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Forums - Gaming - Is DVD-9 enough this generation?

windbane on 14 June 2007
rocketpig said:
windbane said:

*sigh*

CDs were "proprietary" until Sony and Phillips introduced them. Yeah, that's right, CDs are more of a Sony format than blu-ray. I think those worked out well. What was that cool device that used CDs? Oh yeah, the Playstation 1.

DVDs weren't widely adopted until...what was that thing called...oh yeah, the Playstation 2.

Uh, no. While Sony had a hand in CD, Phillips was the real driving force whereas Blu-Ray is completely Sony.

And DVDs were widely adopted before the PS2, unless you consider 25m players sold in the US "not widely adopted". I'm sick and tired of that myth. DVDs were well on their way to dominance before the PS2 even released.


 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb335/is_200201/ai_hibm1G184313442

"LAS VEGAS--In a milestone for the home video industry, DVD players will outsell VCR decks for the first time in 2002 -- 16.25 million to 14.45 million, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said in releasing its annual consensus forecast on the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show last week.

Consumers bought just over 13 million DVD players in 2001, making DVD the fastest product in consumer electronics history to reach a 25 percent household penetration rate, the organization reported. Overall, the consumer electronics industry is expected to rebound from a 2 ..."

The PS2 launched in 2000. 

 



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windbane on 14 June 2007
rocketpig said:
windbane said:

The Blu-ray Disc Association

The Blu-ray Disc Association is the industry consortium that develops and licenses Blu-ray Disc technology. This group has three levels of membership: the Board of Directors, the Contributors and the General Members. [1]

[edit] Board of Directors

The Blu-ray Disc Association website describes the role of the Board of Directors as follows [1]:

"Companies participating in the Board of Directors are active participants of the format creation and key BDA activities. They are selected from the Contributors by election. The board sets an overall strategy and approves key issues. A board member can participate in all activities and attend all meetings. The Blu-ray Disc Founder companies will make up the initial Board of Directors. Annual fee: $ 50,000"

The current 18 board members (as of 09/12/2006) are [2]:

[edit] Contributors

 


That's fine and dandy but who created the format? Who owns the royalty rights?


What difference does it make if all those companies support it?  I'm not scared of Sony owning the rights to a format.  They partially owned CD and DVD.  After that PS2 post I think my full case was made.



Gballzack on 14 June 2007
windbane said:
Gballzack said:
windbane said:
z64dan said:
Gballzack said:
It is kind of sad Blu-Ray's size is virtually useless in that it has to be filled up with redundant data just to avoid terrible loading times. Is Sony banking on faster readers in the future to avoid this "catch 22"?

Yeah having 25 gigs is pretty useless when 15 of the gigs are just extra copies of important info, stored close to other data so its faster for the laser to find...

I guess whenever games actually NEED 25 gigs, the loading will go from slow to incredibly frustrating.


Heh...you guys are funny. The Oblivion guy complained that load times would be worse on the PS3 so he used duplicate data on the disc. Okay. However, seeing as how the DL discs actually read slower than blu-ray and blu-ray is the same speed throughout the disc, there isn't much to be worried about.

I'd also like to point out that all PS3s can install critical files like RR7, Oblivion, and others already do. Ninja Gaiden Sigma will have a full install option. In case you guys don't know, hard drives are much faster than optical drives.

PS3s will always have the load-time advantage. Btw, Oblivion loaded twice as fast on the PS3. A rather awesome port considering it also looked better and ran smoother. I think it'll be ok.


1. When did I say anything about load times being longer or shorter between the 360 or PS3? And why are you going to refer to both of us when you don't respond to anything I said. I asked about the possibility of eliminating the need for redundant data on the Blu-Ray to try and find some justification for the nightmare Blu-Ray is, not how fast my PS3 games are going to load by installing them onto the hard drive first.

