Support NeoGAF

[Fafalada]

umm not necessarily. Video data is generally more tolerant to errors since a wrong bit here or there might not change so much

Tell that to a videophille and they'll probably hang you for it.

Anyway, this reduced error tolerance idea would only make sense if there's a practical reason for it - such as video bitrates being more demanding then base BD spec, and that is clearly not the case.
And even if that were the case, you could STILL do other kind of data at that speed Heck we've lived with just this kind of thing for many years back in 3.5Floppy days (the 1.44HD discs were the most unreliable type of digital storage I've ever used in my life).

 

[Lord Error]

mm not necessarily. Video data is generally more tolerant to errors since a wrong bit here or there might not change so much (or maybe it might - it all depends on the encoding used also, some encoding schemes are more error tolerant than others), so it might be possible to read at a higher rate than normal data where a bit flip might result in the whole file being corrupted.

I think you are confusing something here. Video files on the BR discs will be much like VOB files on the DVD discs - in other words, files like any other files. I see what you are trying to say, but not correcting a read error on a MPEG2/4 material can be quite disasterious for the picture quality or decoding in general.

 

[Pimpwerx]

4x BRD in PS3? Not bloody likely. I hope I am very...VERY wrong on that though. I also don't see them putting a 1x drive in and getting killed by MS. So my guess is a 2x drive. It'll still be slower for transfer rate, although that's hardly the most important factor. Game data isn't large, contiguous files AFAIK.

BTW, there doesn't seem to be a spec for seek times or for required DVD read speeds. So, I guess it's up to the manufacturer. I'd love to get a Plextor BRD drive. PEACE.

 

[Lord Error]

4x BRD in PS3? Not bloody likely. I hope I am very...VERY wrong on that though. I also don't see them putting a 1x drive in and getting killed by MS. So my guess is a 2x drive. It'll still be slower for transfer rate, although that's hardly the most important factor. Game data isn't large, contiguous files AFAIK.

You are confusing things here. 1x BD drive could read DVD discs at 12-16x speed, there's nothing preventing it to do so, much like the 4xDVD drive in PS2 can read CDs at 32x speed. So, noone will get killed based on the speed of BR media reading, it's just that developers will be encouraged to not go with BD format for games, and BD will just be used for movies.

 

[Barnimal]

lets back up a sec. its possible for ps3 games to be pressed on DVD instead of BR????

 

[Lord Error]

lets back up a sec. its possible for ps3 games to be pressed on DVD instead of BR????

Yes, of course.

 

[TTP]

lets back up a sec. its possible for ps3 games to be pressed on DVD instead of BR????

And on CDs if you wish

 

[Ceb]

And on CDs if you wish

Although funnily enough, the official PS3 specs don't list CD-ROM media as being an option for PS3 games.

 

[ManaByte]

Yes I know that, but you notice when they started to go up dramatically? 2000. Before that sales were pretty down and no where near the "dvd players were already in most households" you said. During the PS2 launch DVD's got even more attention and people standing on the sidelines who had a choice between a 150 to 200 dvd player or a 299 ps2 that could also play dvds was a no brainer. Then walmart started carrying cheaper dvd players to compete and BAM, took off like crazy. We went from 2 shelves and no widescreen at Blockbuster to half and half walls of dvd and vhs. And then widescreen, and right before I left we were actually starting to get more dvd format titles then vhs.

The PS2 has absolutely nothing to do with DVD players sales taking off in 2000. Why? Because no one could get a PS2 in 2000 due to shortages. There was no "competition" to force stores into stocking DVD players.

The DVD player price drops and speed of acception also had nothing to do with the PS2. It was the natural progression for three-year-old hardware to get to a price where most consumers could afford it. Wal-Mart beginning to stock the format also had nothing to do with the PS2, it was because it was quickly replacing VHS and just about every studio was supporting it.

