Sony Adopts Blu-ray Disc PlayStation 3

fenimor writes "Sony announced today that it had begun preparations to adopt Blu-ray Disc ROM (BD-ROM) format as a medium for the next generation PlayStation. Single side double layer Blu-Ray discs have a huge memory size of 54 GB, being an ideal medium to distribute next generation entertainment content from movies and music to computer applications. Next month Sony plans to announce a 200GB 8-layer version of BD-ROM according to MacWorld."

Comments

I wonder

[JaffaKREE]

how badly a small scratch will affect these ? How much data redundancy is there ?

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots. That was a common concern when DVDs came out but there is a lot more data correction on DVD. Same so with BluRay See the FAQ

Re:I wonder

[grub]

I mean, let's have higher resolution FMV's! Crisp! Less artificing. But seriously, the game itself -- Do you suppose they'll ever make a 50 gigabyte PS3 game?

It's not just about games. Once the Blu-Ray readers are more common and available for a few hundred bucks for your AV rack you'll see the push to re-buy the movies you've already bought on VHS and DVD.

"Star Wars Special BluRay Edition in 300 channel THX certified blah blah blah" (and Greedo will still shoot first in that release)

Now all we need...

[ackthpt]

Now all we need is some decent games. It would be very cool if Sony would direct some of their lucre towards obtaining rights to M.U.L.E. and Mail Order Monsters and put them on this system.

with all that storage they could make the planet Irata truly shine...

backwards compatible

[Tante]

Will this be compatible with all my PS2 games?

Blu-Ray Winning

[Kenshin]

Personally, I see this as the action that will establish BD-ROM as the leader of the next-gen disc formats.

I don't know many people who will rush-out to buy a new DVD player to play HD movies, but EVERYONE is going to buy a PS3.

With that installed base, it will be fairly easy to translate into the market for movies being sold in that format.

if this is the case then I doubt ps3 in 05

[cyrax777]

Like people keep suggesting. More like late 06 early 07.

Re:Flaming Sony for Proprietary Format

[magicsquid]

The Dreamcast DID have a proprietary format. It was called the GD-Rom.

The following explanation is courtesy of SkunkWorks

The Sega Dreamcast GD-ROM system utilizes Oak Technology's OTI-9220 CD-ROM controller which is a single chip integration of Sony's "CXD-3005R" DSP/Servo control and Oak Technology's "OTI-912" CD-ROM decoder.

So what does this mean? Sega had their "proprietary" GD-ROM system designed to use media with 2 times the capacity of CD-ROM discs, but with off-the-shelf CD-ROM components, and may have used a technique of running the spindle motor at half the speed required for CD-ROM's in reading 2x density GD-ROM discs-- tricking the pickup into believing it's reading off data from a CD-ROM disc at "x" (CAV) spindle rpm when it is actually reading a GD-ROM disc at "y" spindle rpm (x divided by 2=y). With same data read rates as with a CD-ROM disc running at twice it's rpm, the optical head, focus servo controls, signal processors, etc etc. aren't aware it's actually reading data off from a larger capacity medium. In other words, the GD-ROM disc is nothing more than a "passively accelerated" (tightly packed) CD-ROM disc, "decelerated" to emulate a CD-ROM by running the spindle motor at half the rpm!

MGM comes into the picture..

[voice of unreason]

Interesting. I think I'm starting to see Sony's strategy. They're rolling out a console that can probably play blu-ray DVD movies. They recently bought MGM, giving Sony the rights to rerelease all of MGM's movies on DVD. With PS3 to put players into the market, and with MGM movies to release, it sounds like sony has put a lot of thought into making their blu-ray standard a success.

Finally!

[Dark Paladin]

Square-Enix can finally achieve the dream of turning Final Fantasy XIV into nothing more than a 50 hour movie with save spots in between!

backing up will still take 50 disks

[davidwr]

In the days of 20MB hard disks, it took about 50 360KB floppies to back up a nearly-full disk, more or less.

In the days of 40GB hard disks, it took 50 800MB CD-Rs.

With 250GB systems, it takes about 50 4.7GB DVD-Rs.

By the time 50-200GB burners are available for under $200 in 7-8 years, I'll probably be using 2.5-10TB systems at home, and the ratio will still be 50.

I don't know about you, but 50 disk-swaps is several too many. Even with incremental or differential backups, it's a pain in the ***.

Your disks-per-complete-backup ratio may not be 50 but it's probably fairly stable over time.