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Java to Appear in Next-Gen DVD players 330
Ivan P. writes "Sun Microsystems's Java technology will be built into Blu-ray DVD players, executives said on Monday during Sun's JavaOne trade show, a development that advances the technology in the consumer electronics market for which Sun originally developed the software. 'Java will be used for control menus, interactive features, network services and games,' said Yasushi Nishimura, director of Panasonic's Research and Development Company of America. 'This means that all Blu-ray Disc player devices will be shipped equipped with Java.'" Next stop, annoying Flash intros.
Microsoft vs. Sun (Score:5, Informative)
Uh... what? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Microsoft vs. Sun (Score:2)
Oh, Microsoft IS shipping with HD-DVD... (Score:3, Informative)
Don't believe Microsoft would be so stupid? Read this [cooltechzone.com]!
As the saying goes - Game Over, Man! And not for Sony.
And for cross-reference, Balmer said as much (about the eventual inclusion of HD-DVD) when interviewed by Engadget way back in May. Actually what he really said then was they could go other way, but the link I provided seems to indicate which way they are swinging - and is anyone surprised it's whatever Sony is NOT doing?
thank god (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:thank god (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:thank god (Score:2)
Okay, this is much more likely to happen on the PSP, since everyone is running (roughly) the same code. But if there are obvious enough cracks [seattlewireless.net], even more obscure appliances will be cracked.
Re:thank god (Score:2, Insightful)
-Peter
That'll learn 'em! (Score:2)
I suggest breaking copyright law and aquiring a better copy.
Or a bloody coup... ya know... whichever.
Re:thank god (Score:4, Funny)
Re:thank god (Score:3, Funny)
Gives a whole new meaning to "Every man should know where his towel is".
Re:thank god (Score:2)
Re:thank god (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:thank god (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.dvd-replica.com/DVD/vmcommands.php [dvd-replica.com]
http://www.dvd-replica.com/DVD/vmcmdset.php [dvd-replica.com]
http://dvdlab.wikicities.com/wiki/Commands [wikicities.com]
(brief descriptions of the current DVD VM commands).
Great! (Not) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great! (Not) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great! (Not) (Score:2)
Re:Great! (Not) (Score:5, Informative)
b) Java isn't interpreted anymore... its just-in-time compiled and then executed as native code. A bit of a start-up pause while the classes compile, that's all.
Re:Great! (Not) (Score:2)
Show me a cell phone whose apps are 95% written in Java, and it's reasonably speedy and the battery life doesn't suck.
I'll give you a hint. I work at a company where far too much money has been spent trying to do develop this several different times. CPU's are getting closer to making this worthwhile, but so far I've just seen spectacular failures.
(I might behind the times... there might have been some decent java phones released recently
Re:Great! (Not) (Score:4, Informative)
Java actually wasn't designed for generic 'embedded systems', it was designed for set-top boxes, but it was apparently too expensive for the prospective customers.
So this was Gosling's original intent. I don't know whether it's good or bad that it's now fulfilling that intent. I'd rather see Ruby in the standard, it'd be a lot easier to work with (and cheaper to license).
Re:Great! (Not) (Score:3, Insightful)
These days it is even better than that. There is no start-up pause for compilation. The VM starts interpreting bytecode immediately, while the Hotspot profiler thread starts looking for sections of code to translate to very highly optimised native code.
Nope. (Score:2)
Re:Great! (Not) (Score:3, Informative)
In Tivo's case, it actually is Java. The interface used to be very quick and snappy. Then they decided to push the Home Media Option out to all users, and the same quick, responsive UI has now slowed down to a horrible crawl. The hardware didn't change at all, only the software.
As for the poster making the crack about putting Windows Mobile on a b
Re:Great! (Not) (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with your reasoning is that the quick and snappy UI was also in Java.
The future is now. (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe they're already essentially here, in the form of previews - some of which are unskippable - before you can even get to the menu. (Not Flash, but obviously still something very, very wrong.)
Look on the bright side... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least they'll take up less space than the current annoying MPEG2 intros...
games on dvd player (Score:2, Funny)
Re:games on dvd player (Score:2, Funny)
Re:games on dvd player (Score:2)
Misconceptions, as usual (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Misconceptions, as usual (Score:4, Interesting)
This hostility is so boring and extremely old fashioned and reactionary.
