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NHK develops 15,000 rpm Blu-ray Disc system

Japanese company NHK has developed a professional Blu-ray Disc recording system that can reach approximately 7x consumer BD-R speeds. The rotations per minute limitation for current consumer Blu-ray systems is maxed out at approximately 10,000 rpm. NHK exceeded the current limitation with the help of a new type of flexible BD-R Disc that is a mere 0.1 mm thick, which was jointly developed with Ricoh Corporation, a long time innovator in optical disc technology. In order to playback these new flexible discs inside of a reading device, a new stabilizer plate was developed and added to the player hardware in order to hold the discs steady. Here is some more information from the PC World article.

“Engineers at the Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) of Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), are working on an optical disc recording system based on consumer Blu-ray Disc technology that can spin as fast as 15,000 rpm without these problems and demonstrated it last week.

It’s needed because broadcast quality HDTV signals of the type NHK records stream at 250M bps (bits per second) making a fast-spinning optical disc a necessity. A 1X Blu-ray Disc records at 36M bps so the new system is equivalent to 7X speed.”

While this sounds like an interesting development, I have to wonder why they couldn’t use a standard Blu-ray system if they are only going up to 7x? We have already heard about 8x BD-R media by Moser Baer and consumer Blu-ray burners are expected to reach 12x / 10,000 rpms at some point. With this in mind, the NHK system doesn’t sound so great afterall (unless the consumer 8x BD-R is Z-CLV and the NHK Blu-ray system is CLV). On the other hand, perhaps NHK will be able to refine their system with time and exceed the speeds of consumer Blu-ray systems, possibly hitting faster write speeds than 12x? Even if this new system was able to achieve greater speeds, its’ “purpose” is to record broadcast HD signals and a speed of 7x BD-R is sufficient enough for that. Looking at all of this, I am not very impressed with this new NHK system.

8x Blu-ray Recordable (BD-R) developed by Moser Baer

Moser Baer India has developed a new Blu-ray Disc Recordable (BD-R) media that is capable of reaching 8x recording speeds. This is twice the speed of the fastest, current available Blu-ray burners, which can now write at 4x maximum. The new discs are 8 times faster than the current HD DVD-R technology, which is still snailing along at 1x. It is also worth noting that HD DVD burners are still extremely rare within the consumer computer market. The new 8x BD-R technology was developed jointly with OM&T, which is the former Optical Research and Development arm of Philips and is now part of Moser Baer.

How fast is 8x BD-R?
An 8x BD-R disc will record at approximately 36 MB/s maximum, which should translate to under 15 minutes for a fully written 25GB single layer BD-R. The total writing timeframe will depend upon the recording technique used. A CLV (Constant Linear Velocity) writing technique will result in a faster total completion time (~12 min) compared to a Z-CLV (Zone Constant Linear Velocity) technique. We will have to wait and see what type of writing technique is utilized by the first 8x BD-R burners.

These faster BD-R recording speeds will be warmly welcomed by computer enthusiasts and Blu-ray consumers, allowing for even faster backups of Blu-ray movie titles. It seems that Blu-ray recording speeds are increasing at a faster pace than DVDR speeds were developed. Blu-ray Recordable drives are far from being widely adopted due to the high price points (among other factors) and we are already seeing recordable disc manufacturers reach near the maximum theoretical speeds for Blu-ray Recordables. Source: TechShout via CDRLabs.

Hitachi-Maxell develop 200GB, 8 layer Blu-ray Disc
Hitachi-Maxell of Japan have developed an 8 layer Blu-ray Disc with 200GB of storage capacity. Blu-ray already has the layer advantage, but an eight layer disc would provide a massive capacity that the competing HD DVD format would never be able to match.

“Hitachi, Ltd. has developed an optical technology for use with an optical disc device to amplify the reproduction signal output from a photodetector by ten times. In general, an optical disc with multiple recording layers has a problem in that the reproduction signal tends to get weaker. It is expected, however, that this bottleneck can be solved by the latest technology. The company claims that it is possible to efficiently detect the reproduction signal of a Blu-ray Disc with a capacity of 100-200 GB on a single surface which is obtained by the provision of four to eight recording layers, for example.”

Hitachi added three new enhancements to the current Blu-ray optical system to make the new 8 layer Blu-ray Disc technology possible.

1) Several new optical parts were added to the original system.
2) Polarization differential detection was added.
3) Variation in signal gain was reduced.

An optical disc the size of a standard DVD, but with 200GB of capacity would be highly welcomed by many technology enthusiasts, but this format won’t see the light of day until 2009 at the earliest. Even when it does arrive on the market, you have to wonder just how expensive the discs will be due to lower manufacturing yield rates on multi-layer discs. This 8 layer Blu-ray Disc format might not ever be an affordable option for consumers or movie studios. Thanks to Steve for also sending this in. Source: Tech-On! via CDRLabs.

