This is pretty good news... from a retailer and consumer perspective
it's a no brainer.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...n_toshiba_dvds

New DVD Has Dual-Layered Surface

Wed Dec 8, 7:51 AM ET

Add to My Yahoo! Technology - AP

TOKYO - Two Japanese companies said Tuesday they have developed a DVD
that can play on both existing machines and the upcoming
high-definition players, raising hopes for a smooth transition as more
people dump old TV sets for better screens.

Toshiba Corp. and Memory-Tech Corp. said their disc has a dual-layered
surface that can store both types of data on the same side.

For consumers, that would eliminate the potential headache of having to
own two types of DVD players: Both will be able to read such discs,
though only the newer equipment can take advantage of the
higher-resolution technology.

The discs, which took six months to develop, will be able to hold 4.7
GB in the current format and 15 GB in high resolution, Memory-Tech
spokesman Masato Otsuka said.

Making the discs won't cost any more than the companies now spend on
producing current DVDs, Otsuka said.

The new DVDs rely on the HD-DVD format, which has the backing of the
DVD Forum, an international association of electronics makers and movie
studios. New DVD players using the format are expected to hit stores by
late 2005.

Its competitor, Blu-Ray, is backed by Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news) (news
- web sites)., its Hollywood studio and News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment
Group Inc. Blu-Ray has more storage space, but HD-DVD is expected to be
cheaper to produce because its technology closely resembles current
DVDs.

It's still unclear which will become the dominant technology.

Just what we need a Bastard format.

John


"Jordan" <lundj@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:1102549746.016091.297850@f14g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...

Jordan wrote:
Maybe I am dense, but I don't see how this add much to the HD-DVD
format. People with DVD players and SD TVs are not interested in the
HD-DVD material (although it might give a better picture than DVD even
when downscaled to 480i/p). People with HD TVs will want the HD-DVD disk
and not a bastardized version with some of the material - maybe the
extras for movies? - at SD.

Why would a studio want one of these? Can't charge the DVD only
customers more for the disk. But for the first several years after the
HD-DVD or BD comes out, they presumably plan to charge a premium for the
High Def disk, regardless of format. How do they do that with a mixed
market dual layered HD-DVD?

Finally, it is a good bet that a lot of older or cheap DVD players and
PC DVD readers will barf on these dual layered DVD / HD-DVD disks.

I just don't see how this add much value to HD-DVDs in the short term.

Alan Figgatt

"Alan Figgatt" <afiggatt@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:NPOdnV-tMoBNfCrcRVn-uA@comcast.com...
Then you are blind. Studios are already creating HD masters when going to
DVD. It will be inexpensive to produce this new format, which will
preferred since legacy DVD owners can envision upgrading equipment without
having to buy additional new discs.

It may be cheap for them but I think right now with the coming confusion
over the two HD formats for the next DVD the last thing they want to do is
add yet a third format and one that doesn't really service any useful
purpose. It is just a plain stupid idea like Circuit City and Divx.

John


"luminos" <logos1@trip.net> wrote in message
news:10rfsa73lloh482@news20.forteinc.com...

luminos wrote:
It does not matter whether the studios already have HD masters and
whether going to the mixed disk doesn't cost much, although there will
be costs to be recovered. The studios are already making a lot of money
from DVDs. The motivation for releasing HD disks in the short term will
be to generate more revenue and they do that by charging higher prices
for the HD disks as a premium product. In the first few years of HD
disks (whether HD-DVD or BD), the market size will be much smaller than
it is for DVD until most people have brought HD TVs. Got to make selling
the HD disks worth their while, so why sell mixed disks?

Alan Figgatt

Alan Figgatt wrote:

I think it's safe to say that most people are stupid. Look at how long
it's taking to get them to realize that widescreen isn't chopping off
part of the picture.

This format allows one section of DVDs at the store, one DVD section
for stores to stock. People don't have to worry about buying the
"wrong" disc and stores don't have to worry about taking returns on
media bought for the wrong machine.

One disc will work regardless of the DVD player the person has at home.
It's a great idea.

