Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette,
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, sending across from me as usual as
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. We're living in a material world.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not going there. It's because our our
Speaker 1: guest producer, Liz called me a prima madonna, just because
Speaker 1: I said that I can't work like this and I
Speaker 1: would be in my trailer. By the way, my trailer
Speaker 1: is underneath my cubicle. That explains the trash. Yeah, it does,
Speaker 1: lots of trailer trash. You know what, Before we get
Speaker 1: into a total rat hole here, I think we could
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some pumpkins. Pumpkins, Yes, all right,
Speaker 1: what do you like to when you look at a pumpkin?
Speaker 1: What do you think? I'm thinking I prefer it that
Speaker 1: way and not as a pie. Really, I think I
Speaker 1: would love to see that move at a high velocity
Speaker 1: and splat into the ground as hard as possible, preferably
Speaker 1: as far away from its origin possible. In fact, I
Speaker 1: spend hours thinking of ways to propel a pumpkin through
Speaker 1: mechanical means, through the air, onto the ground and splat
Speaker 1: into a thousand pieces. Alright, then, so what is the
Speaker 1: best way to achieve that? Well, it turns out the
Speaker 1: best way to achieve it is to watch people who
Speaker 1: already know what they're doing. And you can do just
Speaker 1: that because the Science Channel has two television shows, the
Speaker 1: Road to Punkin Chunkin and punkin Chunking, that are airing
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving Day, which would be November at eight p
Speaker 1: m on the Science Channel. Yes, eight p m is
Speaker 1: the Road to Punkin Chunkin. Nine pm is punkin Chunkin.
Speaker 1: You two can watch as pumpkins do what they were
Speaker 1: born to do, fly through the air and smash into
Speaker 1: the ground. Ah. Yes, and hopefully noone will make pie
Speaker 1: out of them afterwards, I would hope, not sowing the
Speaker 1: seeds of destruction. You might say, yes. Indeed, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that, but you might I would. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's move on. Today's topic actually comes to us courtesy
Speaker 1: of a little listener mail. This listener mail comes from
Speaker 1: Brian in Vegas, Viva Las Vegas, Brian, He writes, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: love the podcast. Got a question for you, guys, what
Speaker 1: is the difference between Blu ray and DVD? I own
Speaker 1: both but can't tell the difference by looking at them.
Speaker 1: Is that the way they encode the disks? Brian and Vegas. Well, Brian,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a bit about DVDs and a
Speaker 1: little bit about Blu ray and what the differences and uh,
Speaker 1: and you know why there's two different sets of all
Speaker 1: the movies that you want to see in your local
Speaker 1: movie store. And if we're lucky, we can manage to
Speaker 1: get through the entire thing without quoting an Austin Powers movie,
Speaker 1: because it all comes down to one simple thing. Freaking lasers.
Speaker 1: Just get it all the way. Look, I got the
Speaker 1: hairstyle for Dr Evil, so I'm just gonna go with it. Yeah, lasers,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. So first of all, before we before we
Speaker 1: really dig into it, let's talk a bit about digitally
Speaker 1: encoding information onto a disc format. This applies to compact discs, DVDs,
Speaker 1: blue rays, and even the limited HD DVD, also DVD audio, yeah,
Speaker 1: other other formats as well, but really, any kind of
Speaker 1: digital encoding upon a disc um So it's sort of
Speaker 1: similar in a way to the analog way of encoding
Speaker 1: sound on a vinyl disc, only in the sense that
Speaker 1: you have to spend the disk and and a reading
Speaker 1: mechanism goes across the disc and picks up information. Now
Speaker 1: in the case, yeah, I wouldn't say that's completely that
Speaker 1: that's the only way. Well, maybe not, but we're talking
Speaker 1: the difference between digital and analog. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: There are a lot of differences. Well actually yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the main one being nothing actually touches the disk,
Speaker 1: and in in the newer polycarbonate discs. But in both
Speaker 1: cases it is the surface of the disk which is
Speaker 1: uh has has has a texture. It doesn't look like
Speaker 1: a DVD has texture, but it does, right, So the
Speaker 1: DVD has these tiny little bumps. It's there. Usually you
Speaker 1: hear about DVD pits. The pit is on one side
Speaker 1: of the DVD, but the side that is actually read
Speaker 1: by the freaking laser beam that side. It's more of
Speaker 1: a bump. And these bumps are tiny, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: tinier than microscopic. We're talking on the nanoscale tiny, which
Speaker 1: is why they appear flat to us. Yeah, of course
Speaker 1: you can. You can try to smash them out with
Speaker 1: a hammer, but I wouldn't recommend it because that will
Speaker 1: break your dvdsy So, um, we're talking that, like I said,
Speaker 1: in the nanometers range. Uh, the I'll tell you right. So,
Speaker 1: so a typical bump on a DVD would be about um,
Speaker 1: three and twenty nanometers in width, like like wide, which
Speaker 1: is pretty narrows long, which is also not that long.
