EXPECT Blu-ray INSIDE the XBOX 360... just in time for the HOLIDAYS.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/02/xbox-360-blu-ray-console-by-september/

.... or is it?

[Post edited by xplaytendo on May 2, 2008]

It's NOT gonna happen dammit!!! If Sony let M$ put a Blu-Ray drive in the 360, that would be it for the PS3. It would have no benefit over the 360. Not to mention we'd see a drastic drop in load times on the 360 and we'd have to start installing our games. As a 360 owner I can safely speak for most other 360 owners when I say we don't want a Blu-Ray drive in our console.

If Sony allowed that the PS3 would be worth very little. Maybe Sony will give up on the PS3 and allow so as to build a Blu Ray momentum since it's been slow so far compared to dvd's start.

Sony does not own the BDA so it could happen. If XBOX 360 gets a BD drive than welcome M$ to the $450 to $500 console range, it would still be behind PS3 as far as game storage because M$ won't use BD for games and if they did they would be abandoning millions of current 360 owners. After all of this time still no internal WiFi? HUMM. PS3 would stilll be the better of the two as far as BD playback.

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...it would still be behind PS3 as far as game storage because M$ won't use BD for games and if they did they would be abandoning millions of current 360 owners.

Not necessarily true.. If the rumor holds water, and the rumor DOES STATE "internal" drive... then future games will be in BD format, not just for movies. YES... pricetag will hike up & no one will buy it. Unless of course, they keep it at $399 with $120gb... then it's on par with the PS3 (ps3 with only 40gb, but includes wifi).

If XBOX 360 goes BD... I would expect MGS4 to port, sometime in 2009. Why? Why not. Capcom did it for Devil May Cry 4...... ALL BIZNITCH.... nothin' personal.

[Post edited by xplaytendo on May 2, 2008]

IF M$ switches to Blu ray for games what happens to current 360 owners? I'll tell you, that means shelling out for a new system and that will be a f***ed up.

[Post edited by tony1569 on May 2, 2008]

BD is useless for games, atleast now. Even MGS4 could have been done on 1 or 2 DVD discs but Kojima was set on using uncompressed PCM. M$ offers you choice, a console with built in BD would be for those who want to watch Blu-ray movies but also have an Xbox 360. Xbox 360 Blue sounds good. Not eveyone needed to get the Elite console, and not everyone would need a BD equipted console. Now if M$ could have a dual format drive and have a more quiet and reliable system then I might actually consider using a game console for watching movies.

I would like to remind you of the following.

1. Xbox 360 physically cannot decode 40 mbit/s H.264 stream as required by Blu-Ray specification.
2. Microsoft has a corporate ban on Java. Dealing with Java is like dealing with terrorists at Microsoft.
3. Xbox 360's HD-DVD playback software contained 4.7 million lines of code. A Blu-Ray playback software is much longer and more complex. By comparison, a full game like Gears of War contained 400,000 lines of code. No one's writing a Blu-Ray playback software for Xbox 360.

BTW, SCEI lost $2 billion on PS3 from Fiscal 2007/2008, down $1 billion from Fiscal 2006/2007 loss of $3 billion.

Most of that loss is blamed on Blu-Ray inclusion.

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Sony does not own the BDA

Sony owns the patents to the core technologies of what is Blu-Ray today. If Sony wanted to they could quit licensing the UDO and DVR-Blu technologies and the BDA would be without Blu-Ray, so in essence, YES...Sony does in fact hold the controlling factors of Blu-Ray. The BDA is a group of people who manufacture and set standards. That's all. Sony owns Blu-Ray. You can dance around that fact all you want. But you always have to go back to the fact that Sony own the core technologies of Blu-Ray and without them the BDA can do nothing.

R U SERIOUS. ARE WE REALLY DISCUSSING THIS!

[Post edited by bladerunner1 on May 2, 2008]

I thought I was a nerd when I installed my HD DVD rom drive into my XBOX. But then again I also tried converting my BD ROM drive into my USB HD DVD case. And blew up the BD drive incidently. )

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R U SERIOUS. ARE WE REALLY DISCUSSING THIS!

someone call my name :

God Reaggie...you ARE a nerd.

R U...

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Xbox 360 physically cannot decode 40 mbit/s H.264 stream as required by Blu-Ray specification.

Oh bull crap:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_high_definition_optical_disc_formats#Capacity.2Fcodecs

This Deadmeat character acts like he knows what he's talking about, but anything he says talk with a HUGE grain of salt. In fact, assume the opposite is true.