Do not argue with me about the history of the DVD format. I've owned a player since 1997, still have a ton of the first DVDs from 1997, and have been covering DVD longer than you've been renting them to people.

 

[Nerevar]

BD-ROM drives (like the one in the PS3) are 54mb/sec for a 1X drive

BD-R/RE drives (recordable) are 36mb/sec for a 1X drive

KLee laying the smackdown on the fanboys in the thread.

And would people please stop with the 6x BRD speeds in PS3 idiocy? Sony hasn't even come close to demonstrating a 6x-BRD drive, much less having one ready for mass production in less than a year. It's going to be, at best, a 4x-drive - but most likely a 2x-drive. Which is still really fucking fast, so stop sweating it.

 

[Pimpwerx]

The PS2 has absolutely nothing to do with DVD players sales taking off in 2000. Why? Because no one could get a PS2 in 2000 due to shortages. There was no "competition" to force stores into stocking DVD players.

The DVD player price drops and speed of acception also had nothing to do with the PS2. It was the natural progression for three-year-old hardware to get to a price where most consumers could afford it. Wal-Mart beginning to stock the format also had nothing to do with the PS2, it was because it was quickly replacing VHS and just about every studio was supporting it.

Do not argue with me about the history of the DVD format. I've owned a player since 1997, still have a ton of the first DVDs from 1997, and have been covering DVD longer than you've been renting them to people.

Source: SCEI HW Sales

2000/12/31 	6.4 million units (Japan: 3.94 million/ USA: 1.46 million/ Europe: 1.0 million)
2001/12/31 	24.99 million units (Japan: 8.30 million/ USA: 9.87 million/ Europe: 6.82 million)

PS2 helped much more in Japan than over here, but contributing 6M units in its first 9 months, and another 18M units the following year have to count for something. 18M units WW is more units than CEMA sales show. I assume those CEMA player sales figures are only for the US, but it's still a massive number. 8M units were sold in the US alone, which compared well to that 12M unit figure posted on page 1. I'm not saying the PS2 was the sole reason, but it was instrumental in DVD adoption. Noticeably in Japan, less so here and in EU.

You are confusing things here. 1x BD drive could read DVD discs at 12-16x speed, there's nothing preventing it to do so, much like the 4xDVD drive in PS2 can read CDs at 32x speed. So, noone will get killed based on the speed of BR media reading, it's just that developers will be encouraged to not go with BD format for games, and BD will just be used for movies.

I hope you're right. There's no minimum spec listed, and early DVD drives only read CDs at 24x IIRC. Matter of fact, PS2 reads CDs @ 24x. So I'm not so certain we won't be limited to an 8x DVD read speed. I'd hope not, but it's not certain. Plus, the use of BRD should come with a boost in transfer speed, not just capacity. So I expect the DVD read speed to be lower than the BRD transfer rate. With any luck, we do get a 4x BRD drive. That would kick all kinds of all. PEACE.

 

[ManaByte]

PS2 helped much more in Japan than over here, but contributing 6M units in its first 9 months, and another 18M units the following year have to count for something. 18M units WW is more units than CEMA sales show. I assume those CEMA player sales figures are only for the US, but it's still a massive number. 8M units were sold in the US alone, which compared well to that 12M unit figure posted on page 1. I'm not saying the PS2 was the sole reason, but it was instrumental in DVD adoption. Noticeably in Japan, less so here and in EU.

So...a videogame system that could play DVDs and no one could walk into a store and buy in 2000 due to shortages caused everyone to go out and buy a DVD player that year? Suuuure. Also, CEA player sales figures DO NOT COUNT VIDEO GAME SYSTEMS. Where is the logic in saying people saw a PS2 and decided to go buy a DVD player? No, it's because prices naturally started dropping in late 1999/early 2000.

In the US, the format had been out for three years in 2000 and by then player costs naturally started dropping. In fact five million players were sold in 2000 in the US before the PS2 was released. Also in 2000 almost all of the major studios were supporting DVD, and Disney was starting to release their animated films. That is a major reason for parents to pick up a DVD player, not because some videogame system was coming out.

