HP, Dell endorse BD while HD DVD backers stress early production

[Gregg Lengling]

In an effort to establish the next-generation optical disk format, the Blu-ray group said Hewlett Packard Co. and Dell Corp. will join the effort.

Meanwhile, proponents of rival candidate, HD DVD, said they have met key Hollywood requirements needed to free up digital content — perhaps paving the way for disk production and compatibility with current DVD disks.

At the Blu-ray technology update during the Consumer Electronics Show here, Hewlett Packard and Dell endorsed the Blu-ray disk system, marking the first time the U.S. IT industry has backed the proposal. The companies called BD "revolutionary technology" that provides high capacity while taking full advantage of HDTV. They also cited its "open architecture," especially its support for Java for easier application development and that BD will be "more affordable" because it employs widely used MPEG2 and does not require additional compression resources from the the CPU.

 
Maureen Weber, general manager of HP's optical storage solution business, and Gerry Smith, Dell's vice president for peripherals, both dismissed the possibility that they would introduce future drives using the HD DVD format.

Reiji Asakura, digital media analyst and acting vice president of the Japan Society of Picture Quality, said the endorsement by HP and Dell will boost the BD group in the standards effort. "The new generation optical disk system needs support from both Hollywood and the PC industry. HP and Dell, the influential players in the IT industry, supported BD, which should be a heavy blow to HD DVD supporters," Asakura said.

Samsung and LG Electronics both showed prototypes of Blu-ray recorders at CES and Sony demonstrated a Blu-ray player using two layered Blu-ray ROM disks. LG plans to introduce Blu-ray recorders at around $3,000 later this year. Samsung and Sony have yet to disclose their plans.

The BD-ROM format is still being finalized. The CES demonstration was based on the 0.9-levle of the proposed spec, according to a Sony spokesman. The BD founders will soon authorize the ROM format and plan to begin selling BD-packaged content early next year.

***************** HD DVD ***************

Hollywood studios issued nine demands for a next-generation disk system spec. Hisashi Yamada, technology officer of Toshiba's digital media network company, said the HD DVD format fulfills all requirements, especially the request for sufficient disk capacity.

"HD DVD or Bru-ray, which is advantageous is dependent on how quickly the HD-packaged media market takes off," said Kanji Katsuura, executive vice president and chief technical officer of Memory-Tech Corp., a major disk press manufacturer.

"About 800 lines in the world are in operation to press DVD read-only disks, and about 600 lines out of them can be switched to HD DVD disk production as it is," said Katsuura. Memory-Tech is an independent disk manufacturer, but had strongly supported HD DVD format last October after one-year comparison of HD DVD (AOD at that time) and BD formats.

With the approval of HD DVD-ROM version 0.9 at the DVD forum steering committee last November, Toshiba demonstrated an HD DVD player prototype at CES. It showed playback video compressed by MPEG2, WMV9 and H.264, the candidates for HD DVD compression technology.

The steering committee of the DVD Forum will decide the codec when licensing terms for each technology become clear, probably at the next meeting scheduled at the end of February. It is likely that the committee will endorse all or multiple compression technologies as the new codec for HD DVD.

"About 90 percent of circuitry can be shared both for H.264 and WVM9 decoding, so it won't be difficult or costly if two codecs are integrated into one LSI," said Yamada.

Rick Hayatsu, chief manager of NEC's first storage product division, added that if multiple codecs become mandatory, software makers can choose the one with the most advantageous licensing terms.

With approval of the physical layer of HD DVD-ROM, the forum will work on establishing video format. At the February meeting, HD DVD-RAM, the recording format is also expected to be approved.