Network now...FEATURE
Bigger Than Blu-ray
In the picture above you will see the materialized form of one of Pioneer's boldest claims in recent memory: a 400GB optical disc, of 16 layers with a capacity of 25GB each.
What's missing from this equation is the word Blu-ray. In fact, yesterday at the IT Month Fair in Taipei, Taiwan, Pioneer was coy about not using the term Blu-ray at all when unveiling its newest disc, save for suffixing it to “16 times the storage of..."
It is because this is not a Blu-ray disc at all, this is a highly-condensed optical disc that the company proposed back in July and exhibited for the first time yesterday. Now Pioneer is making three new promises: the 400GB read-only disc will hit mass production sometime in 2010, rewritable versions will come through before 2012, and a 1TB version will become available within five years.
The consoles you have right now will not be able to play these discs. Numerous sources have reported that the disc is compatible with Blu-ray players (and therefore PS3s) already on the market. Speaking to Edge, Pioneer said the opposite was true. “Current BD players and drives would not be able to read these discs,” the company said, adding that the technology is “at this time not being proposed as a candidate for addition to the existing Blu-ray Disc format.”
However, the company went on to say that a firmware upgrade may allow Blu-ray players to read the disc, putting Sony’s PS3 straight into the spotlight as the likeliest device available today that could read them.
The potential of these discs are understandably huge for the games industry, a sector which has in part driven the growth of the disc format since the Playstation era. So far there has been only one developer who has put into question the limitations of a 50GB Blu-ray disc. Back in March, Hideo Kojima said that his development studio “always talked about where to cut and what to compress” during the development stages of MGS4, adding that there was “not enough space at all” on a single Blu-ray disc.
At the time of writing SCEA were not available to discuss whether the company was looking into the possibilities of the technology.
ive just burnt my entire cd collection to hd and never want to see another disk again.
cheap digital downloads and solid state memory, that what i want.
Ooh, now we can have Blue ray disks with ~40mins of RAW 1080p on it.
MBMP FTW!! :D
It will have nothing to do with gaming of course.
Anybody seen the install sizes of 360 games? I counted zero using 9GB.
So I think 50GB BD-ROMs will do us for at least the next few weeks or so. :)
I agree with the comments about data transfer bottle necks holding the ps3 back, 100%. As well as this potential problem to overcome, if this new disc is to be adopted by console makers, I see an ever bigger problem: Let's say for the sake of argument that each average gig of game development costs $2 million, discounting fluffy filler cgi padded mimi movies. To see 400 gigs used as gaming potential, will mean a future Elder Scrolls game with what, a development price tag approaching a billion dollars? Basic economics dictates that all this storage will never be used unless some revolutionary way of streamlining game development arrives. New improved graphics can only account for so much of this space and we are not all about to buy hyper HD televisions, the screen resolutions will remain as they are now for next gen.
What a bunch of naysayers!
I think games could use this extra space to good effect, despite limitations inherent in console hardware.
I second that, its radicilous. Just rest assured that most naysayers are either A) Kids B) Idiots who cant see past their nose. Anyhow, I dont see how any break trough in tech can be a bad thing. Heck id rather have 400GB media that is shock resistant, and can store as much as a HDD.
Well, a lot of the negative points made have actually been quite valid.
The discs are amazing, and I can see them being great for businesses wanting to back up. But as a consumer level product, it has some issues. For example, it will cost a lot. When it comes to gaming, especially console gaming, you want to keep things affordable. The other issue is read speed. Not an issue for businesses who just want to make copies of large amounts of data, but for gaming, you don't want to be waiting for an age for the disc to be loaded. For example, developers have already had to duplicate data on Blu Ray discs for PS3 to overcome the slow reading speed.
It is fantastic what Pioneer have achieved, it's just that I see it being a long time before the technology is cheap and fast enough to be used in consumer products. You don't have to be a kid or an idiot to see that.
I don't know if any one has already mentioned this (don't have time to read everything) but for gaming anyway its not the storage on the disc that's the problem, its the RAM. You can have a 400gig disc (No game this generation or even next will ever even come close to needing 400 gigs, let alone 100 gigs) but if you only have 512mb of RAM, graphically you'll be nearly as limited as you were with a meager 7 gig capacity. Even with fast HDD transfers, having a least I gig or RAM (I think the next wave of systems will have at least 1 gig of ram) will be more necessary than a ridiculous amount of storage.