This all was because the format was becoming widely accepted due to price drops and rental places carrying more DVDs. Also, DIVX had flopped and the studios supporting that naturally jumped on DVD so they wouldn't be left behind in the profits.

In Japan it helped because player costs didn't go down over there. But it helped PS2 sales as people were buying the system just to watch the Matrix DVD.

People like to credit the PS2 with DVD taking off in the US way too much and it's fucking annoying.

 

[Pimpwerx]

So...a videogame system that could play DVDs and no one could walk into a store and buy in 2000 due to shortages caused everyone to go out and buy a DVD player that year? Suuuure. Also, CEA player sales figures DO NOT COUNT VIDEO GAME SYSTEMS. Where is the logic in saying people saw a PS2 and decided to go buy a DVD player? No, it's because prices naturally started dropping in late 1999/early 2000.

In the US, the format had been out for three years in 2000 and by then player costs naturally started dropping. In fact five million players were sold in 2000 in the US before the PS2 was released. Also in 2000 almost all of the major studios were supporting DVD, and Disney was starting to release their animated films. That is a major reason for parents to pick up a DVD player, not because some videogame system was coming out.

This all was because the format was becoming widely accepted due to price drops and rental places carrying more DVDs. Also, DIVX had flopped and the studios supporting that naturally jumped on DVD so they wouldn't be left behind in the profits.

In Japan it helped because player costs didn't go down over there. But it helped PS2 sales as people were buying the system just to watch the Matrix DVD.

People like to credit the PS2 with DVD taking off in the US way too much and it's fucking annoying.

I said PS2 helped more in Japan, and less so here. I think that's fair to say. And for all the people that "couldn't" buy a PS2 in 2000, 6M of them magically appeared in households across the world. PEACE.

 

[ManaByte]

I said PS2 helped more in Japan, and less so here. I think that's fair to say. And for all the people that "couldn't" buy a PS2 in 2000, 6M of them magically appeared in households across the world. PEACE.

I was talking about the US, and Sony didn't even ship close to 6M units in the US in 2000 (between Oct 26 and Dec 31).

 

[Kleegamefan]

There seems to be alot of questions concerning the BRD format...

The official answers to your questions are at the BRD Association web site:


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


Here are a couple of BRD white papers that might clear up some (mis)information:

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/Section-13628/Index.html

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/assets/downloadablefile/2b_bdrom_audiovisualapplication_0305-12955.pdf

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/assets/d...physicalformatspecifications_jan05b-12909.pdf

According to the SCEI, PlayStation 3 games can be either DVD-ROM or BRD-ROM:

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050516/sfm178.html


DVD PLAYSTATION®3 DVD-ROM

Blu-ray Disc PLAYSTATION®3 BD-ROM

BD-Video BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE

Hope this helps

 

[teepo]

The PS2 did jack-fucking-shit for DVD in the US. In Japan, yea it definitely helped, but in the US the format was already well established by October 2000 and most people had a DVD player. Hell, you could buy a progressive scan player for $100-$150 less than what a PS2 cost that year and it was much easier to get.

wtf... consumer progressive scan dvd players just started rolling out in 2002 and were priced at 300.

 

[Shompola]

I remember seeing progressive scan dvd players in 2000 but I do think they were a bit pricey. And DVD Video was huge back in 1999 when I got my player.

 

[ManaByte]

I remember seeing progressive scan dvd players in 2000 but I do think they were a bit pricey. And DVD Video was huge back in 1999 when I got my player.

DVD video was big in 1997 because it was the new thing. Everything REALLY picked up in 1998, 1999, and 2000 as that's when support really started to kick in, especially following the failure of Circuit City's DIVX. It wasn't the PS2.

 

[Fafalada]

much like the 4xDVD drive in PS2 can read CDs at 32x speed.

