Panasonic to deliver Blu Ray

[Prairieboy]

Well one of my biggest worries about P2 was archiving. Hard drives just do not seem to be an option. The Blue ray and HD DVD battle is just beginning. But at least we finally have a time frame to have a viable way to store video files.
http://www.creativemac.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=35003
So when I can put one of these drives in my computer, that is when picking up the HVX makes sense to me.

[kecorcoran]

One part of the BluRay spec I think is interesting the BDAV format -- it's a format for recording video on a BluRay disc, much like a VCR or a DVD recorder now.

But part of BDAV is support for 25 Mbps DV streams on the disc.

Although you can currently archive your video to DVD-R, you can either store it with MPEG compression, in which case it's no longer your original footage, or you can write a small chunk of DV stream as a file, which you won't be able to pop in a DVD player and watch.

What I'm talking about is the raw DV data on the Blu disc, exactly as it is on tape, without recompression. And you can watch this disc on your TV by popping it into a BDAV-compatible settop box.

While this wouldn't work for DVCPRO-HD, it would work for your current DVX tapes. (Of course, DVCPRO-HD could be archived to BluRay discs as files, they just wouldn't play back on a BDAV settop box.)

[luke43]

According to the panasonic release , desktop version will ship in january, notebook version will ship in march
http://panasonic.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/en051005-3/en051005-3.html

here is a story and images from japan from panny
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20051005/pana.htm

[Sumfun]

That's interesting. There's been a lot of talk and I'm glad to see products finally coming to market. Does any one know the price of the drives and the discs? Also, what does 2x speed mean? Is it 8 times slower than the current 16x DVD burners?

[Jaime Valles]

I don't mind not being able to play the Blu-Ray disks if they're data-only. I just want to be able to archive full 1080p footage. One 50GB BD will hold around 50 minutes of 1080/24p DVCProHD; almost as much as a MiniDV tape can hold DV footage, but without the dropouts and need for capturing.

Archiving is the hard part with HD, and this is going to make it MUCH easier. I'm sure Panasonic knew this when designing the HVX200.

[Prairieboy]

That was my scare. The tought of burning a disk for every eight minutes of footage did not seem too apealing. One per every 40 minutes is quite do able.
Now we wait to see how much. The fun part.

[ChuckS]

Does this mean that this drive is backwards compatible with SD DVD's?

"The world's first BD drive for notebook PCs is only 12.7-mm high and can record and playback the three generations of optical discs. "

Because one of the major selling points for HDDVD was that it is backwards compatible and Blu Ray was not. But if this press release is stating that's not the case this might be a very short format war. Because if a BD Blu-ray drive can read and write to regular DVD's I don't see any reason that it can't at least read HDDVD's. That would give Blu-ray quite the advantage.

Panasonic to developing and delivering this drive is probably the biggest reason to purchase the HVX200.

[luke43]

blu ray is backward compatible with cd/dvd. Blu ray and hd dvd are not compatible however. This burner is x2 where native speed of of blu ray disk is 36 mbps which means that this panasonic burner will record at 72 Megabit/sed or 9 Megabyte/sec

[cici]

So what are the media for DVCPRO-HD recording that are capable for immediate playback and not only storage? (like P2 card, camera itself, HD-cassette, Harddisk but more pratical for use during playback)

[Nathyn]

I though Blu Ray wasn't backward compatible. If this is the case it will be a short format war indeed. All the big boys seem to be going with Blu-Ray I think Apple can burn HD-DVDs now but I guess they'll be able to burn Blu-Ray soon enough.

-Nate

[Haakon]

Apple is onboard with Blu-Ray, not HD-DVD. Microsoft, however, backs HD-DVD. They seem to be just about the only major player with any clout left in that camp.

Blu-Ray is NOT backwards compatible. The drive just happens to have a multi-laser mechanism that will read/record all three types of media. Pioneer's first Blu-Ray drive will do BR and DVD, but not CD. It's up to the manufacturer.

[dat5150]

Don't you just love how they come out with a 2x drive (3 months goes by)...4x (3 more)....8x and so on. Then there's the long awaited dual layer disc thats impossible to find and overpriced when you do.

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Yay Blu-ray!!!

[Haakon]

Don't you just love how they come out with a 2x drive (3 months goes by)...4x (3 more)....8x and so on. Then there's the long awaited dual layer disc thats impossible to find and overpriced when you do.
That's just going to happen inevitably. I actually found a receipt the other day for a 4x Plextor CD-R (yes, that's 4x, CD-R only) drive I bought a long time ago that cost me $400. Ouch. Now you can get, what... 52x for $25? Blu-Ray will come down in price, too... just depends on how badly you need it.

I like new technology, but rarely can I afford to be an "early adopter"... though when you compare the cost of Blu-Ray discs to DVCPROHD tape, even if they're $20 a pop, they'll be more economical. The computer world may not eat them up yet, but as filmmakers who are going to need a heck of a lot of space for all of these new formats that are popping up, it looks to be a very promising idea.