once) and BR-RE (rewritable) discs and 1X writing to dual-layer discs.
I seriously feel like slaughtering whoever came up with the "X" designation for optical drive speed.
"1X" means a different bit rate for CD, DVD, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, Compact Flash cards, and so on! It is such a confusing metric that it's a wonder it was adopted so universally.
Can't we just measure optical drives in megabytes/sec? This would make so much more sense...
actualy the X isthe same for CD's as Compaft Flash cards 1x = 150KB/s = 153,600B/s = 1,228,800b/s = 0.146MB/s
honestly it doesn't bother me that they did that.. although i do agree that DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD should have stuck to the same damn unit of measurement... but they kinda did..
see the orginal 1x. ment you chould burn a full cd in 1 hour.. 2x ment 30min.. and if i am correct that is what they are doing for DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD.. soo to figure out the rate
(diskSize/((60*60)/(xRating)))'s
note that that is only for disk media and not how flash memory is done.. flash is still 1x = 150KB's
No, 1x was meant to mean the same speed that the audio played at; one-times real-time. 2x would mean you burn/read at twice the rate of playback. 1x never meant you could burn a CD in one hour. For example, a standard CD-R is 72 minutes, and takes.... 72 minutes to burn at 1x. Most CDs are 80 minutes these days. I'm sure you can figure out how long they take to burn at 1x.
1x happens to be 150KB/s, but that wasn't the original definition.
yea.. opps.. it has been so long sence i used a 1x yea.. the 150KB just always stuck in my head.. hummm i wonder then exactly what the 1x value of dvd's and the other crap are now.. i know flash memory uses the 150KB/s
sorry about that.. and thank for bringing me back my memory of cartrige loading cd burnners..
Actually, on CF and data CDs they are exactly the same:)
And MB/s doesn't always make sense. Compare writing audio data and data data on a CD. Different sector sizes due to different ways of implementing error correction. See the technical details section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_CD_standard) [wikipedia.org]
Maybe extensive computer games with lots of sophisticated graphics and cut scenes. But really, we're not yet hitting the limits on DVD drivesx for typical games, where complex visual environments need to be manipulated in the available memory and graphics of the computer itself to reflect dynamic changes.
Until the graphics take a serious leap in capability, there's not much use for Blu-Ray capability for computer software. For backup systems? Maybe it would be useful, but it's still very expensive for that.
Umm, what Sony product are we talking about here? This is a panasonic drive that uses media developed and supported by an industry consortium, of which Sony is one of a dozen companies.
Wow, I see posters unwilling to read stories linked to before but it's been a long time since I've seen one not even willing to read the summary! Panasonic is not exactly a subsidiary of Sony.
Regardless what you think of Sony, Blu-Ray is a format with a wide range of hardware makers defining the standard - not just Sony. It's not like the Betamax situation with Toshiba and HD-DVD.
Or it could be that the announcement of a "form factor" isn't the most exciting and debatable topic. All you really need is one post, bubbling to the top, explaining that it means the drive can go into standard laptops. Someone already did that bit, so what's left?
Arguing the merits of 7mm vs 9mm sizes? Yeah that's a real hot button issue.
While I've made my choice for HD DVD [slashdot.org], many of your comments are exaggerations or just plain silly.
HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks are about as reliable as one another. Blu-ray disc manufacturers use a protective coating to ensure reliability, whereas HD-DVD discs don't require it as they don't store data as close to the surface. The net affect is both are about the same.
HD-DVD and Blu-ray both use the same blue-violet lasers. The drives are not "cheaper to make", they're close to identical except for the diff
Ok, looks like I misread that. I thought you were comparing combo discs to regular discs, rather than HD-DVD combo discs to Blu-ray combo discs (does anyone even make those?) Sorry about that.
Please. Do NOT call DVD "classic DVD", as though HD-DVD is in some way related to DVD. The HD-DVD format has a couple of things in common with DVD (e.g., circular, mostly polycarbonate), but your choice of phrase makes about as much sense as calling a CD an "HD-LP record".
...what? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm confused..
Re:...what? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Re:...what? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:...what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey planned obsolescence [wikipedia.org] worked quite nicely for decades. Don't think our consumer psychology would be the same in the western world without it. Hell, some people still buy a new car/tv/whatever every three to five years because planned obsolescence has taught us that older consumer products are junk. The stuff works fine, just the way it was designed to.
Parent
Say no to Size Zero drives (Score:2, Funny)
About time! (Score:2)
-jcr
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Does such a requirement ramp up the size or power requirements of these devices?
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I doubt it. It's not anything a typical ARM core couldn't do.
-jcr
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2) Whatever needs to be done on the drive is just software that can be run on a micro-controller. Not much bigger than the one that already handle the ATA interface.
So the answer would be: NO.
It is probably just mechanical issues that might not be very difficult to solve but just take more time.
Speed (Score:2)
No.
