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Television Media

Copy-Protected Digital VHS 447

Posted by michael from the consume dept.
DragonMagic writes: "BBC carries this story regarding the comeback, certain studios hope, of the video tape against the dominating sales of the DVD. Fox, Universal, Dreamworks SKG and Artisan Entertainment are releasing a series of blockbuster movies onto the format D-VHS, developed by JVC. DVHS offers High Definition TV technology and the possibility of copy prevention, and is able to play old VHS tapes as well."
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Copy-Protected Digital VHS More

Copy-Protected Digital VHS

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  • People never learn.
    • I'd like to know the name of the person who made the decision to go with this technology. It would be fun to see how long he/she could stay on the job for this decision :)

      • It's an over-priced, niche product, designed for a very specific market. It provides the studios with one more chance to sell their movies again to the same "early adapters" who will need to buy them yet again when disk technology catches up and surpasses digital vhs capacity. The economics of this are beautiful, even if the format never goes mainstream; with the player costing a couple of grand, prices for HD tapes can be at any pricepoint they choose...what are ya gonna do, spend a couple grand on the player and then not buy the expensive HD tapes?

        The guy who thought this one up gets a raise, and a special place in Hell.

  • humm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Altus ( 1034 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:05PM (#2927538) Homepage
    sounds kind of like DAT to me.

    never realy made it anywhere with the consumer, mostly due to anti-piracy measure that were built into the consumer grade units.

    I think, given that DVD has been adopted so very quickly by so many people, there realy isnt to much chance of this taking over.

    still it would be cool if you could record HDTV onto D-VHS and replay it at the same quality

    • Re:humm (Score:2, Insightful)

      by StaticEngine ( 135635 )
      DAT is still used by musicians everywhere, and the level of machine that they would buy ($700+) has SCMS Copy Protection Defeat built right in. Of course, you don't see musicians rampantly pirating music because of this feature...

      It all comes down to this: Some middle manager gets a whiff of some technology, spends a few days writing up a proposal showing how his company can earn X Dollars and save Y Dollars in profits that would be lost to a vague piracy threat if they go with this technology, and some upper manager sits in a meeting for an hour and approves the proposal. The middle manager is motivated by company politcs, the upper manager is motivated by profit, and no one cares about technology, the Rights of Consumers, or whether there's any proof, scientific or otherwise, that this system will work. Companies can only see a Quarter into the future, and only remember the last three months. And capitalism works because it relies of people being greedy, which they always are.

      • Re:humm (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Jeremi ( 14640 )
        [companies are motivated only by profit, and that is why they put copy-prevention mechanisms into their gear]


        Odd that they haven't noticed that copy-prevention mechanisms have been a large factor in the commercial failure of several data formats (DAT and MiniDisc come to mind).


        Perhaps someday they will come to the realization that customers are more likely to buy a unit that does what the customer wants, than one that does what TimeWarnerAOLSony wants.

  • But... why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by soboroff ( 91667 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:06PM (#2927542)
    Why would someone go out and buy a new video tape player (and let's not say VCR, do you think they'd be recordable ;-), when we already have DVD? Because you could get the Brave New World of media coporation evil in a familiar form factor?

    I can see it now... "Who needs the long-livedness, nearly random access, and large amounts of storage of DVDs when you could go back to tapes?" It'll be like nostalgia for vinyl, except without the hiss and pops.
    • DVideo isn't new, there are several players out ther, they hold more data, and quite frankly, DVD isn't there yet technology wise. Meaning dvds that take advantge of new feature often won't run on a dvd player thats 2-3 years old. they need more processing power.
    • Actually they ARE VCRs. Here [jvc.com] it is. There is a 24-hour recording mode! Pretty cool if you ask me. Still too expensive though.

  • I think most people already equate VHS with bad. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Spazntwich ( 208070 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:06PM (#2927547)
    It'll be difficult to convince people to go out and buy VHS tapes now that DVD has already been billed as the 'totally better' replacement for tapes, even if D-VHS is better.

    As for the media, how many people have bought a VHS player recently enough for it to have the "D-Theater" ability? People aren't going to go out and buy another VCR when they just shelled out 200$ or more on their DVD player.

  • Things like these... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:07PM (#2927550) Homepage
    remind me of the withering days of the casette where there were advanced features of seeking tracks and auto reverse play...

    VHS recorders are less than $100 and I'm in serious doubt that anyone is going to pay extra for something they can already get from the DVD players and VHS recorders they already own...
    • This is offtopic but deal with it.

      When I went to buy a new deck for my car, I considered the options. I knew that affordable cd/mp3 players (portable) were just around the corner. I also had a portable cd player. With a good quality Sony tape deck I could handle any format with a little adapter and some batteries and the player of my choice. If I chose a cd deck, I couldn't play many comps I'd made from mp3s and vinyl. The only logical choice was cassette, and I'm glad I did it.

      Rather than being strapped to only cds, I now have a portable cd/mp3 player in my car. 3 formats, lots of music, good quality. As long as the cassette player's heads stay clean, the mp3 audio is as good as the mp3 encoding quality.

      In this day and age, cassette players are STILL a good idea.

  • No Market (Score:3, Insightful)

    by clarkgoble ( 241742 ) <clark@lextek.com> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:07PM (#2927552) Homepage
    The problem is that DVHS offers advantages only to people with HDTV. But right now that is a very small minority. DVD offered not only far superior picture quality to VHS, but also better sound and random access. DVHS loses that all important ability of random access and has for the regular viewer no advantage over DVD.

