| From: | runnerpaul@*****.com runnerpaul@*****.com |
|---|---|
| Subject: | [Shadowbeat] Recording Media- Optical Chip HardBoxes [was: Cybercams] |
| Date: | Wed, 18 Aug 1999 23:46:43 -0400 (EDT) |
At 02:26 AM 8/18/99 -0400, Angelkiller 404 wrote:
::(Somewhere around here, I've got the stats I did up for Optical
::Chip HardBoxes.
<<Snip>>
::If you're interested, let me know.)
:
:Finally got around to answering this...yeah, I'm interested.
Alright, here we go.
:In Shadowbeat, the OMC's were too cheap (something like 0.5/Mp on
:p99)
Too Cheap? Too Cheap? *boggle*
Since like forever, the archetypical price for an album or a movie on
video/trideo on chip or disc has been 20¥ (p.286, BBB3; p.259, BBB2;
p.138, BBB1). This is supposed to be the price for either medium,
chip based or disc based. In the description, equal weight seems to
be given to both types of media, and neither one is mentioned as
being preferred.
Disc blanks cost 10¥ retail, according to Shadowbeat, and have a
500Mp capacity. This is enough for a little over 2.75 hours worth of
high-grade audio, or 100 minutes of trideo. (Note: this is based off
the generous assumption that the 5Mp/min. rate listed for trideo
includes sound. Normally, I'm not that generous, and require the
audio to be recorded separately, for a total rate of 6-8Mp/min.)
Now for Optical Memory Chips. At Shadowbeat's prices of 0.5¥/Mp for
Optical Memory Chips, 20¥ will buy you a 40Mp blank chip. 40Mp is not
a lot of capacity, it'd only hold a little over 13 minutes of music
and only 8 minutes of trideo (and only half that if it's High-Res
Trid).
And these are the capacities if we assume that the movie studios and
the recording industries are taking the 20¥ per title they charge,
and pumping all that money into just buying the chip blanks. Forget
paying off the production cost of the movie. Forget paying the
musicians any royalties (or forget paying the programer who wrote the
code for the "Band-in-a-Box"). It's true that the industry probably
wouldn't be paying retail for the chipblanks, they'd get them
wholesale with bulk discounts, but even with say 50% off the price,
the capacities of the chips would still be woefully small.
I know that attention spans are constantly getting shorter, but I
really think that even with the conveniences of chips vs. discs,
people would really want more entertainment for their 20¥. However,
OMC is just too expensive a medium going by Shadowbeat's prices, and
Shadowbeat has the cheapest prices listed.
:VR2.0, they were something like 6/Mp
<<Snip>>
:and in BBB3, they're 20/Mp
Actually in both VR2 and the BBB3, the price listed for OMCs is 5¥
(p.83, VR2; p.295-6, BBB3). The 20¥ price isn't for OMCs, it's for
personal computer memory, a price which includes other components
found in PCs (But that's another thread).
The VR2/BBB3 price of 5¥/Mp is ten times as expensive as what's
listed in Shadowbeat! This is most likely for the purpose of
playbalance for the cyberdeck construction rules. The price
difference could be explained away by a difference in quality grades:
0.5¥ for "media grade" OMCs and 5¥ for "high-performance computing
grade" OMCs, but that doesn't solve the problem that they're way too
expensive at either price.
Because of this, I just can't see Optical Memory Chips being used for
commercial recordings of audio or trideo, or even being used in a
professional context like say cybersnoop trideo reporter. Even for
casual use, it's dubious as to why anyone would pay that much over a
10¥ disc blank that holds 500Mp.
So to solve the problem, I came up with stats for a new dedicated
recording medium. Back in the Entertainment section of the Gear
chapter of the BBB1, instead of just making reference to "optical
chips (OC)" the text refers to "optical chip HardBoxes (HB)". As this
was the only mention ever made of such a concept, I've gone ahead and
assigned these new stats to them.
An Optical Chip HardBox has a formfactor of 1cm X 2.5cm X 3.5 cm, and
it's more rugged than an Optical Memory Chip. You can step on one
without breaking it, as long as you don't have your heavy combat
boots on. Commercially recorded HardBoxes typically feature product
art on the larger sides of the cartridge.
Optical Chip Hardboxes use specialized compression routines
specifically optimized for audio and video storage, and are entirely
unsuited for storing any other form of data. As such, it's not as
critical to know the Mp size of what you're storing. The capacities
I'll be listing will be in hours, not Megapulses.
The most often used recording formats:
Extended Spectrum Sound: 4 hours
Trideo: 2 Hours
High Resolution Trideo: 1 Hour
And some lower quality, higher capacity, less commonly used recording
formats:
Normal Spectrum Sound: 12 Hours
High Resolution Video: 6 Hours
Ancient Formats only used by nostalgia buffs:
Pre-digital recording era audio: 60 hours
Low-Definition Analog Video (NTSC, PAL, et.al.): 30 hours
Different recording formats may be mixed on one HardBox. For example,
a music album might feature an hour of music (recorded in the
industry standard of Extended Sound) and then 45 minutes of High Res
Trid of concert footage and music videos.
Commercially made recordings may be copy protected, in a manner
somewhat similar to the way Optical Code Chips are, however, if you
have any form of matrix access, you may buy a single use passcode
that'll unlock the copy protection to allow one copy to be made, for
about 1¥-5¥.
Blank Hardboxes may be bought at a price of 15¥.
Adapter cartridges that allow OMCs to be used in HardBox
players/recorders are available for 10¥, which is handy for when
larger capacities are needed, and nuyen isn't an object. The
converter firmware in the adapter cartridge can only handle
contemporary formats, however; Obsolete formats are not supported
(antique analog video must be stored at the High-Resolution Video
rate of 1Mp/min. for example).
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