A roadmap for ending the high-def format quagmire
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Don Reisinger thinks he knows how to get us out from the high-def format war.  Will his three-step process work?
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Can the movie studios kill the most promising new DVD format?
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One way to check the quality of a high-definition television before you buy it is to bring an HQV Benchmark disc to the store with you.
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Blue-laser disc format's standard adopts new video codecs.
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(InfoWorld) - It's an interesting contrast: consumers are fast ditching videotape for DVDs and hard disks, but the people who make TV shows are sticking to tape for some cutting edge applications. When it comes to recording broadcast-quality HDTV, today's optical disc systems just can't spin fast enough to keep up with the video -- but that may be about to change. Current optical disc systems are speed-capped at about 10,000 rpm (revolutions per minute.) Spin them any faster and there's a danger the discs will physically disintegrate in the drive leaving nothing but a pile of sharp plastic splinters and data that is gone forever. And even if they don't break apart the disc can begin to wobble making reliable recording a problem. Engineers at the Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) of Japan's public broadcaster, NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), are working on an optical disc recording system based on consumer Blu-ray Disc technology that can spin as fast as 15,000 rpm without these problems and demonstrated it last week. It's needed because broadcast quality HDTV signals of the type NHK records stream at 250MbpsÂ making a fast-spinning optical disc a necessity. A 1X Blu-ray Disc records at 36Mbps so the new system is equivalent to 7X speed. NHK has gotten around the stress problem by making a flexible disc that is just 0.1 millimeters thick. The disc, which was co-developed with Ricoh, is essentially the recording layer from a Blu-ray Disc without the 1.1 millimeter plastic substrate that is used to give the disc rigidity. It won't break apart at higher speeds but is not rigid enough to be useful in a drive at any speed. To solve this second problem a thick stabilizing plate has been added into the drive. When spun, the disc is kept steady by the stabilizer and can be used up to 15,000 rpm, said Daiichi Koide, an engineer at NHK STRL. The set-up is similar to Hitachi Maxell's Stacked Volumetric Optical Disc (SVOD) that wasÂ introduced in prototype formÂ at last year's Ceatec exhibition in Japan and shown again at Cebit in Germany this year. SVOD packs several 0.1 millimeter thick optical discs into a cartridge and holds them against a stabilizer in the drive to keep them steady while in use. However there is a key difference between the two, said Koide. In the NHK drive the stabilizer doesn't rotate. If it did it would be susceptible to the same stresses that as the discs. The result is that NHK can spin the disc up to 15,000 rpm without any mechanical problems. The system is still under development and there's no word on when it will literally be ready for prime time. NHK envisages cartridges stuffed with a number of the thin discs that can replace videotapes. Â
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If you don't mind buying into a format that has no future, you can finally get your high-def movie groove on for under $100.
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The videocassette in film: an unsettling innovation, a romanticized artifact, an LP in an MP3 world.
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A battle over next-generation disc standards could create a rift in console game storage. Which side are you on? There are few who contest the fact that the acceptance of CD-ROM and then DVD-ROM standards
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It may not be exactly possible for high-definition discs to pick up where their lofty goals of 2005 left off. Transmission technology has evolved very rapidly during that time, partly due to the format war's very existence.
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By Dean Takahashi, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Dec. 11--The idea of creating a home theater takes a big leap forward with the introduction of high-definition movie disc players this year.
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Integrated video engine to offer DVD quality on a handheld
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The Audiophiliac ponders the imminent demise of HD DVD, and looks back over a long history of defunct formats.
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Don Reisinger is fed up with the high-def format war and has even stopped caring about which format will come out on top.  Are you in that group too?
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To promote the format where the DVD Forum fears to tread?
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Simple tool for mass-renaming of files, download of episode lists from TV.com, TVRage or AniDB, analyzing a folder (number of files and total size for each file type), creating and checking of SFV files all in a single executable jar.   What's new in FileBot 1.6: * Episode list searches work much better now (AniDB works again) * Much better handling of lots of files when creating/check sfv files * DnD improvements * Lots of bugfixes
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Toshiba has abandoned the HD DVD high-definition video disc format, it announced Tuesday. (More to fol...
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High Efficiency codec recommended to network, content providers