[Post edited by Skyhawk on May 2, 2008]

Quote:
Sony owns the patents to the core technologies of what is Blu-Ray today. If Sony wanted to they could quit licensing the UDO and DVR-Blu technologies and the BDA would be without Blu-Ray, so in essence, YES...Sony does in fact hold the controlling factors of Blu-Ray.

That's silly. I could say the company licensing the Blue Laser technology has the big control over the BDA! (And it isn't Sony!) Those disks are useless if you can't play them.

Neither does Sony own the patents to 100 other technologies that are necessary to make what Blu-ray is today, including codecs and physical technology used to actually read and process those lil' pits on a Blu-ray disk. I know your hate for Blu-ray and anything Sony is involved in makes you throw logic out the window, but silly is just... silly. The Blu-ray physical format itself has patents shared between three companies actually - I'm sure you know who the other 2 are.

Anyway, Plasmon is the patent holder to UDO, and Sony's competing ol'PDD has nothing to do with Blu-ray technology anyhoot.

[Post edited by Skyhawk on May 2, 2008]

And then there was silence.........[cricket].......................[cricket]...............[cricket].
Ladies and Gentlemen, Skyhawk, has left the building.

Nice work Skyhawk, way to lay the smack down.

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Oh bull crap:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_high_definition_optical_disc_formats#Capacity.2Fcodecs

This Deadmeat character acts like he knows what he's talking about, but anything he says talk with a HUGE grain of salt. In fact, assume the opposite is true.

Your link says 40 mbits/s max video stream for Blu-Ray. Thank you for verifying what I have been telling you.

[Post edited by Deadmeat on May 2, 2008]

Deadmeat, no offence but the Xbox 360 is a pretty advanced piece of equipment - almost half advanced as a PS3! *kidding you Xbox owners*

It's got a GPU that accelerates many of the functions required for AVC decoding, and has a pretty fast processor. If it can handle 30Mps H.264 on HD DVD, I'm sure it can handle 40Mbps without dropping frames. It's not that bad of a console. We bought one for our son, and I must admit it's pretty slick and probably more capable than the "facts" you make up. It's not as crappy as you believe.

Besides, even if the Xbox 360 had a Celeron processor and was much less powerful than the Wii, the Blu-ray add-on could easily add a decoding chip and deliver the decoded stream to the console without any problems. But they don't have to do that. The XBox 360 is an OK console.

[Post edited by Skyhawk on May 2, 2008]

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no offence but the Xbox 360 is a pretty advanced piece of equipment - almost half advanced as a PS3!

Actually Xbox 360 is far far more powerful than PS3 for gaming. It is a pure(I really mean "pure" game machine playing movies as sidejob, not a movie player playing games as a sidejob like PS3 is.

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It's got a GPU that accelerates many of the functions required for AVC decoding

XGPU2(the GPU of Xbox 360) has no video decoding acceleration. Its sole purpose of creation was to play games. XGPU2 does handle CABAC(The last stage of H.264 decoding) stage in shader code, but the first three stages stay on CPU.

Without CABAC offloading, Xbox 360 is restricted to 15 Mbits/s H.264 stream.
With CABAC offloading, Xbox 360 can decode fast enough to meet 30 Mbits/s requirement. But 40 Mbits/s is out of question.

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If it can handle 30Mps H.264 on HD DVD, I'm sure it can handle 40Mbps without dropping frames.

Not according to Amir Majidimehr, retired Microsoft Vice President and former head of HD-DVD group. Xbox 360's inability to handle Blu-Ray's H.264 spec is an open-secret at avsforum.

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We bought one for our son, and I must admit it's pretty slick and probably more capable than the "facts" you make up.

I am a Wall Street finanical programmer holding an MS CS. I know what I am talking about when I discuss computing hardware.

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It's not as crappy as you believe.

Xbox 360 isn't that good for H.264 decoding relative to PS3, because it was never intended to handle this application.

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Besides, even if the Xbox 360 had a Celeron processor and was much less powerful than the Wii, the Blu-ray add-on could easily add a decoding chip and deliver the decoded stream to the console without any problems.

Then this Blu-Ray add-on drive you speak of cost as much as a stand alone player to build. What's the point of it then?

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But they don't have to do that. The XBox 360 is an OK console.