I have seen exactly the same thing in the 70s when developers were complaining about procedural code, and wanted to keep their 'GOTO's.
I have also seen the same thing in the 80s when the idea of using C or C++ in place of assembler was consider too innovative, slow, and demanding of memory.
And again, in the 90s, there was the same reaction against the use of OOP.
Now that procedural development, the use of high level languages, and OOP are now mainstream, the same old arguments are being used against safe and VM-based languages like Java.
Re:Java IS sux (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, because, like, no-one uses E-Bay, banks, stock-markets, airline on-line booking systems.
I'm sure the majority of people couldn't give a hang about these.
Re:Java IS sux (Score:2)
Re:Java IS sux (Score:2)
I am simply pointing out what Java can do.
Other than people who work in that industry no end-user cares a damn about what goes into running enterprise (god I HATE that word) solutions. Stop trying to pretend otherwise. You act like every little pleb out there owes a big thank you to people who write this crap in Java, ASP,
But they do. These systems are designed because they c
Re:Java IS sux (Score:2)
Re:Java IS sux (Score:2)
Re:Java IS sux (Score:3, Insightful)
That is a very easy comment to make, but I don't think that it is fair comment considering E-Bay is possibly the highest volume website ever, and I doubt that the developers of that site are stupid enough to develop the site using a slow technology. I'm afraid the 'slow' argument is getting very old fashioned and rather boring. Java is used for extremely high volume websites, dealing with thousands of transactions every second.
It is time the 'slow' argument was fin
Re:Java IS sux (Score:3, Funny)
Bob
Re:Misconceptions, as usual (Score:5, Informative)
As shown by Linpack benchmarks run last year, Java can run at up to 95% of the speed of optimised C++.
and eats memory like there's no tomorrow.
Embedded Java systems can run in as little as a few hundred KB of memory.
This is going to seriously hinder blu-ray adaption.
Just as the use of Java on mobile phones has (not) hindered the production of Java games and applications for those phones?
A Java implementation means at least 30% more processor power and memory than otherwise needed.
Why not look at the real situation and not present a years-old outdated view of Java?
Re:Misconceptions, as usual (Score:2)
More to the point: many many cell phones these days include PJava/KJava, with a huge number of APIs [nokia.com]. And if you stick a decent graphics library onto a language, even perl can be used to generate very responsive graphics [frozen-bubble.org].
Re:Misconceptions, as usual (Score:3, Informative)
Ok. Let's take an obscure rare example like... E-Bay!
The entire site is written in Java. It is one of the most high-performance, reliable and successful websites ever written. Your bank uses Java. All major stock exchanges (with tens of thousands of transactions per second) use Java.
It takes forever to fire up due to the V
Re:Misconceptions, as usual (Score:3)
That is the remnant of their legacy system. E-Bay discarded their original C++ ISAPI system and moved to Java/J2EE running on WebSphere years ago.
Re:Misconceptions, as usual (Score:3, Insightful)
I picked Linpack because it is a benchmark for raw floating point math performance. This was the final area where (until recently) Java could be criticised as being inadequate in terms of performance. The 2004 Linpack benchmarks show Sun's JDK 1.5 as being within 6% of optimised C++ for floating point numerical work - extremely impressive.
If the majority of java code sucks
The majority of code written in any l
Re:Misconceptions, as usual (Score:2)
My view (and I could be wrong) is that most developers don't care. The zero financial price is the real reason for it's success.
Then there's the fact that it is slow when compared to most other languages which are used for designing large scale systems (C, C++, etc.).
This hasn't been true for years. I don't understand why this myth persists when almost all benchmarks have shown equivalent Java code to be within 80-100% of C,C++ speed for some time.
Re:Misconceptions, as usual (Score:2)
Re:Misconceptions, as usual (Score:3)
import java.applet.Applet;
import java.awt.Graphics;
public class ItsBoth extends Applet {
String message = "";
public void paint(Graphics g) {
g.drawString(message, 50, 25);
}
public init() {
message="It's a floor wax!";
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("It's a Dessert Topping!");
}
}
Scope widening too far? (Score:5, Interesting)
After reading the article, it seems to me that these new media standards are pushing far beyond just new ways to store video. Gosling is quoted as saying "Part of the DVD standard is the players have network ports out of the back". This just smacks of network controlled DRM, and the ability to run java bytecode when the discs boot could allow a whole new range of lockdown facilities on the disks. Not to mention the amount of complexity having network & JVM functionality must be introducing to the end units. Surely even mass production wil struggle to bring such complex devices down to sane prices in the near future.
