How many layers are too many?

[tron3]

Start with the simple facts most of us know.

HD-DVD = 15 GB
BD = 25 GB

We have known for a long time that dual layer discs are pretty reliable and play back well. In fact, many of the discs we buy are dual layer 50GB discs. You can sort the titles by size here. http://www.blu-raystats.com/

HD-DVD has that 51 GB triple layer disc they announced. (17Gb per disc.) Yet, no one knows if the current crop of players will support them. Flashing the firmware might not do the job. Broken promise?

If BD goes triple or quad layer, HD-DVD simply can't catch up and expect to play back correctly. Hence I have the new nick name of "H-THICK DVD."

While I think a triple layer BD would be great, I'd like for it to give me something back in picture and sound quality, and not so much in extas. How many layers are too many?

[u_nick]

from what i hear playing on them is fine. when you try to introduce personal burning though, it becomes a problem. dont remember exactly why or where i heard it, but i remember something vaguely about not ever seeing a triple-layer burner for home use.

[LynxFX]

Triplelayer is just wrong. Luckily BD skipped that and went straight to quadlayer 100GB discs showcased back at the beginning of 2006.

[WickyWoo]

Manufacture keeps showing that any more than 2 on the same disc (no matter which side) introduces exponentially higher failure rates

DVD-14s are about twice the failure rate at manufacture of DVD-9, while DVD-18s are 3-4x the rate

There is simply no need for more than two layers on a video based disc, and I personally wouldn't trust anything I intended to keep to one either. You can still get 3 hours+ of excellent video on a BD-50, anything more than that and it's probably just easier to make another 50.

[Kristin Simard]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Manufacture keeps showing that any more than 2 on the same disc (no matter which side) introduces exponentially higher failure rates

DVD-14s are about twice the failure rate at manufacture of DVD-9, while DVD-18s are 3-4x the rate

There is simply no need for more than two layers on a video based disc, and I personally wouldn't trust anything I intended to keep to one either. You can still get 3 hours+ of excellent video on a BD-50, anything more than that and it's probably just easier to make another 50.

Yup. Unless at some time in the future they went to full holographic encoding with volume-holograms. But that would be a new format.

[MrBogey]

You'd be amazed at how many incredibly stupid people out there think that it's cheaper and easier to make a 3 layer HD DVD than make a BD-50.

[WickyWoo]

You'd be amazed at how many incredibly stupid people out there think that it's cheaper and easier to make a 3 layer HD DVD than make a BD-50.

I just keep seeing people who are mad at having to get off the couch to change a disc.

[Slapper]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Manufacture keeps showing that any more than 2 on the same disc (no matter which side) introduces exponentially higher failure rates

DVD-14s are about twice the failure rate at manufacture of DVD-9, while DVD-18s are 3-4x the rate

There is simply no need for more than two layers on a video based disc, and I personally wouldn't trust anything I intended to keep to one either. You can still get 3 hours+ of excellent video on a BD-50, anything more than that and it's probably just easier to make another 50.

Agreed.
Until the 4K format gets going I don't think there's any need for anything beyond 2 layers. By the time 4K gets going we'll be looking toward a whole new disc technology anyway.

50 gig is enough physical storage for a great 1080p hi-def encode. The only exceptions where we may/will need 2 discs would be for a movie that's 3+ hours long with a true lossless audio track. I can live with 2 separate discs for the extended cuts of Lord of the Rings movies.

Edit: But, since Warner will probably be doing the Lord of the Rings transfers for New Line, we'll be looking at a VC-1 video codec which will probably make the total data less than 50gig anyhoo. So, it should arrive on one disc WITH a true lossless audio track.

[WickyWoo]

The likelyhood of us getting a 4K home format is virtually nill

99% of homes are unable to host a screen big enough to have an appreciable difference

[WickyWoo]

Unless of course LOTR comes out after WB exclusivity or the death of HD DVD

New Line is independant. They make their own choices and are not bound by any of WB's agreements

[lch]

... and we thought 30g is more than enough ?

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

The likelyhood of us getting a 4K home format is virtually nill

99% of homes are unable to host a screen big enough to have an appreciable difference

i think when 4k come, we be buying shockproof readonly 2.5" 500g hdd to get our movie

[Slapper]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Unless of course LOTR comes out after WB exclusivity or the death of HD DVD

New Line is independant. They make their own choices and are not bound by any of WB's agreements

Yeah, but New Line has always worked closely with Warner for their DVD releases. I see them continuing that relationship with hi-def. I think New Line will let Warner do "their thing" with the audio/video encodes unless approached by Peter Jackson. I'm sure he still has some say as to what gets done with these films.

If Warner does have a "falling out" with HD-DVD then hopefully they step things up with high bitrate AVC encodes with everything they do, which would probably include New Line films. I'm sure they will. I'm actually quite surprised Warner has been giving us these lossless tracks lately. My hats off to Warner for that. It's not something they had to do. I know royalties aren't involved with providing the lossless track but it's still a welcome bonus.

I think the chances of 4K coming are better than "nill". I think 4K will make it into homes, eventually. But, will it be a mass-market product? Probably not ever. I agree that very few people would have a display capable "making use" of the format and 4K will probably NEVER achieve the adoption rate of even the long-dead LD format.