Exactly right, Nick. In fact, we can already see how the PS3 has suffered because the cost of Cell and Blu-Ray (combined with the bizarre architecture decisions) resulted in them splitting two banks of 256 RAM rather than allowing unified RAM like the 360.
This is part of the reason why so many PS3 games require HD installs (slow Blu-Ray speeds combined with limited accessible RAM for caching) and many multiplatform games look and run slightly better on 360.
I'll be shocked if the next Xbox and Playstation don't have a gig of RAM, at least.
2x BDDrive reads as fast as a the drive in the X360. It actually moves more data each second. So I dont see you point valid at all.
Discreet and dedicated VIDEO memory is much better than shared VIDEO memory. U have dedicated 256mb for VIDEO, and then if u use the cell as inteded and have dedicated 3.2ghz 256mb System ram for programming data, you cant go wrong. However this might be to much to much to understand either way, when games are coded correctly they preform much better on the PS3. We do have proof of that too. On top of that, consider two thing, all the first party titles like uncharted, gt5p, Re2 look stunning. Not to even mention how much *hit is on the screen in that game.
And I rest my case... (See post below from me)
As far as the two posts you seem to be responding to, neither of those are flame fanboy rants. I don't really see what the problem is in two people discussing memory limitations inherent in game consoles (especially considering the article is related to storage space).
I was referring to Grognards post above, article about Pioneer storage of 400GB results in a post about PS3s memory architecture. Not to mention that the content of said post is complete poppy-cock!
I'm not sure if you're overly sensitive about PS3 or new to online threads, Snowmanandy. My posts were factual and I clearly indicated that I was an early adopter of Blu-Ray, but didn't deceive myself into thinking it was going to be adopted or last like DVD's were due to the introduction of online options which didn't exist when DVD's came out.
My second post posited that BOTH the next Xbox and Playstation would have 1 gig of RAM and the reason why. Threads can go off on a tangent and Nick and I were simply following a line of conversation that sprung out of this topic. I'm not sure what you believe is "poppy-cock" as the specs I cited are what Sony itself has published and their own first-party developers (as well as third parties) have acknowledged the necessity for HD installs to offset Blu-Ray read speeds and available RAM.
I own all of the systems but prefer 360 for its features (both off and on-line) and game library and I do dislike Sony's disingenuous business practices and sense of hubris these past few years. That doesn't mean everything they do is awful, but I also certainly don't feel a need to defend them to justify my purchase of their products.
Mandatory instals = greater ability to do texture streaming DUH! FYI Insomniac's programming presentation and manual were indicating that they were able to stream 450mb each frame from the BD in the PS3 with RATCHET AND CLAN TOD.
Did you even read my original post, because it really doesn't look like it!
I am not sensitive about anything, especially not a games machine, I'm not the one that it is on here every day slagging off Blu-Ray, Sony and PS3. I'm not on here slating anything, I'm simply stating that I find it bizarre that you feel the need to put all of the above down in every artical I read.
I know full-well the specs of the PS3, and yes I know it has split ram as you say, I know that Blu-Ray read speeds are not slower than the DVD drive in the 360 (look up the actual transfer rates), but the seek can take a lot longer as it's a much bigger disk.
I too have read a developer blog (or two) that states the reason for the installs is Blu-Ray and Memory Architecture, I can see it on the Blu-Ray side of thigs if the layout is bad or you are dealing with much higher res textures etc, but that's developers, a lot of it is down to lazy development, surely you must understand that? I'm a developer (not games), and we all have our excuses at the end of the day.
In reply to your other question/comment, I am also not new to online threads, I just don't normally get involved in ones on gaming sites as it just turns into this kind of kiddie argument thing, which I don't have the time/inclanation to get involved in.
I simply wanted to say that I was bored of seeing the same people posting the same negative comments day in and day out.
Ah...got it. My bad.
PS3 does have split ram though, that is true. But as far as the PS3 needing to (not needing to) be brought up, you're right.
in cannot get technical, but i am very pleased with my oppo dvd player upscaling ALL my huge dvd collection. i have only rented a few bd's for playback on my ps3....not impressed.
The PS3 upscales much better than the OPPO up to 1080p and is arguably the best DVD palyer outthere.. All my DVDs also! So... its all a personal prefrence the PS3 is a future proof Gaming Console w/ great features, great future proof DVD player, and BD player. With VOD capabilities also. Not to mention that all it takes is for a firmware and bam u will be able to support even this 400GB Disc.
