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[Kleegamefan]

200GB quad layered disks

New BRD plant in Indiana producing a disk every 4 seconds

1 million disks a month

only 10% more expensive than DVDs!!!


Link to thread in off-topic forum

 

[deadhorse32]

Betamax and MD 4LIFE

DEATH TO VHS and CD

 

[Ranger X]

Also 70% made of paper. Very cheap and powerfull thing. Welcome Blue-Rays.

 

[Gattsu25]

does that mean cleaning discs with water is now the utter destruction?

 

[Ranger X]

I don't know. But it must be linked somewhere with the fact those disk are in some cases like our PC floppys...

 

[Gattsu25]

ahh yes...forgot about that as the most rcent pics I've seen of BRD have always been of the disc itself

nice to see a protective case return as it will probably lower the chance of me renting something at blockbuster only to have it spit and stutter due to scratches that every jerk seems to love adding to discs

 

[jarrod]

In dunno, something about Sony's manufacturing quotes (both on UMD & BRD) strike me as off. I just can't understand how brand new propietary, caddy encased optical solutions are more or less the same manufacturing cost as the established, industry wide DVD? Could someone explain to me how this works?

 

[Gattsu25]

jarrod, here's my theory:

Also 70% made of paper. Very cheap and powerfull thing. Welcome Blue-Rays.

 

[jarrod]

Paper only goes so far though, the reason optical discs are so cheap in the first place is the lack of moving parts making manufacturing that much simpler (both in terms of material and process resources)... wouldn't the plastic caddies alone drive costs up?

 

[nubbe]

Maybe the caddy is made of paper too

 

[jarrod]

I wonder what disc costs on HD-DVD are then? Equal to DVD?

Why was there such an uproar over Nintendo going with propietary formats (GOD) suppossedly driving up GC game manufacturing costs (so much so that firms like SNKP cite it as a reason not to support the platform), yet Sony somehow magically has production lines that eat not only the costs associated with using a propietary disc format, but also the costs associated with adding plastic caddies to them? Something stinks...

 

[Panajev2001a]

In dunno, something about Sony's manufacturing quotes (both on UMD & BRD) strike me as off. I just can't understand how brand new propietary, caddy encased optical solutions are more or less the same manufacturing cost as the established, industry wide DVD? Could someone explain to me how this works?

So Matrix tells the truth about their ROM technology, but Sony is lying about both UMD and Blu-Ray (well Sony+Samsung+TDK+Matsushita+LG+Philips+Mitsubishi, etc...) ?

Come on Jarrod .

 

[jarrod]

So Matrix tells the truth about their ROM technology, but Sony is lying about both UMD and Blu-Ray (well Sony+Samsung+TDK+Matsushita+LG+Philips+Mitsubishi, etc...) ?

Come on Jarrod .

Matrix tells use how they're making the savings (write techniques being post production, layering technology and whatnot). 3DROM is the result of nearly 10 years of research and notable investment by firms like Microsoft, Sony, IBM and Kodak.... it's been a long time coming and hardly some mystical vaporware solution.

Sony (and only Sony thus far btw going off that link) so far has just said UMD/BRD has a neglibible difference cost wise with decade old, signifianctly less complex (both physically and in terms of storage) optical media. Pana, mind explaining to me how that's possible? That's all I'd like to know... so long as your justifiaction reaches past "uh, paper".

 

[Panajev2001a]

3DROM is the result of nearly 10 years of research and notable investment by firms like Microsoft, Sony, IBM and Kodak.... it's been a long time coming and hardly some mystical vaporware solution.

Do you think that Blu-Ray is the result of 2 years of research by Sony alone ?

Let me see, does a total R&D budget of around $60-65 Billions for Blu-Ray by all the members of the Blu-Ray group till now says anything to you ? Because that is the amount of money they are talking about.

