Mini Blu-ray Disc...

[CoolBalla15]

How much space do they hold?

[Dave]

See post 3


/offtopic: mini HD DVD for example are ... useless. they are so small that they cant fit HD video at all

[Blu-rayrules]

Actually Dave it isn't half

Regular CD - 700 MB
Mini CD - 210 MB
Regular sized DVD - 4.7 GB
Mini DVD - 1.4 GB

So mini Blu ray's should be as so...

Single Layer - 7.5 GB
Dual Layer - 15 GB
Quad Layer - 30 GB
Eight Layer - 60 GB

Which if you could record to a eight layer Mini BD-RE.... ...about 5.4 hours of HD video

[takezo]

That will not be for a while. Mini BD-Rs and REs are primarily for home video, people can finaly record home movies in HD or record several mini dvd worth of SDTV home vids on a single disk.

[georgir]

mini BDs seemed a great idea for camcorders or portable videoplayers a couple years back (you know, when bluray woulda shoulda coulda been launched but wasn't...)

now its obvious we'll get to wait atleast an year more before we see them in that field, and they still won't be more than two layers.

with 8gb flash cards already available (and development in that field just keeps speeding up - i just read something about samsung 64GB flash with new PRAM tech), not to mention hdd camcorders and such, i'm really not that anxious waiting for bluray anymore...

[Psiweaver]

advantages of having a disc rather than some other medium ie hard drive is that they are generally cheaper so you can carry more with you plus they can be dropped right into a player and then yoru good to go.

[takezo]

Originally Posted by Psiweaver

advantages of having a disc rather than some other medium ie hard drive is that they are generally cheaper so you can carry more with you plus they can be dropped right into a player and then yoru good to go.

Yes that the main advantage of a disk based camcorder. It's the closest to the vhs and 8mm recorders of past. the bigest advantage to mini DVD recorders are that you can record a home movie then pop the disk into a DVD player and watch it.

flash and HDD based camcorders require a PC to burn the disk, and if you wanted to watch it right away, the camera it's self is the only playback tool you have.

If you run out of space on a HDD camcorder, you have to upload the vids to a PC for safe keeping to free up space to start recording again. Flash based camcorders are posible to change if you run out of space, however buying multiple flash media is expensive, and it may not be enough. A PC is still needed to burn dvds.

Withg a mini Bluray camcorder, you can either record HD footage for the same time as SD footage on minidvds, but you could also record far more SD footage on a single mini BD-R than a dvd. You buy a 5 pack of them for les than the price of a 2gb flash media. The best thing is that you can just pop in the disk into any Blu-ray player and presto it plays, no computer required.

[georgir]

flashcards might be expencive, but you only need a couple as they are reusable, and they do have the formfactor advantage.

hdd camcorders can easily hold much more than either discs (even bd) or flash, so the inability to replace them easily isn't a disadvantage to me. with a 160gb camcorder (no current ones but hopefully soon as laptops already have this capacity) i'd prefer being able to record ten times the duration of dual-layer bd discs without swapping ten discs, even if im faced with the drawback of not being able to record eleven times that duration higher capacity hdds will appear too, while higher capacity bd discs (more layers) are probably quite a way away, and won't work with current recorders (and camcorders). won't work with players/readers too if im not mistaken.

for longterm/archival storage nothing beats optical discs though, so disc camcorders will sell well with people that don't like the hassle of burning them on a pc.
edit: the pc still has the advantage of being able to burn fullsize discs though, while if a camcorder goes for fullsize it'd be too bulky for comfort.
and i forgot to add that once 1080p camcorders start popping out, the mini-bd discs will become even more useless - they'll fit less than an hour of video.

[AV_Integrated]

It would be great if these HDD camcorders also offerred some nicer models that included a hot swap option. That is, you can pull the 2.5" drive (or whatever) out, and put a new drive in on the fly without tools. Like flash memory, only at 100GB+.

I'm really suprised we aren't seeing mega storage HDD camcorders yet as my Archos portable DVR is barely bigger than an iPod and has 100GB capacity.

Give it time, I imagine we will see it all. 250 or 300GB drives, all the prosumer cameras going to hot-swap drives, etc.

Anyone remember the Atari 2600? Things seem to have changed a bit.

[georgir]

Well while we're on the "It would be great" theme, I'd just like to skip to the point when my camera, camcorder, pda, phone, handheld game console and flash or optical disc based mp3/video player can all just wirelessly use the same portable 1tb disc i keep in my inside pocket. With existing things like bluetooth, wifi and the soon-to-come wireless-usb that might actually be possible pretty soon.
For the here and now, I would've appreciated if those devices supported usb not just as a peripheral but as a host too, i.e. i could plug my mp3 player in my camcorder and it'd be able to use the extra storage. Seems weird to me noone made a device like that yet.

[theknub]

my mp3 player will play host. it is meant to be a card reader host, but im sure it could support other things.

[jorg]

flash memory is slow
same with hdd for camcorders
if mini bd read and wright speeds are the same as ther bigge rbrothers then they will be supior(and if they can get atlest dule layer out