Agreed.
Blu-ray will never be able to replace DVD the way that DVD replaced the VHS format. Blu-ray will stick around for a while and play the same role that laser-discs, did in the market, but Blu-ray will eventually completely fail because of newer and better technologies.
The 50GB Blu-ray discs simply cost too much to manufacture because of their high defect rates. And the 25GB Blu-ray discs don't have the storage capacity to meet the needs of publishers. It really is a sad thing that there are DVD movies that have more Special Features than Blu-ray discs.
And with the way Upconverting DVD players have become so successful, Blu-ray really has missed its chance. Many people point out that there are plenty of scenes in movies where Blu-ray discs were not digitally remastered in high-definition, which means the only noticably difference between the 1080p Blu-ray and the upconverted 480p DVD is that the Blu-ray disc has a lot more digital noise in the background.
And it really is annoying in movies like Terminator 2 where you can see that it is not Arnold Swarzennegger doing the stunts on the Blu-ray. The upconverted DVD looks virtually identical to the Blu-ray, except there is less digital noise, and the stunt men look like Swarzennegger. If you want a perfect example of what I'm talking about with how Blu-ray looks worse than upconverted DVD, just look at the movie The Last Samurai during the night scenes.
I have over 400 movies in my DVD collection, and I am very pleased with the way they look on a 1080p HDTV set. All I need to do is lower the Sharpness on the HDTV a little bit and it really does look identical to the Blu-ray, and sometimes better, especially with the movies that have not been digitally remastered for Blu-ray.
The thing that really kills the Blu-ray lineup is how expensive the discs are, even though there is such a minor difference between a Blu-ray and an upconverted DVD. $34 for Blu-ray movies is way too expensive.
I think virtually everyone agrees that within the next five years will see the On-Demand and downloadable stuff start to dominate the market more and more. Dish Network already broadcasts stuff in 1080p. I think as Internet speeds get faster, we will see downloadable stuff in 1080p there, as well.
"The thing that really kills the Blu-ray lineup is how expensive the discs are, even though there is such a minor difference between a Blu-ray and an upconverted DVD. $34 for Blu-ray movies is way too expensive."
That has to be the craziest quote I've ever seen. Blu-Ray obviously is only as good as the system you have. With the correct hardware Blu-Ray is considerably better than upcoverted DVD. You clearly are in the wrong by that statement or either blind.
"And it really is annoying in movies like Terminator 2 where you can see that it is not Arnold Swarzennegger [sic] doing the stunts on the Blu-ray. The upconverted DVD looks virtually identical to the Blu-ray, except there is less digital noise, and the stunt men look like Swarzennegger [sic]."
Hilarious. The most ridiculous naysaying in the history of naysaying.
Why don't we go straight back to the VHS huh? Schwarzennegger never looked better and more identical in those days.
"Why don't we go straight back to the VHS huh? Schwarzennegger never looked better and more identical in those days."
*snicker*
Agreed.
The only thing I have to add is that we have to remember that it also depends on how the movie was filmed, what resolution cameras were used, and how it was compressed originally. I do think that once all movie production essentially moves into HD for all their filming (very few movies have actually been filmed in 1080p due to the sheer size of uncompressed 1080p video) you'll start to see a more significant difference between SD and HD. And by then digital will be so commonplace that BluRay will be the beta and laser disc of this generation.
edit: Ok, forget DD, the Sega Mega Drive is gonna make a comeback http://gizmodo.com/5101807/stand-aside-dying-babies-sega-mega-drive-make...
Jees!
I often look through Edge on a daily basis on my lunch break, due to the fact that they have interesting articles.
I am however beginning to get put off by the fact that if there is any article regarding Blu-Ray, Sony or PS3 I can basically name in my head 3 people that will be badmouthing them, making up 'Facts' or generally being negative within a few hours of that article being written. Also the opostie is true if something regarding Microsoft is published.
Nick, Kim and Grognard (or whatever it is), I'm talking to you guys. Why all the ill-informed, negative comments on anything even mildly relating to Sony.
This is not even a story about Blu-Ray or Sony, but some of you have decided it's a good excuse to have a moan about Blu-Ray AGAIN! Seriously People, leave it alone, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one on this site sick of reading the same old comments in every article by the same people.
I have seen all of you call people "fanboys", all I can say is look at yourselves and what you post and tell me how you have any right to say something like that to anyone else.
