Company called Intersil who develops laser controller chips found inside various DVD and CD players and writers, has announced the availability of first Blu-Ray* laser controllers.
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*Currently (spring 2002), everything what we know about Blu-Ray is based on speculations as the format doesn't exist yet.
Basically Blu-Ray is a name for a new DVD standard which uses blue-violet laser instead of old red laser discs used in CDs and in DVDs. This allows manufacturers to store more data using the same amount of disc surface.
One Blu-Ray disc will hold appx. 27GB of data (compared to 4.36GB on regular DVD) on one side/layer of the disc. It is developed mostly because Japan is going to start digital terrestial television broadcasting in beginning of 2003 and consumers will demand a high-quality recordable media for their new high-definition medium.
Video will be stored using MPEG-2 technology, just like in DVD-Video discs, but in much higher bitrate. Currently DVD-Video discs can have a bitrates upto 9.8Mbps, but Blu-Ray discs support bitrates as high as 36MBps.
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Otherwise totally useless news blurp for Joe Average, but this is anyway a clear sign that the industry is preparing to ship first Blu-Ray devices in beginning of 2003 as promised. Blu-Ray, which uses blue-laser technology instead of red-laser technology (which is used with DVDs and CDs), can store 27GB of data per side on regular 12cm disc (yes, for imperial measurement users out there, 12cm is the size of a regular CD or DVD disc).
Blu-Ray will face tough obstacles on its way to be adopted as a next-generation storage media -- DVD Forum hasn't yet decided whether they will develop HD-DVD using blue-laser technology and MPEG-2 or do they stick with current red-laser DVD technology and start using MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2. To add the possible confusion, NEC and Toshiba jointly announced a competing blue-laser technology in last month. Exactly the scenario everybody has been scared of.
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Sure is shaping up to be Betamax II. I tell ya, after having spent over $10 grand on DVD's (thats right, Canadian peso's though, eh), I know for a fact, that I will not be purchasing one that is not backwards compatible.
Hitachi and one other, is also developing a competing blue ray, dubbed blue light (no, not the beer!). Although it will not hold as much data as Sony's, it will be backwards compatible. Gee, who's getting my ching!
I think, what will help us here, is the (hopefully) reluctance of the major distributors/retailers of DVD's to stock multiple format DVD's. I really can't see, Blockbuster for example, after having spent millions creating larger DVD sections in their locations, dropping all those DVD's just for Sony's!
I can't see it, but, doesn't mean it still won't happen!
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