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Apparently the market LOVES bad spelling. If you check out http://www.blu-ray.com/ you can actually find a spot where they spell "Blu-ray" as "Blue-ray" (check under the headline titled "Jan 18, 2005 - Sonopress Joins Blu-ray Disc Association"). I think they're undecided on the name...

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is still in the process of finalizing the BD-ROM specification, but they have stated that MPEG-4 AVC High Profile (previously called FRExt) and Microsoft's VC-1 video codec (the proposed SMPTE standard based on WMV9) will be mandatory. They will also include MPEG-2 support for playback of HDTV recordings and DVDs. Please note that this simply means that all Blu-ray players and recorders will have to support playback of these video codecs, it will still be up to the movie studios to decide which video codec(s) they use for their releases. The BDA expects the BD-ROM specification to be finished some time in the beginning of 2005.

Both of the major candidate next-generation DVD rival formats planned for product deployment in late 2005 include the H.264/AVC High Profile as a mandatory player feature -- specifically:

• The HD-DVD format of the DVD Forum
• The Blu-ray Disc format of the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA)

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is still in the process of finalizing the BD-ROM specification, but they have stated that MPEG-4 AVC High Profile (previously called FRExt) and Microsoft's VC-1 video codec (the proposed SMPTE standard based on WMV9) will be mandatory. They will also include MPEG-2 support for playback of HDTV recordings and DVDs. Please note that this simply means that all Blu-ray players and recorders will have to support playback of these video codecs, it will still be up to the movie studios to decide which video codec(s) they use for their releases. The BDA expects the BD-ROM specification to be finished some time in the beginning of 2005.

Both of the major candidate next-generation DVD rival formats planned for product deployment in late 2005 include the H.264/AVC High Profile as a mandatory player feature -- specifically:

• The HD-DVD format of the DVD Forum
• The Blu-ray Disc format of the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA)

Standard Resolution right now is 640x480. That comes out to 307,200 pixels. True High definition is 1920x1080 which is 2,073,600 pixels. That's 6.75 times more pixels. Thus if you use the same compression methods it's not far-fetched to assume that the compressed size is also 6.75 times the size of standard res compressed. A DVD holds at max a little over 9 GB. If you use it all (and it's safe to say that many now do) then to go to true High Definition you need over 60 GB of storage, more than twice what HD-DVD can hold. You might point out that blu-ray can't even hold that much. Yes it can. TDK has developed a 100 GB version (http://www.blu-ray.com/) and I've heard a 200 GB version is in the works (http://addict3d.org/index.php?page=viewarticle&ty pe=news&ID=3062). HD-DVD should die. It's a lame excuse for an upgrade.

according to blu-ray.com http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#1.10 the disc's now have a new coating to make them harder. But again if you really want to protect them, cartridges would be the way to go.

Blu-ray FAQ 1.10
Adopts the "DURABIS" as Worldwide Name for Its Super Hard Coating Technology

You are incorrect. According to the Blu-Ray group itself the data rate of HD-DVD is 36.5 Mbps (http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/ bottom of page).

54.0Mbps is far more then the 36.5 required for MPEG2 much less MPEG4.

Also, contrary to what you may have heard, Blu-Ray discs will not require a cartridge. Blu-Ray discs should be more scratch-resistant than even current CDs and DVDs.

And about capacity: HD-DVD can only hold 30GB(15GB per layer), but Blu-Ray can hold 54GB(27GB per layer). In the future, Blu-Ray discs could even hold up to 200GB.

Also, contrary to what you may have heard, Blu-Ray discs will not require a cartridge. Blu-Ray discs should be more scratch-resistant than even current CDs and DVDs.

And about capacity: HD-DVD can only hold 30GB(15GB per layer), but Blu-Ray can hold 54GB(27GB per layer). In the future, Blu-Ray discs could even hold up to 200GB.

Also, contrary to what you may have heard, Blu-Ray discs will not require a cartridge. Blu-Ray discs should be more scratch-resistant than even current CDs and DVDs.

And about capacity: HD-DVD can only hold 30GB(15GB per layer), but Blu-Ray can hold 54GB(27GB per layer). In the future, Blu-Ray discs could even hold up to 200GB.

Wrong. You're looking at the transfer speed for 1x Blu Ray _writing_, not reading.

Try here:

http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#2.3

grib.

The transfer rate for blu-ray is, accoriding to their FAQ, 36 Mb/s, not 36MB/s. Which means that 1x blu-ray (4.5MB/s) is considerably slower than today's 16x DVD drives, which are ~21MB/s.

