Ask the Insiders: Putting the Last Nails in the Coffin

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

No, I seriously doubt you will ever see a commercial, pressed BD100 disc, nor have I even heard of anyone proposing making them. They don't even have the specs for one, and only lab samples for the burnables, and personally, I believe the chances of seeing even one of those at a price that even approaches being worth it is slim. Just because they can make them work in a lab does not mean that mass replication is, or ever will be practical(not saying it WON'T mind you), at least on a consumer level.

Remember, even after what, 4 years on the market, DVD-R 9s are about $4 each in bulk. On a good sale, DVD-R is $0.20, making it 10 times more expensive for the same amount of storage

Which means that if BD-100 hit today, each blank, again in bulk and on a real good sale would be $125 each.

Wouldnt you say that BD100's could have a place in movies like LotR?

I will say its far more likely we will see a BD100 movie than a TL51 movie!

[WickyWoo]

Wouldnt you say that BD100's could have a place in movies like LotR?

I will say its far more likely we will see a BD100 movie than a TL51 movie!

Whether or not they could be used is immaterial, since the capability for them to be used simply isn't there, nor is it likely to be

There's a reason why DVD-18 has fallen out of favor guys. The yield rates suck compared to DVD-9, with the thinpacks any space advantage has pretty much gone the way of the dodo, and the return rate on them (I had to return Sliders season 3 _4_ times to get a working set) is ludicrous

You'll notice Universal who once was extremely gung ho on them on their TV sets has dumped it. So with showslike Northern Exposure and Las Vegas, it's half 18s and half 9s

HD DVD forgot this, and that's why the combos coaster so much. 4 layers back to back, 2 of which have much lower error tolerance= lots of defectives

Now take a format with even LOWER tolerance for variance, and stack them all on one side of the disc. TL-51, were it actually going to happen would suffer from similar issues. DVD replication has proven that every time you add a layer, you're exponentially increasing coaster rates.

Possible? Yes. Practical? No.

[DaViD Boulet]

A year from now 75 or 100GB production might be greatly improved.

It would seem possible that for premiere titles, 75 GB should be attainable.

[WickyWoo]

A year from now 75 or 100GB production might be greatly improved.

Considering that rolling a single disc off a line would accomplish that....

It would seem possible that for premiere titles, 75 GB should be attainable.

Anything you're making in huge quantities you absolutely want to AVOID those formats because of the failure rate, especially early on

Look at DVD, the same exact process with Blu will just be exponentially worse, and again, there are no plans as of this moment to commercially press, or even develop the tooling to commercially press titles on anything larger than 50. I've asked about it as little as right before Christmas. Even BD-50 still has a long way to go before it starts touching DVD-9's yield rate

I'm not saying never. I'm saying as things stand, right now, this minute, ain't happening

[The Don]

Originally Posted by Maxpower1987

I will put BD75/100 in the same realm as TL51 for HD DVD, it isn't viable and will probably not see the light of day unless it is used for data storage where drives will specifically be labeled as compatible.

this is what I pretty much assumed the whole time...

a disc that size sounds like it is more for home use with a PC or camcorder...

[DaViD Boulet]

That's not what we were hearing just a few short months ago, or was the talk about how 100GB discs playing on existing BD hardware just "BD FUD"?

[Joe Cain]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

That's not what we were hearing just a few short months ago, or was the talk about how 100GB discs playing on existing BD hardware just "BD FUD"?

Around here that's exactly what I've been hearing.

The BD 100 demonstration notwithstanding, I don't think I've heard an insider or mod (I think Wicky has been most vocal on the subject) suggest even once that the 100GB BD was a winning proposition for delivering studio content to the mass market. I could be wrong.

[Bullseye]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Alexander was 2 BD-25s because HD DVD needed 2 HD 30s to fit the whole movie.

I understand that. I was just making the point i have no problem with having to change discs if the transfer and audio is top notch.

[Paradiso]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

They absolutely will because even at 25 they still can't get ROTK onto one disc. You need to have a logical break point, that was already designed into each film for DVD. Honestly I don't think you'll be seeing a push for dub tracks in lossless that much anyway. People who care about sound quality aren't listening to dimestore voiceover people, they're watching the real thing. Warner's "lossless on main track and a pile of DD 5.1" is closer to what will be the norm.




