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DVD across the generations compared - Table courtesy DVD Forum
We speak with DCA on its recent production of traditional DVD media that plays new age HD DVD material

Doug Carson & Associates, Inc. (DCA) announced this week that it has successfully mastered and replicated its first 3X DVD-ROM disc at Sonopress' North Carolina facility using DCA's MIS 8.5 DVD formatter software.

The 3X DVD-ROM format was originally proposed at a HD DVD Forum meeting in Tokyo, Japan in 2005. Using dual-layer, red laser technology, the media format is physically identical to traditional DVD-ROM. 3X DVD-ROM differs from the traditional format in that it includes setting instructions that tell the player to spin the disc three times faster to ensure smooth playback of high-bitrate, high-definition video and audio. Simply put, 3X DVD-ROM has the same data structure and guidelines as HD DVD, but written on 650nm red laser wavelength as opposed to the smaller 405nm blue laser wavelength.

3X DVD-ROM discs, however, are incompatible with older DVD players and must be played back in HD DVD players. 3X DVD-ROM incorporates support for AVC MPEG-4, VC1 and MPEG-2 codecs, along with AACS copy protection. Several manufacturers are looking to 3X DVD-ROM as a low-cost entry into the HD video market.

DailyTech spoke with Eric Carson, Product Manager at DCA, to find out more about this lesser known HD DVD format.

DT: Why would someone prefer to make a 3X DVD-ROM over an HD DVD?

EC: This really comes down to a manufacturer that already has DVD equipment in house and doesn’t want to investment in a new signal processor, LBR upgrades or replication lines upgrades required for HD DVD replication.

DT: What's the cost to produce a 3X DVD-ROM compared with a regular DVD or HD DVD?

EC: The cost to produce 3X DVD-ROM in a factory should be identical to producing DVD-ROM, with the exception of copy protection, since AACS is used as the CP system on 3X ROM (just like HD DVD). AACS license fees are listed on their website (aacsla.com) and can increase the cost of the run dramatically (for very small runs) or imperceptibly (for large runs).

DT: Why has it taken so long to produce a 3X DVD-ROM, especially with the success of HD DVD production?

EC: Honestly, there hasn’t been a lot of attention on producing 3X ROM until lately, as HD DVD & Blu-ray production has been top of mind. However, as smaller & independent content producers & replication facilities want to join the HD video advances, 3X ROM gives them an easy way to make the plunge. Blu-ray doesn’t have a publicly available variant, so many producers & plants are exploring 3X ROM for smaller content (3X ROM can hold about 30 minutes of HD video, so it works well for TV shows or lower time content). FYI, Blu-ray had announced a BD9 format (basically BD video on standard DVD), but no specification has ever been released, and there doesn’t seem to be any forward progress on that front at all.

DT: To your knowledge, are there any 3X DVD-ROM movies or software in development/production?

EC: Yes. In particular, the format seems to be gaining momentum in Asia. We have customers in Taiwan that are exploring 3X DVD-ROM for a very particular client right now.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
By goku on 2/22/2007 9:12:49 AM , Rating: 1
I don't really get when they say they made a 3X DVD rom... I thought read speeds were determined by the drive and not so much by the media??? They've had 16X DVD rom drives for quite some time now so I don't see how producing a disc like this is even necessary or anything like that...


By TomZ on 2/22/2007 9:45:27 AM , Rating: 1
The article said that a marker is written onto the disc to tell it to spin at 3X. So the drive controls the speed, but the marker tells it the correct spin rate. And just to clarify, they're referring to stand-alone players more than PC DVD players.


By InsaneScientist on 2/22/2007 6:14:47 PM , Rating: 3
1x on any optical media (CD, DVD, HD-DVD, or Blu Ray) is equivalent to the data transfer rate required to continuously stream the content that the disk was designed for.

I.E. CDs were designed to play music whereas DVDs were designed to play video, thus the data transfer rate for a DVD (at 1x) must be (and is) much higher than the data transfer rate for a CD (at 1x).

If I recall correctly, a CD at 1x = 150KBps (that's a big B, not a little one) and a DVD is roughly 1.3MBps.

Basically what they're saying with the name (as I read it) is that the minimum transfer rate for this new standard (i.e. 1x for it) is the same data rate as 3x for standard DVD-ROM.


By wolrah on 2/24/2007 1:37:06 AM , Rating: 3
Not 100% true.

1x Blu-Ray = 36Mbps

Blu-Ray Video = 54Mbps

Therefore, to play Blu-Ray video, you need at minimum a 1.5x BD-ROM drive.