2. The real question though is why in gods name should a console ever need to install a game first before playing it? Why not just sell a monitor with it and call it a PC? Hell, better yet, why bother with a disc at all? Oh that's right, because a certain someone is trying to force Blu-Ray on the consumer market, that's why. Hey I know, let's make an overly large disc format handicapped by redundant data, boast about how much data it can hold then turn around and make you install your games anyway to compensate for the format's shortcomings, brilliant.

JSF said:
Gballzack said:

We also have to take into consideration that the majority of the space taken up on a Blu-Ray disc game is redundant information that wouldn't be needed on a DVD-9.

This isn't true for multi-disc games however. When you have a multi-disc game, you will need to have some redundant data between discs because the core game files need to be read and re-read now and again. If there is no redundant data, you would have to do a lot of swapping back to disc 1 and then back to whatever later disc again.

 

Yes while this is true, it doesn't change the fact that Blu-Ray's size is basically its own worst enemy if its using a larger part of it for redundant data to reduce load times. Obviously there will be redundant data to play the game's essential functions in a multi-disc DVD9 too, but it wouldn't be redundant data for the same reason and it wouldn't be taking up a fraction of the space Blu-Ray redundant data would. Furthermore, my original point in this statement was to say that you might be able to fit a theoretical Blu-Ray game onto a single DVD-9 if you didn't have to deal with the redundant data which accounted for the space taken up on the Blu-Ray disc.

 


Yeah, ignore half of what I say.  I responded to what you said by stating that HD installs improve load times over Wii and 360.  Most people consider that a great feature, it was the best part of the xbox.  However, you ignore the fact that DL dvds read slower than blu-ray, and blu-ray is the same speed throughout the disc whereas a dvd is only fast on the edge.

There is not much need for redundant data.  You are just wrong...as usual. 


When did I ever say anything read faster than Blu-Ray? And if the Blu-Ray, whether it be Redundant data or HD installs, needs something extra to make it work, then its obviously not the superior format everyone claims it is. Are you going to have to install the Blu-Ray movies you watch to avoid loading times? *rolls eyes*

Ah and well isn't this a surprise Windbane, arguing against the entire thead again I see, it almost seem that you were wrong or something. That could never be true though right? Oh and before I forget: Inb4 another troll pic by "Your Mother". BTW, I'm sure that pic is an ogre, not a troll. :) *wink*



shams on 14 June 2007
windbane said:
shams said:

Taking into account faster CPUs and more on-board RAM (better compression tech available for use), downloadable content, availability of hard disks (etc) - I think DVD-9 is EASILY enough space.

It would be a very rare game that REQUIRES more than 10Gig of COMPRESSED space - and those can be simply delivered on multiple discs.

BluRay IMO is complete and utter overkill. It lends itself to lazy development practices more than anything else (wasting space). And its ironic that a BluRay drive (PS3) is slower than the DVD-9 drive in the 360.

If they should have improved anything, it should be an ungraded DVD-9 drive with faster seek/access times, and faster read rates. That would have been much more useful!

 


1. CPUs and RAM do not make up for texture sizes and 1080p videos. If it did, why are sizes of everything increasing? That logic just makes no sense.


2. Not all 360's have hard drives, developers can not depend on them.

3. People said the same crap about DVDs back in 2000. The only difference this time is people are holding on to hope that the inferior hd-dvd format will succeed. It is unfortunate that the dual-format players may succeed. Either way, blu-ray is making money so it's not going away.

1.You can use advanced compression techniques to keep the textures in main memory/disc (a whopping 512MB of main memory!), then decompress them to the texture memory as needed. So larger textures can take less space than they did on older generation machines. Coupled with the fact that unlike the PS2, the PS3 actually has some nice compressed texture formats that are supported.

EDIT - throw in procedural texture generation..

2. 360's have DVD-9 drives - so what's your point? Just another reason why the PS3 doesn't need BluRay!

3. What crap? The DVD format is now the most common format on the planet, and its even superceded CD burners on PCs (something that surprised me, but was inevitiable when the cost came down). Sony should never have included a BluRay drive in the PS3. Its caused them untold damage, delayed the launch, pushed up the price of the hardware (etc).

