Toshiba Going After Blu-ray? 532
Swifty Nifty has an adventure submitted a link to a story about Toshiba's new High Def Disc Format. No, I'm not kidding — apparently Blu-ray has a new contender. This seems to be intended as a DVD backwards-compatible format, but there's not a lot of detail.
Hello? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hello? (Score:5, Funny)
In that can I vote, and then complain about the way I voted?
Re:Hello? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hello? (Score:4, Funny)
Don't blame me, I voted for HD-Kodos.
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. . . so we will all know what to buy
I didn't buy an HD-DVD player. I will not be buying a Blu-Ray player. I will not be buying a this thing. Technology is moving way too fast for me to keep replacing my hardware. As soon as I commit to buying one of these things, a new technology will have emerged, making my spanking new purchase obsolete before the year is out. I am not a sucker.
Fuck this shit. Lemme download an electronic copy to play directly from my hard drive.
Re:Hello? (Score:4, Funny)
Fuck this shit. Lemme download an electronic copy to play directly from my hard drive.
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Re:Hello? (Score:5, Funny)
Data storage on Betamax is the future, that's what insiders at a big company told me. But I've said too much already.
Re:Hello? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hello? (Score:5, Insightful)
And what, it's your belief that technology is only going to slow down from here?
Re:Hello? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard that some people believe the price of gasoline will go up around a dollar every year because of the post peak problem. if energy prices do go up, then technology, which depends on energy, and the availability of cheap energy will slow down. it takes a lot of money to 'research' new technologies, using technology already researched is cheap. for an example, consider modern CPU pricing, multi-core designed processors have allowed cpu vendors to rely on the same basic die technology for their cores, even while following moore's law. this is why a high end quad core costs only $400 while long ago far away in the past a 'brand spanking new' 1 ghz chip cost over $1,200. designing new chips has been hit or miss, the itanium is a perfect example of how redesigning something, doesn't always create a viable product.
the point being, if energy prices go up and up, people will have less disposable income, making technology higher and higher risk. making existing technology work better will always be cheaper and safer, than designing new technology.
to keep energy costs lower(and thus keep technology moving at a rapid pace), there are 3 solutions i can think of, off hand.
1. Under Sea Drilling platforms off both arctic and antarctic coasts (under sea so they don't break when the ice forms every winter) the cons are, that nobody (that i know of) has a working undersea drilling platform that is practical. you could go with a telescoping design only producing oil in summer months, or have undersea pipelines to beyond the icy region where tankers can fill up so the 'undersea platforms' can produce year round, underneath the sea.. and possibly a few ideas i haven't though of, the problem with this is it's still dependence on fossil fuels, and putting more co2 into the environment is the last thing we need to be doing.
2. bio-fuels could start taking up the slack, this is really only feasible if large scale bio-fuel from algae is started, and so far at least one texas energy company is starting a major bio-fuel from algae product cycle. How that company does, might drastically change the face of bio-fuel as an alternative to fossil fuels, if they're successful and profitable.
3. use less energy. it's simple, just push aside the American car safety standards, so vehicles can be lighter, and use cheaper engines, and mandate fuel efficiency. sure, a lighter car is a death trap if you hit a big truck, or a heavy car, but if all the cars on the road have to meet higher fuel economy targets (like they have to in japan and china) then they're only more dangerous when hitting old 'legacy' vehicles.
you can easily design an ultralight car that would get well over 120 mpg(without being a hybrid) these guys did. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/loremo_lives_su.php [treehugger.com]
i don't know how the car does for safety, in crashes. in general, concept cars that get over 120 mpg tend to be labeled as 'death traps' in a crash with conventional cars, and some use expensive technology that will never scale to the mass market.
cars aren't the only place where we can save energy, but they are a big one, if we'd just say cars can be a lot lighter, even if they're not as safe, just to get better fuel economy. when i owned cars i owned the kind that would have been fatal in any highway collision, yet the type of car accidents i did have, were generally ones involving only me, with 3 exceptions (1 was completely not my fault) and the 3 i did have were at city speeds, not highway.
the point is we could stop the rise in gasoline prices, just by pushing fuel economy.
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Re:Hello? (Score:5, Informative)
And you have tried this? I have authored AVCHD disks for about 4 months now, and my experience is directly opposite of what you are saying. I regularly take authored disks to various places like Circ City and Best Buy to test on a variety of Blu-Ray players, and I have not had a single player not play my menu-based AVCHD disk yet.