The DVD format will be nothing more than a flash in the pan, according to the chief executive of Alcatel.

Then get VC-1 the heck out of the HD DVD and BD-ROM standards. And push now for getting open codecs into standards for storage and broadcast. Also push radio and television stations to offer streaming content in an open format. BBC, NPR, DR1, YLE, SR, etc. all would be candidates.

Remember also that audio codecs are separate from video codecs. The audio codecs for BD-ROM have not been chosen ... yet. Ogg Vorbis would benefit all producers and consumers, except the one we won't mention. Think lower manufacturing costs because Vorbis is royalty-free. Think greater flexibility and speed of development because of the flexible license Vorbis uses.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of leading consumer electronics and PC companies (including Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. A single-layer Blu-ray Disc can hold 25GB, which can be used to record over 2 hours of HDTV or more than 13 hours of standard-definition TV. There are also dual-layer versions of the discs that can hold 50GB.

http://www.blu-ray.com/info/

A current example would be packing VC-1 into both Blu-ray and HD DVD.

Though software patents are currently only a problem in the U.S., I'd still say that they threat of stealth patents would be the worst bug. Proprietary material shouldn't get through the standards process.

Since HD-DVD uses a red laser,

The current HD-DVD standard uses the same blue frequency laser as Blu-Ray. a source There are others, google with keywords: HD-DVD laser color spits out a lot of them.

The BD-ROM version 1 format is expected to include MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 support.. Also stated on blu-ray.com. It's also on Wikipedia's entry.

The news is over a month old, and reasonably well circulated. Not sure why it keeps being overlooked...

Wrong:

http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#3.2/

Take a look at the Blu-Ray website. I think the only company that's missing in the industry partner list is Toshiba. Plus after reading some documentation internal to my company regarding manufacturing costs of Blu-Ray discs they are cheaper to make than HD-DVD's in both cost per disc and cost per gigabyte.

In the past we've seen products like the Beta format for example that have a small industry following just go by the wayside. It seems such that HD-DVD is progressing along the same path. Time will tell I guess.

Source 1.2 Why the name Blu-ray?

The name Blu-ray is derived from the underlying technology, which utilizes a blue-violet laser to read and write data. The name is a combination of "Blue" and optical ray "Ray". According to the Blu-ray Disc Association, the spelling of "Blu-ray" is not a mistake. The character "e" is intentionally left out because a daily-used term can't be registered as a trademark.

And to clarify further, in either case scenario, MS will win because both Next-gen DVD formats will most likely use MS codec.

At this point, I think HD DVD (by NEC/Toshiba) is a history. And I wouldn't be surprised even if Sony has a second thought on the codec they will use for distribution. I want to see Sony leaving MS or coming up with something other than MS codec.

HD DVD supports MPEG-2, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and Microsoft VC-9.

Blu-Ray Disc (BD) already supported MPEG-2 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and now just added Microsoft VC-9. So what?

Um... the next format IS about 50 GiB per disc, check out Blu-ray, they already have recorders in Japan so I expect them to be available to the rest of the world pretty soon.

(1) Cartridges: Thankfully (or not, depending on how you feel about it) they dropped the cartridge requirement from the spec. Quoth the Blu-Ray FAQ #1.9:

"No, with the added support for "no-cartridge" usage to the Blu-ray Disc specification it currently looks like the cartridge will be optional, but we still haven't heard of any definitive decision about this issue. There is research going on to hard-coat the surface to protect the discs from dust and fingerprints without requiring a cartridge, which looks very promising. By making the cartridge optional manufacturers will be able to downsize drives for PC usage and lower their media production costs."

Sony has a great history of wide acceptance for their formats, so I'll be watching this one closely. ;)

Will Blu-ray Discs require a cartridge?

No, with the added support for "no-cartridge" usage to the Blu-ray Disc specification it currently looks like the cartridge will be optional, but we still haven't heard of any definitive decision about this issue. There is research going on to hard-coat the surface to protect the discs from dust and fingerprints without requiring a cartridge, which looks very promising. By making the cartridge optional manufacturers will be able to downsize drives for PC usage and lower their media production costs.

Emphasis mine above...From their FAQ, laso if you look at some of the other media images there, they all don't have the cartridge shell on them.

