Blue Ray Is Comming!!!!!

[dandino]

Hi all

Came across this news about "Blue Ray" a few days ago, can't remember which site it was but it sounds great - has anyone else herd anything about it? Here's the quote:

"Blue Ray:

The main contenders being DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW. Philips claim to be selling the most Recorders but more recently a recording Format known as DVD-BlueRay has been announced which is clearly heads above the rest.

What is Blue Ray:

Blue ray gets its name because instead of using the traditional Red Laser to write to and read from the discs it uses a blue one. As simple as that, well nearly it uses slightly different technology which enables it to cram an amazing 27GB of information onto one side of a standard 12cm disc. This means you can fit 2 - 3 hours of digital video on one side of a disc on its highest quality setting.
Compatibility is too apparently not a problem as it will incorporate dual lasers to still read regular DVD's.

When:

This units will alledgedly hit the high street next year. (Early 2003 Japan - Late 2003 UK (Why are we always last)) Progress is taking place fast as Sony & Matsushita have agreed a definate format for Blue-Ray with other manufacturers to follow.

Sum up:

Although it won't matter as much this time if you get a format that isnt as adopted as one of the others because they all will "Alledgedly" play back DVD's that you would rent from Blockbuster e.t.c, I still feel it would be good to fit a large amount of storage on a disc.

Currently on VHS you can fit the best part of 10 hours in long play and to suddenyl jump down to just over an hour on some DVD recording formats will be quite a shock.

My opinion would be to wait. Especially as last time I ended up with the Betamax. Although better than VHS its not good if you can't by the media for it.

UPDATE:
Since writing this I have found the following information...

"Blue Laser, that's the future. The big electronic giants have agreed that the next generation DVD players and writers will be using a blue laser instead of the current red one. Also agreeing to the format were Japan's Hitachi, Pioneer and Sharp; South Korea's Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics; and France's Thomson Multimedia. Licensing of the new DVD format will begin in the spring. "

So hold on. The current red laser models are officially old technology and already being replaced despite not even having taken off yet."

================================================== =

Can anyone confirm that this "Blue Laser" technology is actually going to happen?

dandino

[WeedVender]

Nice Job, but you are kinda late.
A lot of people know all about it already

[adam]

Yes it is going to happen unless all the major players in the industry change their mind, again. First they backed blue ray for all of about a week. Now they are backing another blue laser technology, but they have made it official, blue laser dvds will replace the current red laser dvds. The players will be backward compatible so don't expect to see red laser dvds dissappearing altogether for many years to come.

Blue laser players and burners are supposed to start coming out maybe as early as next year, though I think they said that last year. I am extremely exited about this new technology. I am considering bypassing this whole dvd-r/w, +r/w craze and going straigt to blue laser burning, I'll only have to wait a couple more years

[Treebeard]

If you would use the search function on the forums you would have seen this topic has been discussed numerous times. so the answer is yes we've heard about it. still 5 years away for pratical & affordable consumer use

[alenhard]

I think this has been discussed extensively in the past. I think that the industry is going to milk the red lasers for all they're worth before anything changes. Sure some of us have been into dvds for a year or two by now, but the market is still just barely opening up. Like the look on your friends' faces when you tell them you know how to rip a dvd- this is still new stuff for most of the world!

The technology sounds great and i'm sure someday it'll happen, but I wouldn't count on it being anytime soon.

What were the dates of the articles you cited?

[[_chef_]]

...not before end of 2004...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

[Arky]

Of course I look forward to the day BlueRay hits the shelves, but like the other cynics here (lol!) I agree that you should not hold your breath waiting. A dual format DVD-/+ burner is now $300, and a single format burner can now be had for just $200 (Panasonic). This is just so amazingly cheap that there really is no justification for not just going ahead and buying one, having fun with it, and furthering your authoring skills, while you wait another 3years for BlueRay to become a consumer reality.


Arky ;o)

[vitualis]

Unless things have changed AGAIN, Blu-Ray may never happen -- with blue laser DVD's being the next advance: http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=370825&highlight=

Regards.

