Movie Industry trying to obsolete your DVD deck.

[Dave Harris]

Will the FCC make the current DVD obsolete? That may sound drastic, but a proposed solution by the movie industry to keep digital TV shows under their control will obsolete your current player. So far, technical details sound very sketchy and I'm skeptical as to their actual implementation (they're talking about a flag in the broadcast stream that would prevent machines incapable of recognizing that flag to play the content, and I don't see how a device that doesn't know about such a flag would know that it shouldn't play flagged content if the content is delivered in today's format), but we'll just have to wait and see. More details here (http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5094610.html)

[Evan Chase]

The FCC has been steering ever more pro-big business in the last couple years now that the Chairman and half the voting members are Republican. They have been loosening restrictions on these obnoxious multi-media giants so the independent radio stations that used to play good music are now corporate owned all-talk with Dr. Laura and Rush Limbaugh telling us what to think.

If the Commission has its way, these companies will also own newspapers in the same markets, so there will be little variety of media opinion in most areas---kind of like Germany in 1938?

This all amounts to pro-big business, anti consumer rights. I don't like the idea that I have to keep buying new equipment for my own home use.

[David Rigby]

....this is precisely why even as a technology bod I'm deeply skeptical about this rush to make everything digital. Problem is it puts ever more control in the hands of fewer and fewer corporate entities / individuals. Wrote a paper on this subject (with particular reference to the internet) for my Computer Science Bsc and it went down like a lead balloon...technical people generally don't like thinking about potential broader implications of their ideas unless it's only the positive stuff - to actually come out with negative views on my course was little short of heresy :)


One good thing is when everyone has to re-buy all their DVDs after the next technology fad we film owners can just laugh :) (though of course I have DVDs too...but at least that's not all I have!)

David

[Dave Harris]

Of course David, I'm sure that all of the NTSC DVDs we have here in the States are all good only until the same titles get released in HD (High Definition) in approx. 3 years or so.

[John Whittle]

The current discussions are flags for digital signals which could leave a set top box or sat receiver and go to digital inputs on a tv set. This is part of the copy protection scheme to prevent recording.

Currently no DVD players output digital MPEG data and I know of no plans to do so.

Don't look for a rapid "conversion" to a HD DVD standard. There are a couple of big problems. One is re-mastering all the titles which weren't done in hi-def and re-authoring them and then it's the chicken and the egg problem of how many sets and play back devices there are out there.

The "studios" aren't looking forward to a mass re-mastering of titles and will more likely do it on the seven year re-transfer program that most of them are on now.

I still haven't seen any D-VHS titles at my local Best Buy and that would seem to be the likely niche market tactic to be used at first.

On top of everything, the studios aren't really excited about putting out a better product that might be used in commercial venues.

Of course time will tell, but I bet your current DVDs (they aren't NTSC by the way, the player just outputs NTSC as option from a component MPEG signal--NTSC is a composite video signal) will be playable longers than my Beta tapes.

John

[Richard Haines]

Say Evan,

Just to be a bit more balanced...at least two media moguls (both of which are monopolistic) are from the Left side of the spectrum and hardcore Democrats, namely, Ted Turner and
Michael Eisner. So, it's not only Republicans which are
to blame.

[Derek Decelles]

Richard,

The difference, I think, is that it is neither Eisner's nor Turner's job to look out for the public interest. I do not expect Turner or Eisner or any other CEO or owner of a large corporation to police themselves, but the FCC is certainly supposed to - being as that is what my tax dollars are paying them to do. Certainly, the Republicans are not alone in their corporate whoredom (Bill Clinton signed the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act) but, on average, they do tend to favor big business interests quite a bit more than the Dems.

- d

[John Whittle]

Originally posted by derek decelles
Richard,

I do not expect Turner or Eisner or any other CEO or owner of a large corporation to police themselves, but the FCC is certainly supposed to - being as that is what my tax dollars are paying them to do.
- d

Historically under any administration, the FCC hasn't faired well in making technological decisions. First they chose the CBS color system and had to retract it, they chose FM frequencies and had to freeze and change those, they chose tv channel frequencies and had to freeze those and "re-define" them (that's where Channel 1 went), then they made that great AM stereo decision to let the public decide and we know how well that turned out.

Why should plug and play and digital be any better?

John

[Bernhard Benet]

Originally posted by Dave Harris
Of course David, I'm sure that all of the NTSC DVDs we have here in the States are all good only until the same titles get released in HD (High Definition) in approx. 3 years or so.

I won't have the above problem because I already started to archive most of my movies in HD on D-VHS starting in 1999. I have not bought a DVD of a current movie since then and sold all the DVD's I had. The only DVD's I still sometimes buy or keep are classics unlikely to be shown in HD anytime soon. Here is my HD list:

http://www.tpitravel.com/tradehdlist.html

I don't like DVD's anyway because they are easily damaged, and have all kinds of incompatibility problems with software. Once they come up with better media or hard disks space gets cheap enough I can simply transfer the D-VHS material to another media.

bb

[Chris Curtis]

Originally posted by John Whittle
The current discussions are flags for digital signals which could leave a set top box or sat receiver and go to digital inputs on a tv set. This is part of the copy protection scheme to prevent recording.


Of course time will tell, but I bet your current DVDs (they aren't NTSC by the way, the player just outputs NTSC as option from a component MPEG signal--NTSC is a composite video signal) will be playable longers than my Beta tapes.

