need..more..density..

The problem with the HDTV people is that they just didn’t go quite far enough.

We need a multichannel video format.

Why?

Well, first of all, how cool would it be to watch concert videos that displayed several displays – instead of being limited to the videographer’s choice of edits, you could choose for yourself what to look at, either by feeding several monitors or by using some kind of keyboard-driven switching system.

Second of all, and it’s silly for me to talk about this, since it wouldn’t do much for me, but, um, 3d? We can make 3d LCD panels – have been able to for quite some time now. So where’s my 3d video delivery format?

I really should be astounded and happy about what we’ve got – and irritated that not everyone on the planet has access – instead of perpetually wanting more features..

10 Responses to “need..more..density..”

  1. curious Says:

    DVDs already support multichannel video, what do you think the camera-angle button does on your dvd player? Just because noone but the porn industry uses it, doesn’t mean it’s not there ;)…

    it’s crappy, poorly supported, and limited in functionality, but it is there none the less… if there were more demand for multi channel video I’m sure there would be better support and more functionality.

  2. sheer_panic Says:

    Well, um.

    First of all, I want multiple channels of *concurrent playback*, along with dense enough media to cope with 20 channels of a 2 hour video, for example..

    Second of all, I don’t think that many consumers have even thought that far ahead yet.. except those of us who are thinking much, much further ahead into immersive VR enviornments.

  3. sheer_panic Says:

    I think perhaps it would be better if I *didn’t* think that far ahead.. I mean, I should just be happy with what I’ve got, really, eh?

  4. ClintJCL Says:

    Concurrent playback is a function of the player, not the medium. There’s no reason a multi-angle dvd can’t be viewed concurrently, other than the player not supporting it…

    Though, you might want to check out the movie Timecode. It has 4 screens run concurrently through the whole movie. I couldn’t watch it, but I watched all the extras (And that’s the only time that’s ever happened)

  5. sheer_panic Says:

    I don’t think that the DVD format is designed for concurrent playback – you’d have to interleve the four files together, because DVD-ROM read heads don’t seek fast enough to constantly be bouncing back and forth, and I don’t think the format has any provisions for that. I’m just basing this on observations, though, and not on having read the DVD spec, and I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

  6. ClintJCL Says:

    well, see, you are assuming a dvd has to be played in a dvd player realtime. It doesn’t, truly. I haven’t watched one that way in 5+ yrs. It gets ripped to the harddrive. At that point, read speed is a function of your harddrive’s capability. And even if that wasn’t good enough, you could put it on a striped raid array for faster reads, right? 🙂

  7. sheer_panic Says:

    Very good point – at which point we pretty much already have all the software needed to play lots ‘o windows of video at once.

    I don’t rip my dvds because I have enough data to keep track of already.. 😉 How much storage do you *have*?

  8. ClintJCL Says:

    Total Usable Space: 4,957,271,334,912 4616.8G 4.51T
    Total Used Space: 3,865,751,937,024 3600.3G 3.52T
    Total Free Space: 1,091,519,397,888 1016.6G 0.99T
    Percentage Free (Full): 22.02% (77.98% full)

    I rip my dvds, rar them with 8% parity, burn them to data-dvdrs (usually spanning 2, with some leftover space that i always fill with other stuff), and of course burn them twice. only leave them on the harddrive for watching.

    but i watch HDDVD encodes more often now anyway…

  9. sheer_panic Says:

    *nods*

    My backup machine is the only one with 4T of disk – I’ve been thinking of building a new file server with 8 channels of 1T disk, but even then I don’t think I could keep my DVD collection spinning.

    speaking of HD , which do you think will win, blu-ray or HD-DVD? I’ve been holding off on buying any HD DVD equipment until I see someone start to pull ahead of the pack..

  10. ClintJCL Says:

    well that total is across 4 machines actually.. but all drive letters are mostly the same from all machines.

    HDDVD seems to be cheaper, even though BluRay can hold more. I’m seeing more HDDVD “in the wild” than BluRay…..

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