The only reason for the inclusion of BluRay into the PS3, is as a trojan vehicle to force a new digital format onto consumers - something Sony are notorious for. Its completely unnecessary!

PS - what I find ironic is this: since most non-Sony companies will be developing x-platform 360/PS3 titles, most studios will be sticking to the DVD-9 size limit anyway. PS3 might get some extra high-def movies, or something else to fill up the remainder of the space.

 



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rocketpig on 14 June 2007
windbane said:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb335/is_200201/ai_hibm1G184313442

"LAS VEGAS--In a milestone for the home video industry, DVD players will outsell VCR decks for the first time in 2002 -- 16.25 million to 14.45 million, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said in releasing its annual consensus forecast on the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show last week.

Consumers bought just over 13 million DVD players in 2001, making DVD the fastest product in consumer electronics history to reach a 25 percent household penetration rate, the organization reported. Overall, the consumer electronics industry is expected to rebound from a 2 ..."

The PS2 launched in 2000. 

 


Nice try. DVDs launched in 1996. Here's the full data. There were about 14 million DVD players sold before PS2 launched in the US. I miscalculated the first time since I factored in 2001 also.

http://www.swivel.com/data_sets/spreadsheet/1004201

If 14m sold in roughly three years isn't already massively on its way to widely adopted, I don't know what is.




Or check out my new webcomic: http://selfcentent.com/

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your mother on 14 June 2007
Gballzack said:
 

...I'm sure that pic is an ogre, not a troll....

I'm not that good at differentiating between trolls and ogres, being that I am human and all, but I'm sure you can easily tell the two apart for obvious reasons. 

*wink* ;)



rocketpig on 14 June 2007
windbane said:
rocketpig said:

That's fine and dandy but who created the format? Who owns the royalty rights?


What difference does it make if all those companies support it?  I'm not scared of Sony owning the rights to a format.  They partially owned CD and DVD.  After that PS2 post I think my full case was made.


I'm not afraid of Sony owning a format either. I couldn't care less. I was arguing your statement that Sony had more of a hand in CD than they did Blu-Ray.




Or check out my new webcomic: http://selfcentent.com/

windbane on 14 June 2007
Gballzack said:
windbane said:
Gballzack said:
windbane said:
z64dan said:
Gballzack said:
It is kind of sad Blu-Ray's size is virtually useless in that it has to be filled up with redundant data just to avoid terrible loading times. Is Sony banking on faster readers in the future to avoid this "catch 22"?

Yeah having 25 gigs is pretty useless when 15 of the gigs are just extra copies of important info, stored close to other data so its faster for the laser to find...

I guess whenever games actually NEED 25 gigs, the loading will go from slow to incredibly frustrating.


Heh...you guys are funny. The Oblivion guy complained that load times would be worse on the PS3 so he used duplicate data on the disc. Okay. However, seeing as how the DL discs actually read slower than blu-ray and blu-ray is the same speed throughout the disc, there isn't much to be worried about.

I'd also like to point out that all PS3s can install critical files like RR7, Oblivion, and others already do. Ninja Gaiden Sigma will have a full install option. In case you guys don't know, hard drives are much faster than optical drives.

PS3s will always have the load-time advantage. Btw, Oblivion loaded twice as fast on the PS3. A rather awesome port considering it also looked better and ran smoother. I think it'll be ok.


1. When did I say anything about load times being longer or shorter between the 360 or PS3? And why are you going to refer to both of us when you don't respond to anything I said. I asked about the possibility of eliminating the need for redundant data on the Blu-Ray to try and find some justification for the nightmare Blu-Ray is, not how fast my PS3 games are going to load by installing them onto the hard drive first.

2. The real question though is why in gods name should a console ever need to install a game first before playing it? Why not just sell a monitor with it and call it a PC? Hell, better yet, why bother with a disc at all? Oh that's right, because a certain someone is trying to force Blu-Ray on the consumer market, that's why. Hey I know, let's make an overly large disc format handicapped by redundant data, boast about how much data it can hold then turn around and make you install your games anyway to compensate for the format's shortcomings, brilliant.

