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.
Great! (Not) (Score:2, Insightful)
Look on the bright side... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least they'll take up less space than the current annoying MPEG2 intros...
Misconceptions, as usual (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:thank god (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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 interesting would be knowing about the API to be specified along with JVM. It could even be DirectX. There's nothing to prevent that.
The API is more interesting as having picked a general purpose machine representation how general purpose will the API be that it uses?
Basically this is worth crap to Sun except for publicity. I thought the JVM specs were open(ish).
Re:thank god (Score:2, Insightful)
-Peter
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.
Re:Great! (Not) (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, my TIVO has the Linux O/S and it's as slow as christmas.
It ain't got anything to do with the UI you idiot, it's the speed of the CPU in the thing.
Re:Great! (Not) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not Java but JVM. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not quote sure why you think "Python is itself a fully interpreted language, so it doesn't count" either. Just because it is fully interperate in it's current, C based implementation doesn't mean that won't change in the future. For instance, if the Parrot VM ever becomes useful then Python will be running under a JIT compiler, just the same as Java. Infact, it would be possible right now to modify Jython to emit Java bytecode, which then could be compiled by the JIT.
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 language sucks.
I've got no choice to but to state that java itself sucks. If it's so goddamned difficult to write GOOD java code, then that's a fundamental problem with the language.
In that case, we would have to say that C and C++ have serious problems. The use of these languages over the past 15-20 years has led to the current problems with buffer overruns, viruses and worms that plague major operating systems and languages.
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 finally put to rest.
Actually I think we are getting muddled up here. You began by saying that Java (as in back end/server side Java) was something we all use and should appreciate. I'm saying no one cares about that and it is highly swappable with any other competing technology.
What other competing technology?
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.
Re:Misconceptions, as usual (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah...and they're gonna use it for annoying flash intros. Just like 99% of the corporate a-holes on the internet.
Will this allow media companies that put flash intros on their websites to put them on DVD's? Yes? Then its a good bet that they'll do it.
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.
Re:games on dvd player (Score:2, Insightful)
http://keye.phk.at/ [keye.phk.at] would translate rather nicely to a dvd player + remote as it was written for mobile phones. we'd only need to cater to a higher resolution.