Re:Hello? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I do. I do it for two reasons. None of them because I need a new Blu-Ray player. Let me explain.
I own a HD camcorder, and I use this to shoot at birthday parties and other family events. Often people ask me about the quality of HD camcorders (not about TVs and players). They wonder if they will actually get good quality. I like shooting and editing, and to show friends and acquaintances what the result can be, I have so far this year created AVCHD disks to show them. They ask me to assist in purchasing a camcorder, and we drop in to a store and talk. That's when they see the AVCHD disk. I have also handed out some disks, but people are interestingly a little shy about asking for permission to view at Circuit City or Best Buy, even though I tell them it has never been an issue for me to get permission.
BTW, this will change in the middle of this month since SCS is releasing their Blu-Ray authoring tool then to match my new Blu-Ray writer.
I always ask nicely and I have so far not received a single negative answer. The closest I have gotten to that was a "You have to ask that other dude". This is also the experience from anyone I have chatted with in the video editing forums I frequent, so I am unsure as to why you think it impossible. Have you tried it and been denied?
If you go back about 12 months and read some of the video editing forums like creativecow or others you will find many curious "editors" doing exactly the same thing.
Just curious about your attitude though. Did I tear down some religious symbol you have been worshiping?
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Nero easily recorded AVC files to DVD5 and DVD9, and played flawlessly on my PS3. Source was a PAL TS file that I converted to NTSC AVC. No issues whatsoever.
I have yet to see any software that would allow me to author HD-DVD. As I have both formats, I would love to see something that would let me
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I agree, but what that means in practical terms is that DVD is still the disc to beat. DVD will be around long after BD, cuz BD is going nowhere fast.
It's too bad noone really came out with affordable 480p widescreen TVs - most people never saw what DVD was really capable of before HDTV came out. And really, a large-ish 720p set with source upconverted from DVD is a pretty nice picture, and way more affordable than HD source and 1080 display. The US ec
Standards (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Standards (Score:5, Funny)
Too late. Standard Approved.
Includes Section 12.4.56.2 Option 'PlayLike1970-8Track'
This has GOT to be a hoax! (Score:5, Informative)
SirWired
Re:This has GOT to be a hoax! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This has GOT to be a hoax! (Score:5, Insightful)
My money's on this being the result of some moron tech writer who completely misunderstood what was going on when Toshiba announced something like a new line of up-converting DVD players...
maybe not (Score:5, Informative)
Toshiba's name is not absent this list, so I'm guessing this is the same format.
Re:maybe not (Score:5, Interesting)
Their EVD (IIRC) format comes to mind. It was based on incompatible use of DVD tech to give a trivial capacity boost, and the (terribly poor performing yet lower quality than MPEG-2) AVS video codec it used. Considering that JPEG is ancient and patent-free tech, and independently re-implementing inter-frame compression is so simple I could do a halfway decent job of it myself in a week, I'm stunned by how little China has achieved despite how much money they have spent. Large retailers in their own country defy the government mandate to carry them, because demand in nil, and the higher performance and non-standard decoding hardware required is far more expensive.
I guess I'd better end this rant here...
Re:maybe not (Score:5, Informative)
There are advantages to fostering domestic high-tech development, as you need a lot of experience to play with the big boys. They are educating and employing an army of young scientists end engineer who would otherwise fuck off to the US, Japan and Germany and work for the high-tech companies there. It's a loss in the short-term, but it is the only way to develop a homebrewed high-tech industry.
You can't expect a Chinese company to catch up with a century of experience that companies like Ford, GM, Toshiba, Matsushita, etc. have. But if you don't try and tread the same path yourself, you will forever be dependent on foreign imports.
Re:maybe not (Score:5, Insightful)
So how's the Dragon PC w/ the People's Linux coming along?
Re:maybe not (Score:4, Interesting)
You can make cheap knockoffs forever, or you can try to take initiative and do R&D. Sometimes it will work, a lot of the times, it will turn out to be rubbish, especially when you're just starting in the industry.
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Yeah, they're called HD-DVD players. Seriously, the R&D has already been done--the hardware has been developed, a base format's in place. My personal feeling is that a firmware update is all that's needed for existing HD-DVD players to support this new format. (After all, the compression would probably be less intens
Re:This has GOT to be a hoax! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This has GOT to be a hoax! (Score:5, Insightful)
Next, how much time does it take to rip that DVD, convert it to fit on a single layer disc, burn it, label it, etc?