    • Re:No Market (Score:4, Insightful)

      by spectecjr ( 31235 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:21PM (#2927647) Homepage
      The problem is that DVHS offers advantages only to people with HDTV. But right now that is a very small minority. DVD offered not only far superior picture quality to VHS, but also better sound and random access. DVHS loses that all important ability of random access and has for the regular viewer no advantage over DVD.

      Except for, presumably, being writable on a standard consumer-level system rather than requiring an MPEG-2 encoder and DVD burner?

      That will be where its value comes in -- as a way of consumers making their own recordings in digital format.

      Si
      • But by the time that HDTV goes "mainstream" so will DVD burners and enough CPU time to do MPEG-4 encoding on the fly with cycles to spare.

  • It's been done (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gizzmonic ( 412910 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:09PM (#2927574) Homepage Journal
    CBS (like many media producers at the time) was worried by the release of the VCR in the early 80's. Their response was to produce a geniune CBS brand VCR, identical to competing VCRs, but without the "record" button.

    They were sold at appliance stores like Sears and Best for about a year. I don't know a single person who bought one. Consumers don't like artificially feature-crippled products.

    I wish the new copy-protected "CDs" were as clearly labeled as CBS's old VCR. They would surely lose in the marketplace if labelled properly...

    • Re:It's been done (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Pope ( 17780 )
      Later,in the mid 90's, Video Casette Players (VCP vs. VCR) came back in a pretty big way. They were/are low-cost items, appealing to folks who want to babysit their kids with a videotape and not worry about them screwing with the machine and taping over those damn expensive Disney videos, or as a 2nd unit for just watching movies in the bedroom. (Lots of people have small TVs in their bedrooms, and don't necessarily need to record things there)

      Not sure if they still sell, but they were under $100 when a regular VCR was still in the $150 to $200 range, and if you have no need to record things they make sense.

    • Re:It's been done (Score:3, Interesting)

      by perky ( 106880 )
      I wish the new copy-protected "CDs" were as clearly labeled as CBS's old VCR.



      Check this [theregister.co.uk] article at the register.

  • Some cool features (Score:4, Insightful)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:09PM (#2927579) Homepage Journal
    DVHS promises 4 hours/tape of HDTV or 50 hours/tape of regular TV.

    For some people, the 50 hours/tape feature may be exciting. That's about 70 hours of TV if you cut out the commericals.

    Personally, I think this will go the way of DAT. Digital audio tape was a cool idea, and is still used in niche markets, but with recordable CDs isn't terribly interesting to consumers. With consumer-grade recordable DVD just around the corner, there's no real market here for a new tape format.

    • Re:Some cool features (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:25PM (#2927671)

      For some people, the 50 hours/tape feature may be exciting. That's about 70 hours of TV if you cut out the commericals.

      As we know from the non-consumer electronics world (i.e. computers) tape is a great archive mechanism but is lousy for random access. The problem with putting 70 hours of TV onto a digital tape is that I rarely want to watch 70 hours of back-to-back TV shows. More likely I'll want to find that kicking episode of Buffy that's somewhere on the tape. I don't want to have to play through 35 hours of other things to find it.

      So although 70 hours of TV on a single tape sounds appealing, in practice I suspect that this format is going to lose out to recordable DVD technologies.

    • PAL people can already get 10 hours on a single tape with the old BASF (now EM-TEC) E-300, 5 hour tapes which you record in long-play. Sure, the quality isn't HDTV, but long-play on the "professional grade" E-300 is cleaner than standard-play on a bargain basement 3-hour tape.

      I think NTSC moves faster so you wouldn't get the full 5 hours in standard play, but I'm not sure if your "extended-play" option is more than double...

      • I think NTSC moves faster

        True...used to have something with the exact numbers on it, but the tape speed is faster when recording NTSC than when recording PAL or SECAM.

        so you wouldn't get the full 5 hours in standard play, but I'm not sure if your "extended-play" option is more than double...

        EP gives 3x the recording time...a T-160 yields 8 hours of recording time, while a T-200 gives you 10 hours (they do 2:40 and 3:20 in SP). Last time I checked, T-200 was the longest length available here (haven't bought blank tape in a while as I rip video from my TiVo and burn it to SVCD nowadays).

    • You see, consumer-grade recordable DVD has been around the corner for about 5 years, now, only now there are half a dozen formats to choose from.

      Plus it has been noted current DVDs cannot store enough to do HDTV.

      Even with CDs, how many people do you know who have bought CDR stereos?

      Ppl mostly use CDR drives in their computers. It hasn't replaced the record button for the cassette in their stereos.

      I think that while DVHS will flop like DAT, DVD(+RW/-RW/-RAM) will be in 10 years like CDRW drives today: mostly in computers.

  • Ask yourself this..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ajs ( 35943 ) <ajs.ajs@com> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:10PM (#2927585) Homepage Journal
    Studios should be asking themselves, "who are your early adopters?"

    DVD is too new for your average consumer to want to run out and buy a new player (even if it plays VHS too).

    High-end videophiles will know better. Random access media has too much going for it in terms of non-linear content (think "the making of" and trailers) and fast search forward or back. They also know that tape involves more moving parts, and thus more wear.

    So, they've got to be targeting the low-end videophiles who know just enough to be dangerous. Oddly enough, the vast majority of THAT market segment are college students or recent graduates, and would be the most likely to be turned off by the new copy-protection features!

    Oh yeah, this is going to be lucky to go as far as DIVX (the DVD format, not the video codec) did. ;-)
    • While random access is very nice and tapes wear much more out than DVDs, people that want the best video quality will have to use tapes. DVHS features much higher bitrates than DVDs and is able to support HDTV resolutions.