Speaker 1: These are tiny, tiny little bumps, and uh, a red
Speaker 1: laser reads these bumps. Yeah. The DVD players and and
Speaker 1: c D audio players use red lasers to read the disks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So here's here's what's happening. A laser gets the the
Speaker 1: DVD player or CD players shoots the laser that gets
Speaker 1: reflected by these different little bumps and by the smooth
Speaker 1: spaces between the bumps, and the difference in that is
Speaker 1: what is interpreted by the machine as bits and bites,
Speaker 1: and that in turn is what ends up being converted
Speaker 1: into the video and audio that you experience when you
Speaker 1: PLoP a DVD or Blu Ray into a DVD or
Speaker 1: Blue Ray player and you turn your TV. The difference
Speaker 1: is a matter of size, right, because a Blu ray
Speaker 1: player can read bumps that are much much smaller than
Speaker 1: a DVD player. And why is that? It's because of
Speaker 1: freaking lasers. Yes, the blue ray actually got its name
Speaker 1: from the fact that it uses a blue laser. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the blue ray right right. And uh, it has
Speaker 1: a shorter wavelength of light wavelength. So that's that's the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Because it has a shorter wavelength, it can
Speaker 1: read information in a smaller track. Right. So, um, we're
Speaker 1: talking about like like when you think of the spectrum
Speaker 1: of colors, that's what we're talking about, the wavelength. So
Speaker 1: roy g Biv. Although I think they took out the eye,
Speaker 1: didn't they. I don't think there's no longer an indigo.
Speaker 1: I think it goes is blue to violet now because
Speaker 1: there was a discussion about how indigo and violet are
Speaker 1: too close to one another to be considered separate. I
Speaker 1: might did the school that I am familiar with they
Speaker 1: are still teaching. Yeah, but we're in Georgia. So Roy
Speaker 1: g Biv. The the color what a what a dirty look?
Speaker 1: I got the Uh? I went to school in Georgia too.
Speaker 1: But the colors go from the longer wavelengths to the
Speaker 1: shorter wavelengths, So a red laser has a longer wavelength
Speaker 1: um than a blue laser. Uh. So the red lasers
Speaker 1: wavelength is about six d and fifty nanometers or rnometers
Speaker 1: if you prefer, I do prefer nenometers. I'm saying nanometers.
Speaker 1: And then the blue laser has four hundred and five
Speaker 1: four and five nanometer wavelength. So that means that the
Speaker 1: blue laser can actually focus on a smaller bump than
Speaker 1: the red laser. Thus you are able to fit more
Speaker 1: bumps and uh and the flat tracks between bumps on
Speaker 1: a blu ray DVD than you would on a regular DVD.