This would appear to be strongly pushing the bias of practicality toward the opposing HD-DVD camp, while attempting to strengthen Blu-Ray's position as technologically more advanced and superior.
Re:Scope widening too far? (Score:5, Interesting)
i see it as a great thing
Re:Scope widening too far? (Score:2)
Re:Scope widening too far? (Score:3, Informative)
Why?
and the ability to run java bytecode when the discs boot could allow a whole new range of lockdown facilities on the disks.
How is this different from running any other software when the discs boot? The use of Java bytecode has no relevance to lockdown.
Not to mention the amount of complexity having network & JVM functionality must be introducing to the end units. Surely even mass production wil struggle to bring such complex devices down to sane pric
Re:Scope widening too far? (Score:2)
You're kidding, right? Building a unit that can use Java for network connectivity and menus won't be very expensive. Your average TiVo box or PDA has more horsepower than they need for that, and I don't see a lot of problems with mass production of those.
I'd expect next-gen DVD players to enter the market at around a $200 price point anyways.
Seems very unlikley (Score:5, Insightful)
There may be some specialized discs that do something like this but I don't not think it will be mandatory.
Interesting things - how to kill a console (Score:2)
Since the HD-DVD drives probably won't be ready by the time Xbox 360 is available in retail channels, Microsoft said it would ship the console initially with regular DVD drives and then revise the console with HD-DVD drives once they are ready.
Yes, Microsoft is prepared to Osbourne its console!!! Who will buy the launch units when HD-DVD units (which you know some interesting games will make use of later on) will be out later?
I was amazed that Microsoft
The more things change . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
One of my absolute top peeves (Score:5, Insightful)
ARGH. Probably one of my absolute top peeves of the last 10 years of technology. Its enough to make one weep for the comforting sight of a simple, nondescript blinking 12:00.
As for Java, I don't care what it is. I hope to god that interface creation is done through SOME kind of standardized framework or toolkit so at least widgets can at least act, if not look similar, DVD to DVD.
I know I'm asking for a lot tho, because it really seems to me that there are a lot of things in our technilogical world that are done simply because somebody sees a potential way to make money and successfully sells the problem (standardized DVD menus, in this case, the horror) to an industry.
Re:One of my absolute top peeves (Score:5, Interesting)
Publicists should be shot.
Re:One of my absolute top peeves (Score:2)
Re:One of my absolute top peeves (Score:2)
I live in region 4 aswell, but we usually see a lot of DVDs for other regions (the wonders of region-free players!)
A way around... (Score:2)
Re:A way around... (Score:2)
Your player may just not honor the UOP (User Operation Prohibited) part of the DVD spec. But that is a totally cool violation with me.
And the worst bits (Score:2)
Some of the Thomas the Tank Engine videos my three-year old is in love with have 3 seperate, unskippable "We made this!" snippets, along with the FBI warning and two trailers. (At least the latter are skippable.)
Now add in menus that have to go through the entire minute plus animation before responding, it can easily take three minutes from disc insert to viewing the video. Ever waited with a three year old desperate for his fix for that long?
HULK WANT TO SMASH!
Re:One of my absolute top peeves (Score:3, Informative)
Video Help [videohelp.com] is your friend - look up your dvd player and crack it. Chances are good your player is easily hackable to disable the unskippable crap. If yours isn't on the list, at least you now have a list of what DVD players to consider buying when you want to upgrade.
Re:One of my absolute top peeves (Score:2)
Hell, since I moved away from my parents' house they no longer rent DVDs. Yep, back to VHS, because they find DVD menus too confusing and frustrating. They don't care about special features or better image/sound quality, so for them DVDs were only a step backwards. And I'm sure they're not the only ones who feel that w
I Completely Agree (Score:2)
DVD menus should be completely declarative, and the exact layout should be decided and implemented by the player. This would allow for players which can attempt to read the menu captions out for blind viewers, among other benefits. It would also mean that they would by necessity be less flashy and annoying, and they'd work the same for every DVD. It wouldn't work the same on every DVD player, but then people might start shopping for DVD players based on who has the best UI, which would be fine by me.
