Next Gen Consoles

[Darth Flatus]

Hrm...

 

Hypothetically, according to Epiphany, HD-DVD can be played back on regular DVD players, albeit at lower resolutions.

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..In which case what is the point of purchasing said HD-DVD?

[metadigital]

I thought the studio support for Blu ray and HD-DVD was pretty much split down the middle. ...

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I'm not sure about the Hollywood studios positions, but I know that most of the technological hardware companies have backed Blu-Ray, so there is one market sewn up ...

[Oerwinde]

I thought the studio support for Blu ray and HD-DVD was pretty much split down the middle. ...

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I'm not sure about the Hollywood studios positions, but I know that most of the technological hardware companies have backed Blu-Ray, so there is one market sewn up ...

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The Hollywood studios were pretty much split. Blu-Ray had a slight advantage but not enough for it to really be worth anything. It was something like Blu-Ray had 47% support, HD-DVD had 45% support, and the rest was undecided. Not that it matters anymore, I heard that they were going to team up and do a hybrid format to avoid a format war, combining the reader and the disc of blu-ray(Faster and more storage) with the software of HD-DVD(More efficient).

 

And to Visc/Hades/Rabbit: The point of upgrading from DVDs to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD would be HD picture. Have you seen the difference between DVD picture and HD picture? Its about the same difference as VHS to DVD. I can't watch VHS anymore after I switched to DVD, the picture is just so far inferior to DVD it just seems like a waste.

 

EDIT: Ok, just did some research and my stats are old. Seems that HD-DVD has the 4 major studios on board, Universal, New-Line, WB, and Paramount, but Blu-Ray has Sony Pictures/Columbia-Tri-Star, MGM, Disney, and Dreamworks, and pretty much all of the tech companies including some major games publishers like EA and Vivendi. HD-DVD just has Sanyo and Toshiba backing it. So it looks like Blu-Ray will be more common for PC usage than HD-DVD, but right now HD-DVD has the advantage for movies.

 

And Epiphany has the numbers wrong as well. HD-DVD holds 15/30 GB, not 45, while Blu-Ray holds 25/50 (1 Layer/2 Layers) but both companies are working on developing discs with more than 2 layers. But chances are HVD(Holographic Versatile Disc) will be out by the time they get the 2+ layer discs out and no one will care. (Prototype is set to be finished within 4 years) HVD can hold a terrabyte and transfer at 1 Gbit/sec where as Blu-Ray transfers at 36 MB/sec and HD-DVD transfers at 19 MB/sec. Also, while blue laser players can read red laser DVDs, red laser players can't read blue laser ones, so Epiphany is mistaken that current players can read HD-DVDs.

[EnderAndrew]

Also, while blue laser players can read red laser DVDs, red laser players can't read blue laser ones, so Epiphany is mistaken that current players can read HD-DVDs.

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Exactly.

[Darth Flatus]

Supposedly HD-DVDs will come with a standard definition layer on them so that they can be played in current DVD players.

 

Pointless waste of space on the HD-DVD and pointless beacuase you won't even be able to use the HD dvd for what it was created!

 

This is a poor feature, not a selling point and will confuse customers.

 

 

 

EDIT: the blue laser disc war is ON! there will be no HD/blu hybrid.

 

TDK have already made a quad layer Blu-Ray: 100Gb. In terms of ease of manufacture and use HD has the advantage. Blu ray's cartridge measn it will require bigger drives in computers and laptops - bigger laptops.

 

Sanyo is now a member of both sides and HD players en masse will be available much sooner than Blu ray players.

[EnderAndrew]

I think that makes very little sense. And I haven't seen anything on that yet.

[metadigital]

The opposing camps are behaving in exactly the right way to cause every thinking consumer (especially corporates) to delay any purchase of the new technology.

 

No-one wants to increase their own expenses on a technological blind alley. A new, larger form factor for a drive is a complete nightmare prospect in our modern miniturization era.

