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Red vs. Blue Lasers Complicate DVD's Future
bnavarro writes: "The EE Times is reporting that the DVD Forum's Steering Committee voted this week to approve the use of low-bit-rate compression for high-definition DVD. The DVD Forum's decision, made at a meeting Tuesday (Feb. 26) in Tokyo, to stick with a red-laser-based scheme but switch to low-bit-rate compression, came only a week after nine of the world's biggest electronics companies agreed to promote a blue-laser-based format for next-generation video and computer optical disks."
Though the article is lean on details, this would fit suspiciously well into Microsoft's plan to have DVD players support Windows audio/video. I'm not a Microsoft fan, but I've got to admit that idea of downloading a 700 MB .wmv file, burning it to a CD and being able to play it back in my DVD player at DVD quality is quite enticing.
The future isn't what it used to be.
After a few cold nights with even a little frost, hell's temperature is rising again. What looked like an agreement on the direction of technology used in consumer applications has now turned into the usual competing standards situation.