It's not an OK console, it is the most powerful and best-engineered game console ever put together, and it averages twice to four times performance advantage over PS3 on equivalent gaming code. You will be shocked how multiplatform developers struggle to hide this performance discrepancy between two. For example, GTA IV on Xbox 360 is pushing 2.5 times as many pixels per frame as it does on PS3. The result is that Xbox 360 version is presented in True HD, while PS3 version is rendered in SD and then "post-processed" to hide its low-resolution output.

Deadmeat,

The xbox 360 is not more powerfull than the PS3. Wait another year and you will see.

Getting back to this silly topic, Microsoft doesnt care about blu-ray. Microsoft doesnt care about hd-dvd. Microsoft cares about Digital Downloads. This is THEIR cash cow.

Gettin back to you deadmeat,
If this is the best console EVER put together...what in the hell is the "red ring of death?"

"BLU-RAY IS A NEW TECHNOLOGY. IT IS GOING TO TAKE TIME TO MASTER ITS BENEFITS."

[Post edited by bladerunner1 on May 2, 2008]

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The xbox 360 is not more powerfull than the PS3. Wait another year and you will see.

like we haven't been hearing that for the past 2 years.

As for blu ray in the 360, what would ms gain from doing something like this?
Its not like blu ray is booming over dvd sales.

Im not even sure they wanted to offer an hd dvd drive, was there some agreement between toshiba and ms on that issue.

From what I've read the PS3 is using an outdated Nviidia graphics card. All of the multiplats turn out worse on PS3. Hell even PS3 exclusives don't look as good as anything on 360. The best things the PS3 has is reliability and HDD standard. So this "PS3 has teh best grafix" crap is just FUD.

The 360 can handle Blu-ray with no problems. However MS needs to make the 360 quieter because it is one loud SOB.

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The 360 can handle Blu-ray with no problems.

Our daughter's relatively slow computer can decode AVC @ 40Mbps, I'm sure the XBox can also and have MIPS left over to calculate prime numbers and overlay them on the screen. It may not have the power to SUC though...

That being said, I doubt Microsoft will build a Blu-ray inside one anytime soon. I just don't see the motivation to do so. It's not like they have to sneak Blu-ray into homes in order to win a format war.

Ok Skyhawk,

before I smack your arrogance into the ground. I will just say that the XBOX 360 is probably the most powerful gaming machine on the planet. If you to actually study it's technolgy you will find that it excells in areas that the PS3. On paper, the PS3 is more powerful. In reality, it’s quite inferior to the 360. Without boring everyone here with the details, the triple core CPU that the XBOX 360 has are currently easier to take advantage of than the SPU’s on the PS3. If Sony actually spend billions on R&D they probably could map the potential of the SPU, but is it worth it? The GPU is more powerful. It has more powerful fillrate, and far more pixel and vertex processing horsepower. It all boils down to memory and the type of memory MS invested into the XBOX. The architecture of pixel and vertex procesing allow the XBOX to do things that the PS3 could only dream of. If you were to run that same vertex shader on the PS3 you would find that the PS3 could not adapt, were the XBOX 360 thrives!!! The 360 also has a clever new way rendering high definition anti aliased back buffers. To accomplish the same effect on PS3 is prohibitively expensive. That would explain Blu-Ray's adaptaion in the console. They are relying on native resolutions of the format to carry out menial tasks. The XBOX could live on a BD-Deck with H.264 decoding, but why when MS created VC-1? Not going into that neck of the woods again. I will however say that, the company I work for, the top engineers are scratching their heads, on why they didn't go with VC-1 vs the supposed industry standard H.264. Anyways a discussion for another day.

ReaggieP, I think you've got me mixed up with someone else

What post are you responding to?

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The XBOX could live on a BD-Deck with H.264 decoding, but why when MS created VC-1?

Microsoft should have adapted H.264 decoding on the XBox. Then it could have played the following HD DVD movies:

Transformers
Arctic Tale
Top Gun
Babel
The Matador
Beowulf
Black Christmas
Into The Wild
Black Snake Moan
Scary Movie 4
Blades of Glory
Clerks II
Derailed
Disturbia
Freedom Writers
Harsh Times
Stardust

etc. etc.

The XBOX 360 can't play any of those HD DVD's? Since when?

I have no idea what he was trying to get there. The XBOX 360 is adaptable to any format from what I know. MS is putting the purse strings out. I'm just excited at the idea of the XBOX 720 or 1080 hitting shelves in the next couple of years!!! I don't think the have come up with the final product name as of yet, but it should be impressive.