Most of my DVDs I buy used from Hollywood Video or Blockbuster. They pretty much always have a 3 for $25 deal. I'm paying $8 for a movie to own it legally.
My time is worth far more than $8 an hour, so even if it only takes 1 hour to pirate a DVD, then it really is a huge waste.
I'd happily pay $20 for BluRay movies at this point. And while Wal*Mart, Best Buy and the like are trying to sell movies for $35 a pop (and wondering why sales are so low) Amazon.com sells tons of BluRay movies for $20 or less.
Re:This has GOT to be a hoax! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This has GOT to be a hoax! (Score:5, Informative)
And talk to any game dev. I used to be a real forum rat for various game development forums. There is a reason that game houses prefer to develop for consoles. Sales on consoles are higher, not because there are more consoles on the market than PCs, but because PC higher is far higher than console piracy.
Console piracy exists, but is far more difficult.
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Sales on consoles are higher, not because there are more consoles on the market than PCs, but because PC [piracy] is far higher than console piracy.
That's an awful big leap of logic on your part, got some supporting evidence for it?
The only thing you can do with a console is play games, thus anyone who has one is going to buy games and nothing else. Whereas most PCs never even run a game beyond solitare. Even the home PCs that are used for games are only used that way part time - I think you would be hard pressed to find a PC that was used for games more than it was used for general web-browsing never mind word-processing and other home-pc tasks.
In
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Please let me know where, because I smell BS as well.
Almost everyone I have ever met in my life has pirated something on a computer. I don't a single person with a hacked console (aside from myself, and I did it more as a hobby).
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Sheeeit.
It takes about 3 minutes of my time (including scribbling a label on the disc with a Sharpie) to dupe a DVD. It takes the computer between 20 minutes and a couple of hours, depending on a few things like quality options and the condition of the source material.
Note the distinction between human time and machine time. I don't need to sit and babysit the computer while it rips a DVD, nor (with the abundance of cheap RAM and CPU power these days) does it interrupt my other comp
Re:This has GOT to be a hoax! (Score:4, Interesting)
Next, how much time does it take to rip that DVD, convert it to fit on a single layer disc, burn it, label it, etc?
Most of my DVDs I buy used from Hollywood Video or Blockbuster. They pretty much always have a 3 for $25 deal. I'm paying $8 for a movie to own it legally.
Okay, this argument doesn't really work. When you buy used like that, guess who gets 100% of that revenue? Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. Not the publishers. As far as they're concerned, you might as well be pirating the movies. If you search around, you'll find the publishing houses (movies, music, and games) blame their losses on the used market just as much as piracy (example here [next-gen.biz]).
My time is worth far more than $8 an hour, so even if it only takes 1 hour to pirate a DVD, then it really is a huge waste.
If it's taking you more than 5 minutes of your time, you're doing it wrong. Insert DVD, launch ripper app, click "Rip", go do whatever it is that's more "worth your time".
I don't know many folks who actually re-burn DVD rips anymore, especially when the new consoles can play media from a USB drive or even network shares. Even if you did, if it's taking you more than 3 minutes to swap disks, fire up your burning software, start the burn, eject, and scribble a title, you're doing it wrong again. NOTE - If you're sitting there watching the ripping or burning parts, you probably actually aren't worth more than $8/hr.
Re:This has GOT to be a hoax! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there's the fact that piracy on consoles is even easier than it is on PCs. No messing with drive emulators or firewalls. Just buy an adapter that costs about as much as a game, flip a switch and you can play copies of any game you like.
Re:This has GOT to be a hoax! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Here's the original article for those that read Japanese:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/net/news/20080529nt05.htm [yomiuri.co.jp]
Here's a translated article for those that don't:
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/web/?wb_lp=JAEN&wb_dis=2&wb_url=http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/net/news/20080529nt05. [excite.co.jp]
Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is the film plot any different than on DVD? No
Is the film characters any different than on DVD? No
A bad movie with special effects is a bad movie, a bad movie on BluRay is a bad movie
Gah (Score:3, Funny)
good news for microsoft (Score:2, Funny)
What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's what happened since HD-DVD caved in-
Just thought it worthwhile to take a moment to point out how things actually turned out. It's pretty remarkable, really, but even Blu-ray did better when it had an opponent to fight. After the battle, most just hung up their cares and said "Meh...upscaled DVD is fine".