Don't ask me why this is, but it's taken straight from the Blu-Ray FAQ at http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_speed


By Mitch101 on 2/22/2007 9:27:55 AM , Rating: 2
I think a lot of Blue Rays looked horrible because they had a tough time producing the 30 gig discs and were putting early release movies on 15gig which made a lot of people wonder why it didnt look any better than a DVD-9. Big mistake as a lot of people started saying Blue Ray looks like crap and that word got around. It has been corrected since but not without some bad publicity.


By qualme on 2/22/2007 11:19:28 AM , Rating: 2
there is no such thing as a 15 GByte Blue Ray disc. HD-DVD has 15 and 30 GByte discs. Blue Ray has 25 and 50 GByte discs.

And the problem was that since BD had so much room, early discs used MPEG-2 compression instead of VC-1 compression which yeilded unsightly HD. All major Blue Ray studios now produce with VC-1, so the image quality is much better and potentially better than HD-DVD (BD supports more colors and wider gamut; HDDVD=24bit, BD=24bit,30bit,36bit,and42bit color; but I don't think any production uses the extra color range yet;not to mention HDMI 1.1 and 1.2 do not support the higher color, you need HDMI 1.3 like the one that comes on PS3's and a TV that supports both more colors and HDMI 1.3)


By walk2k on 2/22/2007 2:25:17 PM , Rating: 1
Wrong. MPEG2 on Blu-ray looks just fine, with enough bit-rate. "Most" discs are not using VC-1, mainly just Warner titles. Of the new codecs, MPEG4 H.264 aka "AVC" is more common on Blu-ray.


By masher2 (blog) on 2/22/2007 5:20:42 PM , Rating: 1
> "Wrong. MPEG2 on Blu-ray looks just fine..."

Your opinion, of course. I've read several stories by professional reviewers which stated otherwise, that the MPEG-2 mastered discs were much "softer", with less image quality, than their HD-DVD counterparts.

And MPEG-2 was not chosen for these because the discs had "enough room". It was the simply fact that early versions of the BD mastering software didn't support anything else.


By Oobu on 2/27/2007 3:41:04 AM , Rating: 2
What makes anyone "professional" for giving an opinion.

This guy gave his, the "professionals" gave theirs.


By BirdDad on 2/23/2007 8:34:10 AM , Rating: 2
no the problem was that the first discs were single layer only and HD used 2 layers snitch or whatever that Adam Sandler movie is was the first to use 2 layer


By ShoooterMcGavin on 2/22/2007 10:54:11 AM , Rating: 2
Since when are all HD-DVD's VC1?
I thought only a few movies were available in this format.


Plays on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players
By lazyinjin on 2/22/2007 10:44:28 AM , Rating: 2
This technology seems to be able to be played(technically) on either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, despite the intentions of HD DVD players. Both BD and HD can handle DVDs as well as AVC/VC-1, so it seems all that would be needed is a firmware upgrade(if at all) to tell the players to spin at 3X, which i'm sure they can do.

Also, this really seems like a point of entry for the porn industry; cheap replication, a low 80-min capacity, requires little to no modification of existing technologies, and can (hopefully) appeal to both BD and HD audience.




By ShoooterMcGavin on 2/22/2007 10:51:58 AM , Rating: 2
What I'm more interested in is the ability to rip a VC1 movie from a HD DVD onto a 3xdvd and have the computer strip the protection (any-dvd HD) so that it will play on any computer.

This seems reasonable to me :P


By MattCoz on 2/22/2007 5:21:05 PM , Rating: 2
You might be able to fit a really short movie on a DL DVD if you strip it down to just the video and regular dolby digital. Figure that could bring it down to about 14Mbps which would allow for about 80 minutes. But honestly, how many movies are that short and worth the trouble of copying?


RE: Plays on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players
By hellokeith on 2/22/07, Rating: 0
RE: Plays on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players
By walk2k on 2/22/2007 2:22:37 PM , Rating: 2
Wrong. "BD-9" (Blu-ray content on dual-layer DVD) is part of the Blu-ray spec.


RE: Plays on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players
By hellokeith on 2/22/07, Rating: -1
RE: Plays on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players
By Tyler 86 on 2/22/2007 3:53:49 PM , Rating: 2
Even though what you say is probably completely true, I would have rated you down, because you're being a dick and could start a flame war over something relatively insignificant.

Next time you have to have someone "shown up", don't hammer in the nail for them, let them do it for themselves.

