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Some researchers at Pioneer now designed a Blu-Ray disc with 16 layers with 25GB each, giving us a total of 400GB on only 1 single disc!! As it seems the procedure isn't very stable yet, and it's not sure if current players like the PS3 can read these discs after a software update.
But that's what I call good news, although traditional HDDs of that size might be a little cheaper :hmmm:
Would be nice if current BD players could read these larger discs through a software update, but I doubt it.
Imagine what the possibilities are, though: near-uncompressed video and audio, nearly boundless storage capacity for game data. Whoever said dual layer DVDs were plenty enough for the forseeable future must've been living under a rock.
With 400GB of storage space, will mailtrading/swapping like in the old days of the Scene finally re-emerge from its sleep?
Bill Gates? ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharingan
Blue Jedi? ;)
That is a good point. Near uncompressed video and audio would be amazing. However it would be very costly from the disc creators due to the added investment needed in hardware to create such discs, and the limited market for them due to compatibility.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharingan
If however they can make current BR players read these large multi layer discs than it would be amazing. Games stored on 400GB discs would give the developers amazing scope for content including a ton of pre-rendered HD footage and multi channel audio.
At the moment I seem to remember reading that standard BR drives are designed to read up to 4 layers so it might not be possible with current drives. However, even with 4 layers that is 100GB per disc.
With DVD and even CD mailtraiding/swapping has still been going very well, especially with Rom Burners who provide copies of the latest Retro collections such as MAME. It has however dropped a lot since broadband became more commonplace and p2p, especially Bit Torrent, became commonplace. However I agree. Even with standard 50GB writeable Bluray discs it is much easier to transfer such amounts of data on a single disc than it is via the internet.Quote:
Originally Posted by P G
If DVDs still aren't outselling Blu-Ray by Xmas 2009 I will be VERY surprised.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharingan
EDIT: Make that Xmas 2010 :p
HDTV sales are accelerating quickly, and the prices of LCD HDTVs is falling very quickly. You can now get a decent 32" for £400, and a 42" for just over £500. Amazing compared to prices just a year ago.
Although for a true 1080p resolution set a 32" is still just over £600 and a 42" over £750. Still, even those prices are much lower than even a few months ago.
April last year I bought my 720p (1280x720) Hitachi 42" Plasma Panel for £620 (which included 19%VAT AND delivery from france :D)
well worth it... retr0 gaming heaven i tells ya! :D
That's true. I bought my 40" 1080p set in March last year, and it cost over £2.000. It was the best set you could get at the time according to all the tests, but even so it is lacking in some areas compared to recent sets so that I've been thinking about replacing it allready. But I'd have to take a huge loss selling it, so I'm a little hesitant.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harrison
Having second thoughts about my 40" 1080p also (a Sony Bravia, bought for € 2100). Although it offers very good picture quality, it just isn't quite large enough to do 1080p high-def video justice. I'd say, if you're going to watch a lot of high-def content, try to go for at least 46", preferably 50" or more.
I've no problem with that with mine (Samsung), I still love watching hi-def content on it. But it handles 24Hz sources poorly, and there's something (ok a lot) to improve on its black levels as well. Mine is the F71 2006 model, and I saw the M87 2007 model which came out mere months after I bought mine had improved in both of those areas considerably. Don't know about any 2008 models, but as prices are dropping it's very likely that I replace mine sometime next year I think.
With 'handling 24Hz sources poorly', you mean you're getting choppy framerates?
I still have my 37" Panasonic VIERA plasma TV, which I bought 2½ years ago and paid 3.800€ (~2.500£). And I still think that Panasonic are making the best plasma panels, their latest ones are now already in the 11th generation (mine's still generation 8), and what I've seen so far yet, I haven't seen better. Of cause their panels are not the cheapest, but I'd rather buy quality than anything else. I've also heard some good things about Sony and Samsung panels, but it seems that Samsung has better LCD panels than plasma.
That is the reason I have waited. The technology was obviously still being developed and is only now starting to become really good. Samsung's LCD panels are definitely very nice and probably what I will buy when I do eventually get one.