On this article and your comments - you may be lucky enough, as am I, to have very fast internet connections, and be able to download and stream content. I personally haven't streamed any 1080p content over my connection (never felt the need) so can't comment on how good it is, but I'm doubting it is truly as good as Blu-Ray quality (that as Nick says, has been filmed properly), but have downloaded some and even with a 20m/s connection, it still takes a while, and the quality is still not up to that of certain Blu-Ray titles.
What some people don't seem to understand is that not everyone is interested in/wants to have a high speed interenet connection that allows them to do this.
I know of people that are not interested in gaming etc, that still want to watch HD films, they do not have a super fast internet connection, as they don't have the need for one, but when their DVD players break, they will probably go out and buy a blu-ray player instead as the prices come down.
I agree the take-up will not be anywhere near as fast as VHS to DVD was, but to say that everything will be downloaded by 2010 or whatever is just absurd! What about other countries that don't have the network infrastructure of UK and USA, do you think they will just not bother with HD?
Others simply want to feel like they actually have something to show for their purchase. I can download any films that I want now, but I still buy some of them on physical media (DVD and Blu-Ray), why, because I like to.
Also Kim, on the "the quality of an up-scaled DVD is as good as Blu-Ray", either your TV is not right, or you are buying the wrong Blu-Ray films, again, as Nick said, most of the stuff that is going onto Blu-Ray at the moment is not filmed in HD, watch something that is Platinum HD quality and then tell me you still think the same. There is a site named AV forums that has a list of BD films and which ones are actually true HD from the Source. Check it out. Batman is coming soon, now that will be a definate Blu-Ray purchase! :)
Fair enough.
I could go on and on trying to justify the aspects of your post that are somewhat critical of my posting habits, but I'd rather not (that would make me look like even more of a fanboy defending my fanboy posts ^^).
Its funny you mentioned that, because up until about a day or two ago I hadn't been on these forums for over a week (been on here and there, but just moved so I didn't have internet for a bit, and super busy getting stuff set up). My internet sped up to 24mb down and 5.5mb up in the new neighborhood so I'm happy about that.
I would say that for the most part the posts I put up aren't TOO fanboyish, but from time to time there are stories that tend to prompt the 360 faithful (myslef and a few others) and the PS3 faithful (ryda and a few others) to come out guns-a-blazin and maybe get a little carried away.
As far as BluRay, I go back and forth whether I want to get one. I think I'll wait another year or so to see how it really plays out. If the prices of the discs themselves don't drop a bit, and if netflix streaming starts offering better HD movies (for my 360 I mean) I wouldn't have much of a reason to upgrade to BluRay (yes I'm aware that HD streaming quality isn't up to par with BluRay). If their selection continues to be less than ideal, I may consider BluRay. Funny thing is, Netflix is now offering HD streaming through Samsung BluRay players, so even BluRay owners connected to the internet can enjoy subscription based HD streaming without having to get a video game system if that's not their thing.
And your comments in regards to my posting habits have been noted.
Thanks for the inteligent and polite reply Nick. My post, believe it or not, was not meant to offend, i just had to say something.
I will add, that most of your posts are factual, as opossed to some of the other comments I read which are obvisouly just written out of spite for some reason, by someone with no real understanding of what they are talking about.
I agree that being able to stream HD and SD movies is great, it's just that when people start claiming that in a couple of years time there will be no need for physical media, I think they need to wake up to the real world.
Blu-Ray players with streaming capability is a brilliant idea too, ultimate choice! :)
Nice connection speed by the way, I'm guessing you're USA?
I understand, its easy to get carried away sometimes.
Thanks, I do try to be as objectionable as I can be (I'm sure my 360 loyalty comes out from time to time though).
I don't think it'll be a couple years either. Maybe there will just be a coexistence between the two formats and we can all be happy (I think that's more likely considering as you say, internet speeds have to be up to par and I think high speed internet has to have an adoption rate of probably 80% or something (just a guess) before digital only can be a viable format.
Yeah, I read about the BluRay player with Netfilx streaming yesterday and it really made me consider getting a BluRay cause then I have the best of both worlds.
Yeah, US. I pay 65 bucks a month for it though (just the internet, not counting cost of cable/DVR).
Completely unnecessary by 2010. Digitial distribution combined with plummeting storage costs (Hard Drives with much faster access speeds, not to mention streaming content) make this obsolete before it even comes out in production. Blu-Ray is a stop gap measure which will never see the adoption rates of DVD because of the alternatives already available.