The official Blu-Ray FAQ informs us that:

"According to the Blu-ray Disc v1.0 specification, 1x speed will require a 36Mbps data transfer rate, which means it will take about 1 hour and 40 minutes to record 27GB. The Blu-ray Disc Association are currently working on the v2.0 specification, which will support 2x speed to cut the time it takes to copy content from one disc to another in half. In the future, the data transfer rate is expected to be raised to 8x or more."

1x DVD speed is around 10Mbps. This is, therefore, 3.6 times faster. Assuming game content of the same size, it should cut load times substantially, assuming that games in both formats are designed such that they limit seek time.

What scratches?

With this?

Of course, given you won't be scratching those anytime soon, 'backing up' becomes less of an issue, so much as 'space shifting' is when you have multiple PS3s in the household...

MPEG video is encumbered by patents for a few more years, but at least the details are publicly available.

What about Blu-Ray or a technology similar. It seems logical to me that if HDTV ever takes off (which it probably will) then people will want a technology that wil allow them to watch movies at the same resolution as their TV.

HD-DVD format uses a 405nm-wavelength blue-violet laser technology

That's Blue-Ray, the competing standard. HD-DVD is based on the same wavelength as DVD and has 15 GB single layer and 30 GB double layer disks.

For more Blue-Ray info check out this web page.

It seems that HD-DVDs use the same wavelngth blue laser that Blu-Ray DVDs use accoring to the Blu-Ray FAQ. Also, sony has succesfully made a single head for reading regular DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, the head uses a 3-wavelength diode.

Complexity of implementation may be why Blu-Ray beats out HD-DVD. According to the Blu-Ray FAQ they only support Mpeg2, basically they are just increasing the size of DVDs. The extra 22gigs per disc might help to.

HD-DVD will not support cartridges, this is mainly because you can make the drives and discs cheaper.

I would imagine that requiring a cart would make laptop drives easier to produce (no tray), although making them optional would make them DAMN complex.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by eleven leading consumer electronics companies (Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition television (HDTV), which isn't possible with todays VCRs. Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 54GB of data.

You'll probably have to wait until 2005-2006 for Blu-ray recorders to become commonly available. The driving force behind the development of Blu-ray Disc recorders is the need to record HDTV programming and currently the only country where HDTV is well established is Japan. The only Blu-ray Disc recorder that's currently available to consumers is the Sony BDZ-S77 Blu-ray Disc Recorder, but as you can see in our Blu-ray Recorders section, most well-known consumer electronics companies have their own prototype Blu-ray Disc recorder in development, so we expect to see more Blu-ray recorders on the Japanese market during 2004.

According to Sony of America's senior vice president Mike Fidler, products based on the Blu-ray Disc format are not likely to be available in the United States until 2005. However, LG Electronics has stated that they have plans to introduce a Blu-ray Disc recorder in the United States in the third quarter of 2004.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue laser is that it has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometer) than a red laser (650 nanometer), which means that it's possible to focus the laser beam with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly on the disc and makes it possible to fit more data on the same size disc. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVDs.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by eleven leading consumer electronics companies (Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition television (HDTV), which isn't possible with todays VCRs. Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 54GB of data.

You'll probably have to wait until 2005-2006 for Blu-ray recorders to become commonly available. The driving force behind the development of Blu-ray Disc recorders is the need to record HDTV programming and currently the only country where HDTV is well established is Japan. The only Blu-ray Disc recorder that's currently available to consumers is the Sony BDZ-S77 Blu-ray Disc Recorder, but as you can see in our Blu-ray Recorders section, most well-known consumer electronics companies have their own prototype Blu-ray Disc recorder in development, so we expect to see more Blu-ray recorders on the Japanese market during 2004.

According to Sony of America's senior vice president Mike Fidler, products based on the Blu-ray Disc format are not likely to be available in the United States until 2005. However, LG Electronics has stated that they have plans to introduce a Blu-ray Disc recorder in the United States in the third quarter of 2004.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue laser is that it has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometer) than a red laser (650 nanometer), which means that it's possible to focus the laser beam with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly on the disc and makes it possible to fit more data on the same size disc. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVDs.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by eleven leading consumer electronics companies (Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition television (HDTV), which isn't possible with todays VCRs. Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 54GB of data.

You'll probably have to wait until 2005-2006 for Blu-ray recorders to become commonly available. The driving force behind the development of Blu-ray Disc recorders is the need to record HDTV programming and currently the only country where HDTV is well established is Japan. The only Blu-ray Disc recorder that's currently available to consumers is the Sony BDZ-S77 Blu-ray Disc Recorder, but as you can see in our Blu-ray Recorders section, most well-known consumer electronics companies have their own prototype Blu-ray Disc recorder in development, so we expect to see more Blu-ray recorders on the Japanese market during 2004.