      I think DVHS has a chance for a while in the high-end videophile segment. Videophile tend to collect movies and do not really play them that often because they had that many tapes/discs. Also the wearout problem isn't that bad because DVHS is digital and it will take a long time before the error correction couldn't correct all the bit errors.

      Also making a DVHS release is very likely much cheaper than a DVD release. You don't need expensive mastering and glassmasters to make a DVHS master. Because of that DVHS release could be profitable even if a low volume is sold. The only thing that is really needed for a good HDTV DVHS release is a high resolution digital transfer and a mpeg-2 encode of that transfer. For most movies that may get a DVHS release the transfer is already existant because it was made for HDTV broadcasting, professional digital video project for cinemas or because the movie made completely digital. Then you just need a cheap mpeg encode.
      • By the time the HDTV will "catch on" with lower prices and much more content - then you can rest assure that once again - Sony & Philips will sit down and come up with a next-generation DVD format (lets call it - DVD-2) that will have all the DVHS capabilities plus more..

        Heck, they could also add recording option (limited by your cable/TV operator so he can disable his broadcast being recorded)...

        As far as I can see about this DVHS - it's as dead as the DIVX format (not the codec).

  • Will make Circuit City DIVX look successfull (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lordpixel ( 22352 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:10PM (#2927590) Homepage
    I heard about this 3 years ago, when DVD was 1/10 what it is now, and I didn't think it would succeed then.

    Let me see, even if it were not copy protected in new and interesting ways, its a tape, meaning you get the following lovely limitations:

    * Minutes to Rewind and Fast Forward, certainly no useful "scene selection"

    * Stretch, snap, oh dear.

    * Yay, its magnetic. Degrades over time (much faster than an optical disk)

    * Multiple versions of moive on one tape with seamless branching to let you watch either theatrical or directors cut.

    So basically its backwards compatible with VHS.

    hrm, anyone remember Philips DCC - the competitor to Sony minidisc from the early 90s. A tape format which played regular cassettes. (Basically, an inferior consumer DAT with extra copy protection and backwards compatibility).

    Nope. Didn't think you would remember it!

    Minidisc may not have set the world on fire (at least in the US) but its still here. People are used to the advantages of disk and solid state (flash memory) formats.
    • It's also read via physical contact, thus another reason it will degrade. Everytime you watch it, it gets a little wear. And if you rewind and fast forward a bunch, its even worse. This is just a bad idea all around. They're going to have to come up with something a lot better for me to give up DVD.

    • Here's a question, not that I disagree with you, but think for a second. How often do you really USE scene selection on a DVD? Especially a rental? I know I don't often sit down to watch a half a movie, with the plan to enjoy the other half tomorrow. Even if I am inturrupted for a day or two, I always re-watch the beginning. The whole flow of the picture is lost if you don't.

  • FMDs & FMCs - Bigger, Faster, Flexible, Better (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cryptochrome ( 303529 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:12PM (#2927599) Journal
    What a crock. Don't waste your money investing in this one - FMDs and especially FMCs [c-3d.net] from Constellation 3D [c-3d.net] are the real future.

  • Not "copy protection" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mike Schiraldi ( 18296 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:12PM (#2927601) Homepage Journal
    Call it what it really is, "Usage restriction", "Usage annoyance", "Copy prevention", "Copy annoyance", anything but "Copy protection", a newspeak word brought to you by the same people who made up the word "pirate", equating someone who copies bits without authorization to someone who robs, rapes, and murders on the high seas.

  • Who's gonna buy this? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dghcasp ( 459766 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:13PM (#2927607)
    But JVC has said it hopes to sell 100,000 D-VHS players,which currently cost $1,995 (£1,400) each, during 2002.

    I can't see exactly who their target market is:

    Videophiles who already have DVD (and perhaps even LD) might buy it if they're spendy people, but would they copy their DVD or LD onto D-VHS and suffer "degredation?"

    Joe Six-Pack is not going to pay $2k when he can get a normal VHS and DVD and still have enough left over to buy 600 sixes of Bud.

    About the only market I can see is people who want to tape off their satellite dish and keep it all digital, instead of having to have programs littering their Tivo.

    But the price is gonna have to come way down (est. 3 years) before the mass market does that. And what do you want to bet by that time there will be some sort of "copy protection" on satellite signals to prevent it?

  • how it will be able to fool my old silver top-loading non-macrovision VCR into not recording? I could see achieving that by either sending out a digital (which my TV can't decode) or high resolution (which my TV can't display) signal. Either way, this thing is useless to me anyway. Seriously, why would I want this?

    The only place I could see this being of any use at all is in video studios for technophobes, where the ease of queing up tape would be handy. Compared to a hard-drive based non-linear editing suite, though, this is a short trip to hell.

  • planned obsolescence (Score:3, Insightful)

    by maniac11 ( 88495 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:14PM (#2927614) Homepage Journal
    This is a great idea if you are a studio executive or shareholder. It's called planned obsolescense: sell a product that will wear out after a certain period of time so that the consumer will have to repurchase it.


    It's an underhanded, but unmistakably capitalist, tactic. Leaving you the only option in a market driven society: vote with your dollars and they'll soon leave this intentionally crummy product for dead.


    A good article regarding the concept of planned obsolescence. [uow.edu.au]

  • See The DCC Faq [come.to] for comparanda:

    • All DCC players and recorders can playback traditional analog cassettes.
    • All DCC players have music searching capabilities. As far as I know this goes for ACC as well on most recorders and players (it works by searching silences there). On prerecorded cassettes you can search by title and the player will know which side it is on.
    • DCC equipment is cheaper than DAT or MD. [substitute miniDV or DVD-R)

    And of course it included SCMS.

