Deconstructing Capacity Claims

As previously mentioned both in my year-old game consoles feature article and in my follow-on writeup on optical storage, the respective per-layer storage capacities of DVD (4.7 GBytes), HD DVD (15 GBytes) and Blu-ray (25 GBytes) are one of the key differentiators between them. Not surprisingly, Blu-ray backers are the ones most vigorously promoting their claimed advantage here, even though dual-layer Blu-ray media is only now beginning to emerge whereas dual-layer (30 GByte) HD DVDs are pervasive at this point.

Nonetheless, what's all this storage space used for? Blu-ray promoters claim that more storage space means more and richer content, for both movies and games, thereby directly benefiting consumers. Reality may be a bit different, though. As both Maury and I have pointed out in the past, most Blu-ray movie discs to date employ the ancient and (particularly key to this discussion) bit-inefficient MPEG-2 codec, versus the more modern and svelte VC-1 (aka WMV) and H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC, aka MPEG-4 Part 10). At the mid-October SMPTE Technical Conference and Exhibition, Sony's Don Eklund, Executive Vice President of Advanced Technologies, claimed (after I repeatedly probed him for a response during the Q&A session that followed his talk) that Sony Studios' decision to go with MPEG-2 was driven by two primary factors:

1) indistinguishable quality differences between MPEG-2 and the other codec options, and

2) the availability of speedy hardware-accelerated MPEG-2 encoders, versus slower software-based VC-1 and H.264 encoding systems.

Eklund echoed these points in this late-October interview and in a recent Widescreen Review Q&A session. Oft-heard industry scuttlebutt refutes his stance, however, and instead suggests two other dominant reasons for Sony's MPEG-2 move:

1) An inefficient codec provides justification, albeit deceptive, for a higher-capacity storage media, one for which Sony happens to own a number of fundamental patents, and

2) Speaking of patents, Sony didn't want to cost-burden its Blu-ray offerings by having to pay MPEG-4 or VC-1 royalties to other companies.

What about games? Again, the Blu-ray backers claim that it's all about the user experience; higher-resolution and deeper-color textures, more complex geometry models, richer and longer video cut-scenes (which many gamers detest, but I digress….), etc. And again, words and deeds may not be in sync. The PlayStation 3's capability to run Linux, coupled with Linux users' ingenuity, has resulted in the ability to rip Blu-ray movies (which thanks to AACS I doubt are playable, just as you can't play a CSS-encoded DVD image off a hard drive….well, not legally at least) and games to the console's hard drive.

As it turns out, PS3 launch title Madden '07 is only 7 GBytes in size; it'd comfortably fit on a dual-layer DVD. Resistance: Fall of Man, a 22 GByte disc image file, is so large only because it contains multiple iterations of the same game for different worldwide sales region localizations, coupled with numerous nonfunctional 'padding' files. This wasn't a dumb decision on developer Insomniac's part, mind you; a single worldwide disc reduces both the company's manufacturing, warehousing and distribution costs. But I highly doubt that those cost savings will get passed on to the consumers, now (the game costs $60) or in the future.