Disgrace Ive never liked the size of standard CDs/DVDs

Disgrace

Ive never liked the size of standard CDs/DVDs. Mini discs just seem much stronger and would make it easier to design smaller computers. Plus thats what they use in a lot of films. When you see them using a standard size disc in Mission Impossible, it looks clumsy but those tiny UMD size discs look great and would even be usable on an ipod. If were talking about formats that have been developed primarily for movie distribution and PC recording then that changes things quite a bit. HVD certainly sounds appealing but not as a movie distribution format but more of an archiving solution. While neither HD DVD or Blu-Ray offer a 13x increase in space there wasnt a need to require such a space increase. Music has always been easier to compress than video. A more appropriate comparison would have been to compare VHS to DVD. I assure you VHS holds more than 700MB worth of data. The next problem is that were simply looking from the wrong point of view here. The goal is to have transperancy from the master to the Disgrace format. Humans tend to default to thinking linearly and assume that more Disgrace means higher quality but theres a limit to what we can perceive. Both Blu-Ray and HD DVD will come close to showing you what the master looks like. Im not sure HVD would translate into a better viewing experience unless were talking about a new codec I assure you VHS holds more than 700MB worth of data. In case anyone really cares, here is what I found: How much could we store on a VHS video tape? Lets do a back of the envelope calculation: Your AV Mac can digitize 320×240 video at 30 frames per second. Lets ignore colour, since the VHS recorder wont record that very accurately, and lets assume that although the digitizer reads 256 levels of grey, we can only rely on recording 16 grey levels on the VHS tape with accuracy. Lets also allow for some horizontal smearing of the scan lines and only read 60 samples per line instead of the full 2 With these somewhat conservative estimates, we get: 320 lines x 60 samples per line x 4 bits per sample x 30 frames per second 2304000 bits per second 3Mb/sec 288 kbytes per second. That makes 17 megabytes per minute, storing 7 GB on a 160 minute VHS tape. In case anyone really cares, here is what I found: The universe is a very consistent entity. One of the major rules is that you cant get something for nothing. One such example is that you cant magically get tremendous resilience to noise digital without the cost of a huge amount of analog message data. VHS is an analog format, and hence it is difficult to make a good estimate on the amount of bits and bytes it can successfully hold without knowing a lot more about the format itself. Beyond that, in order to calculate the theoretical digital-data-equivalence of an analog format, you need to know the bandwidth limits of the analog VHS signal, and whether or not it uses an SSB filter analog TV broadcast does. IIRC, VHS tapes are too slow for use as digital playback devices. At one point, there were people using VHS tapes to store digital data, but the drive motor had to be made much faster in order to make it at all useful. The VHS media and read head have a relatively poor slew rate, so Disgrace bits have to be stretched way beyond the length that would provide 7GB of data. layoutarticlePrint articleIDCA6346827 By Glen Dickson Broadcasting Cable, 6/26/2006 Twentieth Century Fox executives are showing off HD movies that Fox will be releasing this year on the new Blu-Ray optical-disc format. Blu-Ray, which will deliver video in 1080-line progressive-scan high-definition and provide up to five times the storage of regular DVDs, is in competition with the HD-DVD format. Sony, Dell, a host of consumer-electronics manufacturers, and all the major movie studios except Universal support Blu-Ray. The technologys expansion has been hurt, however, by several delays in the introduction of players from Sony, Samsung and Pioneer. Samsungs first Blu-Ray player, which will sell for around 1, 000, is now hitting stores. Sony Pictures has released its first seven titles. Among them are the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic The Terminator and Vin Diesel-vehicle XXX. Meanwhile, the competing HD-DVD format is already on the market, backed by technology companies including Microsoft and Toshiba, as well as by the Universal, Warner Bros. and Paramount studios. Toshiba players priced at 500-800 hit stores in April, although, with limited distribution, units are hard to find.