Re:I Completely Agree (Score:2)
Seriously, I didn't think blind people would listen to movies... seems like a terribly boring thing to do.
Re:I Completely Agree (Score:2)
Re:One of my absolute top peeves (Score:2)
Re:One of my absolute top peeves (Score:2)
Now with Java coming I'm sure we can look forward to a whole new universe of sluggish, buggy interfaces. I forsee a day when it doesn't just take 5 seconds to go from screen to screen, but it there is a maddening delay between moving the selection from one item to another on the SAME screen. That will be SWEET.
(M
Re:One of my absolute top peeves (Score:2)
Re:One of my absolute top peeves (Score:2)
First off I agree that many menus are obnoxious, and not straight forward to the user. There is also a lot of overuse of video clips going into and out of menus.
However, when you purchase a movie/TV show/etc. you are buying a creative piece. You may not consider it art, but the people who create it do. They (and in many cases 'they' refers to the studios more than the producers/directors/actors/etc but the studios do also own creative rights to the work), they have the right to create a who
Re:One of my absolute top peeves (Score:2)
Not Java but JVM. (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyhoo.. what they are saying (which I think is pretty cool) is that the movies will be scripted by programs "written in" java byte codes. Who cares what the language is (java is a language editors). It could even be Flash something or other, or C++ compiled on Windows as long as the output is JVM byte codes who cares. This _could_ lead to very interesting development tools and quite imaginative use of next gen disks.
More int
Re:Not Java but JVM. (Score:2)
You sure you're not thinking of
Re:Not Java but JVM. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not Java but JVM. (Score:3, Informative)
While there are a number of ways to generate Java bytecode from code that is not Java, these ar
Re:Not Java but JVM. (Score:3, Insightful)
Untrue. The Java-GCC backend can be used now, for significant program. For instance, Fedora 4 ships the Eclipse IDE compiled using GCC.
Untrue. JDK 6.0 will include an API to use scripting languages directly, and will include a Javascript-on-Java implementation. There is also Project Coyote (scripting languages on Sun's Netbeans IDE),
My DVD player already has Flash. (Score:4, Informative)
The playstation 2 already has a flash player in it, used by various games for their menu systems among other things.
I guess game companies try not to annoy their customers, so Flash gets used reasonably there.
Re:My DVD player already has Flash. (Score:2)
I should have phrased that as "There is a flash player available for the playstation 2", but it isn't built-in.
Apparently, it was used in "Star Wars Starfighter" ( http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/200
Java DVD Player + network connection + Azureus (Score:3, Interesting)
Could be much nicer for DVD content creation apps (Score:5, Informative)
At the very least those games they always throw on kids DVD's might not be so awful to play if they do not have to be shoe-horned into a system never really designed for games.
More integration... (Score:2)
This convergence thing is really starting to go too far. Does anyone else agree, or do people actually want all your products to do a gazillion things?
They already have games today (Score:2)
I use the term loosely because the games are hampered by the fairly horrific need to use the DVD menu system to play them. This makes for really annoying games, even if you like the basic concept.
In the DVD release of National Treasure, they had actually kind of a cool little movie/game, that was trying to interactively demonstrate different forms of encryption. It had some kind of interesting activities
DVD's With Really Cool Win95 UI (Score:2)
It sounds like they want some kind of time shifting device that's network enabled. Let's see, time shifting? Yup done. Now networked media device? Yup done.
So that means my mega-corporation will make a device that will be higher priced that no one will buy because the price is too high and the feature set too vague! "Let's
Glad to hear it (Score:2)
So... are there details anywhere? (Score:2)
Finally... (Score:2, Funny)
I can see it now (Score:3, Funny)
"NullPointerException? WTF?"
now will someone port MAME to java? (Score:2)
In 2020.. (Score:2)
Two reasons why I object to Timothy (Score:5, Insightful)
Next stop, annoying Flash intros.
Right... the processor that will run the JVM, if not a specific Java chip, then the DVD will certainly have a chip capable of running an embedded flash player.
Now. I have to shout sorry:
FLASH IS A DISPLAY / VECTOR ANIMATION TECHNOLOGY.