Again, no you really don't. Look at Bill's report last week about how Uni can't reuse a bunch of their HD DVD compressions because they come from decade old masters and look like crap compared to the other stuff on Blu

Universal moves fast on catalog titles because they were doing shovelware to try to increase HD DVD's title count

I second what Wicky says: I have a few SD players (pc included) and Uni has the worst track record as far as discs being printed with errors. Especially their TV stuff...Uni needs to stop taking advantage of people and work on quality control.

[Anthony P]

That's not what we were hearing just a few short months ago, or was the talk about how 100GB discs playing on existing BD hardware just "BD FUD"?

David, there where obviously a few articles concerning BD-R's that where 100GB, but I don't remember even one credible article talking about 100GB video disks.

[binarymelon]

Does anyone know which insider would best know the impact of the Sonic announcement to the format war?

[Anthony P]

There was ONE article talking about Hitachi, pre-CES, stating that Hitachi's 4 layer technology was compatible with EXISTING players on the market

John go read them again, the Hitachi disk is a blank writable disk not a replicated BD disk

for example http://www.kickstartnews.com/2007/10...-ray-disc.html

Hitachi has announced that it has created a 100GB blank Blu-ray disc. They have achieved this by creating a disk that has four layers. This doubles current Blu-ray capacities and takes back the HD storage crown from the triple-layer, 51GB HD-DVD blank disc. The new Blu-ray disc will apparently be compatible with existing Hitachi Blu-ray players and burners after a firmware upgrade. Hitachi is also working on an eight-layer, 200GB disc.

[patrick99]

Max, on the subject of PQ and bitrates, do you know if other BD studios have taken note of the excellent PQ results Fox has been getting lately with very high bitrates, and, if so, whether this might have any effect on those other studios' encoding practices?

[patrick99]

Originally Posted by Maxpower1987

Indeed, DDS and PHL have been doing a stellar job, champagne all around

Is Disney currently using PHL, Max?

[patrick99]

Originally Posted by Maxpower1987

Disney have used a variety of post-houses including PHL, Technicolor and others. I don't know who did their latest titles, but I will try and find out...

Thanks, Max.

Wrt Fox, Panasonic, and Deluxe, I assumed that since Fox was getting the same excellent results from both, that the use of high bitrates must have been something Fox was strongly behind. Am I misreading things?

[nhaase]

Does anyone know if HD DVD production lines are convertible to BD production lines? I know it's an odd question, but with all this talk of studios, and now some retailers, dropping HD DVD support, I was wondering about disc-production companies switching support, and of course that's easier if prod. lines are convertible. Plus, it would help w/ the ramp-up in production as adoption spreads and when Uni and Paramount release in blu.

I know some of the differences between the two discs, and that this is probably an odd question, but I thought I would throw it out there, and I'm not completely sure of any specific insider to ask.

Thanks in advance.

[WickyWoo]

Please move all LOTR discussion to the new thread

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=34779

[Rob_BluRay]

For any of the insiders: How rock solid is studio support for Blu Ray right now? What I'm getting at is the fact that Toshiba is going to be promoting HD-Dud with a multi million dollar Super Bowl commercial. This would be the time to "surprise" everyone with a possible studio defection. Are we safe that we won't see any "jumps" to neutral or exclusivity at this point?

[nhaase]

Originally Posted by Rob_BluRay

For any of the insiders: How rock solid is studio support for Blu Ray right now? What I'm getting at is the fact that Toshiba is going to be promoting HD-Dud with a multi million dollar Super Bowl commercial. This would be the time to "surprise" everyone with a possible studio defection. Are we safe that we won't see any "jumps" to neutral or exclusivity at this point?

Why would we see any jumps less one month after WB jumped to us and blu-ray hardware is now outselling HD DVD hardware, and the top 10 hi-def sellers each week are on blu-ray?

[Rob_BluRay]

Originally Posted by nhaase

Why would we see any jumps less one month after WB jumped to us and blu-ray hardware is now outselling HD DVD hardware, and the top 10 hi-def sellers each week are on blu-ray?

Oh, I doubt there would be any jumps at this point but this "war" has had a few surprises. I think the Toshiba HD-DUD Superbowl commercial is a huge waste of money and wonder if somehow they paid off a studio to go neutral?