D-VHS on the way? Studios pledge Support in Thursday's Conference (1 Viewer)

[Jerry Gracia]

In general, owners of high-end home theater systems have been the same type of consumer that enjoys action adventure movies with a lot of special effects.

Who the hell wrote this!

 

[Tony_Faville]

Norm-

Are you talking about Flourescent Modulation Discs? The technology is so close for that, 150gb of data on a single disc.....more than capable for HD-DVD.

My personal opinion is that HD-VHS is going to fail..most heinously..

 

[Norm]

Yes,

FMD ROM Disc and Drive
The introduction of the Fluorescent Multi-layer Disc (FMD) smashes the barriers of existing data storage formats. Depending on the application and the market requirements, the first generation of 120mm (CD Sized) FMD ROM discs will hold 20 - 100 Gigabytes of pre-recorded data on 12 - 30 data layers with a total thickness of under 2mm. In comparison, a standard DVD disc holds just 4.7 gigabytes. With C3D's proprietary parallel reading and writing technology, data transfer speeds could exceed 1 gigabit per second, again depending on the application and market need. Constellation 3D has signed several key strategic partnerships to assist in the development of Fluorescent Multilayer technology.
FMD drives will be similar in size, design and price to CD and DVD drives and players currently on the market. Lasers and laser focusing technology will be the same and only minor modifications are required in the signal-processing unit to allow for the reading of the incoherent light emitted by an FMD disc rather than the coherent light of a CD or DVD

http://www.c-3d.net/aboutus_frameset.html
DVHS Is not going to fail, for high end users that love HDTV. I'd buy in a min. If I could afford it.

 

[DarrenA]

Warner Home Video does not plan to release movies in D-VHS. Neither does Sony's Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment.

``As far as we're concerned, D-VHS is not a commercial product,'' Columbia TriStar president Ben Feingold said. ``The enormous success of DVD leads us to believe, both intuitively and practically, that there's a strong preference for a disc-based product.''

This doesn't surprise me in the least. I mean WB and Sony's Columbia TriStar were the leaders in pushing DVD to market.

What amazes me is that the four studios pushing D-Theater/D-VHS are claiming it will only be a niche product to high-end videophiles. Well I can tell you that most videophiles frown upon magnetic tape-based media because of the numerous reasons already stated in this and other threads.

 

[Norm]

Every person I've met, that had a HDTV set said, it blows DVD away. This product is needed for them, and that market.

 

[Tony_Faville]

Thanks for the info and link Norm. As long as they make the FMd players read DVD as well I will be happy.

 

[Adam_S]

Since I"ve no intention of buying one of these, maybe titles on dvhs can be all pan and scan all the time, like VHS was, opening up DVD for glorious widescreen all the time. (of course everythign would be pan and scanned either vertically or horizontally to 1.78:1)

Adam

 

[RobertR]

Every person I've met, that had a HDTV set said, it blows DVD away

That's a bit of an oversimplification. The best HD transfers are indeed noticeably better than DVD, BUT, they vary in quality just like anything else. Anyone who's spent a lot of time in the AVS HD forum knows that HD doesn't always "blow DVD away". BTW, I have an RCA DTC100 and an HDTV capable front projector, so I have experience with this.

 

[Marque D]

I think once the whole copy protection and DVI/Firewire only thing is solved. (If that happens?) It will have a nice following. The movies will be nice, but I want to record HDTV and D-VHS is one of the few/best ways to do it. An HD-PVR just isn't the solution. I do not want to be limited to what I can record just because I filled up my hard drive. Being optimistic what’s the biggest hard drive they are going to give us, say 320GB? Which may yield like 35 hours of HDTV at best.

 

[John Sturge]

You know something? I am really sick and tired of JVC. Besides creating a shoddy video format, they decide to introduce an HD variation of it with the same stupid pathetic problems, their original VHS poop had. I came into the DVD format for 3 reasons:

1.Chapter Stops

2.Extras

3.Enhanced audio & video

Just trying to make us swallow another video format. But we have learned. We all are intelligent adults, so let's spit.