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah - having a single high-def format is fine, but to rehash what a lot of people said while the format war was in progress I still don't think it's a killer app for most people the way DVD was over VHS. It's no surprise that Blu-Ray still hasn't taken off the way some had hoped/expected it would.
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1. DVD media offered great improvement over VHS (no random access, media wear) and VCDs (Poor picture quality, no menus). But what "must have" feature does Blu-Ray offer over DVD? (Sure, the quality is stunning, but DVD quality doesn't exactly make you want to poke your eyes out).
2. You need high-def TVs to really enjoy blu-ray. That costs a boatload of cash. This is my main personal reason for not even thinkin
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:4, Insightful)
Does that extend to DVDs?
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:5, Insightful)
What is essentially a "movie appliance" should not need to be firmware-upgraded to play a disc. It is just STUPID.
HDDVD got that right - build all the features into the minimum spec from the get-go.
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:5, Interesting)
you do realize, though, that EVERY time you watch a movie - that 1 minute delay of 'loading the disc' is really loading and RUNNING executable code, checking for 'bad hardware' that should be REVOKED (ie, your hardware that some corp. entity NOW thinks should be disabled, perhaps even permanently). then finally, once its done being 'undercover cop' it then lets you view the movie. want to see the movie again? same 'cop behavior' all over again.
I don't own BD and never will. I was at best buy recently and I ejected and reinserted a BD disc. it took nearly a minute to load. I LAUGHED MY ASS OFF. people accept this? really??
it turns out that any BD drive connected to your network or computer is now the least secure thing ON your network. its all black box and you can't know what damage it might WANT to do to some of your hardware. completely untrusted and there's no 'permit/allow' ability if you are even the system owner - you MUST accept whatever damage the BD software wants to do to your system.
and all that just to watch a simple movie. it should be a crime, how they conned innocent people into accepting this 'virus-in-a-box' called BD.
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This is also similar to the ads that all HD-DVD discs I've played contain... ads for HD-DVD. 'The look and sound of perfect!' Great, except I already have a damn HD-DVD player! I'm already sold!.
It seems like studios just d
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It's true you don't hear about it as much because it's not as new anymore, but I can't find any source that corroborates your assertions.
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Speaking of prices, I'm shocked that the retail price of HDDVDs hasn't gone to fire sale levels. Often Amazon sells the BluRay version for less than the HDDVD version. What up with that?
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A secondary factor is that distributors are giving volume discounts to resellers for BluRay, but HD-DVD isn't selling enough anymore to qualify.
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:4, Interesting)
No doubt about that -- it is a huge advantage of the PS3. I'm now seeing new XBox 360s for sale sub-$260 (while the PS3 is at the same $399 that it's been at for well over a year), so while Microsoft claimed it wouldn't impact them when HD-DVD failed, I suspect it's going to cost them dearly as they need to try to get sales through price cuts.
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:5, Informative)
Over here in EU what has happened:
- Player prices have dropped, several manufacturers have come up with new devices and many of them are fast, silent and possess a great upscaler for old movies.
- BluRay disc sales have multiplied in the past 6 first months of this year.
- HD gets constant attention, especially in combination with new flat screen tvs, digital television and PS3/X360.
- I keep getting "Get new BluRay player" and "PS3 with BluRay!" ALL the time from almost every imaginable media from print to TV to radio.
I don't know where you live in but over here BluRay is doing just fine and things are picking up nicely.
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what happened after Blu-ray won. [nytimes.com]
Player prices have dropped? Maybe your stronger Euro is misleading you, but there have been no price drops. Quite the opposite. Blu-ray players used to be freebies with sets, and you'd get a bunch of discs, and there were endless promotions and price cuts. Last I can see, there's zero promotions, and prices average over $400.
I Am Legend almost singlehandedly accounted for a spike in the minuscule sales totals for Blu-ray.
Alternately... (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternately, all you're seeing is the effects of your Dollar's free fall.
Look, if it were just the Euro getting strong, it would be just the Euro getting strong. The fact is that the Canadian dollar is now worth a little more than 1 US Dollar, and has been for a while. Up from a little over 60 US cents, back in early 2000's. Even an Australian Dollar is slowly aproaching parity with the USD. Up from 47 US cents in 2001. Etc.
I don't think the strength of the Euro plays that much influence in those economies.
