Blu-Ray Standard Looks to Make DVD Obsolete

[Gregg Lengling]

DVD is the fastest-growing consumer electronics product in history and it's already obsolete.

At least, that's the implication of an announcement made yesterday by the so-called "gang of nine" -- Sony, Matsushita, Hitachi, Pioneer, Sharp, Samsung, LG, Philips and Thomson. The companies say that, starting Monday, they'll start licensing jointly developed technology for "Blu-Ray" disk drives to make their debut first as computer peripherals, and later as stand-alone recorders.

According to the Consumer Electronics Association, more than 35 percent of American homes now have a DVD player and sales are still on the increase. Blu-Ray drives, however, use a blue laser that allows them to pack information onto a disk more finely. As a result, they can store up to 27GB of data, more than 5 times the capacity on a DVD.

Blu-Ray recorders are expected to find their first market in Japan, where high-definition television (HDTV) is already being broadcast nationwide. That's because their capacity is required to record HDTV without losing quality. Here in the U.S., however, pre-recorded Blu-Ray movies may be necessary in order to make the format take off.

Hollywood's support for a new format is rated as iffy at this point, even by Blu-Ray's supporters. However, the new drives will play back existing DVDs. To assuage copyright concerns, the Blu-Ray consortium has made encryption-based copy protection part of the overall standard.

By Jonathan Angel

E-mail: jangel@technologymarketing.com

February 14, 2003

HDTV Galaxy (under news)

[Skipjack]

I for one am actually excited to see blu-ray take off (before my DVD collection gets too big

However, standard DVD has quite a foothold here in the states.  If blu-ray can match the already shrinking retail cost of DVD players and disks, they'll have a chance of moving in.. otherwise it may be quite a while before blu-ray becomes commonplace.

[The Law]

Fantastic article on Anamorphic.  The side by side comparison's are very well done.