 

[Thomas Newton]

The solution to copy protection is to get rid of it.

$2000 videotape recorders with all of the disadvantages of tape, plus built-in copy protection / playback control, do not strike me as being worthy of one red cent.

 

[Thomas Newton]

I should add -- once you go to random-access, no-wear (when properly cared-for) discs, you NEVER want to go back.

 

[LukeB]

Tape-based format? Bah! Humbug!

 

[Brian-W]

The best HD transfers are indeed noticeably better than DVD, BUT, they vary in quality justike anything else. Anyone who's spent a lot of time in the AVS HD forum knows that HD doesn't always "blow DVD away"

I think I speak for Robert and I in that we'll be buying D-VHS decks when MGM announces support, with Showgirls as a launch title. No more 'opaque' circles.
Hey Robert, got Backdraft in Hi-vision, it too has a couple of 'colored' circles in it (not opaque like Showgirls had).
In all seriousness, I don't like tape, but I'm not going to let the format dictate whether I buy something or not. So will I buy D-VHS pre-recorded movies? If they're OAR, the answer is a resounding yes. If they're not too expensive, absolutely.
I have D-VHS deck and a library of movies I've recorded from HBO and OTA (don't email me asking for copies, I don't pirate), and I haven't experienced the degraded picture, or broken/eaten tapes that is preached so much with VHS. I don't like rewinding them, being able to skip ahead, or that they take up the space of 2 DVDs. But for 1080i vs. 480p, absolutely.
I've compared the 1080i material to DVDs scaled to my projectors native resolution, there really is no comparison.
You guys wanna get pissed off though? The tapes will be region coded ! No joke...
-Brian

 

[Marque D]

Brian said...

You guys wanna get pissed off though? The tapes will be region coded ! No joke...

Will this effect these tapes being able to work with some of the JVC D-VHS players from Japan?

 

[Jacob_St]

I'd buy it if it was reasonably priced. I'd prefer HD DVD but this is the best compromise until that comes along. DVD is a great format but it can't deliver a HD picture. To me picture quality is more important than scene access or not having to rewind.

 

[Brian-W]

Will this effect these tapes being able to work with some of the JVC D-VHS players from Japan?

Yes.

The demo tape that comes with the current JVC U.S. deck has been confirmed to NOT play in Japanese D-VHS decks, nor will it play in older D-VHS (Panasonic HD-1000) decks.

The Japanese decks won't play due to region coding, and the Panasonic failure is because (my understanding) they don't support the 28.8Mbs datastream (only the 19.8Mbs stream).

 

[Adam_WM]

Perhaps if the HDTV owners in America all gather together and make just give money to the companies, this format may actually be financially feasible. It seems to me, if you don't own an HDTV, this format is useless. I won't be buying one.

 

[Marque D]

So will this basicly kill the new Mits D-VHS deck and 5C for that matter?

WOW!!! it took a year and a half to get over a hundred post over here. Does that make me a bad member? More often than not I just read and become more informed verses posting.

 

[CharlesD]

As much as I would love a format that has 1080i playback, I am very wary of this scheme. I suspect that the copy-protection will be rather consumer-unfriendly and I seem to recall a system that would prevent full resolution playback on existing HDTVs, thus alienating the entire potenial market for this system.

Although a good 1080i transfer is highly desirable, tape rewind/fast-forward, the lack of chapter stops and (presumably) the absence of alternate sound tracks is not. In addition there is the issue of tape wear. I have yet to have a DVD get damaged so that it is unplayable, but back in the bad old days of tape casettes and VHS, tapes being "eaten" was a common occurence.

It seems foolish to me for the studios to go forward with D-VHS rather than waiting for a disc-based system. Tape has too many drawbacks for a consumer system and now that the public is used to the convienences of discs it will be harder to re-introduce them to the market.

I suspect, however, that thos decision has alot more to do with copy-protectio/duplication issues than with bringing the best possible product to market. The studios are behind the curve on this issue, any copy-protection scheme they come up with WILL be broken, and consumer HD-PVRs are just around the corner...