 

I sense there will be a delay before widespread adoption.

[Child of Flame]

Eh...actually, the larger size does make sense. I remember several years back when Blu-Ray was just a concept in the What's New section of Popular Science, they were saying the troubles with it at the time, were it was too large because the beam is shot through water (Blu-Ray) rather than an Industrial Ruby. That results in a smaller beam that can read and write more information, but the mechanism to create the beam has to be larger to ensure the water doesn't evaporate.

 

Ender is welcome to correct me on this if I'm wrong, as I'm sure he will.

[Darth Flatus]

I dont know the technical details but i thought both formats used a blue laser. The "blu-ray" discs are encased in a plastic cartridge, much like the cd-roms of ye olde times and some of the early recordable dvds. This makes them physically larger.

 

 

how long before someone notices we have drifted outside of the topic..

[metadigital]

I think this is on-topic, simply because we are discussing the features of next gen consoles, specifically comparing the different optical media.

 

Wikip

[Cantousent]

It's not like you guys are talking about ways to defeat the language filter.

 

...And I find this informative. I'm sure I'll buy one of these new fangled consoles somewhere along the line and this is an integral part of the product. Keep talking.

[Darth Flatus]

true, its just that some can be quite pedantic.

 

I think so far we have exhausted all available knowledge on teh subject. Its now a wait and see game.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

It's a good topic even if it's strayed a little. Saves me having to hunt around for anything as well which is always a bonus.

[metadigital]

Just in case anyone missed it:

Compatibility

The BDA announced that, while it was not compulsory for manufacturers, Blu-ray drives should be capable of reading DVDs, ensuring backward compatibility.

 

JVC has developed a three layer technology that allows putting both standard definition DVD data and HD data on a BD/DVD combo disc. If successfully commercialized, this would enable the consumer to purchase a disc which could be played on current DVD players, and reveal its HD version when played on a new BD player.

[Darth Flatus]

BD is blu ray disc right? That would imply that blu rays are like normal discs if they can fit in current players... but this contrary to reports in current press.

 

Even so its still a waste of a layer. I dont think the stopgap idea (until blue laser players are easily available) is a good idea - its just better to hold off releasing the new discs until the players are available.

[metadigital]

It is not a mandatory regulation of the new standard; it is just optional, so I'm sure some will do it until the volume limit becomes an issue (" TDK announced a prototype four-layer 100 GB Blu-ray disc.").

[mkreku]

I can't believe how short-sighted some people are.. Don't you remember Bill Gates saying "A PC will never need more than 640Kb in RAM" a few years back? Saying that a normal DVD is enough and to actually believe that won't change.. it's just.. wrong.

 

Of course there's going to be a change of standards. It may take 2-3 years, and we may not know which standard will prevail, but my bet's on Blu-Ray and I see the PS3 already having it as a huge advantage.

[metadigital]

I can't believe how short-sighted some people are.. Don't you remember Bill Gates saying "A PC will never need more than 640Kb in RAM" a few years back? Saying that a normal DVD is enough and to actually believe that won't change.. it's just.. wrong.

 

Of course there's going to be a change of standards. It may take 2-3 years, and we may not know which standard will prevail, but my bet's on Blu-Ray and I see the PS3 already having it as a huge advantage.

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That was the chairman of IBM, and the full quote was that no-one would ever need the IBM PC-AT, because the XT was more than sufficient for everyone's needs.

 

(Of course, to be fair, the PC market was an incidental benefit, IBM made their money in Big Iron and didn't even think the PC market would ever amount to much in comparison. Too much fiddling around with loads of stupid end users ...)

[EnderAndrew]

Computers were also supposed to eliminate the use of paper, and instead that have made it easier to produce far more documents.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

I can't believe how short-sighted some people are.. Don't you remember Bill Gates saying "A PC will never need more than 640Kb in RAM" a few years back? Saying that a normal DVD is enough and to actually believe that won't change.. it's just.. wrong.