The business of business is to make money. I think consumers take things much more personally than businesses themselves do. If there's money in it, competitors will unite.

John

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The xbox 360 is not more powerfull than the PS3. Wait another year and you will see.

I am not a gamer. I am a programmer. People like me are frustrated by public misconception generated by SCEI's misleading marketing. SCEI marketing people are so good at hyping up worthless product that even a world famouse developer like Kojima Hideo admitted that he was conned by SCEI when he began the development of MGS4.

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If this is the best console EVER put together...what in the hell is the "red ring of death?"

Xbox 360 is the best console ever put together in the eyes of game programmers.
PS3 is the worst console ever put together in the eyes of game programmers.

Programmers doesn't care about the reliability of a console because it is not their concern.

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The 360 can handle Blu-ray with no problems.

Not according to Amir Majidimehr, retired Microsoft Vice President and former head of HD-DVD group.

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Our daughter's relatively slow computer can decode AVC @ 40Mbps

Care to spell out the exact spec of your daughter's PC?

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I'm sure the XBox can also and have MIPS left over to calculate prime numbers and overlay them on the screen.

It can't. Sorry.

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It may not have the power to SUC though...

No. You will have to wait until Xbox 3.

That being said, I doubt Microsoft will build a Blu-ray inside one anytime soon. I just don't see the motivation to do so. It's not like they have to sneak Blu-ray into homes in order to win a format war.

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Microsoft should have adapted H.264 decoding on the XBox. Then it could have played the following HD DVD movies:

Xbox 360 can decode upto 30 Mbits/s of H.264 stream. Any higher and it starts dropping frames.

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The XBOX 360 can't play any of those HD DVD's? Since when?

Xbox 360 can barely meet HD-DVD spec, but not Blu-Ray spec.

Deadmeat I find your posts VERY informative and I'm going on the assumption that you know what you're talking about but I have 1 question.

If the XBOX 360 can barely meet the HD DVD specs like you mentioned and it cannot play bluray...well if the PS3 can meet the bluray specs doesn't that make the PS3 more powerful?

I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about either console except that they're both supposed to be very powerful.

Programmers always get frustrated with new tech. Hey guys, you have a 50 g disc to work with here...get inspired.

Well I have read on a couple of sites that the PS3 is a complete nightmare to develop games for. I don't remember if it has to do with the chip architecture or what but if you search online there are articles that explain this much better than me. Actually here I'll do a quick search for you...

Being a video game developer (I develop for both, Playstation 3 and XBOX 360) people ask me almost daily which platform I think is better. These are my personal feelings, in no way does this reflect my employer.

Short answer: XBOX 360.

Long answer: Price, performance, visual quality, game selection and online support. I think the XBOX 360 wins in every category.

Price: This is obvious the XBOX 360 core is only $299. The PS3 is around $499 for the 20GB version. It comes with a hard drive, but you don’t need a hard drive to enjoy a lot of great games on the 360 so I think it’s fair to compare both core systems.

Performance: On paper, the PS3 is more powerful. In reality, it’s quite inferior to the 360. Without getting into too many details, the three general-purpose CPU’s the xbox360 has are currently FAR easier to take advantage of than the SPU’s on the PS3. I suspect a few years down the road some high budget, first party PS3 exclusive titles will come out that really take advantage of the SPU’s and do things the XBOX 360 can’t, but I don’t think the console is worth buying based on this speculation (for some it will be though, we'll have to wait and see how these games turn out).

Graphics: The XBOX 360 is a clear winner. The GPU is more powerful. It has more powerful fillrate, and far more pixel and vertex processing horsepower. Part of the reason is their choice of memory, and architecture of pixel and vertex procesing. I can’t get into details but the same vertex shader will run much slower on the PS3 than the XBOX 360. The 360 also has a clever new way rendering high definition anti aliased back buffers. To accomplish the same effect on PS3 is prohibitively expensive. For this reason I think many games will have no choice but to run in non-HD resolutions on the PS3 version, use a lower quality anti aliasing technique, or do back buffer upscaling. The end result in all cases is going to be noticeably worse image quality.