Don't feed the trolls, intelligent discussion on this only plz...

If there is actually a BD-9 on DVD 9 documentation somewhere, please post a link reference. It could be useful to someone.


By TomZ on 2/22/2007 4:43:21 PM , Rating: 1
I didn't realize this was a moderated forum. :o)


RE: Plays on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players
By masher2 (blog) on 2/22/07, Rating: 0
By hellokeith on 2/22/2007 6:42:18 PM , Rating: 2
Like you, I have "read stories", even from BD insiders, that BD-9 exists. But that is it. No further information, like first hand knowledge of DVD replicators using the process or software officially supporting the authoring of BD-9. And only one account of a BD player barely being able to play (with errors) the media.

Not what I'd call substantial evidence that BD-9 is anywhere near the "maturity" of 3X DVD-ROM.


By Visual on 2/22/2007 7:35:20 PM , Rating: 2
Wrong. Any of the final players will play BD, DVD and CD. The early Blu-ray hardware that was released only in Japan even before the BD specs were finished (mostly recorders though, no BD players that I know of) might not work with red-laser formats but that doesn't matter.

What the hell were you thinking when you posted? Were you actually as misguided as to believe the FUD you're spreading?


Can this be used for gaming?
By bysmitty on 2/22/2007 10:37:14 AM , Rating: 1
Screw movies, I just want to know if the Xbox 360 can make use of this technology?

...bysmitty




RE: Can this be used for gaming?
By miekedmr on 2/22/2007 12:17:27 PM , Rating: 2
Umm... I'm sure the drive in the 360 already goes faster than 3x.
This type of disc is just a minor change so that stand-alone players will know to spin it at a higher rate, it's not some fundamental improvement of the media.


RE: Can this be used for gaming?
By Mitch101 on 2/22/2007 12:36:37 PM , Rating: 2
Wont matter pretty soon you will probably be able to stream any format over to the 360. I havent been watching this that close but I recally most formats can be streamed already just not sure if all the HD ones are supported yet.


RE: Can this be used for gaming?
By Goty on 2/22/2007 12:51:32 PM , Rating: 2
Steam over what, though? The only thing remotely capable of supplying the bitrate needed to stream HD-quality video is ethernet, in which case all you're doing is streaming from a PC. If that was the case anyways, why not just hook the PC up to the TV?


By InsaneScientist on 2/22/2007 6:22:20 PM , Rating: 2
Fiber optic internet lines are more than capable of handling that kind of capacity as well.

Verizon's FIOS, which, to the best of my knowledge is the fastest internet available to consumers (not businesses, schools, and the like) should be able to handle streaming compressed HD video fairly well at the top tier, though not the lower ones.
I'm not saying that everyone has that kind of bandwidth in their home (I know people who are still on dial-up *shudder*), but that is undoubtably where our society is going.

I know a guy in Denmark who's got a 100Mbps fiber internet line going into his house. That could handle HD content without breaking a sweat. IIRC he pays the equivalent of about $70 USD for it.

I would love to have one of those.


RE: Can this be used for gaming?
By bysmitty on 2/22/2007 2:57:11 PM , Rating: 1
My meaning was if it could be used for gaming purposes on the 360. It would be a great answer to Sony's higher priced BD solution for getting XL sized games to the gamer.

...bysmitty


RE: Can this be used for gaming?
By MattCoz on 2/22/2007 5:23:57 PM , Rating: 3
There is no physical difference between DVD and this 3X DVD. They have the same capacity.


x3 speed
By hessenpepper on 2/22/2007 11:08:53 AM , Rating: 1
As I recall cd players would spin at the rate needed to stream audio directly from the cd. When reading tracks closer to the center of the disk it would spin faster.

DVD's are a whole different animal. DVD content is encoded/compressed. The DVD drive (players included) must be able to read ahead and uncompress the video. During high action scenes the bitrate is higher and it needs to read information from the DVD faster just like a pc.

I just downloaded a 720p movie from xbox live and it was about 5G, so it would easily fit on a DVD. Playing that movie from a DVD would actually be reading the data slower than a Superbit DVD.

I'm not sure what the x3 means, but it is not the drive speed.




RE: x3 speed
By TomZ on 2/22/2007 12:31:01 PM , Rating: 2
The article pretty clearly states that the 3X marker on the DVD instructs the player to spin at 3X the normal DVD rate. I assume that otherwise an HD-DVD player would spin it at 1X. Note that they're talking about stand-alone players, AFAIK, not PC HD-DVD readers, but I don't see why the same principle wouldn't apply there. In other words, when playing a DVD movie, what's the point of spinning faster than 1X? And that software could also use the 3X marker to decide to read at 3X instead. Ripping a movie would be a different story, since then you would want to go at the fastest rate possible.