Samsung Blu-ray player problems with enhanced mode

I found this video over on YouTube from a person that was experiencing Blu-ray player problems with his Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player. In particular, he is experiencing playback problems when trying to access the “Enhanced Mode” of the Blu-ray Disc movie title, The Guardian (a Buena Vista film). After clicking on the “Enter Enhanced Mode” option, the Blu-ray player hangs on a loading bar animation. So who cares? Well the video author has some enjoyable music playing during the whole video and even chimes in with some pretty funny subtitles. Check it out!
[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/WBGwOsnZFME"][/gv]
There have been many Blu-ray playback problems reported on the Samsung BD-P1000 standalone Blu-ray player, but many of these problems have been fixed via a firmware update, which can be obtained from Samsung. Even after the firmware update, it appears there are a few additional problems (such as enhanced mode) that Samsung will need to address with this unit, hopefully with yet another firmware update. Please note that the playback of the main movie works just fine on the Samsung player, only enhanced mode has problems.

HD torrents on BitTorrent update
Back in January, I took a look at some new hd torrents appearing on ThePirateBay. These hd torrents in particular were ripped from HD DVD movies via a (then) recently released, open source tool named BackupHDDVD, which can circumvent AACS protection. Since that time, many new tools have been released, which can also rip and backup HD DVD and even Blu-ray discs. The most popular of those tools being AnyDVD HD and DVD Fab HD Decrypter. So, now that all of these new tools are available, how many hd torrents will there be floating around on the BitTorrent trackers? My guess is a LOT more, but let’s take a look.

HD Torrents on ThePirateBay.org

I did a quick search for “Blu-ray” on ThePirateBay.org (one of the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker websites) and it resulted in 34 hits within the video category. I took a quick screenshot of some of the results and edited the image to remove whitespace and undesired columns.



That’s quite a lot of ripped Blu-ray movie torrents. A search for “HD DVD” in the video category produced even more hits, resulting in 141 torrents! Don’t be fooled by the label @CHINA HDTV appearing on all of the torrents. These are mostly English Blu-ray videos, but they were added by the PirateBay user named “CHINA HDTV”. Apparently he labels his torrents with his username. A search for Blu-ray titles on TorrentSpy.com came up empty, but a search for HD DVD turned up approximately 10 HD DVD rips. Looking at the TorrentSpy results, it is clear that the PirateBay has a much larger selection of hd torrents.

The future of hd torrents

Will these Blu-ray and HD DVD torrents continue to grow in numbers? Definitely. As more and more consumers acquire Blu-ray and HD DVD optical drives, more and more Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD titles will be ripped and then shared as hd torrents on the net. But just because these hd torrents are available, it doesn’t mean that most pirates will actually care about them.

Keep in mind that this is just a quick snapshot of the current available hd torrents listed on a couple of the public torrent trackers. There are other elite, non-public communities such as HDBits.org that specialize in high definition content that will most certainly contain very large listings of hd torrents.

Backup HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs Easier!

If you would like an easier method for ripping, copying or backing up HD DVD or Blu-ray Discs, you can use AnyDVD HD. AnyDVD HD allows you to copy HD video files off of your discs using Windows Explorer and has an easy to use interface with no command line complications. You can download a free 30 day trial of AnyDVD HD from here.

HD DVD player promotion $100 instant rebate
A new Toshiba press release provides details on a new $100 instant rebate on the purchase of Toshiba HD DVD standalone players. This promotion is strategically timed for the Father’s Day holiday and the apperance of The Matrix trilogy on HD DVD, which is being released on May 22nd.

– From May 20 through June 9, movie enthusiasts that purchase an HD-A2 HD
DVD player will receive a $100 in-store instant rebate.

- From June 10 through June 16, consumers that purchase any Toshiba HD DVD
player will receive a $100 in-store instant rebate. For individuals
seeking the complete home theater package, an HD DVD player can be
purchased with any Toshiba 42″ (measured diagonally) or larger HDTV for
a $200 in-store instant rebate.

5 Free HD DVD’s are still included
Along with the $100 instant discount, Toshiba is still offering FIVE free HD DVD’s (after mail-in) with the purchase of one of their HD DVD players. All of these promotions combined along with the release of the Matrix trilogy make it EXTREMELY tempting for any High Definition fan to go out and buy an HD DVD player. Rumor is that Amazon.com will also be participating in this promotion. If so, consumers will be able to purchase the Toshiba HD-A2 at $210 ($310 – $100 instant rebate) and the HD-A20 for $260 ($360 – $100 instant rebate) on Amazon. You can read the full press release here.

DVD Fab Decrypter is now DVD Fab HD Decrypter


Checking the DVD Fab website today, I noticed that DVD Fab Decrypter has been discontinued. DVD Fab Decrypter has been rolled into DVD Fab HD Decrypter. This means that you can rip and decrypt all your DVD’s, HD DVD’s and Blu-ray discs using one free-ware utility. The combination of both products make sense from a development standpoint, as now there will be only one software package to update instead of two.

Update to the latest DVD Fab HD Decrypter
If you are running a beta version of DVD Fab Decrypter or an older version, you might not have been notified of the latest update, even if you are using the “Check for new version automatically” option, which is enabled with the default installation. I had one PC running an old 3.0.0.0 beta 5 version of the software, and an automatic update notification was not appearing.




As of this posting, the latest version is DVD Fab HD Decrypter 3.1.1.2, which was released on 05/12/2007. Download the latest version here to ensure the best performance of your DVD Fab HD Decrypter software.