The Blu-ray Disc Founders are:

Dell, Inc.
Hewlett-Packard Company
Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
TDK Corporation
Thomson

http://www.blu-raydisc.info/

Licensee List


The following companies have entered into Blu-ray Disc Agreement


Blu-ray Disc Format Logo License Agreement

AMC Co., LTD.
JAPAN


ATI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
CANADA

Audio Dev AB
SWEDEN

CMC Magnetics Corporation
TAIWAN

Eclipse Data Technologies
USA

Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.
JAPAN

Hitachi Media Electronics Co., Ltd.
JAPAN

Hitachi Systems & Services, Ltd.
JAPAN

Hitachi-LG Data Storage, Inc.
JAPAN

KENWOOD TMI CORPORATION
JAPAN

Kikusui Electronics Corporation
JAPAN

LEADER ELECTRONICS CORP.
JAPAN

Mitsumi Electric Co., Ltd.
JAPAN

Ono Sokki Co., Ltd
JAPAN

Ono Sokki Manufacturing Co., Ltd.
JAPAN

Optodisc Technology Corporation
TAIWAN

PULSTEC INDUSTRIAL CO., LTD
JAPAN

Renesas Technology Corp.
JAPAN

Samsung Electro-mechanics Co., Ltd.
KOREA

Shibasoku Co., Ltd.
JAPAN

TDK Corporation
JAPAN

Texas Instruments Japan Limited
JAPAN

Victor Company of Japan, Limited
JAPAN

Yamagata Mitsumi Co., LTD
JAPAN

Yokogawa electric Corporation
JAPAN




Blu-ray Disc Content Protection System Agreement

AMC Co., LTD.
JAPAN


ATI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

CANADA

CMC Magnetics Corporation
TAIWAN

LG Electronics
KOREA

Optodisc Technology Corporation
TAIWAN

PIONEER CORPORATION
JAPAN

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd
KOREA

SHARP CORPORATION
JAPAN

TDK Corporation
JAPAN

Victor Company of Japan, Limited
JAPAN

 

[TKM]

http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/nea/200407/features_316490.html

In the early stages of volume production, when production levels are low, the majority of production costs will be on equipment acquisition and mastering. Both of these items will need to be cut as far as possible.

Sony is moving to address these problems already. First, it plans to use production equipment from DVD-ROM manufacturing, including the injection molding presses used to make the disk substrates, and the film growth systems forming the reflecting films. The mastering process, which creates the stamper used to transfer microscopic pits during the molding process, is tapping a technology called phase transition mastering (PTM), which will deliver lower costs.

PTM was developed in-house by Sony. A Si substrate is coated with inorganic resist, and illuminated with blue-violet laser diode light through an object lens with a high numerical aperture (NA) of 0.95. This light cuts the pit pattern. "It looks like a PTM mastering system will be cheaper than existing DVD systems," said a source at the company.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Thanks TKM (PM for you... old PM now, but it is there).

 

[jarrod]

Do you think that Blu-Ray is the result of 2 years of research by Sony alone ?

No.... did I say anything of the sort? All I've said is I don't understand where these savings will come from (where as with 3DM, Matrix has been pretty forward with the how the technology works, so much so even a non-techie like me can grasp it). I did forget that BRD has shifted to a caddyless hard coating for ROM though (which brings savings comparately, but is still an added cost), and TKM's quote on the PTM mastering process helps also.

I'm just asking "how" here after all? Aren't you curious about that? And wouldn't you be a bit frustrated if the only answers you recived were "paper discs" and cricizing other media/pulling up noncommital partner lists out of nowhere?

 

[kaching]

Either one of you could have just googled for the information requested

http://www.blu-raydisc-official.org/tecinfo/data/tech01.pdf

Page 2 & 3 explain the BR disc's recording layer and the manufacturing process and should answer most of your questions, jarrod.

Also, about the paper substrate thing - I don't believe that's intended for ALL BRD manufacturing but rather for manufacturing of disposable discs.

 

[jarrod]

Huh, thanks Kaching. Seems the coating costs should be offset by BRD using a single substrate layer (DVD is 2 layers). Writing techniques should be comparable, that really only leaves the upfront costs of converting CD/DVD production lines.

Now if only someone could explain how a UMD is cheaper than a dual layer DVD for me?