There are too many inherent flaws with Blu-Ray technology for it to be feasible long-term.
I'm glad to own a PS3 and have 30+ Blu-Ray movies, but I have no false illusions about it's longevity.
It all begs the question though, what will the data seek times be? The PS3 Blu-Ray has such a slow seek time that developers have to repeat a lot of data on the disc to improve load times, if its that bad on a 25Gb disc what will it be like on a disc 16 times that size even allowing for improving drive speeds?
I doubt that this format will ever be used for consoles anyway, we're moving towards an era where more often games will be downloaded straight to a storage medium and HDD prices are dropping on a weekly basis as bigger ones are released.
As a medium for backups I can see the use for these discs, for movies and games? I think its doubtful.
Good Lord. I could back up everything I have and still have 150GB of data left.
Still, with the proliferation of online storage, and the rate of knots at which HDD/SSD sizes are increasing (and prices decreasing), you have to wonder if this'll ever catch on as a consumer level product. Business'll love it though.
Someone should invent a 16 layer cassette tape for Commodore 64. Now that's the future. Anyway, just because it has been announced doesn't mean it will see the light of day, or if it does will it necessarily be used in consoles. Sure it would allow bigger games, but I for one don't need bigger games! Got a back log of titles to get through. They are just fine on bluray thank you very much!
these disks will never be used for gaming. This makes no sense at all.
Back up purpose for large companies maybe ..but not as medium for gaming or not even movies.
these disks will never be used for gaming. This makes no sense at all.
Back up purpose for large companies maybe ..but not as medium for gaming or not even movies.
digital distribution is the way of the future... my personal thought is that thats the reason microsoft didn't really put to big of a fuss up about the format war...an after thought HD-dvd add on to have something out there... i believe that digital distribution will render formats useless.. next gen consoles will have a disc drive for backwards compatibility and watching movies...
Hum.. And saving games?
jeez. i wouldn't want to see how much data would be lost if you scatched that disk...
Holy Crap that's a lot of storage, I assume with will be more for optical backup rather that distribution of media. What could the possible fill this with.. Imagine the possibilities...!!
Directors Cut of MGS4 anyone? with improved textures !
I doubt microsoft has come knocking judging by how many times I heard Sony and PS3 in it sounds like sonys already sleeping over and having pillowfights.
Don't forget the Midnight Feast :D Every decent teenage pyjama party has a midnight feast..
16 layers? Now there's your problem. We have all seen the prototypes of optical discs with more than two layers for at least 10 years now. Last year we have seen the seven layer "holographic BluRay" from Sony, now we get 16 layers from Pioneer, while Sony still claims to pull off 20 layers by 2010.
Outside of laboratories, in the real world, mass production has never seen anything beyond dual layer. For good reason! Because it's never about what you can do, but what you can do in cheap mass production. And as long as a 1080p movie fits nicely on a BluRay that nobody buys, the incentive to fit a 4k progressive movie onto a disc is below zero. Then just imagine how delicate that disc would be and how many things can go wrong during manufacture.
The bigger question (for gaming) is: what's the transfer speed from it?
That's commonly why PS3 games use more of the disc for unencoded data or need a lengthy install process - the info doesn't stream off of the disc fast enough to accomodate many games in a traditional compressed format.
When the bottleneck becomes disc speed and not disc size, you're merely trading one issue for another.
That is... Incredible. I'd love to see how they manage to pull this off, and how expensive the discs and players are. There's just one thing: Half of a terabyte for a single game? The cost of creating that much content would be absolutely enormous. Once we get up to the 1TB discs, what then? Granted, a lot of games now don't even fill up their entire discs, especially not on Blu-ray discs, but having that much space available is sure to prompt a new wave of content creation.
Although I know I'll probably be eating my own words in a few years, I'll throw them out there anyway: When games become large enough to require a terabyte of space, how long will they take to develop? If your answer is to hire a larger team, where does that leave smaller studios? Independents? When that day comes, I theorize that there will be (if this hasn't already happened by then) a huge flowering of independent studios making games for digital distribution, outnumbering the larger studios by far. If they need to make large games to compete with the major studios packing away a terabyte of info into one game, they can also turn to randomly generated worlds.
I suspect Microsoft will come knocking...
I think they are already in the door and even made themselves (without asking) a cup coffee waiting on the final product...