According to Sony of America's senior vice president Mike Fidler, products based on the Blu-ray Disc format are not likely to be available in the United States until 2005. However, LG Electronics has stated that they have plans to introduce a Blu-ray Disc recorder in the United States in the third quarter of 2004.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue laser is that it has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometer) than a red laser (650 nanometer), which means that it's possible to focus the laser beam with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly on the disc and makes it possible to fit more data on the same size disc. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVDs.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by eleven leading consumer electronics companies (Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition television (HDTV), which isn't possible with todays VCRs. Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 54GB of data.

You'll probably have to wait until 2005-2006 for Blu-ray recorders to become commonly available. The driving force behind the development of Blu-ray Disc recorders is the need to record HDTV programming and currently the only country where HDTV is well established is Japan. The only Blu-ray Disc recorder that's currently available to consumers is the Sony BDZ-S77 Blu-ray Disc Recorder, but as you can see in our Blu-ray Recorders section, most well-known consumer electronics companies have their own prototype Blu-ray Disc recorder in development, so we expect to see more Blu-ray recorders on the Japanese market during 2004.

According to Sony of America's senior vice president Mike Fidler, products based on the Blu-ray Disc format are not likely to be available in the United States until 2005. However, LG Electronics has stated that they have plans to introduce a Blu-ray Disc recorder in the United States in the third quarter of 2004.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue laser is that it has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometer) than a red laser (650 nanometer), which means that it's possible to focus the laser beam with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly on the disc and makes it possible to fit more data on the same size disc. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVDs.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by eleven leading consumer electronics companies (Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition television (HDTV), which isn't possible with todays VCRs. Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 54GB of data.

You'll probably have to wait until 2005-2006 for Blu-ray recorders to become commonly available. The driving force behind the development of Blu-ray Disc recorders is the need to record HDTV programming and currently the only country where HDTV is well established is Japan. The only Blu-ray Disc recorder that's currently available to consumers is the Sony BDZ-S77 Blu-ray Disc Recorder, but as you can see in our Blu-ray Recorders section, most well-known consumer electronics companies have their own prototype Blu-ray Disc recorder in development, so we expect to see more Blu-ray recorders on the Japanese market during 2004.

According to Sony of America's senior vice president Mike Fidler, products based on the Blu-ray Disc format are not likely to be available in the United States until 2005. However, LG Electronics has stated that they have plans to introduce a Blu-ray Disc recorder in the United States in the third quarter of 2004.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue laser is that it has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometer) than a red laser (650 nanometer), which means that it's possible to focus the laser beam with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly on the disc and makes it possible to fit more data on the same size disc. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVDs.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by eleven leading consumer electronics companies (Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition television (HDTV), which isn't possible with todays VCRs. Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 54GB of data.

You'll probably have to wait until 2005-2006 for Blu-ray recorders to become commonly available. The driving force behind the development of Blu-ray Disc recorders is the need to record HDTV programming and currently the only country where HDTV is well established is Japan. The only Blu-ray Disc recorder that's currently available to consumers is the Sony BDZ-S77 Blu-ray Disc Recorder, but as you can see in our Blu-ray Recorders section, most well-known consumer electronics companies have their own prototype Blu-ray Disc recorder in development, so we expect to see more Blu-ray recorders on the Japanese market during 2004.

According to Sony of America's senior vice president Mike Fidler, products based on the Blu-ray Disc format are not likely to be available in the United States until 2005. However, LG Electronics has stated that they have plans to introduce a Blu-ray Disc recorder in the United States in the third quarter of 2004.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue laser is that it has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometer) than a red laser (650 nanometer), which means that it's possible to focus the laser beam with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly on the disc and makes it possible to fit more data on the same size disc. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVDs.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by eleven leading consumer electronics companies (Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition television (HDTV), which isn't possible with todays VCRs. Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 54GB of data.

You'll probably have to wait until 2005-2006 for Blu-ray recorders to become commonly available. The driving force behind the development of Blu-ray Disc recorders is the need to record HDTV programming and currently the only country where HDTV is well established is Japan. The only Blu-ray Disc recorder that's currently available to consumers is the Sony BDZ-S77 Blu-ray Disc Recorder, but as you can see in our Blu-ray Recorders section, most well-known consumer electronics companies have their own prototype Blu-ray Disc recorder in development, so we expect to see more Blu-ray recorders on the Japanese market during 2004.