Game Selection: The XBOX 360 has a huge head start here. 1 year is an eternity in gaming. Almost all multi-platform developers have made the XBOX 360 their primary platform due to timing of release-to-market, this means the games will look and perform better on the 360. The PS3 versions will be ports of the 360 versions. (The opposite was true for XBOX 1 vs. PS2). The XBOX 360 is also far faster to develop for due to better development tools (massively popular Visual Studio .NET vs. proprietary, buggy PS3 compiler and debugger), better documentation, and easier architecture (3 general purpose CPU’s vs. 8 specialized processors that require DMA). Timing has also caused all next-gen middleware developers to make XBOX 360 their primary platform, and they will ‘add ps3 support’ as needed. This support will probably be inferior to the XBOX 360’s due to manpower and more importantly, demand. It’s this catch-22 now that will continue to drive the 360 forward and hold PS3 back.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-348-1.htm

That article was done when the consoles first released. He has since done a follow up titled "Playstation 3 vs. XBOX 360: One Year Later" which you can read here...

http://www.hardcoreware.net/playstation-3-vs-xbox-360-one-year-later/

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The XBOX 360 can't play any of those HD DVD's? Since when?

Falcon, you really have to fine tune your sarcasm detector.

All the movies I mentioned (and there are many more!) are all encoded in H.264 (not Microsoft's VC-1) and play just fine on the XBox 360. That was my point.

Just like Blu-ray has many titles encoded with VC-1, so does HD DVD have titles encoded with AVC.

And don't be fooled by people who make up things as if they were facts without them providing any references. I'm sure XBox 360 is powerful enough to process a Blu-ray stream just fine. Heck, the PS3 is likely powerful enough to decode 6 streams (across 6 cells) and still decode HD MA. I'm sure the XBox has at least 1/6th the power of the PS3.

It's not the lack of power that's preventing Microsoft from providing a Blu-ray add-on, but rather there is probably not much of a point in doing so (from a marketing perspective).

BTW, here's a simple spec page for the 360: http://www.xbox.com/en-AU/support/xbox360/manuals/xbox360specs.htm

Quote:
Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth

I'm going to guess the above might be even faster than our daughter's duel core AMD that decodes AVC fine even under Vista and dozens of other processes running at the same time!

[Post edited by Skyhawk on May 3, 2008]

Quote:
If the XBOX 360 can barely meet the HD DVD specs like you mentioned and it cannot play bluray...well if the PS3 can meet the bluray specs doesn't that make the PS3 more powerful?

To understand this "contradiction", you would have to understand different types of processors and how they handle data.

PS3 CELL is a streaming processor it excels at processing linear access streaming data such as video but sucks at handling random access data.
Xbox CPU is a traditional general purpose multicore processor it is good at handling a large volume of random access data but is not as fast as CELL in processing linear access streaming data and therefore cannot process video and audio as fast as CELL does.

Video falls into linear access data category and CELL is considered an excellent streaming processor. However, CELL sucks at handling a large volume of random access data as I mentioned before and programming CELL to handle a data volume larger than 256 KB properly is a total nightmare, if not impossible.

So what constitutes this "random access data"? Games. This is why Xbox 360 is much more powerful than PS3 for running games, but PS3 makes a much better movie player than Xbox 360.

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All the movies I mentioned (and there are many more!) are all encoded in H.264 (not Microsoft's VC-1) and play just fine on the XBox 360.

All those H.264 movies you listed were encoded below 30 Mbits/s as per HD-DVD specification and Xbox 360 plays them.

Playing 40 Mbits/s H.264 stream as required by Blu-Ray specification is another matter.

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I'm sure XBox 360 is powerful enough to process a Blu-ray stream just fine.

I don't know what you do for a living but I am a programmer holding a master's degree in CS.

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Heck, the PS3 is likely powerful enough to decode 6 streams (across 6 cells)

What CELL could do.

- Six 18 mbit/s 1080i MPEG2 streams
- One or two H.264 streams of upto 50 Mbits/s in total..

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It's not the lack of power that's preventing Microsoft from providing a Blu-ray add-on, but rather there is probably not much of a point in doing so (from a marketing perspective).

It is against Microsoft's corporate policy to support Java, as required in Blu-Ray specification. Supporing Java is like dealing with a terrorist at Redmond.

Hence don't expect to ever see a direct Blu-Ray playback support in any of Microsoft product, be it Vista SP2, Xbox 3, etc.

wouldnt think a guy that calls himself "deadmeat" would be so damn smart.

microsoft pays you well...don't they.

[Post edited by bladerunner1 on May 3, 2008]

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I don't know what you do for a living but I am a programmer holding a master's degree in CS.

Surprisingly, I don't even have an undergrad degree in CS. I don't do Oracle databases, nor certified as an MSE. I don't do HTML (as a living), nor any other high-level stuff. I don't do phone support, nor do I program VB or MS Access.

