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New DVD-Video specs released -- a disappointment

27 October 2003 12:56 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny | 5 comments

DVD Forum, the governing body of DVD specifications, including the DVD-Video specs, has apparently decided to stick with the current DVD disc capacity and technology with its new DVD-Video specs.

Most of the industry analysts were betting that DVD Forum would choose to use either existing 8.5GB red-laser discs with MPEG-4 video encoding or new 25GB blue-laser discs with existing MPEG-2 video encoding. But no. Instead the new DVD-Video specs, dubbed as 'Enhanced DVD', will use the same video encoding as current DVD-Video discs and the same disc size as current DVD-Video discs.

The only new data that will be added to the new specification over the old one relates to online content and authorization systems. Basically the next-generation 'Enhanced DVD'-capable DVD players would be able to connect directly to Internet and use online sites that the DVD disc relates to, to deliver further content to user. So, in theory, this is aimed to replace now-used DVD-ROM sections of DVD-Video discs, to allow stand-alone DVD players to access that kind of data as well. Other part most likely relates to online content as well: discs will be able to carry authentication data that can be, most likely, used to purchase content or movie-related products by using the DVD itself as an authentication device when accessing to beforementioned online content.

It is most likely that DVD Forum's decision killed off the idea of MPEG-4 material on red-laser discs, but it remains to be seen what blue-laser developers will say about this situation. Blu-Ray already exists and price of the blue-laser technology is coming down rather rapidly..

Sources:

NE Asia
TheRegister

Permalink to this article

Future DVDs could hold 1TB of data (28 September 2004)

Disney and Microsoft join DVD Forum (26 February 2004)

NEC demonstrates HD-DVD drive (18 December 2003)

Toshiba presents: 36GB dual-layer rewritable disc (10 May 2003)

Sony unveils first Blu-ray recorder (3 March 2003)

DVD Forum chose NEC/Toshiba blue laser technology (11 November 2002)

NEC and Toshiba introduce another blue-laser DVD technology (26 August 2002)

Manufacturers agree to create uniform blue-laser DVD standard (19 February 2002)

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GrayArea (Member) 27 October 2003 13:56
>quote from article "online content and authorization systems" Could this "authorization system" be used to control playback of the main DVD content? Perhaps enforcing a "lease" agreement limiting the numer of times and/or "lifespan" of a DVD (of course if you PAY again you can re-authorize your movie)? All I know is the content industry has a real hard-on for pay-per-play media controls. We mustn't lower ourselves to the level of those we loathe, lest we become loathsome ourselves. [ + quote]
dRD (I hate titles) 27 October 2003 14:36
I would assume/hope that they learned from the original DIVX format how stupid idea it would be to launch a pay-per-view DVD format.. But yes, I the discs could be used this way. Petteri Pyyny Webmaster http://AfterDawn.com/ Please read our guides before posting questions! Guides are available here: http://www.afterdawn.com/articles/ [ + quote]
GrayArea (Member) 27 October 2003 15:12
It was not clear to me from either article if the new spec supports some kind of unique identifier for each disc. If they are able to digitally serialize individual discs and gain control of hardware thru net connections... Need I say more? Perhaps not, but I will anyway. Personally I would not make any assumtions about what stupid ideas the DVD Forum (lackeys to the MPAA) may latch onto. One big reason DIVX failed is because people who did not like the idea (most everyone it would seem) had other choices. There will be no disc based competition for this format/standard. We mustn't lower ourselves to the level of those we loathe, lest we become loathsome ourselves. [ + quote]
Motomatt (Senior Member) 28 October 2003 4:53
I know the terminator special High Definition version DVD will only play on your computer, and it has to be connected to the internet to even play the disk. It gets a license or something from the windows media player website each time you play it. Maybe a taste of whats to come. Matt [ + quote]
fedrive (Inactive) 28 October 2003 7:51
World's Number One Storage Technology Forever. Atomic Holographic Optical NanoTechnology. US Patented. http://www.colossalstorage.net [ + quote]