So basically I'm just saying that if the whole rest of the world seems to be going upwards fast, it isn't. It's you going downwards.
And with or without HD-DVD competition, you'd still have a dollar in freefall. It drives all import prices up over time.
Re:What Happened When HD-DVD Gave Up (Score:5, Insightful)
Care to back up those lies? (Score:4, Insightful)
The PS3 has not got any more expensive.
The Sony BDP-S300 [amazon.com] is not any more expensive.
You try to deceive by including the introduction of very expensive high-end Blu-Ray players from companies uncommitted before HD-DVD folded.
Blu-ray sales, paradoxically, have collapsed
Only if you think disc sales being lower from Christmas to the start of the year as an odd thing. In reality, Blu-Ray disc sales are now week to week generally about 9% of standard DVD sales and climbing. In anticipation of your next argument, Blu-Ray disc sales also long ago eclipsed online movie sales and growing more rapidly than that segment.
High definition media gets almost no attention
From who? Consumers are buying HD-TV's in droves. PS3 sales are up, along with Blu-Ray media sales. You may not care, but you are simply sticking your head in the sand to absorb the tears from the loss of your dear HD-DVD.
Retailers that used to push both Blu-ray and HD-DVD now push....nothing. I find it hard even finding a single Blu-ray player for sale.
Unless you go into Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. Now you are just a parody of yourself as anyone with even a sliver of shopping experience has seen Blu-Ray discs and players in big box stores.
Former HD-DVD supporters are so pathetically transparent...
I myself only got a Blu-Ray player at the beginning of the year, and have but a few discs - I have no great commitment to the format myself but can realize it's the next video format, just as it was easy to do before the war even started because of studio support.
However as marginal my own interest in the format may be, I cannot let complete fabrications by those who would damage the whole HD media market with outright slander and fabrications go unchecked. As a movie lover I would prefer the HD media market remain healthy so we get more good quality transfers. If you loved movies yourself you would abate your attacks which cause only harm, and for what - revenge on Sony? So not worth your time.
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I can summarise the above far more succinctly for you:
As shocking as this may seem. Sales of consumer electronics take a dump in the firs
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Never trust a group of drunken sods for your high tech information.
Go with the caffeine addicts. We're smarter.
Details (Score:5, Funny)
Which, of course, means it's a perfect candidate for a Slashdot article...
Really, what's the use? (Score:5, Insightful)
DVDs are way more sensitive to damage than CDs, which were not that robust in the first place. It seems to me that every new optical format will be progressively more sensitive to scratches and other kinds of surface damage/warping.
While my need for high-capacity data storage is ever-growing, just like everybody else's, I don't put much hope into optical media anymore.
I just buy a new hard drive, swap it out and put stuff on it.
It's faster, more reliable and takes up less space. It's just a bit less portable, is all.
The only way I'm getting a Blu-Ray or any other contender format, current or future, is if my new laptop comes with a compatible drive. Otherwise... I don't really care, and I doubt it that I ever will.
Re:Really, what's the use? (Score:5, Insightful)
-->I keep hearing this from people... do you all not remember magnetic tape?
CDs and DVDs are virtually invincable, compared to VHS and cassette that they replace. And really, if you take care of it, it is quite robust.
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CDs and DVDs are virtually invincable, compared to VHS and cassette that they replace. And really, if you take care of it, it is quite robust.
As robust and durable as a HDD?
I drop cds and dvds all the time. A standard hard drive wouldn't be able to take that kind of punishment. Even portable HDs just aren't all that durable.
Personally, I think flash storage may be the best way to store portable data in all formats, if the price can ever get low enough.
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DVDs are way more sensitive to damage than CDs, which were not that robust in the first place. It seems to me that every new optical format will be progressively more sensitive to scratches and other kinds of surface damage/warping.
1. Make a sensitive product ...
2. Make backing up your movies/music/data illegal
3. Wait for the first scratch
4.
5. You have to buy that Disney movie your kids love so much over and over again.
It's a crappy business plan, IMHO, but it seems to be headed in that direction.
Re:Really, what's the use? (Score:5, Funny)
Note to Hillary and Toshiba (Score:5, Funny)
About time (Score:3, Insightful)
- Want to force customers to buy new, expensive players instead of minor DSP/Firmware upgrades to existing player designs
- Want to force customers to have a difficult time making their own HD media because Blu-Ray writable media and burners are too expensive.