According to Sony of America's senior vice president Mike Fidler, products based on the Blu-ray Disc format are not likely to be available in the United States until 2005. However, LG Electronics has stated that they have plans to introduce a Blu-ray Disc recorder in the United States in the third quarter of 2004.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue laser is that it has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometer) than a red laser (650 nanometer), which means that it's possible to focus the laser beam with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly on the disc and makes it possible to fit more data on the same size disc. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVDs.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by eleven leading consumer electronics companies (Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition television (HDTV), which isn't possible with todays VCRs. Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 54GB of data.

You'll probably have to wait until 2005-2006 for Blu-ray recorders to become commonly available. The driving force behind the development of Blu-ray Disc recorders is the need to record HDTV programming and currently the only country where HDTV is well established is Japan. The only Blu-ray Disc recorder that's currently available to consumers is the Sony BDZ-S77 Blu-ray Disc Recorder, but as you can see in our Blu-ray Recorders section, most well-known consumer electronics companies have their own prototype Blu-ray Disc recorder in development, so we expect to see more Blu-ray recorders on the Japanese market during 2004.

According to Sony of America's senior vice president Mike Fidler, products based on the Blu-ray Disc format are not likely to be available in the United States until 2005. However, LG Electronics has stated that they have plans to introduce a Blu-ray Disc recorder in the United States in the third quarter of 2004.

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. The benefit of using a blue laser is that it has a shorter wavelength (405 nanometer) than a red laser (650 nanometer), which means that it's possible to focus the laser beam with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly on the disc and makes it possible to fit more data on the same size disc. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVDs.

All of which assumes that they're looking to make a portable electron-beam disc player. That's not at all what they're talking about. They specifically say that this is a tech for mastering discs. For playback, you'd use Blu-Ray or something similar. That would be more advanced than anything on the market now, but it's still just a plain old-fashioned laser.

For the life of me I don't know why HD-DVD was chosen by the DVD Forum over Blu-Ray.

The DVD Forum can't approve/accept a format that hasn't been proposed to the forum, and Blu-ray Disc most likely never will be. The Blu-ray format was developed outside of the DVD Forum by a group of 10 leading consumer electronics companies called the Blu-ray Disc Founders (BDF). The reason they haven't proposed the format is because they feel that the format is siginificantly different from current DVDs and needs to be developed in another forum.

Check out the Blu-ray web site for more information.

P.S. The HD-DVD format wasn't approved until they changed the voting rules so that abstained votes didn't count.

A buddy of mine burnt several DVD+Rs for me. After I came back home, they became coasters as I found out none of the PCs I own read them. My laptop is less than a year old for god's sake. Despite its hype, DVD+R format is useless unless you have a compatible drive(players should be ok).

Also, new 8x recorders are coming.
Also, new double-layer recorders are coming.
The target is constantly moving...

As far as the next generation high capacity DVD format is concerned, Blue-ray is currently under development, headed by Sony, Matsushita(panasonic) and phillips. Meanwhile, (oh what a surprise) there is another high-cap DVD standard using blue-laser technology, headed by Toshiba and NEC. It is called HD-DVD and it stores 5 times more data than current DVD+/-Rs can hold. Needless to say they are incompatible to one another.

while neither of new DVD standards is available in the market yet, it is a matter of time that they will replace the current standards. Then again, we will face incompatibility issues between Blue-Ray and HD DVD. Competition is good, but consumers have got enough of those with VHS/Beta, LaserDisc/Videodisc, Win/Mac, yada yada yada.

Despite its hype and promises, DVD+R may live a short life (maybe 10 years) IMO.

Sony is actively pushing the Blu-Ray format. There is already the HD BDZ-S77 Blu-Ray HD recorder/player devices being sold in Japan.

Blu-Ray can hold 23GB on a disk, but more importantly it can have very high-speed data transfers, and the pro Blu-Ray devices even have two heads for faster transfer.

Visit blu-ray.com and read more about those 25/50gb recordable discs supported by Sony, Hitachi, JVC, Panasonic, Philips, Pionner, Samsung, Sharp and TDK.

Of course... HD-DVD is just around the corner. Check CNET or Blu-Ray.

Still, be good to have those movies on DVD. After all, "Nazis make the best bad guys."

Uncle Eazy