Speaker 1: What this translates to for you and me mean is
Speaker 1: the dig capacity of storing a high definition film versus
Speaker 1: a standard definition film. Right, so high definition audio and video,
Speaker 1: why should just say high definition video? High definition audio
Speaker 1: doesn't really mean anything. High definition video takes up a
Speaker 1: lot of space, so much space that I A. If
Speaker 1: you want to try and pack more than an hour
Speaker 1: and a half of of a high definition content greater
Speaker 1: than seven lines of resolution, you're gonna need something besides
Speaker 1: a regular DVD, because even with video compression, it just
Speaker 1: can't do. Oh, I can't do it uncompressed, and um,
Speaker 1: even with video compression, it can't hold that much information. Really,
Speaker 1: a single layer DVD only holds four point seven gigabytes.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love only because I'm that's a
Speaker 1: lot of information. Yeah. I think back to I think
Speaker 1: back to the days of CDs coming out and thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: on one disc, I can hold that much information? Who
Speaker 1: would ever need more than? Right? I mean seven hundred megs.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine filling up more than a hundred at
Speaker 1: a time. My first hard drive was forty megs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think mine might have been run around that same size.
Speaker 1: And before that didn't have a hard drive at all.
Speaker 1: It was all on floppy disks. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a single layer of Blu ray in comparison, holds twenty
Speaker 1: seven gigabytes, and that's more than two hours of high
Speaker 1: def video or standard. Yeah. But the thing, the thing is,
Speaker 1: though DVD is only really equipped to do right well,
Speaker 1: I mean it can do seven twenty, It can do
Speaker 1: more than that or to, but it can't hold as
Speaker 1: much information. So, in other words, it can it can
Speaker 1: do it, it just has to. It's not gonna it's
Speaker 1: not gonna have as much. So like you can do
Speaker 1: the higher resolutions, but you have to. But you because
Speaker 1: that requires more information or more storage space, you can't
Speaker 1: store as much of it as you could on a
Speaker 1: blue ray. So again, DVD four point seven gigs, Blu
Speaker 1: ray twenty seven gigs. That's single layer on either case.
Speaker 1: Now you can double layer these discs. Uh. So a
Speaker 1: double layer Blu ray would hold up to fifty four
Speaker 1: gigabytes of data. Um. Now, when you're double layering, it's
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting thing. You've got two different tracks
Speaker 1: going uh along a disc. And here's another interesting thing,
Speaker 1: another thing that's different between uh, the digital discs and vinyl.
Speaker 1: With vinyl, you put the needle on the outer part
Speaker 1: of the record and it naturally works its way through
Speaker 1: the groove to the center. All right. With these digital discs,
Speaker 1: the laser, the freaking laser starts in the center and
Speaker 1: works it's outward toward the edge. Now, can you think
Speaker 1: of anything that could cause an issue as a laser
Speaker 1: moves from the center of a disk toward the outer
Speaker 1: part of a disk? I mean, other than like a
Speaker 1: scratch or a dog here, right, I'm just talking about
Speaker 1: a natural thing that will happen as you're moving from
Speaker 1: the center of a disk to the outside of a disk. Like,
Speaker 1: what happens to the speed of the data that's going
Speaker 1: by as you as your laser moves outward, Because yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna get slower. Well, the disk has to
Speaker 1: move slower. See, the problem is that it's gonna the
Speaker 1: data itself will actually move faster because you're talking about
Speaker 1: revolutions per second. Okay, if you keep your revolutions per
Speaker 1: second constant, then the data is going to stream by
Speaker 1: much faster toward the edge of the disk than it
Speaker 1: would towards the center. Say yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And if you guys are having trouble imagining this, uh,
Speaker 1: just get a piece of paper, put something put like
Speaker 1: a little coin around, like maybe towards the center of
Speaker 1: the paper, and maybe another one toward the edge of