 

[kaching]

Yeah, plus the coatings don't sound like they require expensive manufacturing techniques - spin coating seems pretty cheap to me, so it sounds like its mostly a matter of the cost of the 2 coating materials themselves.

As for UMD, can't help you there. I'm guessing its on par with DVD because the UMD discs are so wee

 

[aaaaa0]

Funny what that article alludes to but doesn't go into detail on, and no one here has picked up on it either.

http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/nea/200407/features_316490.html

Memory-Tech installed new manufacturing equipment designed specifically for HD DVD in its Tsukuba Plant, in May 2004. The manufacturing line is intended to slash cycle time to just over 3.5 seconds, about the same as DVD-ROM lines, for single-sided, single-layer 15GB media.

The facts of the matter are: that plant was recently demonstrated to the industry, had 3.5 second cycle times with better than 90% yield, and was converted back and forth from HD DVD to DVD production in 5 minutes during the demonstration.

They were so confident about the yields that the attendees were allowed to remove random finished discs from the production line and test them.

This was not the case with the Sony demo. The attendees were not allowed to test the finished product at random, and in fact there are accusations floating around that a fair amount of smoke and mirrors was used at the Sony demo. (But I have problems believing that myself, frankly.)

 

[kaching]

Didn't pick up on it, because I didn't read it, personally. The part quoted by TKM wasn't sufficient to answer jarrod's question so I went looking elsewhere. Thanks for providing the additional insight behind the article.

That yields are better for HD DVD is not surprising at this stage, since that's been one of the intended focuses of AOD tech all along - to capitalize on existing DVD manufacturing lines and mastering equipment as much as possible. It'd be more than a little disappointing if they weren't delivering on that promised benefit.

The BRD group chose to put capacity before the ability to capitalize on existing manufacturing tech and so as a result have naturally had to work harder to achieve competitiveness in this area. What's interesting is that their efforts to do so may actually generate new techniques that could eventually make the BRD manufacturing process even more efficient/cheaper than existing DVD, if I'm reading this right.

 

[aaaaa0]

What's interesting is that their efforts to do so may actually generate new techniques that could eventually make the BRD manufacturing process even more efficient/cheaper than existing DVD, if I'm reading this right.

I'm not so sure personally, but people I know have said it's not likely.

Just as an example, one BRD fabrication disadvantage that was told to me is that the substrates of BRD are twice as thick as for DVD (despite there being only one of them). Physics thus dictates they must take longer to cool when they come out of the injection molder, hence maximum production speed, everything else being equal, will be slower, and thus the discs will be more expensive to make.

Any improvement to increase the cooling speed of the platters to improve BRD's fabrication speed could likewise be applied to DVD and HD DVD just as effectively, so if BRD gets better, HD DVD gets better too, and the gap remains.

At least that's the story being told to me by people "in-the-know", who I admit may not be impartial, but certainly should know the ins and outs of optical mass duplication.

 

[kaching]

Fair enough and it certainly seems logical. But everything else may not be equal, as you say. Do your people in the know have anything to say about the application of the cover layer and hard coating? Are there any efficiencies over and above DVD to be achieved there?

 

[Crazymoogle]

The avs thread is really worth reading if you can handle some of the bickering that comes with audio/videophiles. Apparently BD-ROM still doesn't have locked in audio/video formats, so there isn't a lot of concrete comparisons to make.

The substrate is thicker on BD-ROM, but it's interesting to see that because of that, it is also more reliable. Dual Layer BD-ROM and Dual-Layer, Dual-side BD-ROM appear to be fundamentally better formats from a production reliability view, with quad layer already being a possibility.

In the end however, this is really about capacity. 30GB HD-DVD is nice and all, but if I was going to take a format leap, I might as well go for the best. 20-170GB extra is not something to ignore.

Hopefully this doesn't just split the industry into a +/- style deadlock.

 

[TAJ]

>>>200GB quad layered disks<<<

They'd BETTER have a lot more capacity with the fucking ancient video compression they're using.

 

[Panajev2001a]

>>>200GB quad layered disks<<<

They'd BETTER have a lot more capacity with the fucking ancient video compression they're using.

???