Yep. Like all the early HD sets it simply doesn't have a 24Hz mode, and instead incorporates that trick where it jumps a little back and forth between frames to make the 24Hz playback rate match the TV's 60Hz display rate. And the result is obvious choppyness when things are moving around a lot. Only last year did the sets come with modes that provide smooth 24Hz playback. My set isn't the worst of them, but it still annoys me a lot whenever I spot it. Which in some movies is all the time, in others hardly at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharingan
Some DVD players with upscale technology are meant to be able to fix this problem on older TVs as the DVD player sends a clean 60Hz display rate to the TV preventing this issue. And upscaling DVD players are now quite cheap. I saw a Sony one the other day for £50.
I have to interject here with a ... well i dont know what to call it...
As you all know Laser Printers are better and *technically* cheaper to run than the bubble-jet counterparts, this is reflected even today in price and performance.
Most of the money made from the Sale of Laser Printers is re-invest into the Bubble Jet line of printers and hence why they are not only substantially cheaper, but also constantly improving quality. still inferior to Laser however...
the same Parallelism is seen with LCD display and Plasma Display panels...
I have yet to see an LCD keep up with the colour / vibrance and lumi of my Plasma.
Now LCD's are getting better as more and more money is invested into it, (i am sure there is one small country thats major export has to be PDP screens LOL) however they are still plagued by low luminosity, pixel / picture tearing at low frequencies, serious latency with some video / audio sources and the dreaded dead-pixels
Although I have to admit I have seen some beautiful Sony LCD panels that are almost enough to make you think twice! but I wouldn't have a display panel that was not plasma... its.... well... all round better, if slightly more pricey.
So if i had any opinion,
If you can get plasma....
if you are getting 42" or less (which less might be hard to find in a plasma) go for a name brand, with this a 720p will be very pleasing for viewing :)
if you are going larger than 42" make sure you get atleast 1080p viewable panel, and dont get fooled by those funny 1:1 matrix panels either! always try and get a 16:9 or 16:10 display panel.
okay... thats about rant over i think LOL
carry on.... :)
I have to agree with Zetr0. I made that decision 2½ years ago and bought a plasma, because I thought quality was better, and in future I will also stick with plasma panels. Never change a winning team ;):lol:
I'm fully aware that plasma beats LCD per definition, but plasma has or had a couple of shortcomings of its own. Basically back when I was looking at it, you'd choose plasma if it was going to be mainly used for TV and movies, and you'd choose LCD if it was mainly for computer and videogame images. Also, back when I was looking at TVs you couldn't get 1080p plasma screens. No idea if you can now. I remember I had walked into a store that swore by plasma and didn't have any LCD sets at all, and as I was about to turn on my heel and walk out again the salesman who told me this actually got upset. I ended up having a long argument with him about the pros and cons of plasma, and he really fired himself up. To the point that he nearly chased me out of the store. :lol:
Basically I refused to buy one because one: you couldn't get 1080p sets yet and two: Image burn-in. Now, the seller swore that this was no longer a problem with plasma sets, and I don't think he lied. But I was going to spend over £2.000 on a new set that was and has been showing a lot of static computer and game images, and I just didn't want to risk it. So that's why I personally went for LCD.
Every Full HD panel can do 1080p, also plasma.
I know, the point was that there were no Full HD plasma screens at the time. The LCD ones had only been around for a half year or so. I expected that they're available now, but didn't know for sure as after I bought my set I stopped following the developments.
HD Ready panels could only display 1080p at 50"+ I think, smaller panels could only display 1080i.Quote:
Originally Posted by Teho
Most HD Ready panels can still only show true 720 resolution HD and downscale 1080. It is only sets with Full HD physically shown as a feature that can display 1080 at its true resolution. Plasma was stuck with lower overall pixel dimensions until very recently.
Plasma does have some advantages over LCD such as the fact you don't get abrupt changes in the image between two adjacent pixels. Due to the mature of plasma technology it is always a bit smoother. However that is something you definitely don't want for video games. And Full HD LCD screens now have the total physical pixels needed for a Full HD 1080 resolution image, so in my view they are now my preferred choice because you will see each and every pixel of the Full HD image, whereas with plasma it will always be a slightly softer image.
Until recently only TVs of 50"+ offered full HD, but I've noticed that nearly all of the new 42" sets are now Full HD, and some 32" ones are too.