[The Guardian]

Of course people thought DVD was the greatest thing when it came out, some people even stopped going to theatres because of THAT, and on early players no less.

So who can say what will happen in the future... personally I think we might just see 4K in homes, but in the near future the only way I see it happening is with projectors... On 40" and 50" screens I don't imagine you can see a huge difference, on 100"+ though perhaps. You're definitely at a point of diminishing returns though, more likely we'll see a new format with far greater bandwidth and thus far less compression on the video (just like audio, where we now have lossless!) but still being 1080p.

[WickyWoo]

Yeah, but New Line has always worked closely with Warner for their DVD releases. I see them continuing that relationship with hi-def. I think New Line will let Warner do "their thing" with the audio/video encodes unless approached by Peter Jackson. I'm sure he still has some say as to what gets done with these films.

I wouldn't say that at all

WAMO is no longer owned by Warner, so there is no nepotism reason to involve them

New Line dumped the snapper long before Warner
New Line reguarly featured DTS when Warner (outside of a handful of titles) refuses to use it

Unless it's specified in their contract, PJ has no control. DGA rules require director approval of a film to tape transfer (which BTW I know for a fact that they don't always remember to get), but the LOTR movies were done non-union.

[gvortex7]

I also don't see any commercial viability for a 4K resolution format, unless in 30-40 years most if not every home features a full wall display. Kind of like in the movie Equilibrium. So it seems, 1080p will be the dominant high resolution for the next few decades. I don't have any problem with that.

[w_tanoto]

remember that HD VMD?? lots of layer. how un-simple! I guess it's a lot of hiccups.

[Blaumann]

Originally Posted by w_tanoto

remember that HD VMD?? lots of layer. how un-simple! I guess it's a lot of hiccups.

They should turn it into a feature and show an intermission screen at each layer break:

*music plays*
INTERMISSION
time to get some beer or take a pee
press play to continue
*music keeps playing*

[Slapper]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

I wouldn't say that at all

WAMO is no longer owned by Warner, so there is no nepotism reason to involve them

New Line dumped the snapper long before Warner
New Line reguarly featured DTS when Warner (outside of a handful of titles) refuses to use it

Unless it's specified in their contract, PJ has no control. DGA rules require director approval of a film to tape transfer (which BTW I know for a fact that they don't always remember to get), but the LOTR movies were done non-union.

I guess we'll have to wait for other New Line releases to see what "influence" if any, Warner has over the hi-def versions. Considering the format is relatively new I still think New Line will defer to Warner as they did when DVD first got off the ground.

I guess what will be most telling is watching what New Line does with Hairspray and Rush Hour 3. That should give us a taste of the direction they are headed. They appear to be more concerned with their movies as far as regional encoding/overseas releases so I hope they also take the same consideration with what video codec & bitrate gets employed. I still expect these to be "lossy" VC-1 encodes. If they are, then I take this as a sign that they are, indeed, playing on Warner's hi-def court.

Everything could change by the time LOTR gets released to hi-def anyway (maybe next year around the holidays), so I guess it's a bit early for me to be speculating on New Line's hi-def plans for the LOTR Trilogy.

Seeing how Jackson tied up the Hobbit for so long, I see him having other stipulations in his contract including the release of the LOTR titles (hi-def) to the home video market.

[SS316SRV]

From what I understand, the big thing is not layers and gig space. The biggest thing is bandwidth. HD DVD has a little band width, and Blu-ray has a big bandwidth.

[CptGreedle]

As far as the triple layer is concerned, it is a poor attempt to make up for the obvious capacity advantage that Blu-ray has over HD-DVD. Of course with the fact that Blu-ray is cheaper to produce per GB, this means that these discs will be very expensive, I would imagine most companies would not want to spend that kind of money on a dying format when they can just put a compressed version on a 2 layer HD-DVD and the full version on a Blu-ray. Also, the triple layer is not in production, it is not even finished. The announcement was premature and leaked on purpose to support the FUD and spin campaigns that the HD-DVD camp loves so much. Fact is, it is still on the drawing board. I highly doubt this will run on all (if any) of the existing players, PLUS it will be more expensive, PLUS it does not currently have any of the existing movies on it so if people want already existing movies in this format they will have to buy them again, and pay more for them this time... Plus I have a hard time believing that they can outfit a standard DVD maker (or whatever it is) that can make HD-DVDs with this cause not only are you adding 2 GB per layer, but you are also adding a third layer which NO DVDs have! In other words, they will need to make new machines for making these discs rather than outfitting older ones, which will raise the price even more. And like all new technology, it will take years before it is out on the market. It will be obsolete by then. And I remember hearing that Blu-ray developers were looking into making BD with more layers, that hold up to 200 GB (in theory). So if these was a serious threat, I'm sure we'd see that being pushed forward more.
The only way a triple layer HD-DVD would work would be 1- if they were planning to support software for it (which they have not announced), 2 - if Blu-ray was clearly failing in numbers and HD-DVD was on top, it would be a big incentive to bring Blu-ray people over to HD-DVD. But since this is not the case, and it is clearly not a finished product, it will only stay there to support the FUD of the HD-DVD camp.