Speaker 1: the paper, and turn it one revolution. Now, in that
Speaker 1: one revolution, both coins just made one circle, but the
Speaker 1: one on the outer edge had to go a greater
Speaker 1: distance in that same amount of time. Therefore, the one
Speaker 1: on the outer edge is going faster. Okay, then, so
Speaker 1: in order to compensate for this, DVD players and Blu
Speaker 1: ray players actually physically slowed down the spinning of the
Speaker 1: disk as the laser moves towards the outer edge. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it automatically knows where where the laser is reading
Speaker 1: and adjusts the speed of the disc spinning. Right, because
Speaker 1: the arm that holds the freaking laser is always going
Speaker 1: to be in a specific location and that dictates how
Speaker 1: fast the disk needs to spin. Now, um with a
Speaker 1: double layer The reason why I brought this up is
Speaker 1: because with a double layer disk, it is possible to
Speaker 1: have one layer of information go from the inner edge
Speaker 1: to the outer edge of the disk, right, or from
Speaker 1: the center to the outer edge, I guess I should say,
Speaker 1: And then the second layer could start at the outer
Speaker 1: edge and work its way back into the center. And
Speaker 1: in that case, you would need to speed up the
Speaker 1: disk as it started getting closer and closer to the center,
Speaker 1: otherwise it would not be turning fast enough for it
Speaker 1: to read the information properly. Right. In other words, DVD
Speaker 1: players and Blu ray players make my head hurt because
Speaker 1: they require physics and I was an English major. And
Speaker 1: Blu ray transfers information faster too. I mean, it has
Speaker 1: a thirty six megabit per second data transfer rate as
Speaker 1: opposed to just ten make a bit per second for
Speaker 1: our DVD, right, which is also important to note. Right.
Speaker 1: So let's see what we got here. We've we've discussed
Speaker 1: the fact that since you are able to create smaller
Speaker 1: bumps in a Blu ray disk, you therefore can fit
Speaker 1: more bumps onto a disc than you could with a DVD.
Speaker 1: That's why you can store more information on it. That's
Speaker 1: why you can store high definition information on it, as
Speaker 1: opposed to a DVD, where you just can't. It's just
Speaker 1: not doesn't have the capacity. Here's another thing that the
Speaker 1: manufacturing process for the two different discs, it's different. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: Because the DVD is a sandwich. It has two pieces
Speaker 1: of polycarbonate plastic about zero point uh six millimeters six
Speaker 1: tenths of a millimeter um in thickness, and the material
Speaker 1: that has the information on it is sandwiched in between them,
Speaker 1: and the two halves are glued together. Um. Whereas the
Speaker 1: information on a Blu ray disc is actually on top
Speaker 1: um of a one point one millimeter thickness disc, which
Speaker 1: is really amazingly thin, I would think, um, But it
Speaker 1: does have a a plastic coating on top of it,
Speaker 1: a hard coating on top of it to keep it
Speaker 1: from I'm assuming its plastic. It has a hard coating
Speaker 1: on top of it to keep it from getting scratched.
Speaker 1: But it does also prevent distortion uh that you know,
Speaker 1: the plastic would cause as the laser would travel through it,
Speaker 1: which is called by refringence. It's it's kind of it's similar, Marty,
Speaker 1: but you know, bifrage. It's similar to you know, if
Speaker 1: you've ever if you've ever like looked at something through
Speaker 1: a really thick pane of glass or or underwater, you know,
Speaker 1: where you you look up through the water and you
Speaker 1: see something beyond the surface, and then when you do
Speaker 1: surface through the water, you realize that it's not exactly
Speaker 1: where I thought it was. It's similar to that. It's
Speaker 1: not the exact same thing, but you can think of
Speaker 1: it as uh analogous to it. But yeah, that can
Speaker 1: cause the uh, the red laser to have difficulty getting
Speaker 1: the information and it may even actually cause it to
Speaker 1: uh to skip right. Yeah, that and that's a that's
Speaker 1: what we call a bad thing. Yes, it means that
Speaker 1: you're not going to get the experience you want out
Speaker 1: of it. Also, a DVD has to be has to
Speaker 1: be flat for that reason. Has to be red flat,
Speaker 1: and Blu Ray disks do not necessarily have to be flat.