- Believe that by making the size larger that pirates can't figure out how to transcode to a smaller formant before posting on the internet (and that 30G images are too big to download)
- Want to be able to ship many movies on a single disc... but that doesn't seem to be happening
The companies could have come up with a new format using better compression. Players would be marginally more expensive because of increased decode processing, but in general I think you'd see $30 DVD players become $35 DVD/HD players very fast because of the very marginal increase in capabilities needed.Oh well.
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1) Want to include a higher bitrate encoding so that banding/compression artifacts are kept to a minimum
2) Want to include lossless audio
I've downloaded several movies that have been recompressed to DVD5/DVD9, and though they look pretty good, they still exhibit signs that they've been recompressed. In many cases, they're better than what you'd get via HD cable or satel
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Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
You can easily fit ANY resolution video, on ANY sized media, using ANY lossy codec. You can have HD video on a floppy disk using MPEG-1.
With lossy codecs, the lower the bitrate, the more visual information will be discarded (quantized) to make it fit the available bitrate. There's no magic that will wipe away the 5X increase in storage size that Blu-ray has over DVD. Highdef on DVD will simply look less detailed (more smooth), with the appearance of more compression artifacts like color banding.
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
Bzzzt! Wrong! Of course you can't. You don't need 25 or 50G to encode, but you can not encode an HD movie onto a standard DVD with any known or theoretically envisioned codec. 90 minutes of video encoded at 15Mb/s would not fit on a dual layer DVD and 15Mb/s would yield a very poor quality HD result. Good quality HD requires 20-25Mb/s bitrate, which would require media storing 15G or more.
Please enlighten us oh-wise-one, what encoders would that be, and how would they encode three times better than H.264 or VC-1? Also, if they existed, how would players decode them in real time without adding massively more expensive hardware to the mix?
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Yeah, that's not ever happening until there's some serious housecleaning in the marketing department.
Masters of Horror was a series that was 13 1-hour episodes. Each episode was a different anthology-esque tale told by a different horror movie director. Because it was so diverse, not every fan liked the same episodes. But they liked the series overall. The 13th episode was ultra violent, and was either never aire
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Even an MPEG2 movie at 480 looks fairly spectacular on a large screen. The key difference
here is that you are getting a pristine version of a movie that's been mastered by a pro
and not just some quick hack thrown together with a few default options from some bit of
consumer grade desktop software.
h264 mastered onto a dual layer DVD by the studio would impress all but the most obstinate snob.
Is this the same thing..? (Score:5, Informative)
The heise article is here: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Toshiba-setzt-Kampf-gegen-Blu-ray-Disc-mit-einem-DVD-Player-fort--/meldung/108830 [heise.de]
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Bittorrent Before Blue-Ray! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Then buy some other brand (Score:3, Informative)
This was gonna happen (Score:4, Interesting)
Myself I am just sitting waiting for affordable rewritable versions (this include Blu-Ray) to become available for PCs.
RTFA - I know, I'm wierd.... (Score:5, Informative)
Its just a DVD player with built in upscaling capabilities.
See where it says
"One Japanese report appeared to suggest that the new technology would be able produce much higher-resolution images from existing DVDs, but did not address the apparent impossibility of this claim.
The modified DVD format relies on a newly-developed large scale integrated circuit chip to rapidly convert the stored video, but no technical details were released."
Not a new format, just HD-DVD/Blu-Ray resolution output
Basically doing in the DVD Player what many TV's do internally.
Optical discs? (Score:2, Funny)
TFA misses the point (Score:2, Informative)
Upscaling DVD player, not a new format (Score:2, Insightful)
Pointless (Score:2)
New name picked for high def disc format (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I guess this is one way to do DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
everyone is reading the press release wrong (Score:5, Funny)
so everyone calm down, this is merely a movie technology villain, not a villain of movie technology. i mean yes, it is a technology villain from a movie, not a villainous movie tech, i mean... oh forget it
I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
You're average home theater customer would have been thrilled and it all would have stuck with the planned obsolescence in five/ten years to sell us 1080p
MIcrosoft and Apple have it right... (Score:4, Interesting)
To anyone who says that we still need a portable medium for market laggards (example: Grandparents)(other portable mediums will probably be flash based/iPod, Zune), I'd expect they'd still be buying DVDs, that market isn't going to die anytime soon...I doubt they will be upgrading to Blu-Ray