Amir's interesting take on Triple layer HD DVD (45GB) (1 Viewer)

[Sean Bryan]

And that is a perfectly valid concern which I agree with.

However, when it is pointed out that IF this were to be done, the idea is that all current players WILL be able to play them after a simple firmware upgrade (which now makes this an interesting possibility because it apparently can be done without screwing over early adopters), your anger then shifted to "well, dumb people aren't going to do that, and they'll still be angry".

 

[Shawn Perron]

My wife's parents bought a new HDTV 2 years ago. I visited them in november and they had been running thier dvd player in 4:3 mode. 2.35 movies looked like 4.00 aspect ratio. They did not know how to fix the problem. They are NOT stupid people, just people that wanted to connect a few cables and watch a movie. Not everyone wants to study thier media player and learn every nuance of it's operation. These are your average users. Calling people "dumb" just because they don't care to put the time and effort into watching a few movies that you do is pure ignorance. You have to remember that to most people watching a movie is just a good way to be entertained for a few hours, not the audio video spectacle that many around here aim for. You seem to attach an importance to the hobby that most people just don't feel. It's unfair to these people to expect them to figure out how to upgrade thier firmware just because HD-DVD didn't bother to spec triple layer when it was not only known to exist but announced to be viable by thier own press people.

And before you say that they shouldn't have invested in new tech, you have to take into account that the salesmen at these stores prey upon these people to buy more then they need. "This will play all your current DVDs and allow you to watch High Definition movies too!" "You got this awesome new HDTV, you just have to buy this HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player to really enjoy it!" They don't know exactly what they are getting, they just expect to be able to pop dvds and hd-dvds into it and watch a few flicks.

 

[Rob_Walton]

You could well be right, I just can't tell from the way it was said. An issue from transcribing a telephone conversation I guess.

Since there certainly has been mention of 45Gb discs I guess the next question is whether the process to read them has ever been demonstrated? As I understand it disc manufacture for HD DVD is relatively similar to DVD and is consequently fairly trouble free. But the playback (hardware) is a little different, using a new laser, and far lower tolerances, which has made that area of production similar to Blu-ray in many ways. If there hasn't been any public (outside the lab) demonstration of triple layer playback on HD DVD I'm confused as to how anyone could predict the current players are capable of being firmware upgraded to support this feature.

 

[JeremyErwin]

If the incompatibility problem was limited to not being able to read the third layer, and if all hd-dvd players were firmware upgradable, then a gig or so (stored on the first or second layer) could be devoted to firmware updates.

The more space the merrier.

AFAIK, HD-DVD supports a peak bitrate of 30 Mb/s. Let's make it constant.

A 7200 second movie (2 hours for you non-metric types) would consume 216,000 Megabits, or 27 Gigabytes of data.

Bluray supports a maximum bitrate of 54 Mb (388,800 Megabits for our feature) or 48.6 gigabytes of data.

Now, it's entirely possible that my math is wrong, but for your average, run of the mill, non special edition movie, two layer bluray makes more sense than three-layer hd-dvd, given the maximum bitrate limitations.

Oh, yeah. DVD

9.8*3600*2/8= 8.820 GB. Look familiar?


Now, I know that some of you are going to protest that 30 Mb/s VC-1 looks better than 54 Mb/s MPEG-2, according to a Microsoft internal study, but does 54 MB/s VC-1 look better than 30 MB/s VC-1?

I seem to recall that the first reviews of Bladerunner were quite good. Years of exposure to RDSL, however, have made us all into nit-pickers.

 

[rodney_g]

For an ignoramus like me, the above was informative. Thanks.

My 2 simple questions:
- the current HD DVD titles some of you guys are lucky enough to watch: what is their bitrate?
- what is the capacity of the current HD DVD discs? Is it 15GB?

Thank you,
Rodney

 

[Sean Bryan]

You seem to have a real "thing" for equating this issue to the habits/limitations of "most people". I'm not sure why this would be news to you, but "most people" aren't going to be buying into HD DVD or BD for quite a while. They're really not. Most people at here at HTF won't be getting into either format for a while as well.

If, and I stress IF, something like this were to actually to be added to the specs, it is likely to happen within a time period where "most people" are probably not even aware that Hi-Def on disc is available. "Most people" still won't have high def displays, and "most people" are not interested in moving from DVD to a new format. This would never be an issue for "most people" because "most people" wouldn't have bought a first generation (or even second generation) HD DVD player.

This probably won't even happen anyway. And if it did, it would only be relevant to the early adopters who bought into a new format at it's birth knowing full well that it might not even survive. These people are certainly capable enough to handle a firmware upgrade. So "most people" who would have to deal with this would not be put off. And "dealing with it" would most likely involve inserting a CD that comes to you in the mail.

So why are you so angry about something that is relatively straight forward and innocuous, that won't inconvenience your in-laws, and probably won't even affect you in the slightest? Are you just looking for something to be angry about. [Rhetorical question, I'm done with this argument. Unless I have to respond to something, like maybe why the damn VCR always flashes 12:00? ;]

 

[Sean Bryan]

I just popped back in here to say that I posted this topic here, at the Home Theater Forum because I thought it was an interesting issue that would hopefully create discussion about the likelihood of this happening, the "truthiness" of whether or not it really would be as relatively straight forward as Amir has suggested, what the inside logic would be for not pushing it through already if it was possible, the motivations of Disney for not supporting HD DVD when this was proposed to them, etc, etc... And for the most part, the discussion went where I hoped it would.


I didn't want to get dragged into an argument about whether something like this is would be an unacceptable "inconvenience" for the 2% of poor soles who got duped into buying into HD DVD by crafty salesmen.


It's frankly not a discussion that I feel belongs here and I regret getting dragged into it.


I'm done with it (the argument, not the thread).


Carry on.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

I do really like the idea of including a CD with the necessary firmware update in the first triple-layer releases. An elegant and pretty inexpensive solution to keep people from having a nasty surprise.

Assuming any of this comes to fruition, of course.

 

[Shawn Perron]

It should have been in the specs from the start. There is really no arguement for that since they claimed it was not only feasible but well within the capability of the format. If they add it to the specs, they have put out a good percentage of the people that bought the players and inconvenienced the rest. If these players were really ready from day one, no firmware upgrade should have been necessary since launch. This is just another example of the halfass launches both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray made.

 

[Vincent_P]

I thought it was 36 Mb/s.

Vincent

 

[RobertDW]

I think the way it goes is like 36.4Mb/s or so for the HD DVD drive or hardware and the media is limited to 30.2Mb/s.

 

[Sean Bryan]

I think it is something like the storage rate is 36 but the read rate is 30.

Whatever the specific difference, it seems like it is the 30 that is the limiting value.

Heard some interesting ideas from Amir about using dynamic bandwith allocation to help deal with this if it becomes an issue.

 

[JeremyErwin]

and amirm has said that vc-1 is usually encoded at slower bitrates. Still this does mean that the philosophical equivalent* of the superbit is possible with bluray 50G, while the hdvdd 45G is only really useful for long movies and extras.

* yes, yes. Marketing ploy by Columbia, a.k.a Sony.

 

[patrickSo]

You don't need to know how to change your oil in order to drive a car. However, in order to properly use an HD-DVD player, you have to know how to insert a disc and navigate a menu. That's all a firmware update entails.