Plus, the bonus features don't need to be in high def any more than
they currently support surround sound. Keep the extras in the normal
DVD format and provide high def and normal versions of the film.
This looks to be an unbeatable idea to me.

- Jordan

Why sell mixed discs? Let's forget about Blu-Ray for a moment and just
look at HD-DVD...

Assume you're a retailer and you have a choice between stocking HD-DVD
exclusive discs, which will require their own section and numerous
returns from customers who have yet to figure out the difference
between wide-screen and pan and scan much less DVD and HD-DVD.... or
you can stock a mixed media disc that can be shelved with all the other
DVDs because it's just like a regular DVD unless you have a high def
set.

The choice is clear. A mixed disc will eliminate confusion, not
contribute to it. People that would ordinarily hold off on buying DVDs
because they don't want to have to buy it again on HD-DVD would make
the jump because once they upgrade their equipment their existing discs
will already be HD capable.

Alan Figgatt wrote:
cost more. So will the players. Sure there might be a handful of my
favorite films I might want to upgrade (probably less than 10). But I
can't see buying "Stripes" again in HD. It's a great film, but Hi-Def
is not going to make it any more or less funny. Overall I've been pretty
happy with DVDs. I do have an HDTV and Hi-Def looks amazing! On the
whole, not enough to get me to re-purchase my DVD Library over though.
Like I said, a handful, maybe.

In article <c0Ptd.10341$_3.118820@typhoon.sonic.net>, "John Doe" <john_doe@nospam.com> wrote:
manufacturers to have to build backwards compatibility into the HD-DVD players
so that they can play our standard dvd's. You still will have to keep a old
DVD player around in order to keep playing our current DVD's with this move.
This just makes retailers and manufacturers lifes easier since they dont have
to sell 2 packages to people.

In article <10rfsa73lloh482@news20.forteinc.com>, "luminos" <logos1@trip.net> wrote:
buy the new HD-DVD player and then have the player downsample the HD material
to 480i/p if you are not ready for buying a HDTV set yet but want to enjoy the
newer HD-DVD titles.

We do not need bastard formats!!!

In article <1102612754.426673.11510@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups. com>, "Jordan" <lundj@earthlink.net> wrote:
all are making sence!!!!

We try!

The other problem with the bastard formats is shelf space at stores.
Places like Circuit City and Best Buy don't have enough space for DVD's
now, let alone the bastard ones and then HD ones too.

John



GMAN wrote:

Instead of trying to put both formats on the same side of the disc,
which would reduce the HD capacity, why not just put the regular DVD
on one side and the Blu-Ray or DVD-HD on the other?

Of course, I'm sure the studios would rather sale people the standard
DVD now and the HD format later on, thus doubling their profits. I'm
sure they've made quite a bit of $$ from some of us who have bought
DVDs for movies we already had on VHS.


-
-Jon Purkey - <jonpurkey@aol.com)
For a quicker reply by email please use the
address found here: http://tinyurl.com/o8ka

In article <8jamr0df01uj096huvod9idqc87b29pu6e@4ax.com>,
Jon Purkey <jonpurkey@aol.com> wrote:
The Blu-Ray disks require a new manufacturing line. The HD-DVD
disks can use a standard line and it only takes a few minutes
to change from DVD to HD-DVD. That is one of the selling points to
the manufacturers of the HD format as opposed to Blu-Ray.

It always happens. The conversion from mono LP to stereo LP to CD
was common in the audio field.

Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

I agree totally, and I, too will <finally> sit this one out.
I was an early adopter of Beta/VHS and paid nearly a thousand dollars for my
first Video Recorder.
I bought a big screen TV for $2,500 with 3 guns that bounced the video off a
screen (front projection).
I bought Pioneer's Laser Disc format and paid nearly a thousand dollars for
a player had had to drive 60 miles to buys discs (before I found a
mail-order place and before Columbia House created a Laser Disc club).
I was an early adapter of DVD and paid $899 for my first DVD player.
Wal-Mart now has progressive scan DVD players stacked to the rafters for
$19.95
Then.... I got smart. I resisted my impulse to pay $5 grand for a
widescreen projection HDTV at Best Buy a couple of years ago and it paid
off. Now I can buy a bigger widescreen HDTV, with more features and a
better picture for about $1200 at Sam's or Wal Mart.
I will not be an early adopter of a high-definition DVD player or software.
The video quality on my current DVD's are fine for now. I'm gonna let
everyone else pay the high prices and I'm not sitting our another 'format
war'!
A little remembered fact: Back when Lear invented the 8 Track Tape Player,
there was a competing format... A 4 track player with a faster tape speed
for better audio quality (4 tracks were 7.5 ips, 8 Tracks were 3 3/4 ips)
and they had larger reels of tape inside so they didn't have to have a track
jump in the middle of the song. I chose 4 Track and 3 weeks later they ended
production because 8 track won. Then I bought a Beta recorded, which was
superior to VHS (I don't know if I believe it, but that's what most people
claimed) and we all know what happened there. Pioneer's Laser Disc format
was great for mid 80's technology but high priced players and insane
software prices, coupled with hideous quality control on disc manufacturing
kept this from becoming a mainstream format.
Until now, the only intelligent decision I made was scorning Circuit City's
"Divix" format.
We all know how that book ended.
As I said, I'm gonna site this one out and let others pay the big bucks.
-Jim-

Well, to be fair, Beta did a few significant firsts that VHS was forced to
follow.
The first TV/VCR combo.
The first to offer visual scanning.
The first Hi-Fi VCR.
The first handheld camcorder.

Of course, VHS had their firsts, too.
The first with an extended play speed.
The first with solenoid control.
The first with linear stereo using Dolby NR.
The first with front loading.

As for early adoption, you're not an early adopter of Beta if you didn't buy
the first Betas, the Sony LV-1901 TV/VCR combo from 1975, or any of the
standalone decks from 1976.

Same goes for VHS if you didn't buy the first VHS deck for USA in 1977: The RCA
VBT-200 or any deck from 1978.

LaserDisc is actually a late 1970s format, developed jointly by Philips and
MCA. Pioneer would get into the act in the late 70s later on when MCA wanted
to make LD available to the Japanese (who knew that Pioneer would ultimately
take over the format and give it a quality boost over what Philips and MCA
could do). The first consumer LD player was the 1978 Magnavox VH-8000
MagnaVision, while the first ever production player for 1977 was the
Pioneer-made PR-7820. Unless you bought a Pioneer PR-7820, a Magnavox VH-8000,
a Magnavox VH-8005, or a Pioneer VP-1000 between 1977 and 1980, you weren't an
early adopter of LaserDisc.

If you thought some of the early 80s rotters were bad about quality, then
you've never heard of MCA DiscoVision. The only company that was worse than
DiscoVision was Technidisc.

To be fair for LaserDisc, the quality problems with rotting were corrected
rather quickly throughout the early 1980s. In the 1980s and 1990s, only a few
companies here and there were constantly making bad discs (most getting out of
the business well before the end of LD in 2000-2001), notably Technidisc, WEA
Manufacturing, and Sony DADC USA.

LD product from other companies, particularly Kuraray, Pioneer, Mitsubishi,
Sony DADC Austria and Japan, and 3M are usually good with only a handful of
problems here and there.

LD's primary failures which also ultimately influenced price was caused by
Pioneer's rather limited marketing of the format, the VCR, the formation of the
videotape rental market, and the marketplace confusion that RCA's CED format
brought in 1981.

Pioneer didn't market LD very well when they took it over in 1981. To make
matters worse, RCA was trying to compete with CED and their large advertising
campaign, which only fueled marketplace confusion. ("CED is LaserDisc, isn't
it?" or "Is this Pioneer one of those RCA players I've seen on the
commercials?")

The VCR was well-established in the early 1980s with a desirable feature that
was advanced for consumers at the time, so there was no incentive to buy into
play-only formats like LD and CED. The establishment of the video rental
market also meant that people only had to spend about $5 to rent a movie to
watch instead of spending $30-$60 to buy a videodisc or $40-$120 to buy a
prerecorded video tape.

But, the lesson about early adoption is still well-noted. - Reinhart

On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:16:56 -0500, "Jim Burgan" <jimbo@qmix.com>
wrote:

And I thought I was the only one who remembered these...