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Author Topic: Computers for digital photography  (Read 22387 times)

Ray

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Computers for digital photography
« Reply #20 on: February 11, 2007, 07:36:54 pm »

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The tech is still very immature. Just because it seams like technically good thing, does not mean it will be adopted. If that was the case, we'd all have replaced DVDs with 5GB discs the size of a quarter by now.

Daniel,
You are generally some months (and sometimes years) ahead of the rest of us, in the US. But already some people are watching HD movies from BD discs on their hi rez TV sets in Australia. I think there was an initial problem (and perhaps still is) with the first internal computer BD players/burners being able to play HD movies, and that would be a sign of the immaturity of the technology, but I think that's now been fixed.

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As for competing formats, yes it actually is a bad thing. Neither format offers anything unique with the exception of storage space (BD) and audio support (HD-DVD). The format war is about DRM and licensing deals. This is the whole reason why we have two formats and not one. Competition of products is a good thing. Competition of the formats is only good before it hits store shelves as it gives the industry an opportunity to choose the standards they'll use before they build around it. A format war after it hits the store shelves it does nothing but add confusion, cost and frustration for the consumer. Anything you buy now could very well become obsolete in a short time.

I agree there are bad aspects. There's always the danger of something becoming obsolete. I got caught out myself once. I bought a Syquest drive that recorded onto re-writable 1 & 2GB magnetic media, before I bought my first CD burner. Got my fingers burned there.

My gut feeling is, the huge leap in performance of blu-ray, far greater than the leap in performance of DVD over CD, will ensure it's success. The public might well be confused. They often are. Tough! Get educated! I'm not confused   .

The demand should be great enough to support both formats for perhaps a long time. The fact that already you can buy a player/burner that supports both formats should ensure that no-one is left stranded with material that cannot be read, if (when) one format collapses.

We are actually in a different era to VHS versus Betamax. The media is now being used for both entertainment and general storage of data. The flexibility of the computer increases the ease of cross-format interchangeability.

I'm upbeat about this and currently I'd place my money on blu-ray.

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Currently 500GB drives can be had for $140 USD. 1TB hard drives have been recently announced and should be hitting store shelves very soon at around $400 further dropping the price of other drives. We'll have a single 3.5" hard drive at 1.5TB by Christmas this year at the current rate of development as well. Toshiba, Seagate and Hitachi all have officially stated this won't be difficult to achieve. By Christmas we will also still have a format war of the new optical discs unless something big and completely unexpected happens very soon to change that.

It's not clear here whether you are talking about internal or external drives. The fact is, at the current stage of technological development, blank DVDs are far cheaper per gigabyte than hard drive storage, both internal and external. Since the potential storage of a single BD disc is 200Gb, I think it reasonable to expect that some time down the track, blu-ray storage of data will also become far cheaper than the latest 10 TB hard drives.

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I'm not negative. Just skeptical--and rightfully so--as this whole thing is a big song and dance I've seen many times during my 15 years dealing with computers. Simply put, I'll believe it when I see it.

It's probably going to be a bigger song and dance than you've seen before because the potential of blu-ray is so great. If I can get 200Gb of image files on a single 4 1/2" disc, before I die I could fit the whole of my life's photographic output in a wallet of discs so light I could carry on my person. Of course I expect to live long enough to see the successor of blu-ray and perhaps the successor of the successor, but you get my drift.  
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jjj

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« Reply #21 on: February 11, 2007, 08:32:25 pm »

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That there are 2 competing formats is not all bad. You Americans must realise better than most that competition is generally a good thing.
VHS was quite poor quality compared to Betamax which was nowhere near as good as Philips' V2000. And look which piece of crap won that war! I was given a Philips VCR in a photo comp and even 25yrs later I've not seen a video recorder as good as that. 4 hrs each side, 8 in total on standard play. Freeze frame was perfectly still, with no noise and scaning back and fore was the same high quality, but faster.
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jjj

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« Reply #22 on: February 11, 2007, 08:38:29 pm »

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It's probably going to be a bigger song and dance than you've seen before because the potential of blu-ray is so great. If I can get 200Gb of image files on a single 4 1/2" disc, before I die I could fit the whole of my life's photographic output in a wallet of discs so light I could carry on my person. Of course I expect to live long enough to see the successor of blu-ray and perhaps the successor of the successor, but you get my drift. 
I always find, storage is always playing catch up with data aquisition. Unless you have unlimited money!    As drives get bigger, so do image/video/prgramme files. I'm constantly filling up  hard drives.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2007, 08:39:09 pm by jjj »
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Ray

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« Reply #23 on: February 11, 2007, 08:58:18 pm »

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VHS was quite poor quality compared to Betamax which was nowhere near as good as Philips' V2000. And look which piece of crap won that war! I was given a Philips VCR in a photo comp and even 25yrs later I've not seen a video recorder as good as that. 4 hrs each side, 8 in total on standard play. Freeze frame was perfectly still, with no noise and scaning back and fore was the same high quality, but faster.
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All formats were poor quality. The choice was between the least worse and the least worse did not win. Now the stakes are higher and different. Data storage comes into play and the flexibility of cross-formats made possible with the computer.
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Ray

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« Reply #24 on: February 11, 2007, 09:01:06 pm »

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I always find, storage is always playing catch up with data aquisition. Unless you have unlimited money!    As drives get bigger, so do image/video/prgramme files. I'm constantly filling up  hard drives.
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Bottom line: data on blu-ray will occupy much less space, will be much lighter and more transportable than data on hard drives and will have greater longevity.
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jjj

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« Reply #25 on: February 11, 2007, 10:15:39 pm »

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Bottom line: data on blu-ray will occupy much less space, will be much lighter and more transportable than data on hard drives and will have greater longevity.
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The same thing was said about CDs. Had those fail on me as have many others. And I don't buy cheapies. Plus BR will be more vulnerable to scratches/marks as data density increases.
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Ray

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« Reply #26 on: February 12, 2007, 12:36:25 am »

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The same thing was said about CDs. Had those fail on me as have many others. And I don't buy cheapies. Plus BR will be more vulnerable to scratches/marks as data density increases.
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Perhaps more relevant here would be the comment, 'I've had CDs fail on me during the past 10 years but never a hard drive. I'm still using 10 year old hard drives.'

My first recordable CD was done by Kodak about 12 years ago. 650mb of Photo CD images for A$100 including scanning. My first hard drive bought about 6 months later, an 850mb Western Digital, cost A$850. That first Kodak disc has undergone greatly improved performance over the years. Images now open much faster than they used to   . Do you think that first hard drive is still working and/or serving any archival purpose?

I am perhaps fortunate in that I've never experienced a failed CD or DVD that I know was initially recorded properly and that worked at the time it was recorded, and I have bought cheapies.

Blank CDs in Australia, in spindles of 100, are still cheaper than the cheapest internal hard drives, but not as cheap as DVDs per gigabyte.
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Ray

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« Reply #27 on: February 12, 2007, 12:56:05 am »

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Plus BR will be more vulnerable to scratches/marks as data density increases.
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Whilst it may be the case that unforseen problems turn up, as happened with early CDs for example when it was discovered that the adhesives used on labels sometimes reacted with the disc surface, the requirement for greater protection using harder and more uniform disc coatings is being met.

The following article explains some of the processes.

[a href=\"http://www.tdk.com/consumer/marketing/brd3.html]http://www.tdk.com/consumer/marketing/brd3.html[/url]
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