DreamSteam signs on to encrypt Blu-ray competitor

[Tattenbach]

who is behind Royal Digital Media?

http://www.prweb.com/releases/DreamStream/RDM/prweb1540224.htm

[david89]

DreamSteam has announced they have signed a deal to encrypt Royal Digital Media's new optical media format, a competitor to Blu-ray.

The company uses military strength encryption and says the protection will be used on commercial motion picture discs.

"DreamStream and RDM's technologies align perfectly, as they both rest exponentially beyond the standards currently being employed," added DreamStream's Chief Development Officer Ulf Diebel.

The protection used will be 2,048-bit encryption. In comparison, Blu-ray uses 128-bit.

RDM's new HD media offers storage capacity of 100GB per disc, a notable upgrade from Blu-ray's 50GB. The company says their discs can also offer display qualities higher than 1080p.

"RDM's format will transform perceptions of high-definition," said Diebel. "RDM's system is able to display the next generation of high-definition: 1920p. With this advancement in technology, true digital cinema will soon be a widespread reality."

A single disc can hold about 4 hours of 1920p resolution video, added the company.

The RDM systems are based on red laser technology, which is much cheaper than Blu-ray's blue laser technology and therefore players and discs are expected to be cheaper.

"The retail prices for RDM's players and discs are expected to equal those of the traditional DVD format, greatly undercutting Blu-ray," said Diebel.

"The mission of RDM is to replace traditional DVD technologies with a comprehensive, next generation HD system," said Eugene Levich, RDM's chief executive officer. "The industry's problem, which Sony has been unable to solve with Blu-ray, is how to transition into HD without destroying the existing DVD industry or gouging the pocketbooks of consumers. We have the solution and can solve this without having to drastically overhaul the entire infrastructure of DVD production."

Should be very interesting to say the least. here link from story http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/15809.cfm

[BDMinus]

They'll have to lock out the pc users if they want to prevent copying and even then some smart pirate group will reverse engineer a stand alone player and copy the movies anyway so this will only affect legitimate users, like all drm seems to do.

[TM2-Megatron]

Seems like a ridiculous move, IMO. Blu-Ray's already won, no competitor is going to take them down now.

And 1920p? Is the person that was quoted just on drugs, or are they implying their discs are going to display something around 4053x1920? The whole "next generation of high-definition" would seem to imply the latter, but nobody will really care as most people who own HDTVs don't even own models capable of true 1080p since they purchased them too early and got stuck with crappy 1366x768 sets.

Anyway, wouldn't it just make more sense to use 4K as the successor to 1080p home video?

And 2048-bit encryption? Paranoid much?

[Tattenbach]

Thanks for the comments but who are these guys? (sounds like the question by Butch and the Kid)...

Are they manufacturing themselves? Where are they from?

Sounds like it took Sony and the rest years of work to develop whatever BD is and now RDM (sorry, never heard of them before) comes out and announces something revolutionary in, rather, no time. Sounds like melamine marketing.

[Roger O]

Well all in all that’s fine but if blu-ray wants to shoot themselves in the foot so be it. We have enough issues getting a retail movies to play properly now. I saw a post earlier stating that blue-ray may not even be around another 5 years. There is no way anyone will run out a pay another $400.00 or more for a player just to play higher encrypted movies. I’ll go back to DVD up conversion first.