But when high-level CS IT guys start pretending to know about hardware engineering low-level stuff, I get sceptical.

Get a ring on your pinky finger... then we'll talk.

Edit: Another thing BTW Deatmeat got wrong. The PS3 does not use all the cell processors in parellel in order to process the AVC codec. This kind of processing is serial, and doesn't lend itself well to parallel asynchronous processing (to put it mildly).

[Post edited by Skyhawk on May 3, 2008]

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But when high-level CS IT guys start pretending to know about hardware engineering low-level stuff, I get sceptical.

Get your degree and you should then be in a positio to know if I understand this stuff or not.

Quote:
Edit: Another thing BTW Deatmeat got wrong. The PS3 does not use all the cell processors in parellel in order to process the AVC codec. This kind of processing is serial, and doesn't lend itself well to parallel asynchronous processing (to put it mildly).

SO I guess you never heard of a term called pipelining.

Quote:
SO I guess you never heard of a term called pipelining.

In fact I have, and the concept is very important for RISC based processors, particularly useful in the communications industry. And I even know about superscaling, code reordering and predictive branching, and how tricky it is to write compilers that take advantage of RISC's pipeline architecture effectively, especially when timing is critical.

However, multi-processing across 2 or more CPUs is a completely different subject.

G4 is reporting that M$ is releasing a Blu-Ray add-on, not an new console with a Blu-Ray drive.

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In fact I have

I was talking in terms of software development.

What you would do to develop a multithreaded app is to basically decompose the decoder into a set of non-dependent function modules, then connect each module with FIFO(One module's output would be another module's input). Then assign a thread to each module and you got your multithreading app. This is the easiest way to write a multithreaded app. You can do better than this, but having more than one thread traversing over same data set gets really really ugly.

H.264 decoder on PS3 is in fact broken into three modules each running on an APU, with the final CABAC done on RSX via shader.

That consumes 3 out of 5 APUs available(A dirty PS3 secret that SCEI won't tell general public) to user application. Remaining 1 APU handles audio, and I don't know what SCEI does with last remaining APU.

Probably not enough R&D to finish the product properly. You know Deadmeat, it makes me wonder why Sony went over the top in the PS3 and doesn't even know how to use the full potential of what is actually there. Or is it B that they developed something they had no idea what they were doing. I have a feeling their engineers had no idea what they were doing.

[Post edited by ReaggieP on May 5, 2008]

http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=182288

Microsoft issued an official denial for the 1 millionth time.

(also posted to another thread) - relevant here



Hey everyone... just what if Nintendo decides to add a Blu-ray drive to a future generation of the Wii game system...? It's a possibility, right? Then what would Microsoft do to counter - ALSO add a Blu drive too??

Think about it. If (and when ) Blu-ray becomes a popular success in the marketplace (players, recorders etc), even maybe one day as popular as DVD(?), it will put pressure for competitors to add it's HD quality to their own systems (now that HD-DVD is dead), and by then I would think it would be a no-brainer to adopt Blu-ray tech into the body of the various game systems (or the add-on option).

Remember, we are now in the (growing) first stage of HIGH-DEFINITION (TV, disc, etc), and Blu-ray can only get more popular in use.


Above image - Mitsubishi and Pioneer has announced that they have been working on the development of a new Blu-Ray disc (cheaper to produce) using a new technique similar to the one used for DVD-R and CD-R. Well, we can expect to have more affordable Blu-ray discs in the near future.





~ One day perhaps...?

.
_____________
-JIMI McLovin (the Voodoo Child)

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I was talking in terms of software development.

Lestat or Deadmeat or HDNow or whoever you are, quit making things up and pretending to know what you`re talking about. I got into HDL when you were probably still in diapers.

You mention terms like `pipelining` when you obviously have no idea what the term refers to. And there is no such thing as DVD 2.0 either. HD DVD is dead now, and you`ll just have to stop pretending that it`s ever going to make a comeback in any shape or form.

Here, as a `high-level` kind of guy... perhaps this link is the only one you need to understand and finally accept your situation: http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html

I`m sorry I had to resort to that, but you`re going to have to accept it sooner or later. Buy a Blu-ray player... and you`ll feel much better.

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just what if Nintendo decides to add a Blu-ray drive to a future generation of the Wii game system...?

You mean the same Nintendo that won't enable DVD playback on Wii to save $15 royalty?