I could be wrong; I'm not an expert in these things, I'm just basing this on what I understand from the article.


RE: x3 speed
By Mitch101 on 2/22/2007 12:40:10 PM , Rating: 2
I just assuming here but spinning at say 16x for everything just produces more noise and if you could tell the unit just to speed along at enough that you can read the disc and maybe a few times over if there is a spec of dust then do it just enough so it doesnt sound like a party favor.


RE: x3 speed
By Rai2121 on 2/22/2007 4:06:26 PM , Rating: 2
3X means that the regular DVD is spun at the native speed of an HD DVD, which happens to be 3X that of a regular DVD. The reason this is important has to do with the Maximum Data Transfer Rate.

If you look at the chart in the article it shows that the MDTR of a DVD is 11.08 Mbps. If a regular DVD-5 or DVD-9 are to be used for HD Video and Audio, the MDTR needs to be the same as the HD DVD standard, which is 36.55 Mbps. This is to ensure smooth playback no matter what Video or Audio codec is used to encode the material.

For example, Quicktime 1080p movie trailers are usually encoded around 10 Mbps, which use AVC/H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10. VC1 for an HD DVD movie will use anywhere from 15 to 20 Mbps to insure there is no macroblocking in the faster paced scenes. MPEG-2 sometimes gets close to 30 Mbps to ensure quality for HD. Along with that there are different rates for the audio used. Dolby Digital Plus can be up to 1.5 Mbps and DolbyTrueHD can be as high as 6 Mbps.

3X DVD-Rom is a standard that ensures that no matter what Audio or Video codec is used an HD DVD player will be able to handle the Data Transfer Rate.


HD DVD on Xbox 360 with a software update
By OddTSi on 2/22/2007 2:34:02 PM , Rating: 2
So this technically means that MS could release a software update for the 360 that would allow all 10M+ 360s to play these DVDs. If MS did that, wouldn't that put HD DVD way ahead? But MS would probably rather sling their video service than release this update.




RE: HD DVD on Xbox 360 with a software update
By killerroach on 2/22/2007 3:25:29 PM , Rating: 1
Other than, if you read the article, it does require an HD-DVD drive to read these disks... an ordinary DVD drive won't suffice. In other words, a 360 has as much chance of playing 3x DVD media as a PS3 or the DVD drive in your computer currently does, which is zero. This goes well beyond an issue that can be resolved from just a simple firmware update from everything else that I've read on this.


By TomZ on 2/22/2007 4:42:38 PM , Rating: 2
I'm not an expert, but I think I see two things here. First is the ability for the drive to actually run at 3X and sustain 3X data transfer rates. Second would be a software upgrade to support the HD-DVD codecs, etc. It seems like if these two criteria were met, it would be possible to play these 3X DVDs in an XBOX. Anybody know whether this is right or not?


By OddTSi on 2/22/2007 6:40:30 PM , Rating: 2
It requires an HD DVD STANDALONE player, since they're the only ones programmed to read these discs. There's nothing physically different with these discs as compared to regular DVDs. The only thing different is the data that's written on them.

You need to read at 3x speed, support UDF 2.5, have AACS enabled, understand the HD DVD file structure, and have the "horsepower" to play movies encoded with VC-1/h.264. The first one isn't an issue unless you're using a DVD-ROM drive from the mid-to-late '90s. The last one isn't an issue for the 360 since we all know it can play these movies from either an HD DVD disc via the add-on and/or the Xbox Live Video store. All the rest are software issues that can be taken care of via an update.


Terminator 2 Extreme Edition
By therealnickdanger on 2/22/2007 10:26:34 AM , Rating: 2
A 1080p24 transfer on DVD-9. Released in 2003. Under $10. There are lots of other WMV-HD DVDs out there...

But there's no substitute for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The new 1080p transfers are almost transparent to the film stock and the audio is lossless. Other than going directly to a 4000x4000 UHD format, we've already got the best solution right in front of us.




RE: Terminator 2 Extreme Edition
By ShoooterMcGavin on 2/22/2007 10:47:48 AM , Rating: 2
Was it really 1080p??
I played it on my computer and the resolution was more like 720i!