I was in a store the other day and they had a lot of HD TVs running proper HD broadcasts (most stores still just stick SD broadcasts on their TVs and makes them all look a bit crap). I was especially interesting in seeing how well the smaller sets could handle full HD compared to the larger ones and I was quite impressed. The Samsung, Philips, LG, Panasonic and Sony sets all showed it very nicely on the larger sets and you could clearly see the difference between the Full HD image quality compared to the HD Ready sets that were downscaling the images.
However on the smaller 42" and 32" sets I could still see the difference between the Full HD and the HD Ready sets. Therefore even the smaller Full HD TVs are now worth getting over the HD ready ones because you can see the difference. I would however still see the 42" sets as a minimum for Full HD if you were watching films a lot. But in smaller rooms a 42" is still quite large, so a 32" set is going to be a much better option, and a 32" Full HD set is still going to offer more than any HD ready TV can.
I've seriously been considering HDTVs lately and due to the size of the living room and the location of the TV the maximum size would be 42", but I think a 32" set might be better. Will have to measure up and consider it properly once I can afford one. ;)
I'd recommend 42" any day! :thumbs:
Too easy!!!!;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharingan
I've always thought plamas looked better than LCD for TV viewing, even when LCDs were capable of much higher resolutions. It's the way things move on LCDs that doesn't quite sit right with me. But at the end of the day it's personal taste/preference.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zetr0
We've got a 37" Panasonic plasma too. It's a.. um *checks* PX600 from 2ish years ago. I love it :wub:. It's not a 1080 set (but can accept 1080 signals and downgrade them to fit) but I run my stuff at 720p anyway and it looks marvellous.Quote:
Originally Posted by Demon Cleaner
As for 400GB BDs being good for games. Don't you feel games take long enough to make and are costly enough already? Having to cram in hours of superHD prerenders, textures etc etc will really push this up. Also, what're the 'seek times' and data transfer rates like with a disc like that?
I maintain that DVDs are a long way off dead. They will be surpassed, but it's going to take time. And I'm sure we've been round this track before.....
It is a similar situation to VHS. When DVD came in everyone knew they were better and much easier to use than VHS. However as everyone already owns a VCR initial DVD sales were very slow. I think the same will be true of BluRay. Everyone has a DVD player. However the difference is that DVD and BR basically work in the same way so there are no instant usability benefits in buying into the new format, unlike the move from VHS to DVD where instant access, no rewinding, no degradation of image quality, much smaller compared to tapes etc were all big plus points.
Some films are already cheaper on Blu-Ray than on DVD, that shows that they're pointing in the right direction.
Really? That is good to know. To be honest I've not been looking at the prices of current DVD or BR releases. I tend to buy DVDs when they have been out a few months. The local Supermarkets often then have then for sale for £3-5.
I got my HD-DVD for the 360 today, they still had a lot in stock in a local shop here. Oz bought one last week, and told us that they still have a lot in stock. So a friend went there to buy one the weekend, and I asked him, to get also one for me. So I got it today, price was 9.95€ :lol:, not that I really need it, but it's always cool to have.
Big plus is, that it comes with the 360 remote control, and it can also be connected to a PC like a normal USB drive. And when I look at the films that are available for HD-DVD, wow, they are really cheap.
And in case you didn't know, HD-DVD movies also contain the normal DVD version which can be played on any DVD player. So if you want to buy a film, buy it on HD-DVD, it's cheaper than the normal DVD, and you'll have it in both formats.
I would have too at that price. And yes, the films are really cheap in the UK too thanks to the demise of the format. And quite a few films did get released on the format too.
I didn't know you could play all HD-DVD discs in normal DVD players? I thought it was only certain double sides ones. If that is true it is a bit annoying that BR won, although the larger BR discs will be a big advantage in the end.
Don't know if this is with all discs, the ones I looked for, had that feature.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harrison
I think in the ( near )future there are no moving parts anymore in a computer.
They have the technology!
No vent's anymore , just with storage cards.
No dvd players , only optional .
Rossi
That is already the case with the Asus Eee PC notebook PC. It uses Solidstate Harddrives which use the same technology as memory cards, so no moving parts. This means the battery life is much longer, and in turn less heat is also generated overall.
However, at the moment CPU's, memory chips, north and south bridge, and GPUs all give off heat, so there still needs to be moving parts in the form of fans in all systems.
Awesome, I wanted the media remote control. I'll have a look for one of these bundles. Not fussed about the HD-DVD drive, but if it's dirt cheap.....Quote:
Originally Posted by Demon Cleaner