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It's a possibility, right?

Zero possibility based on history.

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Then what would Microsoft do to counter - ALSO add a Blu drive too??

All download future.

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Lestat or Deadmeat or HDNow

I don't go by other nick. I only go by Deadmeat.

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I got into HDL when you were probably still in diapers.

Really? I thought you were a fanboy.

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You mention terms like `pipelining` when you obviously have no idea what the term refers to.

Pipelining refers to the practice of placing latches controlled by control unit along the processor execution path in between stages, to enable quicker signal synchronization and enable higher clockspeed.

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And there is no such thing as DVD 2.0 either.

Why don't you ask that question to DVD Forum WG-12?

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Here, as a `high-level` kind of guy...

I went as low level as assembly(don't do now) and Linux kernel driver writing.

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Buy a Blu-ray player... and you`ll feel much better.

Why waste my hard earned money on something that will die out in a couple of years?

Deadmeat... thanks for your opinions, but I'm not convinced.

When someone suggested that you purchase a Blu-ray device", you responded - "Why waste my hard earned money on something that will die out in a couple of years?" So, now your predicting the demise of Blu-ray in a couple of years? (oh boy... shakes head)

Counter this with the previous reports that Nintendo is likely to include a DVD drive in the Wii this year, but apparently you'll have none of this possibility, as you said - "the same Nintendo that won't enable DVD playback on Wii to save $15 royalty?"

Well, I've heard different (although the company has not yet made a definite confirmation/announcement) - reported late last year (INFO) - It looks like a recent posting on Nintendo’s Japanese website referring to Wii DVD playback is 100% kosher and not some kind of cruel hoax…

According to a Q&A on the site the new functionality will be added in 2008. Turns out it was originally due in the latter half of this year too, but it had been postponed while Nintendo struggles to satisfy the ongoing gargantuan demand for Wii this year. Fair enough, we suppose. Anyway it’s not yet clear whether DVD playback will work via some kind of firmware update or will only be available for a new generation of consoles. Fingers crossed it’s the former.

So that’s a piece of good news in the pipeline, right? Okay DVD is not quite the equivalent of HD DVD or Blu-Ray, but for those of us without the visual acuity of a Kestrel or the bank balance of a city trader it’ll do very nicely for the time being, thanks. We wonder what other surprises Nintendo has got up its sleeve…?

Further... I suggested that Nintendo might add a Blu-ray drive sometime in the future, as the popularity of HD games increases, but you don't think so, and responded with "Zero possibility based on history."

But I'm talking about the FUTURE... to the day when Blu-ray's growth and adoption is much greater than it is now, which many analysts expect over the next 5 years. There's no other disc technology in HD that offers greater quality and potential than Blu-ray, and it shouldn't be much further in the future that a 200GB Blu-ray disc is ready for production (and probably affordable).

Microsoft vs Sony aside, the Wii is not currently a hi-def device, but could eventually add a Blu-ray drive for future development of Wii-HD games?... possible.

_____________
-JIMI McLovin (the Voodoo Child)

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Why waste my hard earned money on something that will die out in a couple of years?

Oh, I have this suspicion that downloads won`t even kill the standard dvd rental model in a couple of years. I know you got burned that way with HD DVD, but you should have known that we were into a high-def media format war, and that the industry predicted only one format would prevail. Since that has come to pass, it`s time to join us in the world of reality.

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Microsoft vs Sony aside, the Wii is not currently a hi-def device, but could eventually add a Blu-ray drive for future development of Wii-HD games?... possible.

Since the Wii has established itself in the gaming console world I can see them adding a bluray drive in their second generation models. Imagine all those games in hidef. That would be pretty cool.

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Counter this with the previous reports that Nintendo is likely to include a DVD drive in the Wii this year

Wii already has one, but Nintendo is not enabling DVD playback to avoid $15 DVD royalty.

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but apparently you'll have none of this possibility, as you said - "the same Nintendo that won't enable DVD playback on Wii to save $15 royalty?"

Exactly, the same Nintendo that won't pay $15 to enable DVD playback in Wii.

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Well, I've heard different (although the company has not yet made a definite confirmation/announcement) - reported late last year (INFO) - It looks like a recent posting on Nintendo’s Japanese website referring to Wii DVD playback is 100% kosher and not some kind of cruel hoax…

Yea, and why don't you stick a DVD movie disc into Wii and see what happens?

