First Hybrid Blu-ray / DVD title announced

ok I will start... hehe... This is a bad idea. People need to replace their players not try and get their 39 funaki player to play these. My dads DVD player still cant play many of the burned disks I make for him and its a lower line Sony. This will just mar the perception of quality when they dont frackin work on old cheap ass DVD players. Then on BD players they will need at least one but probably 2 or more firmware updates to make them play right futher irking J6P.

Take a lesson from HD DVD and stop trying to make everything backwards compatable. This is why Windows still sucks. Backwards compatability.

this only going to make more troubles for consumers who were already confused by the hybrid hd-dvd's. pointless now when prices of players and discs are dropping.

well if they use that 8.5gb dvd part to give us a 720p resolution movie that will be a great

especially on the smaller version of movies

Yuck that DVD layer is gonna make sick

Its great to have a disc that works in every player (if it works in every player)

Just let it have the same price as DVD and we good to go.

This idea sucks rhinos. . First I like art on my disk. Second people people will buy it stick it in the DVD drive and say it looks just like DVD. Third it risks compatibility issues. Fourth it raise prices for people who just want a damn BD.

It's a bad idea all around since they didn't do it from the start.

IF from the start we got combo discs, AND the studio didn't release any DVD version... then everyone would get the same disc, and the price could be lower... and that might be ok if it was truly compatible with older DVD players.

Doing it now makes no sense.

This will lower BD quaility & eliminate BD extras, just to have a DVD layer.

Excellent.

I like combo discs. They're much more flexible in terms of usability. Having disc art is nice, but having a built-in DVD is better. Even better would be BD50/DVD9.

I don't like Japanese soap operas though.

Does it have the scratch resistant coating on both sides? Just the BD side? Neither?

Hmm... The article says the DVD Forum has refused to certify those discs, because the design is not necessarily 100% compatible with the DVD standard. So, I wonder if we'll ever see them here in North America. I will note that some companies have released CDs that weren't 100% compliant. Then again, some of those discs are indeed not compatible with some CD readers (due mainly to DRM foolishness).

However, the manufacturer states that despite this bending of the design rules, 64 of 64 players they tried played the discs fine.

Heheh. I wonder how much of this refusal to certify is sour grapes, and how much of this refusal is true technical issues.

Well, early on, BD replication success rates were not high, and BD50 was even more problematic.

Combo discs would have made the rates even lower.

Plus, there's still that not-100%-DVD-compliant issue.

Warner should be all over this. They love releasing on BD25, this way they can release a combo and continue to leave out lossless audio.

Hmmmm...



This seems to imply it's single-sided, and I guess would keep the disc art. Or am I mistaken?

well another thought
instead of havinf red laser dvd layer make it 50gb on one side and another side have us 720p resoluton of the movie

what would be the point of that? most players/tvs will just rescale the picture. No need to waste space/time.

This developement adds versitility to the Blu-way format and that can only be a good thing. The fact that several respondents here are so appalled by, yack-a-tosis, the mere possibility of touching a Blu video disc that contains SD material is a good omen. Joe Sexpack's reaction is usually opposite of theatre finatics....

I've read that BD's can be hybridized with CD content too.

I love "Japanese Soap Operas"... I have a extensive collection!

EDIT: I even appeared in one, that shot some scenes in NYC.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is a single-sided disc. Single transparent Blu-ray layer, and dual more reflective DVD layers.

I'm also thinking that we will not see this in any significant way in North America or Europe. Maybe a few obscure releases here and there, but not for the top tier mainstream movies. Too many potential issues.

The good news though is that this suggests that dual-sided Blu-ray/DVD discs should be easily doable. I suspect that dual-sided discs will maintain the 100% DVD compatibility, and the DVD Forum would actually approve them.

If they do become a norm in the U.S. I hope I don't have a crap load of issues playing them like I've had with my HD DVD combos.

I also hope they don't add a $5 premium on them like HD DVD titles.

The bad HD DVD/DVD combos were likely due to poor QA, because the discs themselves were basically HD DVDs glued to DVDs. They weren't compatibility issues with the disc structure. ie. Buy a new disc from a new batch, and it will work (both for HD DVD and DVD, assuming there isn't an authoring problem).

Single-sided Blu-ray/DVD hybrid discs would be another layer of complexity, and hence the statement by the DVD Forum that there could be compatibility issues with the disc structure. ie. Buy a new disc from a new batch, and your DVD player may still choke on the disc, because the discs are not fully compliant with the DVD standard.

I had single problem with the playability of combodiscs. Of course combodisc were not as common here, but of the ones I had, it was zero problems.

Im perfectly fine with a BD/DVD combo as long as they charge the same as the DVD. I prefer this over digital copy.

I can totally understand this, as the "combo" format - be it the audio DualDisc or the HD-DVD/DVD combo disc - has proven each time to be reliable, popular, and successful.

it's probably this one, title named "Code Blue (Doctor Heli Emergency Rescue", about emergency rescue using helicopters. I just saw it yesterday on Amazon Japan. I actually haven't seen any Japanese drama being released on BD besides this one...

I, for one, loved combo discs. I could loan them out to friends, play them on my laptop when BD-ROM drives were still $400+. They also played in portable DVD players for road trips, etc. This seems more like a hybrid. Hybrids (and combos) had good potential for HD DVD. Neither was utilized correctly. If they do this right, they can go all high def for a release and actually give Blu-Ray some mass market appeal rather than the niche it is now.

The studios are deathly afraid of releasing a top tier disc as double-sided combo only, and thus would not do so any time soon. Warner's VP told us this in person (for HD DVD combos). They said that the returns (wrong side up) and support questions would do them in.

It's easier with lower volume titles, but they wouldn't be doing it with something like The Dark Knight.

A single sided hybrid like this Japanese disc could solve that problem... except it doesn't because it doesn't fully comply with the DVD standard. Even a 1% incompatibility rate would be a public relations disaster for a high profile release.

Are BDs and DVDs precisely the same thickness?

Many of the problems with audio dual discs came about because they were slightly thicker than normal CDs.

This meant that the disc layer was beyond the focusing ability of some CD players, and of course the discs would get stuck in some slot-loading players.

If the thickness of the combo BDs is any different, it could result in a world of nightmares both for BD and DVD players.

(All it takes is for a disk to be "99% compatible" to generate thousands of returns for retailers and studios.)

HD DVD single-sided combo discs were not uncommon in Japan. In fact the first 3 HD DVD releases (Virtual Trip nature series, released 4/7/06)were single-sided combos (or 15/5 'twin' discs). About 35 or so were released, but all were in Japan (except Freedom, but it was made in Japan by Bandai as well and released only in the US). So, like the HD DVD twin, it may be something that stays within Japan. At least with the BD single-sided combos, a full length movie would fit on them easily, so if the DVD forum approves it, then we could see them here someday, as least on an experimental basis.

Also I read that BD two sided combos are not possible because that would make the disc too thick (12mm instead of 11).