Except that CD speed is actually 24x, basically you can expect CDs to read at about half the speed of DVDs on PS2.

It'll still be slower for transfer rate, although that's hardly the most important factor. Game data isn't large, contiguous files AFAIK.

"Sure" it's not, if you're EA and your games can load for one minute at a time... That's the same kind of nonsense that has people believing it's the hardware that dictates load times most of the time.
Rule of thumb - if you want to get anywhere NEAR good utilization of your DVD drive on current consoles, you should never do more then ~1 seek per 1MB of raw data reading from the disc. And less is always better with seeking on optical drives.
That's the number 1 reason why early PC ports always sucked major ass on consoles as far as load times go (Unreal on PS2 quite literally loaded for over one minute), and they mostly continue to have poor load times relative to "native" titles.

 

[Bebpo]

Except that CD speed is actually 24x, basically you can expect CDs to read at about half the speed of DVDs on PS2.

No wonder most of my cd-based games have horrible loading

 

[WHOAguitarninja]

yourself along the way - do you even read what you've written? :lol

Did you? He didn't contradict himself at all. Youd know that if you read the entire sentence. He didn't have the best wording for the sentence, but there was no contradiction.

Stop getting so worked up. You're coming off as if you're going crazy. It's a debate forum, we're not trying to pull each other's hair out (most of the time).

 

[C- Warrior]

Okay, the C-Warrior is overwhelmed.

But let me rationalize with the common idiot logic. (many times the answer is in that sort of thinking)

If Sony wants to push Blu-Ray, they obviously want developers to take advantage of it.

Now, they probably made sure that when the PS3 is set and ready to go, the cost to press a Blu Ray game would be comparable to a DVD game. Sony probably also wants to push the hareware to make it more resistant to piracy so they can make more profit on games sold. Publishers would also like this idea.

So in lue of preventing piracy, encouraging an aspect of what the PS3 has and the 360 doesn't, I believe they want devs to use Blu Ray. And in understanding of this, they will probably make Blu Ray when all is said in done as fast/almost as/slightly more faster than the 360's ability to read DVD's @ 12 speed.

Whew, thanks for the responses.

 

[mr2mike]

"Uh, PS2s are NOT counted in DVD player sales..."

Of course they aren't, but that didn't change the fact that studios saw this huge installed base that could read DVD, wich sprung up almost overnight, so even if "DVD player" sales hadn't changed, the market for DVD movies still rose sharply.

And thus is why PS3 is important for BR (I saw someone say PS3 had nothing to do with the HD-DVD/BR war): If both formats are out, and sales for "players" of each format are lets say, roughly equal, What would happen if the market for one of the two suddenly started to climb exponentially? studio execs aren't idiots...

Well ok, they are, but t least you could say the didn't get to be execs by making bad buisness decisions...

So even if player sales are static, if the one of the two formats sees it's consumer pool expand faster than the other, they WILL take advantage of it.

 

[Lord Error]

If Sony wants to push Blu-Ray, they obviously want developers to take advantage of it.

I don't think BR will be that important for game developers, unless their game ends up being larger than 8-9GB so that it cannot fit on a DVD. Unless Sony puts a 4x (or faster) BR drive in PS3, it will be basically detrimental for games to be made on BR, as they would load faster from a DVD disc in that same drive. From a standpoint of watching movies however, it's excellent that BR is there, no matter what speed the drive is. I know I won't be buying dedicated player anytime soon now that I know I can get it for cheap in a console.

 

[mrklaw]

Rule of thumb - if you want to get anywhere NEAR good utilization of your DVD drive on current consoles, you should never do more then ~1 seek per 1MB of raw data reading from the disc. And less is always better with seeking on optical drives.

Any idea what your new rule of thumb will be with the next gen? 32MB per seek? Will that be mostly taken care of by larger models/textures, or will you need to consolidate assets more than currently? Will you have space for duplication now because of DVD/BD space?