RE: Terminator 2 Extreme Edition
By Mitch101 on 2/22/2007 12:34:44 PM , Rating: 2
You had to have a monitor capable of doing something over 1920x1080 but I was able to output it at 1080i and seeing it makes you wonder why we needed another format? But oh well HD-DVD and Blue Ray are here just will take some time before the price drops to a level worth buying although

I may just wait for UH-DVD. 4x HDTV but im sure the studios will spend a trillion on that copy protection and take 10 years after we all have UHDTV. Then watch it get cracked by a commodore 64 the day of its release by a student in russia who had nothing better to do that day.


HD-Divx or WMV9
By Mitch101 on 2/22/2007 8:58:08 AM , Rating: 2
If they only included support for HD-Divx or WMV9 in these players then we could have had 2 hours of HD content on a regular DVD-9 instead of 30 minutes. My IODATA Linkplayer 2 supports those formats and it was only $250.00 about 3 years ago. I know this is not as compressed a format as HD-Divx or WMV9 but about 98% of the people out there wouldnt be able to tell the difference anyhow. Especially those with smaller HDTV's.

Plus I dont have the DRM issue to deal with. Of course my recording options are limited to OTA HDTV tuners and 1080i which is still incredible.




RE: HD-Divx or WMV9
By alifbaa on 2/22/2007 9:34:55 AM , Rating: 2
I agree, and I've never figured that one out either. An MPEG-4 AVC codec of your choice run at about 5Mbps will produce fantastic results at 1080P. As for quality loss from MPEG-2, it can be noticeable in high motion scenes, but I'd be very curious to see if that could be eliminated by encoding to MPEG-4 directly from the source as opposed to transcoding from MPEG-2.
At the very least, I don't understand why they couldn't have used VC-1 on a DVD18 (dual layer, dual sided like you see in widescreen/fullscreen formatted movies) and developed drives with a laser system on each side of the disc. With the thin drives they have today, you could probably fit such a device within a two inch tall device, certainly within three inches. Using DVD18 would have given you about 18GB of space. Quality using VC-1 would have been slightly less than what they are producing now, but maybe a better codec could have been developed. Either way, the drives would be similarly priced to what we see DVD drives go for right now.


like Mini-DVD
By johnsonx on 2/22/2007 2:16:12 PM , Rating: 2
This looks like the HD equivalent of the 'Mini-DVD' that Nero (and presumably other packages) will let you create. A Nero Mini-DVD is DVD formatted video written to a CD. Likewise, this 3xDVD is HD-DVD formatted video written on a regular DVD.

The difference of course is that AFAIK there was no standard for Mini-DVD, and none of the set top players I tried a Mini-DVD in would play it. They recognized the disk as a CD, but didn't know what to do with the DVD format video on it since they'd already decided it wasn't a DVD.

3xDVD support is part of the HD-DVD standard, so player compatibility won't be a problem.

What I wonder now though is if it will be possible to burn HD video to a dual-layer DVD on a computer, and then have it play as a 3xDVD in a HD-DVD player?




RE: like Mini-DVD
By Yawgm0th on 2/25/2007 7:14:16 PM , Rating: 2
MiniDVD is an 80mm DVD with less space than a standard 120mm DVD. MiniDVD can also refer to cDVD, which is a CD written to the DVD spec, but with much less capacity and very little player compatibility. What this article is talking about is not remotely similar to MiniDVDs.

A better comparison would be VCD and SVCD, which will play on all standalone DVD players that meet the requirements to play DVD-Video, but at decreased resolutions. There are no problems whatsoever with VCD and SVCD, and they will play on over 99% of all players out there. That's what this format aims to achieve.


Corrections and clarifications
By hellokeith on 2/22/2007 1:45:28 PM , Rating: 2
"Using dual-layer, red layer technology, the media format is physically identical to traditional DVD-ROM."

that should be red laser

"3X DVD-ROM incorporates support for AVC-MPEG-1, VC1 and MPEG-2 codecs, along with AACS copy protection."

that should be AVC MPEG-4

"WMVHD DVD"

These are not the same as HD DVD-9 (HD9 / 3X DVD ROM). A 3X DVD ROM will play in an HD DVD drive, while a WMVHD DVD will only play in PC DVD drives (or a very specialized standalone player). Also, there are significant video & sound improvements in HD DVD over what was used in WMVHD DVD's.




Blue ray/hd dvd
By Sasuke on 2/22/2007 11:06:36 PM , Rating: 2
so can a blue ray player play cd/dvd/blueray and can it play hd dvd too?




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