John

if ntsc/pal were limited in definition only to 'broadcast' this would be correct.

there are major differences in the mpeg stream between pal and ntsc formated videos.

there is not a 'catch-all' dvd mpeg stream that 'contains' all formats to be selected upon playback. every program stream is formatted as follows:

a pal mpeg compatible for dvd V is 720x576 or 704x576 @ 25fps
an ntsc mpeg compatible for dvd V is 720x480 or 704x480 @ 29.97 fps.
half D1 [a lower resolution digital stream] can be 352x576 for pal, also @ 25fps or 352x480 @ 29.97fps for ntsc.
vcd, a pioneer digital video format using mpeg1 instead of the nice new mpeg2 utilizes the following:
352x288 @ 25fps for pal
352x240 @ 29.97fps for ntsc

if you are authoring say an ntsc dvd, and do NOT use one of the above listed resolution/frame rates for NTSC, either your software will re-code it for you to conform, or it will tell you to supply a compatible stream if your software has no encoding capabilities.

so the ntsc and/or pal stands for much more than just one item.
many dvd player can resolve the differences in fps/resolution with varying degrees of satisfaction of end users.
philips were notorious for playing back mpeg2 material correctly while playing back mpeg1 material in the native format only. users in n.america would get a rolling b & w picture on their tv when trying to play a pal vcd.

1993 i first started creating vcd of stuff i wanted to keep off tv or camcorders etc etc =]

chris

[John Whittle]

Originally posted by Chris Curtis
if ntsc/pal were limited in definition only to 'broadcast' this would be correct.

there are major differences in the mpeg stream between pal and ntsc formated videos.


chris

With all due respect Chris, what you're talking about is what we HAVE not what was DISCUSSED in the committee before the standards were set.

Originally (about 1985) the plan was to have ONE digital standard for the World which would be beyond NTSC and PAL and the new concept, the Versitle Disc would be recorded so it would play anywhere in the world. There were lots and lots of arguements (square pixels, oblong pixels, computer guys, bob and weave, Microscoft standard {which got shot down} etc etc. What emerged (by the time Warners got in bed with Toshiba) was back to coding for PAL and NTSC.

It didn't have to be that way.

You don't have to run HiDef at 29.97 but it is done in this country probably because engineers can't tell time. That's probably the reason we're also stuck with drop frame and non-drop time codes.

The whole "new television" revolution which began in the 1980s may someday be written and I'm willing to be that several years down the line there will be many who complain about the decisions that were made. Look at 16:9, that was made 10 years before the ASC decided they wanted to fight it--the anser from SMPTE and IBU was "where were you?" The funny thing was they had participated and I guess forgot (or the leaders changed).

Also there is an MPEG standard for 21:9 which no one uses, but better covers anamorphic pictures. There are probably 30 different versions of MPEG-2 and each and every one of those was a fight.

John

[Chris Curtis]

i'm in total agreement with the above.

my point was that there isn't a single mpeg program stream from which the 'proper' elements are xtracted for wherever the end user may be.

a single standard is obviously a better choice and i advocated this when mpeg2 was getting kicked around. i had already had enough of the 'vcd' standards.

the drawback is the equipment already in place all over the world. utilizing, as you pointed out, different standards. all our equipment, regardless of advancement, is built on different platforms. this being how to arrive at a base fps and a base resolution. our electrical current springs to mind.

when i watch a vhs in pal on my multiformat vhs deck in ntsc mode, it doesn't look as good as when watching in native mode. this is key in why all these differences in resolution and frame rate still hang on. native bases to native output.

but what we have, is, what we have. a so called 'ntsc' dvd is by standard, design, flaw, or feature, authored for an ntsc market. as are pal dvd. therefore calling an dvd bought in the u.s. is very legitimately called an 'ntsc dvd'.

below is the quote i was replying to:

Of course time will tell, but I bet your current DVDs (they aren't NTSC by the way, the player just outputs NTSC as option from a component MPEG signal--NTSC is a composite video signal) will be playable longers than my Beta tapes.

John

: that was all i was replying to. the statement was incorrect and was only speaking to it.

my apologies on any other topic i may have rambled into.

=]

chris

[John Whittle]

Chris,

Couple of things. Five years ago we used to do six transfers of each title (a Pal and Ntsc each for full frame/p&S, letterbox insdie 3:4 and 16:9) now we do one hi-def for down conversion to all of the above. While there isn't a "consumer" process available, there are professional ways of doing it. It does require "interpolation" but after all, mpeg is doing interpolation.

As far as Ntsc, in my humble definition, it's a composite video format with a color cub-carrier. I discount the scan lines, etc and only refer to Ntsc as that color encoding scheme and Pal as that color encoding scheme. We have used a 655/24 frame ntsc signal for video playback on movie sets and there was a NBC experiment of "slow pal" (24 fps recording) as a mastering format about five years ago. It wasn't really pal since it was a digi-beta signal which was component the 24 frame recording made for easier conversion to Ntsc than the other way around.

Others are free to disagree, but that's what I mean when I say it's a Ntsc signal. A s-vhs output isn't Ntsc since it isn't composite/ The problem is geting a component signal recorded. You'd be amazed how many post houses feed composite to the hi8 and S-vhs bays so while the signal may be very high grade it will still suffer from Ntsc color artifacts. The same with D-2 recordings and laser discs.

It's too bad we didn't come up with a single disc format for the world but in this case the money of the rights holders outweighed the engineers and equipment makers. No one wanted a replay of the Beta-Vhs debacle (although there were minor fights over Dolby vs DTS which got there late and the Circuit City Divx fiasco).

John