    People like DVDs because you don't have to rewind them, you can jump directly to a particular scene (which is, I know, just another way of saying you don't have to rewind them), and they have the same familiar size and shape that CDs have. The hilarious part is that D-VHS is targetting the high-end consumer with titles like X-Men, Independence Day, Die Hard, U-571 and Terminator 1 and 2 - all of them eye candy that, while they may look good on HDTV, are mass-market films.

  • According to the article, the cost for one of these new D-VCRs is $1,995!!!! Why would I pay $1,995 to get a new VCR when I can pay $200 to $500 to get a DVD Player???? This is insane. This will never take off. The price is too high for my budget. Also, why would I want to buy a digit VCR that only plays Prerecorded D-VHS tapes? You can play regular tape, and I bet you can record like a normal VCR, but I noticed that the article doesn't mention that this new VCR can record Digital quality signals and maintain the digital quality. Why would I want to pay $1,995 and not get the ability to record digital? I think this will be another DIVX.
  • This is probably going to end up like LaserDisks. It'll be the high-end format that home-theater people are going to use instead of DVDs. And then they'll come out with blue-laser DVDs after DVDs are at 99% acceptance so that people can buy new stuff AGAIN.

    Now the question I'd love to see answered is weather you can tape OTA HDTV programming on these new D-VHS VCRs. That might make HDTV *gasp* useful!

  • What is the ideal media? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:17PM (#2927628) Homepage Journal
    So with yet another video media coming out, it occurs to me to ask what the ideal media would be? Is it DVD, or is there a need for something better? Does DVD really offer HDTV resolution?

    Personally, I see several shortcomings in the current DVD format:
    * NTSC/PAL-based encoding. Rubbish. The disc should be encoded with however many frames per second the original media used. The players can then convert to NTSC/PAL, or they can put out a native signal for multisync TVs. Then each frame on the disc is one original frame from the film.
    * Size limitations. If we're creating a new format, we can use newer technology to get a lot more data on the discs.
    * Region coding/content coding. Well, this won't go away, but it certainly belongs on a wish list.

    • Re:What is the ideal media? (Score:5, Informative)

      by cmowire ( 254489 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:26PM (#2927674) Homepage
      DVD does not offer HDTV resolution. The widescreen modes can play on a HDTV screen and give you pretty good quality, but it's not as good as HD.

      The ideal format would be a DVD-style disk with blue lasers, and a writable/rewritable format available at the launch date. You just know they'll bungle it, but.... But if they had that, it would have enough storage space to do HDTV resolution video while being a nice optical medium. If they delivered writable/rewritable features with it, you could use it to record stuff.

      This format would best be introduced in 3-5 years. People will have already converted their collections over to DVD and be looking for new media purchases, HDTV will be more available, and the hardware to make it usable as a substitute for a VCR will be there, too.

      The main reason why the DVD format does the NTSC/PAL encoding is to make the player simpler, BTW. That, and good 24fps to 60fps conversion is a pain in the rear to do right in cheap hardware. With an HDTV-format DVD, they might do things the right way.
    • What you do is develop a media disc with two areas for data. The first part of the data is used to store the codec relavent to decoding the media that would then be recorded on the rest of the disc. You have a player that can load the codec off of the disc on the fly and use that codec to play back the media.

      So you start off with something the size of a DVD let's say. But you want to be able to use Divx ;-) encoded video. Fine load the codec on the codec track dump your encoded media on the other track, and suddenly you've got the ability to play a lot more content at the sacrifice of some compression artifacting.

      It seems silly to me to tie the nature of the video's encoding to the media it comes on. If you have an intelligent generalized player, you should be able to play just about anything that's within the capabilities of the hardware.

      The media involved should be a disc to provide random access. Optical is ideal because it last a hell of a lot longer than tape. Capacity should be ludicrously huge but affordable. The current price point of DVD's seems pretty reasonable, so maximize the capacity that would be cost effective at that price.

  • Another attempt to save the tape. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Obiwan Kenobi ( 32807 ) <evanNO@SPAMmisterorange.com> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:18PM (#2927630) Homepage
    First, DVD fans shouldn't be the least bit worried.

    Secondly you can find the release in full here. [dvdfile.com]

    This new VHS has the potential to hold up to 28Mbps (Megabits per second) of High Definition signal. This surpasses the defacto standard of 18Mbps, and that's certainly a good thing. The main difference between these tapes and DVD is that yes, even though DVD is great, it can't do high definition. It just takes up too much space. So in that regard, these D-VHS tapes have the one-up.

    However, D-VHS (they're going to market it as D-Theater) will still need to be rewound. You still won't be able to have commentaries. You still won't be able to have multiple angles, seamless branching, or menus.

    They will still wear out over time.

    While I'm positive they will be gorgeous when they are debuted tomorrow for the press, the fact remains that tapes are tapes and by definition they disintigrate over the years.

    The real question is that there have been at least half a dozen High Definition DVD formats proposed and yet no one will stand behind them. Of course JVC did invent VHS to start with and that's a good point, but this Beta-like (or 8-track like if you prefer) alternative to a digital medium already has its days numbered with very (VERY) few players, all priced just below $2000 and the fact that consumers will be confused yet again by even more techno mumbo-jumbo.

    Lastly, I think the fact that even though the first few movies will be your basic blockbusters (The first two Terminators, U-571, X-Men, Independence Day, et al), I'm glad to see that Warner Bros (who coincidentally were the first to back DVD) and Columbia TriStar aren't getting in this race.
    • This new VHS has the potential to hold up to 28Mbps (Megabits per second) of High Definition signal.