1) It has nothing to do with Java - THIS news is AWESOME and I look forward to being able to write my own programs to take screen caps, and write a whimsical comment while the player is playing, and email it to a friend. Or keep a log of my movies and ratings as I watch them, or write a book mark sharing XML format, and wire it to the remote, so you can bookmark film locations, and plug your own audio commentary on them. (think about wedding videos / holiday video, and you will see why this is nice - but also for mainstream stuff)
2) So, Java can do games and animation, and even there are Java flash players, and SVG players, and MPEG4 players. Just because the technology is there, doesn't mean annoying 'Flash' (unrelated) intros.
3) *ahem*
What is more annoying is the abundance of unskipable content on DVD's, and this has nothing to do with either of the unrelated technologies that you have mentioned.
If this can be screwed off, I would be happier, I still haven't had time to look for a firmware hack for my DVD player.
Anyway.
This is ancient news and lousy planning (Score:4, Informative)
Every DVD player comes equiped with its own CPU, and even its own assembly code that is a part of the DVD-Video specification. This is already a part of the DVD-Video spec from even the very beginning. The problem is that Hollywood (together with the other members of the DVD Consortium... now DVD Forum) deliberately crippled the CPU so that it could in reality do very little. I've described this CPU has having 26 registers, no RAM at all, and 1 TB ROM address space, with incredible video capabilities but lousy rendering capabilities (sub-pictures).
Frankly, I think the DVD Forum blew their chance at having a cheap consumer entertainment computer back when the original design was put together back in the mid 1980s. If the CPU would have even had just a little bit more computing power, including a small (even 64 K) amount of RAM and text rendering capabilities (nothing new or even expensive to implement back when the design was being put together) they would have had not only a movie playing machine, but a computing platform that would have been more widely distruted than the X-Box or Playstation.
Even before the DVD-Video 1.0 spec came out (it was at a beta 0.98 when I mentioned this) I was suggesting to the design committee for DVD-Video to incorporate Java into the specification. Even then (about 10 years ago) I felt that some sort of programming environment would have been both easy to implement and offer to make DVD-Video something well beyond a simple movie playback box. Obviously my idea fell on deaf ears. Too bad I didn't patent the idea (perhaps I should have).
The DVD Forum will probabaly screw this one up as well, but at least they are going down the right general direction. IMHO there is no reason to make it specific to the Blu-ray format except as a splash to make the new generation of players seem to have more capabilities. Existing DVD discs certainly could be using this same capability, and there is plenty of space on a DVD for some binary (even raw source code) programming instructions, with a full two hour movie.
Cool applications of this (Score:4, Interesting)
A $50 box that is quiet, plugged into my TV, plugged into the Internet, and can run custom code from a custom disk that I burn?
Possible applications anyone?
A cheap slave box with a custom Java code that functions as an alternate type of MythTV front end, that streams video on demand from a MythTV backend?
Games? (Using only the remote control as an input device?)
A general porpoise Java app could be written that talks to a server, where the server "drives" the user interface on the TV screen. This general purpose DVD only needs to be released once. Applications can be written on your Linux box that present any type of user interface for any purpose. Home control menus and applications, for example. Show me the latest Slashdot headlines. (But the custom code for this is on the Linux box, the DVD is just a general remote driven user interface toolkit.) Show me the current weather map. Show me the front door security camera.
Re:Ethernet port (Score:2)
Re:Ethernet port (Score:2)
Re:Ethernet port (Score:2)
You know, not every household has a ethernet hub directly connected to the internet. What makes you think it would require that? Now, if they come standard with phone jacks, perhaps you may have something to worry about.
Also, the java VM may be part of the standard. That means, to play HD dvd content, you will need to use a player that adopts the standard. Is your $100 DVD player going to play the 40GB+ HD content dvd's? I don't think so.
Re:The only appliances that are fit for Java: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Java and Linux... (Score:2)
Show me a version of Linux that can run within a few hundred kilobytes of memory, like embedded Java, and I might agree you have a point.
Re:Java and Linux... (Score:2)
The Java that runs E-Bay - the most profitable website ever. I think you may have to concede the point.
Re:slashdot finally through (Score:2)
Better not buy any new mobile phone then. Virtually all of them come with Java.
Re:ARG (Score:3, Informative)
It may already be there:
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164