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Blu-Ray Attacks Microsoft, Microsoft Bites Back
QT writes "Ars Technica has been following this week's next-gen DVD dramas closely. First, there's extensive coverage of the
reasons why Microsoft backed HD-DVD, which was primarily inspired by mandatory support for
copying discs to computers. The BDA, however, countered with an attack on Microsoft's reasons, and
Microsoft returned fire. Richard E. Doherty, Microsoft's head of the media entertainment technology convergence group, said that 50GB Blu-ray disc are in fact many years away. Is
MS playing games, or is Sony misrepresenting just how far along BD-ROM really is?" From the article: "HD DVD is proven to deliver 30GB capacity today, with the potential to deliver even greater capacity. The 50GB claim for BD-ROM discs is unproven and will not be available for many years to come, based on discussions with major Japanese and US replicators. Replicators not only do not have test lines running, they cannot even pre-order the equipment to begin evaluating this disc. They cannot judge the cost of these discs, or even whether they can be manufactured at all. Major replicators can mass manufacture 30GB HD DVD discs today and it's well understood that these discs will cost significantly less to manufacture than the lower-capacity 25GB BD discs."
We previously discussed this topic when the announcement came out.
So 50GB is miles off, of course it is because we all know that HD-DVD is so real and there are so many devices whereas Blu-ray will only be shipping in potentially the biggest selling console of 2006.
Microsoft do XBox 360, Sony do PS3, XBox 360 hasn't gone for either HD-DVD or Blu-ray. If HD-DVD was so real why didn't they pick it for XBox 360?
Its amazing how this talk of reality of Blu-ray (which I've actually seen demo'ed) over HD-DVD tends to ignore the fact that only one company (Sony) is producing a mass market player in 2006.
If PS3 wins, then Blu-ray will have significant volume in 2006 which will drive down costs and mean larger capacity disks arrive much earlier.
"Grand Theft Auto - Whole of the damned Continenal United States" anyone?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The Blu-Ray spec requires a fully functional Java interpreter to be embedded in every media player. You know the scripting language that DVDs use to control menus and stuff like that? On a Blu-Ray system, this is a full Java implementation with access to a TCP stack and everything.
(I saw some sessions about this at JavaOne this year.)
How could Microsoft get behind something like that?