Speaker 1: I would assume though, that it would be preferable if
Speaker 1: they were flat. And uh there, because one of them
Speaker 1: is like one point one millim you're stick in the
Speaker 1: other as one point two millimeters stick. A Blu ray
Speaker 1: and a regular DVD look pretty much the same to us.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, is it in the encoding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's also in the decoding, which would be the
Speaker 1: freaking lasers. Um, I'm gonna get so much mail about
Speaker 1: people who were tired of hearing freaking lasers. I expect
Speaker 1: you to. Liz probably will as well. She's kind of
Speaker 1: chuckling right now, but it's not gonna be as funny
Speaker 1: when you're editing, is it? Is it? Liz? Ha um?
Speaker 1: And of course you could always soundscape this to make
Speaker 1: me sound like and even she wanted. Now. The other
Speaker 1: interesting thing, we have articles, by the way, on both
Speaker 1: DVDs and Blue rays on how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: both of which I found incredibly informative while cramming for
Speaker 1: this podcast. Yes, and they have some great illustrations as well.
Speaker 1: So if you're having if you're having problems, imagining what
Speaker 1: it is we're talking about. I do highly recommend you
Speaker 1: guys check out these articles because it will give you
Speaker 1: a visual sense of the things that we're explaining. But
Speaker 1: one of the things I thought was interesting that they
Speaker 1: pointed out um in these articles is that the manufacturing
Speaker 1: process for the Blu ray disc, even though it's different
Speaker 1: from the way DVDs are created, it is not more
Speaker 1: expensive than the way DVDs are created. So then why
Speaker 1: would you say Blu ray discs cost so much more
Speaker 1: in the stores. I think there are a couple of
Speaker 1: different reasons. One is that it's a premium product, so
Speaker 1: you are buying a high definition products so that you
Speaker 1: can the experience that you will get watching a Blu
Speaker 1: ray disc using a Blu ray player on a high
Speaker 1: definition television. All of that is important. If you don't
Speaker 1: have a high definition definition television, this isn't gonna do
Speaker 1: any good. So but the experience of watching one of
Speaker 1: those on an HDTV with right cable connectors, using the
Speaker 1: right equipment, it's gonna be It's gonna be noticeable. It
Speaker 1: may not be as huge a leap as DVD was
Speaker 1: from VHS, but it's still going to be noticeable. The
Speaker 1: other reason is that because the Blu Ray has a
Speaker 1: greater capacity, you could actually pack more specials and UH
Speaker 1: and extras on a Blu Ray disc then you could
Speaker 1: on a DVD. And a lot of companies do that.
Speaker 1: And thirdly, a lot of companies that are making Blu
Speaker 1: Ray players have made them Internet capable and you can
Speaker 1: actually access extra content through the Internet on your Blu
Speaker 1: Ray player and UH, a lot of companies are are
Speaker 1: making this available where you get, you buy the Blue Ray,
Speaker 1: you put it in your player, you started up, and
Speaker 1: then you can access extra content online and things like
Speaker 1: you know, new subtitles. Let's say that you um wanted
Speaker 1: to get a film but there was no you know,
Speaker 1: you wanted to You had a friend who was coming
Speaker 1: and their English wasn't so good, but they spoke fluent
Speaker 1: Portuguese and you don't have Portuguese normally on the disc.
Speaker 1: But if you pop it in you find out, hey,
Speaker 1: there's an option here where I can get Portuguese subtitles.
Speaker 1: Or it may be extra commentary. It could be anything
Speaker 1: from even extra content like deleted scene. Really pretty much
Speaker 1: anything that they can think of that the movie studios
Speaker 1: can think of could be part of this extra content
Speaker 1: that you can access with your DVD player, your Blu
Speaker 1: ray player, I should say, not DVD player. UM. Now
Speaker 1: you're limited mostly by a couple of things. One, you
Speaker 1: have to have a high speed Internet uh access point. Um.
Speaker 1: If you don't have that, then you're not going to
Speaker 1: be able to access all this content. Even if you
Speaker 1: could access it, it would take you so long to
Speaker 1: download any of it because it's it's high bandwidth stuff.