 

Of course there's going to be a change of standards. It may take 2-3 years, and we may not know which standard will prevail, but my bet's on Blu-Ray and I see the PS3 already having it as a huge advantage.

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In an interview with the guy who did MGS he said pretty much this. The PS3 while superior is unlikely to reach its full potential because of other factors (most likely cost and time). If however he is wrong and the PS3 does reach its full potential then people will be going whats an Xbox360 in 6 years time.

[EnderAndrew]

That may be the case. The 360 will no doubt be the easiest to develop for with the XNA. However, no one really knows how much more difficult it will be to develop for the PS3 at this point.

 

Given the demos we saw, I don't think it will be horribly difficult.

[Child of Flame]

That may be the case.  The 360 will no doubt be the easiest to develop for with the XNA.  However, no one really knows how much more difficult it will be to develop for the PS3 at this point.

 

Given the demos we saw, I don't think it will be horribly difficult.

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I think what MGS guy was saying was more along the lines of "To unleash the true potential, it would be like making a game out of FMVs."

 

Hence the comment about time and manpower.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

I think what MGS guy was saying was more along the lines of "To unleash the true potential, it would be like making a game out of FMVs." 

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This is the guy who created MGS... He should be a master at that by now.

[EnderAndrew]

I think what MGS guy was saying was more along the lines of "To unleash the true potential, it would be like making a game out of FMVs." 

 

Hence the comment about time and manpower. 

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Not always. A FPS doesn't need heavily scripted events. Good radiant AI, good physics and some high res textures. Most FPS games don't have 50 million models.

[Epiphany]

In an interview with the guy who did MGS he said pretty much this. The PS3 while superior is unlikely to reach its full potential because of other factors (most likely cost and time). If however he is wrong and the PS3 does reach its full potential then people will be going whats an Xbox360 in 6 years time.

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The guy is a fruitbasket. He's the same guy that made a food analogy regarding next gen consoles, and also started talking about this and that before ever getting PS3 development kits.

 

The Cell itself is extremely poorly designed, and the heart of its performance comes from the SPEs, which will be pretty much impossible to use to their potential. There is no cache associated with them and they only have 256KB of local memory at RAM speeds that need to be DMA'ed to from main memory. It requires linear memory access, and a memory manager to run on the SPE in order to map addresses between the local 256KB and main memory. Branching in your code throws out a significant portion of your performance on the SPEs, and pretty much NO code goes long without branches. The one exception would be processing lists of vertices, but that's why the GPU is there, and there isn't much reason to supplement its vertex processing power. The power of the SPEs is entirely focused on floating point arithmetic, which doesn't even make up a significant amount of game code these days.

 

In other words, the BULK of the Cell's processing power is unusuable by games as they are generally architected. At the very least, it is insanely difficult to harness. The fact that you can write code for them using C++ does nothing to change their arhitecture or make planning for the system any easier.

 

All of those architectural decisions are known facts coming directly from Sony in numerous public events as well as in their developer documentation. There is no ambiguity here. No hidden power. No "well maybe we don't know everything yet". No tricks left up their sleave. That is the architecture of the PS3 as it is set in silicon. The only CONCEIVABLE way in which the PS3 beats the 360 in terms of performance is if you take all of the gigaflops on the machine - the PPE, the 7 SPEs, and the (totally a joke) GPU number (in bold) =

 

36 + 7(26) + 1800 ~ 2 teraflops

 

Notice how 90% of that number comes from a very suspect GPU number. And the 10% which remains for CPU floating point arithmetic is divided amongst 8 processors, 7 of which will be very difficult to manage. And the performance gets much worse when you talk about anything other than floating point.

 

Given the demos we saw, I don't think it will be horribly difficult.

 

I hope you realize the "demos" you saw were simple FMV, that require no actual scripting code, or anything of that nature, just make it and hit the proverbial "play" button.