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According to a Q&A on the site the new functionality will be added in 2008

Actually Nintendo was referring to a separate higher priced model.

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We wonder what other surprises Nintendo has got up its sleeve…?

You expect too much from Nintendo, the same bunch that sells $80 Wii for $250.

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Further... I suggested that Nintendo might add a Blu-ray drive sometime in the future

Yea, the same Nintendo that won't enable DVD playback to avoid $15 royalty...

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as the popularity of HD games increases

HD games don't require Blu-Ray, as Xbox 360 has proven.

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and responded with "Zero possibility based on history."

Yes, zero chance.

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But I'm talking about the FUTURE... to the day when Blu-ray's growth and adoption is much greater than it is now

Blu-Ray sales is collapsing, not increasing, according to NPD.

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There's no other disc technology in HD that offers greater quality and potential than Blu-ray

The market is shifting to downloading.

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and it shouldn't be much further in the future that a 200GB Blu-ray disc is ready for production (and probably affordable).

Blu-Ray cannot be pressed in more than two layers. You are confusing RAM with ROM(DL max).

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Microsoft vs Sony aside, the Wii is not currently a hi-def device, but could eventually add a Blu-ray drive for future development of Wii-HD games?... possible.

That shows that you don't understand the mind set of Yamauchi Hiroshi and Iwata Satoru.

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Since that has come to pass, it`s time to join us in the world of reality.

The world of reality is that Blu-Ray is not selling.

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Since the Wii has established itself in the gaming console world I can see them adding a bluray drive in their second generation models. Imagine all those games in hidef. That would be pretty cool.

Nintendo doesn't care about highdef. And you don't need Blu-Ray for highdef games, as Xbox 360 has proven.

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You expect too much from Nintendo, the same bunch that sells $80 Wii for $250.

Perhaps you don't expect enough. After all, the competitors are selling theirs for a loss, and Nintendo is selling theirs for not just a small gain, but a HUGE one. It's why Nintendo is more profitable as a game company than Sony and Microsoft combined.

Yeah, I don't see Nintendo adding a Blu-Ray drive to it's console anytime soon. It took Nintendo almost three years to release DVD in a console nevermind, think of HD? Remember Wii's target age is 6-16. yes, it is now proven to be more widespread than that, but I can see a Wii upgrade happening. Maybe five years from now, once they have beaten the Wii to end of its life.

For the Record: Pipelining Architecture
Here's the direct link. Click on the PDF.
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=356683.356687

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Pipelining is one form of imbedding
parallelism or concurrency in a computer
system. It refers to a segmentation of a
computational process (say, an instruction)
into several subprocesses which are executed
by dedicated autonomous units (facilities,
pipelining segments). Successive processes
(instructions) can be carried out in an
overlapped mode analogous to an industrial
assembly line. So, very loosely, pipelining
can be defined as the technique of decomposing
a repeated sequential process into
subprocesses, each of which can be executed
efficiently on a special dedicated autouomous
module that operates concurrently
with the others.

[Post edited by ReaggieP on May 6, 2008]

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Maybe five years from now, once they have beaten the Wii to end of its life.

Then you get another Nintendo console with DVD drive that is not actually DVD compliant(and save on $15 royalty). Xbox 3 will be getting a $20 red-laser drive with 20 GB capacity from Taiwan. No need to bother with $80 Blu-Ray drive and $60 royalty at all.

The shortcoming of your thinking is that Blu-Ray is the only way to get increased data capacity in the future it isn't. There are half dozen much cheaper alternatives to choose from.

Hey whatever happened to that VAPORWARE "Super Upconverter"... Still don't see it anywhere on earth?

[Post edited by xplaytendo on May 6, 2008]

fee...what ever happened to Toshiba's "Super Upconversion" :

Dm.
Your right. You don't need 50g blu-ray discs to have hd. gaming. BUT WE DO HAVE 50G DISCS FOR HD GAMING! WHY WOULDNT YOU WANT TO USE THAT???????????

JIMI, I wouldn't expect to ever see Wii games in true HD, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a BR drive in Nintendo's next console, although it's too soon to speculate.

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Your right. You don't need 50g blu-ray discs to have hd. gaming. BUT WE DO HAVE 50G DISCS FOR HD GAMING! WHY WOULDNT YOU WANT TO USE THAT?

Because even if we put more game on a standard DVD, we can always "Super Upconvert" (SUC) it to 960p!

My ORAL HYGIENE has more FLAVA' than these recycled threads.... Pucker Up!