      Whaaa? SMPTE has long since specified that over-the-air HDTV will be broadcast on a 19 Mbit channel. That's maximum; broadcasters can mux more than one lower-bandwidth channel into that piece of broadcast spectrum if they choose to.

      So it a major feature of this new format is home recording of HDTV, those extra 9 megabits are completely wasted. There's no information there. That's nine million zeros per second. ;-)

    • Re:Another attempt to save the tape. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by melatonin ( 443194 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:47PM (#2927780)
      The main difference between these tapes and DVD is that yes, even though DVD is great, it can't do high definition. It just takes up too much space. So in that regard, these D-VHS tapes have the one-up.

      yes, but the solution is simple; switch to a better codec. Alright, the 'better codec' part isn't simple, but the way video compression technologies go, it will happen, if it hasn't already (MPEG-4 isn't broadcast quality).

      However, for most DVDs produced the quality totally sucks. Try hooking up your favorite DVD to an HDTV, and you'll probably be quite surprised. If you'll see all the artifacts you know and love from digital video on your computer. HDTVs are great at one thing; perfectly reproducing the signal that comes in (hook up a VCR and prepare to be horrified).

      Honestly, as HDTVs kick in, consumers may be looking for something that can deliver higher quality. It is possible to encode much better video than they do; but the studios target our stone-age TVs, as I'm sure it's cheaper. Animation DVDs have to be compressed differently (like a key-frame every frame or something; no or very little temporal compression), and the visual quality is almost flawless in comparison. However, I've noticed several DVD players 'hickup' when playing back animation DVDs.

      Watching ST:First Contact on an HDTV, you can see lots of background blockiness other compression artifacts. Playing it back on a high-quality TV, you can't see anything wrong! Unbreakable is horrific; at times it feels like I'm watching 8-bit dithered video.

      Studios may be eyeing to upgrade all our DVD players (and the DVD standard). They would get to bring us higher quality (through a newer codec or possibly updated media) and fix the CSS 'issue' at the same time. In that case, they may want to choose embrace and market D-VHS as well, as it may fill their needs now.

    • Actually, with that much bandwidth it'd certainly be feasible to have multiple commentary tracks and low-quality alternate angle tracks all on the same 28mbps stream. As long as they figure out how to parse all the possible data into a coherent display, they've got the room for it. Still though, the lack of chapter skips and quick scanning really kills it for me. Not to mention that with the massive DVD installed base and consumer mentality that DVD >> VHS, it doesn't have a chance. The only chance it's got is to be included on new generation VCRs with far too low a price point to justify the type of extra-feature capability I talked about or to make it very high in price and aim it at the theater buff crowd. Since the studios all have hi-def copies of their movies anyway, there wouldn't be much production cost that I could see as far as data goes, and there really isn't that much investment in the technology. It's certainly possible to profit off this technology (plus everyone's happy they get 'copy-protection' - of course they got that with DVD too). That doesn't mean it'll ever replace DVD - a hi-def optical format, preferably more resistent to wear-and-tear (say a DVD type disc in some sort of caddy) would be the ultimate format as far as I'm concerned.

    • They will still wear out over time.

      That is a feature.

  • Technical details questions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ryu2 ( 89645 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:19PM (#2927634) Homepage Journal
    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.

    How will they hook up to HDTV? Via analogue component inputs? There is no final consumer digital standard for HDTV interconnections, precisely because of copy protection concerns.
  • Why can't they come up with something USEFUL, like affordable dvd recorders? I know I know, they're only $500 or so right now, but that's for your computer, not to sit comfortably in your entertainment center. That's one advantage tape media will always have over cd media..easy, extremely affordable recordability.

    The caveat to this is all the 'protection' they'll inevitably bring into play. Always cracks me up when I see Macrovision 'quality assurance' or similar crap on rented videos. It just assures that YOU won't make a good copy without some extra hardware. I'm sure these digital players and recorders will add just that many more hoops to jump through to make a backup for yourself or an anonymous coward you know.
  • I think this might be able to take off if it was complimentary to DVDs rather than trying to replace them. 50 hours of broadcast TV recordability is a good thing. Of course not having the ability to record DVDs, and artificially not allowing people to record what they want to record will seriously hamper any acceptance of this device, much like the DAT debacle.

    When will they ever learn?
  • I remember this from a few years ago, and even then it was expensive. It is a technology that nobody was interested in, and probably still aren't. I remember someting about the system being able to record 8-streams simultaneously (so 8 different tv channels, although at lower quality I would assume). The system did seem quite good as (A) it was recordable (unlike DVD), (B)it was backwards compatible. However I think the 8-stream system was crippled (guess who wanted this), and there was no support for the system. I don't think this has much chance this time round: I mean normal VHS recorders are dirt cheap.

  • I'm awaiting a standalone player playing ISO MPG4 (Score:3)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:33PM (#2927708) Homepage
    I doubt MPAA even in all their power can stop that... and that will be a killer appliance. Publicly availible codecs are around, no more VCD mpg1 or SVCD mpg2, DVD-on-a-cd mpg4.

    Kjella
  • Has anyone brought this up? Barring the copyright problems, this stacks up against the TiVo in most ways.

    It may have more success as a way to time shift, and thus replace the conventional VHSR in the house, but because it's 2 years *after* TiVo, I wouldn't expect it to take off at all.

    If this had been released 3 years ago (Possible! Sony had Digital8 around that time) and could record digitally onto standard VHS tapes and had a Firewire port for streaming of data around a Firewire network...

    Heck, if they added that feature right now, I bet there would be a niche market for it!

    Still, they should have released this product three years ago...