JSF said:
Gballzack said:

We also have to take into consideration that the majority of the space taken up on a Blu-Ray disc game is redundant information that wouldn't be needed on a DVD-9.

This isn't true for multi-disc games however. When you have a multi-disc game, you will need to have some redundant data between discs because the core game files need to be read and re-read now and again. If there is no redundant data, you would have to do a lot of swapping back to disc 1 and then back to whatever later disc again.

 

Yes while this is true, it doesn't change the fact that Blu-Ray's size is basically its own worst enemy if its using a larger part of it for redundant data to reduce load times. Obviously there will be redundant data to play the game's essential functions in a multi-disc DVD9 too, but it wouldn't be redundant data for the same reason and it wouldn't be taking up a fraction of the space Blu-Ray redundant data would. Furthermore, my original point in this statement was to say that you might be able to fit a theoretical Blu-Ray game onto a single DVD-9 if you didn't have to deal with the redundant data which accounted for the space taken up on the Blu-Ray disc.

 


Yeah, ignore half of what I say. I responded to what you said by stating that HD installs improve load times over Wii and 360. Most people consider that a great feature, it was the best part of the xbox. However, you ignore the fact that DL dvds read slower than blu-ray, and blu-ray is the same speed throughout the disc whereas a dvd is only fast on the edge.

There is not much need for redundant data. You are just wrong...as usual.


When did I ever say anything read faster than Blu-Ray? And if the Blu-Ray, whether it be Redundant data or HD installs, needs something extra to make it work, then its obviously not the superior format everyone claims it is. Are you going to have to install the Blu-Ray movies you watch to avoid loading times? *rolls eyes*

Ah and well isn't this a surprise Windbane, arguing against the entire thead again I see, it almost seem that you were wrong or something. That could never be true though right? Oh and before I forget: Inb4 another troll pic by "Your Mother". BTW, I'm sure that pic is an ogre, not a troll. :) *wink*


The only downside to the PS3's blu-ray player is that is only reads at 2x.  That is not a fault of blu-ray as a format, it is the limitation of the PS3.  Newer players will read faster.  It is obviously the superior format compared to hd-dvd and dvd.  How companies use it is another story.

Again, DL-DVDs read slower than blu-ray at 2x.  Are you saying 360 games should be limited to 4.7GB in order to keep load times higher?  They should have included a hard drive. 



windbane on 14 June 2007
rocketpig said:
windbane said:
rocketpig said:

That's fine and dandy but who created the format? Who owns the royalty rights?


What difference does it make if all those companies support it? I'm not scared of Sony owning the rights to a format. They partially owned CD and DVD. After that PS2 post I think my full case was made.


I'm not afraid of Sony owning a format either. I couldn't care less. I was arguing your statement that Sony had more of a hand in CD than they did Blu-Ray.


Well, it was 2 companies for CD and a large consortium for blu-ray, despite who benefits most out of it.



windbane on 14 June 2007
rocketpig said:
windbane said:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb335/is_200201/ai_hibm1G184313442

"LAS VEGAS--In a milestone for the home video industry, DVD players will outsell VCR decks for the first time in 2002 -- 16.25 million to 14.45 million, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said in releasing its annual consensus forecast on the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show last week.

Consumers bought just over 13 million DVD players in 2001, making DVD the fastest product in consumer electronics history to reach a 25 percent household penetration rate, the organization reported. Overall, the consumer electronics industry is expected to rebound from a 2 ..."

The PS2 launched in 2000.

 


Nice try. DVDs launched in 1996. Here's the full data. There were about 14 million DVD players sold before PS2 launched in the US. I miscalculated the first time since I factored in 2001 also.

http://www.swivel.com/data_sets/spreadsheet/1004201

If 14m sold in roughly three years isn't already massively on its way to widely adopted, I don't know what is.


Fair, but the PS2 accelerated it.  It was not until 2002 that DVD outsold VHS.

Sony also gets half credit for CDs.  Sony's formats do not always fail.  That's the original point.