Speaker 1: If it's pointless, right, So you have to have a
Speaker 1: high speed Internet connection. And um, you also what was
Speaker 1: that I had to I had to and now I
Speaker 1: only have the one. Ah, it's gone. It's gone high
Speaker 1: speed Internet access. If it comes back, I'll shout okay.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I was hoping it would
Speaker 1: come back immediately, but no, it's not coming back immediately.
Speaker 1: You touched on something there though that I think uh
Speaker 1: might answer the listener meal question. And then I wanted
Speaker 1: to come back to because we were talking about why
Speaker 1: might you not be able to see the difference in
Speaker 1: a DVD and a Blu Ray or h D DVD
Speaker 1: for that matter of disc And I think it comes
Speaker 1: down to something we've talked about before. And that's the
Speaker 1: screen size and resolution of your TV. Yeah, it turns
Speaker 1: out that, uh, let's say that you if you have
Speaker 1: a larger television, you will notice these these differences a lot.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll they'll jump out out at you more. Um.
Speaker 1: If you have a smaller TV, the difference in resolution,
Speaker 1: UM isn't going to be quite as noticeable. But on
Speaker 1: that plasma you'll be able to pick it out. Yeah, obviously, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: but if you're talking about like a say, thirty inch television,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, a thirty inch television, standard definition
Speaker 1: may look pretty good. High definition is gonna look fine.
Speaker 1: But you know, anything beyond seven lines of resolution you
Speaker 1: probably don't need. I mean, you probably wouldn't really know
Speaker 1: the difference between seven twenty which or your your two
Speaker 1: main kinds of high definition TV in the United States,
Speaker 1: the seven twenty lines of resolution or the ten eight
Speaker 1: lines of resolution. Um. Now, if you have and even
Speaker 1: if you have a bigger TV, some would argue that
Speaker 1: the difference is really not that noticeable. So when I
Speaker 1: say bigger TV, I'm talking like in the fifty to
Speaker 1: sixty inch range, which is that's pretty big. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are larger televisions out there, and of course you
Speaker 1: could get say a projector, which would you know, a
Speaker 1: digital projector is going to make an even larger picture.
Speaker 1: And in that case, yeah, you may need some sort
Speaker 1: of equipment that will provide a ten a D resolution
Speaker 1: or else it's just gonna look kind of blocky, and
Speaker 1: you know that it's not gonna it will look muddy
Speaker 1: and not as not as crisp. Right. That I think
Speaker 1: is probably the the crux of the situation right there.
Speaker 1: And also there are a lot of DVD players out
Speaker 1: there now that up convert uh signals now an up
Speaker 1: converting d v D. What that does is it tries
Speaker 1: to add in some of the information that is lost
Speaker 1: during the video compression process. Because again, to get a
Speaker 1: movie onto a DVD DVD, I don't know where that
Speaker 1: came from onto a DVD, I tell you it's because
Speaker 1: this studio so hot today, so warm in here today. Um.
Speaker 1: But in order to get the information on there, they
Speaker 1: use a compression format and uh, and you tend to
Speaker 1: lose information when you compress it, and so an up
Speaker 1: converter tries to add in information to create a more
Speaker 1: high definition experience, even if the source material itself is
Speaker 1: not high definition. So if you have an up converting
Speaker 1: DVD and a Blu Ray player, and you have a
Speaker 1: copy of the movie on DVD and a copy of
Speaker 1: the movie on Blu Ray, the differences maybe subtle. They
Speaker 1: you should probably still notice them. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: not like, uh, it's not like it's you know, it
Speaker 1: would take a an expert to see the difference. But
Speaker 1: it may be that they're not. You know, maybe the
Speaker 1: colors are just a little richer on the Blue ray,
Speaker 1: or that the the edges are look a little more natural,
Speaker 1: not quite as sharp. I mean, it depends. It's a
Speaker 1: very subjective experience. Yeah, I would imagine so. Uh yeah, gosh,
Speaker 1: it never came back to me. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it was that was in my brain that just decided
Speaker 1: to escape. At least it got while the getting is good. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so much stuff in there that's still stuck screaming
Speaker 1: to get out. Thoughts. Did you have anything else to
Speaker 1: add on this discussion of blue ray versus DVD? Not really? Okay,
Speaker 1: Well hopefully that answered your question. Um, And you know,
Speaker 1: we could have even gone into the whole HD DVD thing.