  • Specs (Score:2, Informative)

    by minkeyboodle ( 217651 )
    A press-release-looking document on the D-VHS specs is at http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/products/vcr/D -VHS-e.html [jvc-victor.co.jp]
    It looks like the first idea behind these units were to record digital satellite links in DSRs (Digital Satellite Recorders). Here's another press release from 1997:
    http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/D-VHS/d970601e .html [jvc-victor.co.jp]

  • Add DVD or VCD archiving to current PVRs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:34PM (#2927717) Homepage Journal
    I'd really like to be able to record shows to DVD or VCD. PVRs could do this with the addition of the right recording hardware, but the industry would throw a shit-fit. It'd be really sweet to be able to select shows from your list on the Tivo, cut the commercials, maybe divx them (Or not if you think it degrades the quality any more than mpeg encoding does) and dump them off to a CD sized media.

    This capability would be trivial to add -- they're just mpeg files on your hard drive after all. Someone in the business will probably do it one day. Then the lawsuits will begin and it'd be tied up in court longer than any of us will be around.

  • I'd love to insert the picture here, but it would be of a mangled tape. I don't think I've seen or heard of a DVD destroying a disk, yet. Know of one? Pass it along and I'll avoid the mfr. VHS is too problematic.
  • Hmm, $2000 USD.

    Heh.

    How about a complete computer with a DVD drive on it and a (resonably) high quality video out card (I do believe that they should be able to do HDTV resolutions, not like HDTV is /that/ great, yeesh).

    In fact computers are EASIER to play DVDs on then a regular stand alone DVD player is.

    Hmm.

    Mabye that would be ONE good thing about these D-VHS systems, FINALY being able to use the as a passthrough! Star topologies SO suck for A/V equipment. :`( :`( :`( :`( (if you've ever had to manage one in which NOTHING automaticaly detects anything else, you would cry too. I have to manualy select the friggin audio decompression method on my stand alone DVD player for crying out loud!)

    I just open my computers DVD-ROM drive up, pop in a DVD, close the tray, and walla, the movie starts to play! Yaah.

    10-15 seconds, slow tray.

    bleh.

    That is the ONE thing that I seriously miss about VHS, the ability to have EVERYTHING running through the VCR. Perferably in a nice serial method. Nintendo to Cable Box, Cable Box to VCR, VCR to TV. Yah. Since my standalone DVD player DOES NOT HAVE A FRIGGIN OFF SWITCH on the remote control, anytime the TV is tuned to the DVD player's inpt channel I get that blue APEX DVD screen, ickies! Not fun.

    Ah, of course the sound system doesn't help things any, hehe. Damnit I wish that somebody would invent a single *High Quality* wire that transfered over both video and {2,4,5}.1 surround sound data. Man that would rock. Alot. Seriously. Hell make it all digital too, hehe, I'm willing to pay for an A/D converter in each seperate device (uh, lets see, Speakers, TV, thats it. ^-^ ) in exchange for the convience of just ONE CORD between devices!

  • JVC's VHS patent (Score:3, Funny)

    by Patrick ( 530 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:42PM (#2927763)
    Why would JVC develop a new digital video standard based on magnetic tapes? Does anyone else suspect it has something to do with JVC's aging patents on VHS and S-VHS?
  • Even if other people don't care for random access, other people don't have DVHS players, but they do have DVD players wether they be in their Playstation2, PC, or standalone set-top-box.

    DVD is here to stay.

  • Why this exists (Score:2, Informative)

    by darien ( 180561 )
    You may wonder why anyone would launch a new tape format in 2002; but D-VHS has actually been around for several years.

    If you can read Japanese you can read the press release for the launch of Hitachi's first D-VHS machine in August 1998 here [hitachi.co.jp]; otherwise you might like to take a look at this press release [dvhs.co.uk] from 1999 which announces the first HD consumer VCR, which used D-VHS and was manufactured by Panasonic.

    When D-VHS kit was first being developed it was all but impossible for consumers to record to DVD, so D-VHS looked like it might have a future. But DVD recording technology started to become affordable very soon after, so I guess by the time the manufacturers were ready to really push D-VHS in the West it was a non-starter.

    And I can't say I'm surprised the major studios are looking at it - for the time being at least, no-one's hacked the copy protection, which is more than can be said for DVDs!

  • YEAH!!! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hooray, I get to pay $2000 so that movie studios can prevent me from copying movies!!!

    What a bargain.

    High def my ass

  • Why not DVD 2.0? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SilLumTao ( 134743 )
    I'm not a media empire mogul, but why waste time and money on something so risky? Why not capitalize on the success of DVDs and come out with DVD 2.0?

    DVD 2.0: A new format of DVD that supports HDTV but fixes that pesky "weak encryption" problem of original DVDs. Ultimately, it won't stop people from ripping them, but it should slow them down (look at Xbox DVDs for example). And the best part? Everyone has to buy a new DVD player (backwards compatible to DVD 1.0 of course), and they have to re-purchase their favorite DVDs encoded for HDTV! [Yes, this sucks, but it would make the most sense from an execs point of view].

    Gag, I think I'll sell my TV and move to Montana...

  • tape stretch (Score:3)

    by gmhowell ( 26755 ) <gmhowell@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:49PM (#2927790) Homepage Journal
    Does this digital format remove the problems inherent in tape stretch? If not, count me out.
  • They expect to sell players?! at 2 grand a piece? No recording capabililty and are even further crippled by copy prevention (like just exactly what is going to be used to copy it anyways?). Somehow I don't see HD DVD (when it arrives) starting at 2 grand and I don't expect to see camcorders using this format either.

