4 layer Demo

Hitachi showcased playback of a four-layer Blu-Ray disc featuring a capacity of 25GB per layer. The company said that the drive used for reading was a standard Blu-Ray drive, at its booth at the 2007 International CES.
There have been other academic reports of creating fourlayer (100GB) or even six layer (200GB) disc media by TDK. Some companies have also showcased playback of multi-layer BD media using test players embedded with a special optical head. But in the current demonstation, Hitachi used a 'standard drive'."This is the first demonstration of quadruple disc readout using a player based on an optical head generally used in current BD drives on the market," said Hitachi representatives. Hitachi used an optical disc drive based on the "GBW-H10N" supporting 4x speed BD recording, which Hitachi-LG Data Storage, Inc. announced in July 2006. However, the company made some alterations to the firmware and the optical system inside the head, to make the player compatible with four-layer BD playback. Frontend signal processing (Renesas) and other circuits are the same as those used in the "GBW-H10N."Of course, the demonstration did not include playback of video. Hitachi set up a reference system that included a PC, the BD drive connected to an oscilator, tuned to display the HF reading signal and especially the javascript:void(0)Publishdata patterns of the disc, which indicate the BD recording marks. According to a report on the Japanese Tech-On website, the first layer (L0) of the 100GB disc included a series of 3T patterns followed by 4T patterns marked on a layer one (L1) above it, 5T patterns on L2 and 6T patterns on L3. When the player picked up signals from each layer on this disc, it displays the signals' waveforms using the oscilloscope. The frequencies changed depending on the layer being read, so demonstration observers could recognize the readout of each layer. However, the drive was not set to pick up the 2T patterns, which are the smallest found on data Blu-Ray discs (3T to 11T for the data features on DVD).Hitachi said, that developing this technology required a drive capable of detecting which layer to read. The company has not specified how the pickup lens actually detects the readout layer, but reportedly explored a wide variety of methods including a very basic way, in which the pickup lens finds a targeted layer by scanning each layer in order of shorter distance from the optical head.Quadruple BD capacity could be used for storing Digital Cinema Picture Quality content in the future. For example, a 100GB disc could hold 3.5h hours of 64Mbps video (resolution 4K-2K).

Sony launches museum of of low res

Do you still own a standard TV and DVD or even a VHS? Well, if you do your place or at least your TV set should already belong in a Museum! At least according to Sony!The main Blu-ray backer launched the "Museum of Low Res" (MoLR), a consumer website which takes you on a virtual tour of the history of technology and the conception of Blu-ray Disc itself. The tongue-in-cheek website visually explains the Blu-ray disc format; from a giant TV sculpture demonstrating the resolution power of Blu-ray Disc, to a robotic arm sculpture highlighting its storage capacity.Is it worth the time to take a look at it? Yes, a bit of humor in this battle of the formats is a good thing. We tend to forget that the main goal of high definition movies is entertainment and fun. Sony brings that back a little with this site. At least for the European market since the site was launched by Sony-Europe.The image represent what Sony says is the first High definition TV that reached 1080! I always loved videowalls!

Blu-ray lead

Washington, D.C. (April 20, 2007) -- Sales of Blu-ray HDTV DVDs once again trounced rival HD DVD in March and the Sony-backed format now has a 69-31 percent sales lead in the first three months of 2007.

This information came from a website with lots of good information: www.tvpredictions.com

More Information about DVD and the Digital Age.

DVD - stands for digital versatile disc. It records information as compressed digital data on one or more layers of optical medium and is read by a laser beam in the DVD device. Small, easily packaged & transported. Can store enormous amounts of data and costs pennies to manufacture. Data can be ANYTHING - music, moving image, still image, text, animation, you name it and all on the same little disc. The costs of creating the data, though, can be huge. Advantages are obvious. These things can store all the films that would rot in the cans in Hollywood, once they're remastered and transferred. Have a look in HMV and see all the old black & white stuff available, for example.Another great advantage of DVD is the quality of image and sound. Anything not digitally copied loses a little quality every time a copy is made. Because digital technology works on numbers, the numbers are always constant, so any copy is exactly the same as any other. Two million copies of a DVD of 'Return of the King' will all be exactly the same in terms of quality of image and sound. Same with video games, same with any type of DVD.
CD - stands for compact disc. Also stores data and is read by a laser in the CD device. See above but don't ask me how they're different because I don't know. No doubt some kind technology person will tell me in due course.
DAT files - digital audiotape files that record music digitally on to tape.
Digital TV - fast, high quality TV pictures processed through computerised images. They need to be received by aerial/satellite dishes, or via cable and have a 'de-coding' box to unscramble the signals & put them on your nice flat screen TV set. The one with the five speakers that annoy the neighbours and wake the baby up at two in the morning when you're watching 'Return of the King'. Add to this 'interactive TV', where the consumer can view and choose things like camera angles and replay the goals on live sport transmissions or vote Jordan off 'Im a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here'. Such fun for the bored couch-potato.Digital TV was launched around 1996 and now has three 'platforms' for reception - SKY digital (via satellite), Ondigital (BBC) via aerial and NTL (via a cable network). No doubt there will be more soon.Many options are available, like business video-conferencing and 'pay-per-view' for important live events (mainly sport).In development are 3D holographic TV and also plasma screens (worked by gas, not tubes). Video recorders were challenged by DVD technology, but also in development is a neat idea called the PVR or personal video recorder which will use a hard drive to store programmes recorded from TV for later playback. It will be able to 'profile' your consumption by tracking your preferences, so if you always watch East Enders, it will record it for you because it 'knows' you like the programme. By keeping a record of the channels you watch, it can also provide data back to market researchers, so you can be targeted for products and services.Digital radio - Until digital technology was developed all radio programmes were either AM or FM, processes which present the actual sounds generated, complete with crackles, hisses and atmospheric interference. Digital radio signals are translated into computerised digits so there is no distortion or interference, which means better sound quality.

