Could we say goodbye to physical media?

[Asbo Zaprudder]

To play region 2 DVDs, you also need a TV that can handle PAL video (576i@50Hz). I think most modern HD TVs can, but it's worth checking. I've seen many negative comments on Amazon UK from people in North America who have been caught out by this, and who have proceeded to blame the DVD distributor or Amazon rather than themselves for not doing the research.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

To play region 2 DVDs, you also need a TV that can handle PAL video (576i@50Hz). I think most modern HD TVs can, but it's worth checking. I've seen many negative comments on Amazon UK from people in North America who have been caught out by this, and who have proceeded to blame the DVD distributor or Amazon rather than themselves for not doing the research.

A lot of recent TV sets can input both pal and ntsc. Best to check your TV settings

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

If both formats are supported, the TV should handle things automatically unless it's a Magnetbox, Sorny or Panaphonics (Simpsons reference). SD content on HD sets generally looks ghastly, however.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Ebay is also the home of ticket scams especially for tay tay

 

[publiusr]

I just read an article called “A 3D Nanoscale Optical Disk Memory with Petabit Capacity” in NATURE.

That’s a million movies on one disk.
Bring it on.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I just read an article called “A 3D Nanoscale Optical Disk Memory with Petabit Capacity” in NATURE.

That’s a million movies on one disk.
Bring it on.

Or Star Trek optical chips like isolinear chips but for real

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I just read an article called “A 3D Nanoscale Optical Disk Memory with Petabit Capacity” in NATURE.

That’s a million movies on one disk.
Bring it on.

Sorry, but you're way too optimistic.

1 Pbit or 10^15 bits is approximately 10^14 bytes or 100 terabytes or 100,000 gigabytes (GB). A 4K UHD video requires at least 20 GB of storage per hour so a two-hour movie needs at least 40 GB. Therefore, you could fit 2,500 2-hour 4K UHD movies in 1 Pbit of storage.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Sabine Hossenfelder has a video on the subject of optical media that can potentially store petabytes of data. There are some major caveats so it might be quite a while before it's available to ordinary punters. One thing not mentioned is the stability of the medium - what is the error accumulation rate and what is the mean time before errors become uncorrectable?

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Just think, my young nephew who is the youngest across the family at age 7, at some point in the future he may look at petabyte storage media in the same way we look at 1.44mb floppy disk from back in the day now.

Sometime i still can't believe i went from a time when games on cassette were just amazing, to them now being like something from the stoneage. Lol

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Just think, my young nephew who is the youngest across the family at age 7, at some point in the future he may look at petabyte storage media in the same way we look at 1.44mb floppy disk from back in the day now.

Sometime i still can't believe i went from a time when games on cassette were just amazing, to them now being like something from the stoneage. Lol

But even when cassette storage was current people could see it being obsolete in a few years, especially when CDs came onto the market and the potential for rewritable optical disks.

Speaking of old stuff I was just thinking back and a lot of other happy memories. Who remembers digital encyclopedias before wikipedia existed we had Grollier, MS Encarta, even Brittanica flirted with the idea.

 

[Snaploud]

To play region 2 DVDs, you also need a TV that can handle PAL video (576i@50Hz).

My region-free player has internal PAL to NTSC conversion.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

My region-free player has internal PAL to NTSC conversion.

Cool. You obviously thought ahead. Does it handle the different frame rate well?

 

[Snaploud]

Cool. You obviously thought ahead. Does it handle the different frame rate well?

I think it handles the frame rate conversion well. The website I used has a variety of different players. Some have video converters. Some don't have video converters. Here is the description they give:

Region Free Blu-ray DVD players Buying Guide and Information

If you are planning to use a Multi Region Blu-Ray DVD player in the USA you need to consider a few things before you purchase. Region coding for Blu-ray discs is divided between the world in 3 regions which are A, B, and C. In addition to the regional coding, there are Pal and NTSC TV output systems. If you have a TV in the United States, chances are that TV only supports the NTSC TV system. This means if you want to play back a Pal DVD disc from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, etc., you will need a DVD player that has a video converter built in or you will need to buy an external video converter. We have packages with all of our players that do not convert so you can purchase the player with the video converter. We also sell many DVD players now that have a video converter built in. If you buy one of these you will not need anything besides the player to play Pal or NTSC discs on an NTSC TV in North America. If your TV supports both Pal and NTSC then you can play any of these discs on your TV without a video converter. If your TV is the Pal or Secam standard in Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, etc. then you will not need a video converter. Most of the time you will be able to play standard and/or Blu-ray DVD movies from the USA and/or overseas with just one of our Multi region Blu-ray players. However, TV's from the USA may not support the resolution HDMI input from a foreign disc, in which case you will need to purchase a video converter.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I think it handles the frame rate conversion well. The website I used has a variety of different players. Some have video converters. Some don't have video converters. Here is the description they give:

Region Free Blu-ray DVD players Buying Guide and Information

If you are planning to use a Multi Region Blu-Ray DVD player in the USA you need to consider a few things before you purchase. Region coding for Blu-ray discs is divided between the world in 3 regions which are A, B, and C. In addition to the regional coding, there are Pal and NTSC TV output systems. If you have a TV in the United States, chances are that TV only supports the NTSC TV system. This means if you want to play back a Pal DVD disc from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, etc., you will need a DVD player that has a video converter built in or you will need to buy an external video converter. We have packages with all of our players that do not convert so you can purchase the player with the video converter. We also sell many DVD players now that have a video converter built in. If you buy one of these you will not need anything besides the player to play Pal or NTSC discs on an NTSC TV in North America. If your TV supports both Pal and NTSC then you can play any of these discs on your TV without a video converter. If your TV is the Pal or Secam standard in Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, etc. then you will not need a video converter. Most of the time you will be able to play standard and/or Blu-ray DVD movies from the USA and/or overseas with just one of our Multi region Blu-ray players. However, TV's from the USA may not support the resolution HDMI input from a foreign disc, in which case you will need to purchase a video converter.

Besides the necessary 625 to 525 line conversion (anything from the crude, commonly used dropping of one in six lines to the sophisticated FFT phase correlation), I believe there are two methods for converting the frame rate:

• Slow the frame rate from 25 fps to 23.976 fps (~ -4%) and use 3:2 pull down to add intermediate frames
• Interpolate intermediate frames from the existing frames' contents

These methods will produce noticeable stuttering or artefacts, plus you lose vertical resolution.

I'd expect that playback without conversion would look better, but I've never had to worry about this. We're kind of fortunate in region 2 that TVs support both PAL and NTSC thanks to Japan being in region 2 and also using NTSC. I couldn't vouch for SECAM, but it's not that different from PAL apart from colour and audio encoding.

It's a surprisingly complex subject and I have only a passing acquaintance with it, so I could have overlooked something or just be plain wrong.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

A lot of DVD players can actually by made region free by either a software update or a special code you entire via the remote, and some have jumper setting inside that you take the cover off to get at......i bought the Space 1999 dvd boxset from Australia way back in the day, and all i had to do was input a code via the remote that made the dvd region free, which i assume was a feature the makers built into the dvd software to make it easy to just build one version, then use software to lock it to whatever region it was being sold in, of course they could never have imagined the codes to unlock it popping up on the internet. Lol

Of course snag number 2 was that at the time i still had a big uk pal 50hmz crt tv........but not long after i got my first lcd tv which could do 50hz and 60hz, so i was then able to watch the boxset in colour. Lol

 

[Guy Gardener]

Lets say, for a law abiding distributor, it costs 20 bucks to license a movie per movie, before you burn that movie to an optical disk, per optical disk, and you want to double that to make a profit.

So 40 dollars per movie, a thousand movies, on one disk, well, that's 40 thousand dollars, for one disk that can easily be destroyed by oily fingers or 90 movies start skipping, because on one scratch.

It's not usable technology.

However, you could have 80 web cams filming in 1080p for 80 years, for perhaps home security, and you may need three of these disks.

However!!!

In 7 years from now, the cinema of the 1940s is going to start entering the common domain, so we can forget about licensing, and pretend that we are all back living in the wild west days of Napster.

I think a better investment in technology would be compression, so that we can store a 40 gb movie on a 3 mb floppy disk.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

A 40 GB movie compressed to 3 MB would have lost so much information that it would look and sound like noise.

 

[The Wormhole]

Thirty years ago, everyone thought music on vinyl records was a thing of the past. Yet, these days, for those who want music on physical media, vinyl is the preferred format. Physical media will likely to continue to exist in some manner. Digital media certainly isn't going anywhere, but it won't lead to the extinction of physical media either.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Thirty years ago, everyone thought music on vinyl records was a thing of the past. Yet, these days, for those who want music on physical media, vinyl is the preferred format. Physical media will likely to continue to exist in some manner. Digital media certainly isn't going anywhere, but it won't lead to the extinction of physical media either.

I still wish they would update Mini-Disc format for the modern age and use it as the "DeFacto Digital Based Physical Media for music".

It's literally the perfect form factor for portable music IMO.

Imagine, having EVERY single Michael Jackson song on one Mini Disc using updated Blu-Ray or Archival Disc density and the ability to play that music off a single Mini Disc.

Or EVERY single one of Bethoven's music played by a top tier orchestra recorded onto one Disc.
What used to be a 28 CD-Disc set could be shrunk down to one Mini Disc.

 

[aquova]

I still wish they would update Mini-Disc format for the modern age and use it as the "DeFacto Digital Based Physical Media for music".

It's literally the perfect form factor for portable music IMO.

Imagine, having EVERY single Michael Jackson song on one Mini Disc using updated Blu-Ray or Archival Disc density and the ability to play that music off a single Mini Disc.

Or EVERY single one of Bethoven's music played by a top tier orchestra recorded onto one Disc.
What used to be a 28 CD-Disc set could be shrunk down to one Mini Disc.

Gathering up the right hardware would be a challenge, but Sony did release Hi-MD which could store 1 GB on a single disc, and I think some of the players had MP3 playback support. That's like 300 songs or so on a single disc. Granted, if they wanted to bring back that form factor, they could do a whole lot better now (Mega Mini Disc...)

I do agree with you though, I'm a fan of MDs, I have a MD walkman and stereo deck at home and I still use it from time to time.