Interactive layer on Blu Ray discs?

[Voidler]

Has anyone heard about this feature of Blu Ray discs? From what I know it's a layer of the disc you can write and access information automatically from somehow (I think) and it's been described to act like a Hard-Drive on a disc. Is this true? It was said that you could download a new trailer or new subtitles or something to the disc on the interactive layer. Would this be able to work on PS3, in games?

If so would it be appropriate to say that many HDD features like DLC and game updates wouldn't need a HDD but could be done directly to the disc?

Correcting misinterpretations I'm sure I am making on the interactive layer would be obliged.

[O.D.S]

i've never heard of such a thing (your source?)

if you mean writing (burning) to a BD, well the PS3 as far as we know does not ship with a burner of any kind.

[JetBlackRX89]

I've never heard of it, but it sounds like a good idea. But it's true that the PS3 and all BluRay players coming to the U.S. probably won't support burning onto a disc. Readers will be expensive enough and writers will be even more expensive for a good while.

I have heard the BluRay comparison to a HDD though in other senses. The most obvious is that it's storage capacity is the same or greater than most people's HDDs today. The second is it's flexible methods of writing data to the disc. It allows data to be read from the disc while other data is burnt onto it, just like a HDD. When you finish burning a BluRay RW, it's not nearly as finalized as a burnt DVD and you're still free and drag and drop more files onto the BluRay or remove files, unlike most cases with DVDs where you have to whipe the DVD totally clean before you can change its contents.

[Voidler]

I read it here I believe

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5309378.html

It would be a cool thing to have on PS3

[rpgamer_2k5]

I was confused about that feature when I read that a year back. Does this mean that the Blu-Ray Drive has writing capabilities? It would be nice, if a 1 gb of space could be re-writable.

[JetBlackRX89]

The PS1 could read CDs but it couldn't write them. The PS2 could read DVDs but it couldn't write them. The PS3 will read BluRays but it won't write them. Things will follow that pattern.

But there are CD and DVD burners out there. And there will be BluRay burners that can worth with the rewritable layer that Voidler talked about. But none of these burning drives will be in the PS3. No burning/writing in the PS3 what-so-ever.

[Danji]

I posted this quite a while back (many many months). The Blu-ray disc player feature of the PS3 necessitates the ability to write to the disc because movies will feature the ability to DL content to the disc allowing updates on subtitles or more features in general.

You are forgetting the fact that the HDD could be used for other things such as Soundtracks and saving pictures of yourself/car to be uploaded to games. Writing vital information to several games on each games disc is a bad idea.

Would be awesome for level downloads and what not though.

[Garfunkel]

so what does that mean in laymens terms ikari?

[Danji]

Oh, it means basically that the only thing feasible to do with that ability to write to the disc is do downloadable content.

If it wrote game saves to the disc then how would you play your saves from renting it on a friend's copy? Exactly.

I was trying to say that the feature of being a blu-ray player makes it necessary for the PS3 to write to the blu-ray so you might see this incorporated in games.

[Domination]

The PS1 could read CDs but it couldn't write them. The PS2 could read DVDs but it couldn't write them. The PS3 will read BluRays but it won't write them. Things will follow that pattern.

But there are CD and DVD burners out there. And there will be BluRay burners that can worth with the rewritable layer that Voidler talked about. But none of these burning drives will be in the PS3. No burning/writing in the PS3 what-so-ever.

That's true, J. But now that I think of it, what would be the purpose for it if it could? First, it'll add to cost and really, no one would ever use it.

Microsoft said something about ripping music or movies directly from a disc and storying them on the 360's HDD.

At the E3 conference, Sony said that you will be able to do the same when they were talking about digital content. But unlike the Xbox 360, the PS3 will come with more than just an HDD for storing saved data, it'll also come with various other types of storage, allowing you to tranfer that saved data directly to a PC and on either (depending on whether you upgrade or not) to a Blu Ray disc, a standard DVD disc, or even devices like the PSP and perhaps Apple's coming iFlick player, too.

[Danji]

That's true, J. But now that I think of it, what would be to purpose for it if it could? First, it'll add to cost and really, no one would ever use it.

Microsoft said something about ripping music or movies directly from a disc and storying them on the 360's HDD.

At the E3 conference, Sony said that you will be able to do the same when they were talking about digital content. But unlike the Xbox 360, the PS3 will come with more than just an HDD for storing saved data, it'll also come with various other types of storage, allowing you to tranfer that saved data directly to a PC and on either (depending on whether you upgrade or not) to a Blu Ray disc, a standard DVD disc, or even devices like the PSP and perhaps Apple's coming iFlick player, too.

But writing to the disc is a basic feature of Blu-Ray players to enable download of new content and the PS3 was announced long ago to be a Blu-Ray player so there is a chance that it will be able to write to the disc (at least movies)

[Domination]

I'm not actually saying it won't. I'm saying the feature would seem rather negligible when you start comparing the flexibility of the system itself.

[JetBlackRX89]

The Blu-ray disc player feature of the PS3 necessitates the ability to write to the disc because movies will feature the ability to DL content to the disc allowing updates on subtitles or more features in general.I haven't read up about this too much, but from the way it seems it isn't exactly a necessity to download new subtitles and whatnot. And even having said that, let's pause and look at the word "download." This implies that somehow the average BluRay player hooked up to the family TV has some way of accessing the internet where it can acquire this additional content. This would make it neccessary for every person with a BluRay player to have an internet connection to get the most out of their BluRay discs. Somehow I don't really see this happening.

What seems more likely is that we won't see this writable layer being used in the first movies to be released on BluRay. Any device that is able to write to a BluRay has the potential to burn a batch of pirated HD movies. Writers will be expensive for the first few years as were DVD burners until recently. However, what does seem possible is that when the price of writers goes down, manufacturers will start putting BluRay RW drives in computers as the new standard. People will pop BluRays in their computer, download the content from their computer's internet connection, burn the new content using their computer's drive, and then enjoy the content when they place the disc in their livingroom BluRay player.

So maybe one day you will be able to put a PS3 game in your computer's drive and download new levels and content, but I don't see the PS3 itself being able to write the content. Even though we're only talking about one layer, it would still be neccessary to have full-blown writing abilities, which will be expensive for the next few years. Besides that, Kutaragi (sp?), in his arguement on X-Box live, admitted many people don't make use of online features on gaming consoles, so only a low percent of PS3s would be online and able to download the content. It's much simpler if people used their computers, which probably already have a net connection, for the writing task and then place the disc in their PS3 to enjoy the new content.

[Z]

one of the main advantages of BD over HD-DVD other than the huge space difference is the 'online interactivity'. what that means exactly, I have no idea. I feel that this may not be as important as the extra storage space so I didn't give it much attention.

about PS3 having a disk burner of any kind; this is a useless feature that will only add cost dramatically, especially if it was DVD or BD disks in question. people have PCs for writing to disks. most will not be using that feature. and with all the other storage options and HDD plus Sony's 'online storage' plan, you can store whatever you like on them.

finally, you can simply link PS3 to any PC via a USB cable. so if you want to copy what ever content on PS3 into a disk, you can- though I don't see why.