Why was DVD so Revolutionary

DVD initially stood for Digital Video Disc but now stands for Digital Versatile Disc. Like a CD, DVD is an optical storage system for read-only, recordable and rewritable applications. But, being similar to a CD in many ways, DVD is considered to be a CD future replacement.
The main differences between the CD and DVD are summarized in the following table:

Feature
DVD CD-ROM
Substrate diameter / thickness (mm)
120 / 1.2 120 / 1.2
Sides
1 or 2 1
Layers per side
1 or 2 1
Capacity (GB)
4.7, 8.54, 9.4, or 17 0.7
Track pitch (microns)
0.74 1.6
Min pit length (microns)
0.4 - 0.44 0.83
Linear velocity used for scan (m/s)
3.5 - 3.84 1.3
Laser wavelength (nm)
635 or 650 780
Numerical aperture
0.6 0.45
Modulation
8 to 16 EFM (8 to 17)
Error correction code (ECC)
RSPC CIRC
Durability and dust/scratch
same as that of CD high

• The main features of the DVD formats can be summarized as follows:
• Backwards compatibility with current CD media (at least the newest models of DVD drives)
• Physical dimensions identical to compact disc with total thickness equal to 1.2 mm, but with capacity at least 7 times larger than that of CD.
• Capacities of 4.7 GB, 8.54 GB, 9.4 GB, and 17.08 GB, depending on the disk structure.
• Single-layer/dual-layer and single/double sided options.
• DVD replication process is similar to that used for compact disks.
• A disc-based format means fast random access like in hard drives and CDs and unlike tapes.
• Designed from the outset for video, audio and multimedia. Meets the requirement for 133 minutes of high quality video on one side of a disk.
• DVD-ROM for enhanced multimedia and games applications.
• DVD-Video for full length high quality movies on one disc.
• DVD-Audio for higher quality music, surround sound and optional video, graphics and other features.
• All formats use a common file system.
• Copy protection built into standard (unless it is broken...)

A brief History on DVD

DVD (commonly known as "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc") is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality.

In the early 1990s two high-density optical storage standards were being developed; one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc, backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density disc, supported by Toshiba, Time-Warner, Matsushit Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC. IBM's president, Lou Gerstner, acting as a matchmaker, led an effort to unite the two camps behind a single standard, anticipating a repeat of the costly videotape format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s.
Philips and Sony abandoned their MultiMedia Compact Disc and fully agreed upon Toshiba's SuperDensity Disc with only one modification, namely EFMPlus. EFMPlus was chosen as it has a great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. EFMPlus, created by Kees Immink, who also designed EFM, is 6% less efficient than the Toshiba code, which resulted in a capacity of 4.7 GB as opposed to the original 5 GB. The result was the DVD specification, finalized for the DVD movie player and DVD-ROM computer applications in December of 1995.In May 1997, the DVD Consortium was replaced by the DVD Forum, which is open to all other companies.
"DVD" was originally used as an initialism for the unofficial term "digital videodisk" was reported in 1995, at the time of the specification finalization, that the letters officially stood for "digital versatile disc" (due to non-video applications)

EVD

An EVD developed before HD DVD or Blu-Ray in 2003 by On2 and Beijing E-World . And anouched by chinese 'Xinhua News Agency' to take-over from DVD to play on High Definition TV. This is mainly a chinese format, it is successful due to the fact that 1 in 5 people in the world are chinses but is consider to be sub standard to HD DVD and Blu-ray. It would be the equivlent to and VCD, when DVD was the lastest format.