[VideoMann]

Here are some links on Blu-Ray: target 2003-2004
Licensing started in 2002, and manufacturing components are already on sale for large orders (for manufacturers)

There is a push for 2 standards: One Blu-Ray (using blue laser) and another simply blue-ray with I believe a lower encoding bit-rate. The Major standard seems to be Blu-Ray and probably the better of the 2 in recording quality (at least theoretically). There is a 3rd standard that has more to do with the disc type than with the laser. This 3rd standard from Calimetrics uses special dyes on a multi-layer disc (up to 10 layers easily done) and able to use a blue laser giving capacities larger than the other 2 standards. This 3rd standard may probably not be the major player in consumer because they do not have the "financial or manufacturing cloud" as the companies supporting the other 2.

http://www.calimetrics.com/News/ML_Newswire/ml_newswire.html

In my estimation which is very early now so it is more like an informed guess at best, the likely domination will be...

1. Blu-Ray
2. blue laser+different specs in encoding
3. Calimetrics ML DVD solutions

Number 2 may go the way of DVD-RAM because most major players are going after Blu-Ray

Here are some links:

http://www.emedialive.com/r3/2002/news1102_01.html

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/start.html?pg=15

http://www.blu-raytalk.com/

http://www.blu-ray.org/home.htm

http://www.matsushita.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/en020219-4/en020219-4.html

http://212.100.234.54/content/54/24124.html


From Calimetrics:



http://www.calimetrics.com/ML_Technology/Roadmap/roadmap.html

[ktnwin]

Sorry for my ignorance here on Blue Ray. OK, Blue Ray DVD will has much higher capacity then current DVD discs (27 GB vs 9.1GB for commercial DVD).

What are the intentions of this high capacity ? I envision a few:
1) more movies on single DVD disc
2) higher res DVD for HDTVs
3) higher bit rate DVD (30 Mbs) to improve DVD quality
Can someone shed the light for me.

I would imagine that the new BlueRay DVD players should also play the old DVD format, this way all the existing DVD movies do not have to change overnight. I hope I do not have to go buy the DVD movies I already bought.

[adam]

Just to clarify, Blue Ray is just one of the competing blue laser formats coming out, and it seems that this one may not even make it to the starting line. The competing NEC blue laser format has already been selected to be the new dvd standard, in good time of course. One of the reasons why NEC was selected is because the players will be backward compatible with current red laser dvds, and I think this wasn't the case with blue ray.

I think you listed the main reasons for such a format ktnwin. Current dvds are actually highly compressed All that extra capacity will essentially make every dvd like a superbit dvd, and once they start releasing hi def blue laser dvds then things are really going to get interesting. I suppose they could also cram more extra's onto the disk but that doesn't seem worth it. I'm thinking more along the lines of the star wars prequel all on one disk...sure would hate to scratch that one though.

[ktnwin]

I guess this new technology will turn the "HD-DVD to DVD-R" process into something similar to current "DVD to VCD" process

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[adam]

Hmm, the DVD Forum's entire site won't seem to load for me.

Well PhilipL, I was kinda expecting people to read between the lines. NEC did not propose a DVD format, they proposed a pysical disk medium and the DVD FORUM has officially decided to use it for the next dvd standard. Obviously this standard is not finalized yet, its barely even begun, but they do know what the medium will be.

http://www.planetanalog.com/news/OEG20021108S0048

In regards to backward compatibleness, ok bad choice of words. No its not a foregone conclusion that the players will be backwards compatible with current the DVD standard. My point is that NEC's disks are backwards compatible, or at least can be. Obviously the backwards compatibleness depends on what data you put on them.

Every source I have read suggests that NEC chose the physical specifications for their format with backwards comapatibleness in mind, and every source I have read suggests that the DVD Forum chose this format for this reason. Obviously there is a major incentive for the next gen dvd players to be backwards compatible with current standards.

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[adam]

Interesting, I stand corrected then. I think it was that Tokyo newspaper that first announced the DVD Forum's "decision." Either they jumped the gun and started the rumor, or they have some insider information and the DVD Forum is just being flaky and reserving the right to say they never committed to anything. I think the latter is entirely possible but in any case, the next dvd standard is so much in its infancy, I guess anything is speculation at this point.

Thanks for that info.