They are considering VC-9 and MPEG4 AVC for play-back: for 720p-1080p recording in real-time while playign back other stream you need to wait a bit if you want to do it using VC-9 or MPEG4 AVC as it would be very processor intensive.

200 GB of RAW space in a single disc is an enormous amount of uncompressed space.

 

[TAJ]

>>>They'd BETTER have a lot more capacity with the fucking ancient video compression they're using.

???

They are considering VC-9 and MPEG4 AVC for play-back: <<<

Since when??? Don't tease me like that. Are you sure you're not thinking of AOD/"HD-DVD"?

 

[Panajev2001a]

I am not teasing: they are re-evaluating them both due to the very high Picture Quality improovements.

When they chose MPEG2 also fro ROM media (playback ) was because the Hollywood studios deemed it to be superior not just because Sony wanted it.

 

[aaaaa0]

BRD has since reconsidered its position on codecs. I'm also happy to say they've reconsidered their decision to use a crappy proprietary filesystem instead of UDF.

However, I'm still betting AOD's going to be cheaper and the first to mass-market.

I'm not calling the winner yet.

 

[Panajev2001a]

BRD has since reconsidered its position on codecs. I'm also happy to say they've reconsidered their decision to use a crappy proprietary filesystem instead of UDF.

However, I'm still betting AOD's going to be cheaper and the first to mass-market.

I'm not calling the winner yet.

They are not going to use UDF and their file-system is superior to UDF or you call the ability of recording and playing-back at the same time multiple streams without HDD support irrelevant (engineers from Sony and Matsushita referred to this feature possible thanks to their new file-system) ?

 

[MrPing1000]

we are going to run outta tree's a lot faster now

 

[TAJ]

>>>BRD has since reconsidered its position on codecs. <<<

You have no idea how happy that makes me. Have they improved sustained transfer speeds to take better advantage of increased capacity?
I'm picturing Superbit-esque BRDs with 30X the mux rate of current WMVHD DVDs...

 

[DCharlie]

Out of interest :
how much of the 65 billion $ has sony put in to the Blu Ray venture?
Also , how much has gone into Cell?

I know these won't be totally PS3 specific products, but it would be interesting to get a handle on the current R&D burden that is at least partly related to PS3?

 

[Fafalada]

burden that is at least partly related to PS3?

Even with all these news about BRD advances I remain extremely skeptical about chances of it appearing in a PS3 that would launch before 2007.

Frankly I was never particularly convinced about it even being considered, and I'm yet to see or hear something to make me believe otherwise.

 

[Kleegamefan]

TAJ, the BRD group has focused on the MPEG2 because only the re-writeable BRD spec is complete.....

All optical recorders(DVD, AOD or BRD) *MUST* have MPEG2 decoding if they plan on archiving broadcast HDTV content, which is encoded in MPEG2.....

The AOD/HD DVD group have downplayed the fact their recorder *MUST ALSO* use MPEG2 for recording because the BRD group have only talked about MPEG2....

The BRD group realize the PR disadvantage of not mentioning potential advance audio/video codecs (like VC9 and/or H.264) that could be used in their (still incomplete) BRD-ROM format......

This is why, at the Blu-ray Summit, Sony's Mike Fielder recently made noise about "evaluating advanced codecs" for use in the BRD(ROM) format...

According to a friend of mine @ Dolby Labs (who shall remain nameless) AVC H.264 has already been privately approved by the BRD group and VC-9 is just about a lock for BRD ROM as well....

Sofar, the BRD group has seen the HD DVD format gather steam/support so they have systematically tried to address all the "issues" people have with BRD (Caddies, production costs and now advanced AV codecs)....

I can't even imagine how much high quality 1080p video would be able to fit on a pre-recorded 200 Gig BRD ROM disk using VC9....

Actually...YES I CAN

AHEM....

VC9 is around 250% more effcient than MPEG2 @ equal bitrates....you can fit around 4.5 hrs of 1080i video on a 50gig BRD....1080p is double the data, so now we are talking 2.25 hrs of 1080p on a 50gig BRD....if we use a quad-layered BRD ROM disk, we are talking about 9 hours of 1080p video, just using MPEG2!!!