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Re:Speed (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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The media itself limited recording speed in the past because the discs would shatter if you spun them too fast. It'd be nice if they let us know what has changed with BluRay that means that discs won't tear themselves apart at high rotational speeds. Are they not made of the same polycarbonate materials as HD-DVD/DVD/CD are?
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These days most of new desktop BD drive products are 4x at $500.
LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray Drive/HD DVD Reader
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140332/article.html [pcworld.com]
>The GGW-H20L is the first Blu-ray Disc burner to support 6X speed for writing to BD-R.
>That's up from 4X on the GGW-H10N, and up from 2X on the early Blu-ray Disc burners
> from Plextor, Sony, and Pioneer. In the PC World Test Center's evaluation, the
> drive's performance reflected i
Dude, you're getting a DELL (Score:2, Informative)
BC-5500S? (Score:2)
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A picture is over here (may resize your browser):
http://www.span.com/catalog/popup_image.php?pID=17074&osCsid=33580f [span.com]
Media is way too expensive (Score:2)
On top of that, BD disks have the recordable goo on the bottom side, which makes them less durable than both CDs (goo on top) and DVDs (goo in the middle).
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The coatings really do work quite well. They don't make the surface completely unscratchable, but they do make them far more durable than a standard CD/DVD.
different form factor though (Score:2)
Except coating trumps that (Score:3, Interesting)
While that distance is shorter, the medium in between is far less fragile [youtube.com] than CD/DVD.
Would you (could you!) do that with a DVD?
Blu-Ray + HD-DVD (Score:2)
9.5mm vs 12.5mm (Score:2, Informative)
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Why Does "Thin" Override All other Concerns? (Score:4, Interesting)
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On a related note, I'm getting increasingly annoyed with the computer case manufacturers for not includi
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I think the main reason they were making them this small was to fit in existing form factor products. For instance, now you could simply check 'blu-ray drive' when designing your laptop at Dell and they'll give you one instead of the standard DVD drive. This makes it interchangeable without having to design a special laptop housing just for the blu-ray drive.
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Then again, as long as they don't have a recording function, who needs Blu-Ray in a Laptop anyway.
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The parent poster didn't even bother to RTFA: The drive supports 2X writing to single-layer BD-R (write-once) and BR-RE (rewritable) discs and 1X writing to dual-layer discs.
So it does have a recording function
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"1X" means a different bit rate for CD, DVD, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, Compact Flash cards, and so on! It is such a confusing metric that it's a wonder it was adopted so universally.
Can't we just measure optical drives in megabytes/sec? This would make so much more sense...
Re:Too late for MWSF (Score:5, Informative)
honestly it doesn't bother me that they did that.. although i do agree that DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD should have stuck to the same damn unit of measurement... but they kinda did
see the orginal 1x. ment you chould burn a full cd in 1 hour
(diskSize/((60*60)/(xRating)))'s
note that that is only for disk media and not how flash memory is done.. flash is still 1x = 150KB's
Parent
Re:Too late for MWSF (Score:5, Informative)
1x happens to be 150KB/s, but that wasn't the original definition.
Parent
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sorry about that.. and thank for bringing me back my memory of cartrige loading cd burnners..
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And MB/s doesn't always make sense. Compare writing audio data and data data on a CD. Different sector sizes due to different ways of implementing error correction.
See the technical details section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_CD_standard) [wikipedia.org]
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Until the graphics take a serious leap in capability, there's not much use for Blu-Ray capability for computer software. For backup systems? Maybe it would be useful, but it's still very expensive for that.
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I asked the question for a very legit reason.
I honestly don't care for or against either format... yet. Both are still relatively expensive, and I have no equipment that utilizes either one.
Reason why: (Score:2)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071007-new-blu-ray-discs-with-bd-drm-failing-to-play-on-some-devices.html [arstechnica.com]
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Burn me twice...Hey cool! This thing's rewritable!
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Laziest slashdot poster ever (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless what you think of Sony, Blu-Ray is a format with a wide range of hardware makers defining the standard - not just Sony. It's not like the Betamax situation with Toshiba and HD-DVD.
Parent
Re:The low volume of posts show... (Score:4, Informative)
Arguing the merits of 7mm vs 9mm sizes? Yeah that's a real hot button issue.
Parent
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-HD-DVD drives are cheaper to make, owing to the red laser.
Incorrect. HD-DVD uses a 405nm laser, which is on the violet end of blue. It's the same laser that Blu-Ray uses.
Sources: http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com/overview.html [thelookand...erfect.com] http://www.steppininit.com/tay/hd_vs_blu-ray/about_hd-dvd.html [steppininit.com]
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While I've made my choice for HD DVD [slashdot.org], many of your comments are exaggerations or just plain silly.
HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks are about as reliable as one another. Blu-ray disc manufacturers use a protective coating to ensure reliability, whereas HD-DVD discs don't require it as they don't store data as close to the surface. The net affect is both are about the same.
HD-DVD and Blu-ray both use the same blue-violet lasers. The drives are not "cheaper to make", they're close to identical except for the diff
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