    It is definitely a niche market thing, but are there really ten thousand suckers ready to pony up the big bucks to see Ahnold say "Hasta La Vista Baby" in HD? I somehow doubt that these tapes will show up at Wal-Mart for $6.44 each. And what "videophile" is going to forgo all the lovely extras that come on a DVD over a video tape. (Play with or without subtitles, commentaries, etc)

    Last point is that this format really eats storage requirements (I seem to recall 75 gigs per hour from somewhere) so it just won't be very efficient to transfer the content (assuming that it can be legally accomplished) to that newfangled networked media server that we were going to use in place of separate CD and DVD players with each TV.

  • Is piracy really that much of a problem? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Keith Mickunas ( 460655 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @05:54PM (#2927813) Homepage
    I buy a lot of DVDs. I mainly buy them because I think they're an excellent value. For the most part I pay just under $20 for new releases, sometimes less. In fact I've bought more DVDs than CDs. And with LD and VHS I was never really motivated to buy much. But lately the studios have been releasing some great special editions of various movies such as Holy Grail, Shrek, Star Trek The Motion Picture and so on with tons of extras for really good prices. I'm happy to spend my money on things like that.

    Even if I did find pirated movies, how much would I save? And what would the quality be like? In the case of some bootlegs, I've heard they're pretty poor. About the only reason I'd ever go for pirated DVDs is if its something I just can't get here legally. And if George would just release his movies on DVD, I'd never even have to think about it.

    Personally I think a lot of people are more like me than the handful of pirates the studios are so worried about. The studios are making a ton of money on DVD, probably with the addition of DVD they're now making more on home video sales than ever before. If they continue to provide quality products at reasonable prices, they got nothing to worry about. Besides, those determined to steal it will find a way, they always have before.

  • I think I should sort some stuff out (Score:5, Interesting)

    by donglekey ( 124433 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @06:06PM (#2927871) Homepage
    This is a good thing for a few reasons and bad for a few more.

    1. Don't panic about the copy protection stuff, DVD has copy protection too ya know (barely). People are starting to find out macrovision and are starting to get very pissed off at copy protection once they run into it. They find out that they can't run their DVD player into their shitty TV through their VCR because the VCR is crippled and macrovision kicks in. Needless to say they aren't happy campers.

    2. This is NOT aimed at regular consumers right now. People already don't like having to buy DVD players to get something new, they would shit a brick if they had to buy a new $2000 or even $200 machine just to play movies after they just got their nice new POS $75 Apex so no one will accept it.

    3. Think DAT. No one uses it to distribute music but it does still have a lot of uses. Have you ever seen true 1080i HDTV? Probably not. It looks incredible. It blows everything away. Grainless, perfectly smooth, HDTV that was 1080i the whole way through (not upconverted) is an experience that you won't forget. HDTV doesn't really have any standard way of being transported. There needs to be something there, even if it isn't going to be distributed to the masses. Distribution is a the biggest problem for HDTV right now. People want it but no one will give it to them, except HBO and Showtime off of DirectTV and Dish Network.

    3. Video production work will get a giant kick out of this, and thus it will be easier to get actual HD broadcasts.

    4. Movie theatres could use this it is in such high resolution, cameras could tape to it for local TV stations, it will be adopted, but not by consumers that is for sure.
    • Funny you should talk about movie theatres.

      For some reason, when a movie pans in a theatre it always seems blurred, like watching a movie on an old laptop.

      The same movie released on TV doesn't blur.

      I thot theatres were supposed to have high res and all that crap.

      Anyone experience this as well?

  • More information in Wired (Score:4, Informative)

    by mikemulvaney ( 24879 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @06:22PM (#2927933)
    Wired has an article about this here [wired.com].

    Interesting bits:

    Video on D-VHS tapes is uncompressed, so it's enormous. A 75GB hard disk would only hold around 30 minutes of the video, according to company officials, making the trading of HD content over the Internet impossible. D-VHS can record and play back up to four hours of video in high definition mode -- up to 1,080 lines per screen width, or more than double the resolution of DVD,

    And:

    The HDCP system can't be broken, however, because only high definition sets will have the HDCP decoder, according to Dan McCarron, national product specialist in JVC's color TV division.

    Heh, "can't be broken". Well, we'll just have to wait and see.

    Personally, they can do whatever the hell they want. If they want to make it too hard for me to watch movies, then I won't. No skin off my back.

    -Mike

  • Great, another video format. S or Super VHS is a better quality vhs format that apeared 10 years ago. Its still around (sort of) as its good for editing. It required more expensive tapes and never took off.

    However People WILL want more resolutions when HDTV is more prevalent. The tape has 2 things going against it
    1) DVD's are cheaper to make than tapes. Much like CDs and audio tapes.
    2) DVD momentum.

    although they should be able to use better codecs with dvd's it brings up the backward compatability problems..

    I don't think most people miss the other junk on the DVDs (angles? commentary etc.....)
  • Glad to see someone pushing D-VHS.

    I don't think it's going to go mainstream for pre-recorded stuff (except possibly HDTV), but I think it's very promising as a recordable media.

    The main advantage over the myriad of recordable DVD wannabees (appart from the fact that the recordable DVD standards war is putting everyone off) is the high capacity of D-VHS.

    HDTV is one application of that high capacity, sure, but the important one is being able to record several hours of TV on one tape.

    No-one cares that they have to change DVD's to watch the next movie, but you want to be able to record more than that while you're out....

    I *want* D-VHS to succeed. Mainly for selfish reasons: I want D-VHS deck prices to come down to a price I can afford :)

    -roy

  • D-VHS as a backup format? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by checkyoulater ( 246565 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @06:47PM (#2928028) Journal
    While 2000 bucks sounds like a lot to watch videos, it sounds like a decent price for a backup medium. Depending on the cost of media, of course. This could actually do well as a dual purpose machine: HD video player and all-purpose tape backup unit.
  • if they want to stop the sales of DVD the answer is simple ...

    bring back betamax!
    bring back betamax!
    bring back betamax!

