Blu-Ray and HD recorder question (1 Viewer)

[Nick]

How much space does it need for 2 hours movie to fit on either format.
Will we be seeing the layer switch like we see on the DVD ?
it would be nice the the movie can play without pausing.
I don't understand why they don't do a buffer like Minidisc.
Even ten seconds that should be enought for the movie to play correctly.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Nick, please post that sort of question here in the Software/High Definition area. Thanks. JB

 

[Ken_F]

The HD-DVD and Blu-ray specifications both mandate a minimum level of buffering to eliminate apparent layer changes. This is one area where both formats learned from DVD.

Based on information reported on AVS, the typical BD player will have 256 RAM and the typical HD-DVD player will have 384-512Mb RAM. The HD-DVD specification requires a significantly longer video buffer than Blu-ray, but that makes sense since a high percentage of HD-DVD titles will be DL (and subject to layer changes), whereas most BD titles will be SL and never have to deal with layer changes. Any visible layer changes on HD-DVD would be very bad (from a competitive standpoint), so they made sure to address that in the specification.

The HD-DVD specification requires 64 megabytes of volatile memory (memory that requires power to maintain data) for data cache, and another 140.6 megabytes of non-volatile memory (memory that does not require power to maintain data) dedicated specifically for buffering disk content. The 140.6 megabyte buffer for disk content works out to 31.25 seconds of 36Mbps data, which is more than sufficient to guarantee instant layer changes on every dual-layer disk. Further memory is obviously required by the player's os and software, as well as for storage of Internet and other network-downloaded content.

 

[Nick]

Sorry, Feel free to move to move it there.
thanks

 

[Jesse Skeen]

I'm hoping the new players will be able to better handle layer changes on old-style DVDs too. That's the only reason I don't go completely nuts at it right now.