Speaker 1: The the failure of the of that format, which you know,
Speaker 1: what's what's sad is I actually backed that format. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't purchase an HD DVD player. I didn't go
Speaker 1: that far, but I expected that one to win out
Speaker 1: early on in the race between the two formats. Was
Speaker 1: one of our very first podcasts. Yeah, HD DVD versus
Speaker 1: Blue Ray. Yeah, you know, and and blue ray technically
Speaker 1: can store more information than HD DVD could. But because
Speaker 1: HD DVD hit the market first, I thought that that
Speaker 1: was gonna be the I thought that was that was
Speaker 1: the death knell there that and it's less expensive, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was significantly less expensive than Blue Race.
Speaker 1: Of course, now Blu ray players are in a much
Speaker 1: more excuse me, a much more affordable range, especially the
Speaker 1: PS three Slim ount. So you don't rest around with Slim, No,
Speaker 1: you don't at any rate. I was having a gym
Speaker 1: crochy momentum at any rate. So that wraps up our
Speaker 1: discussion on Blue Ray versus DVD. I guess that brings
Speaker 1: us to our second round of listener mail. This listener
Speaker 1: mail comes from Christopher and he says, hey, guys, love
Speaker 1: the podcast. The AI episode was great. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to add a little bit into the part about the captions.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, they are used for preventing people from
Speaker 1: making mass accounts all across the net. There's a company
Speaker 1: that is making these called Recapture. What they do is
Speaker 1: take a word that is known and bends it into
Speaker 1: a typical capture and takes another unknown word that has
Speaker 1: been scanned from a book or some other means of
Speaker 1: creating digital copies of hard copy works and assumes that
Speaker 1: you will get the unknown word correct if you get
Speaker 1: the known word correct. It then takes the newly discovered
Speaker 1: word and places that in the scanned book instead of
Speaker 1: the unreadable by O c R mess. Also, that leads
Speaker 1: into O c R which could be a pretty good topic.
Speaker 1: I think. Thanks for a great podcast. Keep it up.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I kind of wrote a little bit about
Speaker 1: this when I wrote how captures work. The The idea
Speaker 1: is really interesting. Google does this a lot where it
Speaker 1: actually crowd sources, uh your search when you're trying to
Speaker 1: search information within a hard copy. Um, so you've got
Speaker 1: the scanned document, you're let's say that your search algorithm
Speaker 1: cannot recognize the text within that scanned document because it's
Speaker 1: just a picture, right. What you do is you pull.
Speaker 1: It identifies that you know a section as being this
Speaker 1: has got to be a word. Pulls that puts that
Speaker 1: picture as part of the capture. When you identify both
Speaker 1: the the known capture and the unknown one, it then
Speaker 1: stores the information for the unknown one in a database.
Speaker 1: As more and more people are confronted with that word,
Speaker 1: it looks for the greatest number of people agreeing on
Speaker 1: what that word is. Okay, let's say the word is
Speaker 1: is trumpet, all right, and the people who are answering
Speaker 1: this capture say it's trumpet and the other five percent
Speaker 1: say it's something else. The program then says, all right, well,
Speaker 1: then chances are this word actually is trumpet. And that's
Speaker 1: how it tags that that picture with the word trumpet
Speaker 1: and makes it searchable within a scanned document. So yeah,
Speaker 1: yet another way of making artificial intelligence a little more
Speaker 1: of a reality. That's yep. If any of you have
Speaker 1: any other cool things to tell us, or questions or
Speaker 1: comments or criticisms that sort of thing, you can write us.
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