    L-A-M-E

  • Will they never learn? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by KewlPC ( 245768 )
    HDTV aside, this has absolutely 0 value over DVD.

    1)No random access. Now you're gonna have to start rewinding your movies (again)

    2)Do you really think the consumer-level D-VHS "VCRs" are going to have recording ability?

    3)Tapes stretch, break, become mangled, and start to lose their magnetic abilities after a while, especially if the tape is used often. I've got movies on VHS that I've had for years, and they're rapidly losing their picture and sound quality. Just because the images will be stored on the tape digitally doesn't mean that the tape itself won't go bad (stretch, mangle, get "eaten" by the player, etc.) after a while.

    Of course, it's in the studio's best interest if the tapes go bad after a while, 'cause then you've got to buy them all over again.

    Also, forget any extra features like you'd have on DVD. It will be back to "dump a telecine of the lo-con print to tape, stick a few trailers on the front, and then go manufacture a few thousand."

  • How about better movies instead? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by statusbar ( 314703 ) <jeffk@statusbar.com> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @07:09PM (#2928120) Homepage Journal
    I just wish that companies would put at least as much effort into their new movies as they put into their failed copy protection/digital limitations systems. I mean, what is the percentage of worthwhile movies that came out in the last two years? 10% ?

    --Jeff
  • If it goes out through standard Cable/Antenna coax, split video/audio, S-Video, you can copy or digitize it.

    Do folks need super audio/video? Or just a different format which doesn't wear out just as fast.
  • ..do I want a medium that has fair use prevent--er, "rights management"--built in, and has all the features of videocassettes (no random access, drop-outs, stretches, Rube Goldberg transport and heads...)?

    No.

  • Okay, I think this one is going to tank harder than the hindenburg grafted to the side of the titanic grafted to the side of the world trade center, but _only_ in the consumer market.

    Think of video houses and TV broadcasting outfits. I don't know about elsewhere, but in Canada all radio stations (and presumably, tv ones) are required to keep a running log of everything they produce, for one month. This must be quite prohibitively expensive for the 'little guys'.

    Remember backup, too. I've often wanted to back up onto a nice roomy VHS casette! This could finally spell the end of those proprietary cart drives we've seen so many of these past years.

    Also, remember, that this medium is less linear than vanilla VHS (vVHS?). The tape itself hasn't become any longer, so ffwd/rew would occur much more quickly (subjectively speaking).

    This could've been an interesting technology had it been introduced five years ago.

  • Won't allow ANY recording of broadcast High Def (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @07:22PM (#2928168)
    It's not completely clear in the press release, but the only full resolution material that will playback on these machines will be prerecorded tapes released by the studios.

    You thought you could just record HighDef off the air and time shift it? Not a chance. You can record in VHS mode and a reduced bit rate digital mode, but not in full High Def.

    The Content owners need "protection" you know? I was almost expecting to see that use would require you to plug a phone in so that the machine could call back to JVC and report back.

  • Three Words that say it all... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mojotooth ( 53330 ) <mojotooth.gmail@com> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @07:38PM (#2928244) Journal
    Here's why I'll never get a machine that plays this format:

    BE KIND, REWIND

  • Benefits for the MPAA, (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NeuroManson ( 214835 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @07:38PM (#2928247) Homepage
    Red hot poker up the rump for the rest of us...

    I do like the idea of DVHS, but the sole problem is this: If the tape is damaged (all tape media has a tendacy to stretch with every play, and can sometimes be damaged by drops or heat), which in digital as opposed to analog, can render the tape completely unplayable... Analog would show it as a momentary video glitch, nothing worse than that...

    Of course that allows the movie industry a shot at something they really can't do with DVD: Planned obsolescence... DVDs don't degrade as easily over the years as DVHS obviously will, and their plans for copy protection naturally means that the majority of buyers will come back time and time again to buy a fresh copy...

  • There are big limits on what you can record. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @07:41PM (#2928265) Journal
    This format is currently very limited. They have built-in copy protection to limit what you can record and make copies of.

    But, it is also not possible to record most HD material with these VCR's today. It can only record via the copy protected firewire port. But, none of currently available set top boxes have firewire output. They only have component video output.

    Also, because of the copy protection, it's not clear if they will 'allow' you to copy channels like HBO-HD, or other 'premium' content.

    These issues need to be resolved before this technology is going anywhere.

  • This is not new. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stuffman64 ( 208233 ) <stuffmanNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @10:26PM (#2928962)
    Almost three years ago I bought this D-VHS recorder/sattillite reciever [orbitsat.com]. We only got one D-VHS tape with it (it felt much higher quality than a standard VHS tape or even a S-VHS tape), and I quickly filled it up Southpark episodes (it was good at the time). Since the tape records the exact MPEG2 bitstream (or so it claims) going into the receiver, the picture quality on the tape was identical to what we saw. This also meant, however that when the sattilite lost its signal (due to tree branches blowing into the dish's line-of-sight), you would get the same annoying picture dropout (which is of course, expected). If it wasn't for me being able to get this for dirt cheap, I never would have bought it, but nevertheless I get a really good quality VCR with it.

    Basically, my point is this is nothing new. It costs significantly less than a DVD burner, offers just as good picture quality (as long as your material is high quality), and allows you to have near-perfect digital duplicates of your source. If only the SCMS didn't hinder it's abilites, I think this would have been a good in-between step for people who want high-quaility copies without shelling out DVD-burner cash.

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