If we encode using VC9 then you are talking about *TWENTY-TWO-AND-A-HALF* hours of 1080p video than could fit on a quad-layered BRD ROM disk!!! (9 hours*250%=22.5 hours)

.....not bad

DCharlie....the $65b figure is the total R&D investement of the entire BRD group sofar....although Sony is the most vocal mouthpiece of BRD, many others within the BRD group have contributed tons of money and engineering effort to BRD.....Matsushita and Pioneer Electronics especially....

Faf, Japanese PC magazine Asahi PC published an interview with Kiyoshi Nishitani from SCEI in which he said that he is currently working with Sony to enable BD-ROM playback on the PS3.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news2.php?ID=9446

PlayStation 3 will have a BRD-ROM drive, IMO

 

[aaaaa0]

They are not going to use UDF and their file-system is superior to UDF or you call the ability of recording and playing-back at the same time multiple streams without HDD support irrelevant (engineers from Sony and Matsushita referred to this feature possible thanks to their new file-system) ?

It's irrelevant. Those engineers are either being misquoted or are misleading you.

The filesystem has nothing to do with the ability to read and write multiple streams at the same time.

The filesystem defines the logical organization of the data on the disc. All that's required for multiple stream read/write is sufficient disc throughput and latency. The filesystem can affect this to a small degree by offering physical file placement optimal for streaming and (depending on the reliability of the optical hardware) good defect managment capabilities. You can already do this stuff with UDF.

You can record multiple streams to and from hard disks in real time... and they use FAT, NTFS, whatever file system your OS supports. The reason it works is cause your hard disk is fast, not because the filesystem has any special features.

The advantage of UDF is that everyone already knows how to read UDF, it's the standard filesystem for optical media, and it's pure stupidity (or a pure patent/licence money grab) for BRD to go and design it's own when UDF is perfectly suited for it.

 

[goodcow]

Am I the only one who finds it absolutely insane that it costs $65 billion in R&D to develop a new optical format?

 

[jarrod]

Am I the only one who finds it absolutely insane that it costs $65 billion in R&D to develop a new optical format?

I don't think the 65 billion is simply for R&D is it? Wouldn't it also go towards publicity and manufacturing?

 

[Panajev2001a]

The advantage of UDF is that everyone already knows how to read UDF, it's the standard filesystem for optical media, and it's pure stupidity (or a pure patent/licence money grab) for BRD to go and design it's own when UDF is perfectly suited for it.

If we stuck with the idea of "let's not invent anything new, everyone knows how to use the existent solution" then the industry would be still stuck in the dark ages.

 

[TTP]

^

 

[Kleegamefan]

I agree pana.....that is the 2nd side of the same coin....

When introducing new formats/technologies/whatever....there are no perfect solutions....

Innovation is important(albiet innovation for its own sake is not a good idea either)....and although we know alot about UMD, we do not know everything about the new filesystem.....

Besides, who's to say it would be a good idea to stick with UMD forever...

At any rate, we need more information about the pros and cons of this new BRD filesystem before we can formulate fair opinions.......if anyone has that information, I am all ears

 

[aaaaa0]

If we stuck with the idea of "let's not invent anything new, everyone knows how to use the existent solution" then the industry would be still stuck in the dark ages.

No this is like Sony inventing a "PJEG" image file format, that does almost the exact same thing as JPEG, except the patent is owned by Sony, and they're forcing every new digital camera that uses Sony Memory Stick to write their images in "PJEG", despite there being no obvious advantage in doing so.

Yes, sometimes there is a good reason to break compatibility.

BUT sometimes there is no good reason to break compatibility.

This is one of those times.

As a minor point, I would also like to point out that Sony's OTHER blue laser format (their high-end, expensive Professional format) DOES support UDF. It's designed to replace M/O discs for enterprise backup systems, and is actually designed quite well I've heard.

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Professional/bluelaser/BWF101.html

(No, the BWF101 is NOT a BRD drive.)

Anyway the whole point is moot, since the last I heard, BRD is probably going to switch to UDF anyway.