Well, I certainly can't disprove what I don't know, but I can definitely share what I do:).
It's a mystery to me why Sony hasn't been serious about advanced codec. Note that Blu-ray was originally going to be MPEG-2 only - they added VC-1 and H.264 later when it was clear that HD DVD + VC-1 could store more minutes of content at a given quality level than Blu-ray. But Sony themselves have stated all their launch titles are going to be MPEG-2 due to technical limitations, and they're making the authoring tools. If Blu-ray survives, this will probably change eventually.
I haven't been tracking the recordable media capacity tightly. I'll see what I can find out though.
I like to think that the line is derived from reality - I joined Microsoft a few months ago because I thought they were doing great stuff in digital media, not the other way around. For specific answers
1. Sure cost of disc matters. Whoever has the cheaper format offers more margin per disc assuming the same retail price, making it more cost effective to release more titles.
2. VC-1 is about 1/2 as complex to decode as H.264 High Profile, which makes computer-based playback a lot easier. Won't matter for DSP-based solutions, as you say.
3. Well, iHD is quite flexible as well. I've yet to hear a compelling example of something that iHD can't do for movies that Blu-ray's Java can, but there are certainly examples to the contrary, like picture-in-picture.
4. That's been argued, but lacking good release dates for the PS3, or detailed info on how the Blu-ray support is going to work, it's hard to make a good comparison. I suspect you'll be able to buy a XBOX 360 + HD DVD accessory before PS3 launches in the USA. Really, when with the PS3 be available, in what volume, and what price? We know you'll be able to buy a HD DVD player in about 33 days, at $499 list.
5. "In the lab" means that there aren't any production lines that can make dual-layer Blu-ray, but there are a number of production lines that can handle dual-layer HD DVD. HD DVD is launching in five weeks - it's well out of the lab at this point.
Interesting theory, but wrong on its face. All the codecs in question (MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264) are fully and publically documented. Picking one over the other wouldn't help or hurt piracy.
Well, it has been suggested that one of the reasons that Blu-ray used MPEG-2 is that they were assuming they'd get the 50 GB dual-layer format working much easier than they had, so they could use the least efficient codec, meaning any rip from the disc would be unweildy in size. Which is really Sony shooting themselves in the foot, since they don't have 50 GB out of the lab yet, nor non-MPEG-2 authoring tools, so they're going to struggle to get long movies onto single discs.
In practice, AACS DRM is very well designed. I wouldn't assume any deCSS like solution for it will happen. On the flip side, there is Mandatory Managed Copy, so there will be a legal way to rip for Media Center use.
FWIW, I work in Amir's division, as Program Manager for Video Encoding.
Oh, there are still some very substantial differences. Even though both use the same laser diode, Blu-ray uses a much thinner substrate, so the optical head is closer to the actual pits. In theory this means it can have higher data density (15 GB per layer instead of 25 GB per layer). But in practice, this has meant:
HD DVD can do dual-layer very easily for 30 GB, while Blu-ray still hasn't gotten dual-layer out of the lab, meaning that mass market titles will be single layer 25 GB.
Blu-ray discs are harder and more expensive to make, for both manufactured, and writable/rewritable.
Sony has also failed to get a way to actually use any advanced codecs other than MPEG-2 working yet. Which means that for near-future HD titles, we're looking at:
HD DVD @ 30 GB running VC-1 (you can do all of LOTR:ROTK:EE on a single side of a single disc with that).
Blu-ray @ 25 GB running MPEG-2 (where anything much over 2 hours can start having some quality degradation compared to the source).
Also, Java is a relative nightmare for developing movie content versus iHD. It's akin to building a web site completely as an embedded Java applet v. using XHTML. With iHD we can build great stuff, like having picture-in-picture of the director popping up for audio commentary. It's also not clear what the baseline support of Blu-ray players for interactivity is going to be - a number of players look like they might support a small subset of what's possible. With HD DVD, all players will support iHD.
HD DVD v. Blu-ray isn't unlike XBOX 360 v. PS3. Sure, the PS3 sounds great on paper. But Sony's betting the farm on SO many new technologies, the failure or delay of any one of throws the whole thing off. If they could make either PS3 or Blu-ray work perfectly and on time, that'd be one thing. XBOX 360 and HD DVD are shipping and shipping in a month respectively, and rock. Rocking, shipping products beat rocking paper specs with questionable ability to implement any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
You will be able to play a physical HD DVD in any physical HD DVD player. The net access is about making a legal copy of the media for use in a media center. You'll be able to play in disc in your library on any other player, without net access, just like you can with a DVD.
HD DVD trades better cryptographic security for more flexible end-user rights. with Mandatory Managed Copy, any HD DVD can be transferred, legally, to other approved devices. While this is technically capable (via deCSS tools) with DVD, it's illegal.
Sony's a major patent holder in Blu-ray, but hardly the only one, or the majority one. For example, Blu-ray includes the VC-1 video codec, so Microsoft will also get a cut of every player sold.
You don't mandate requirements for your extended support network. I've got neighbors, family, friends I support - probably a dozen machines in all. I don't say it like "my way or the highway" but I absolutely mandate upgrades for those folks.
For example, last week a family friend had her Win98 box spywared again (even though she was on dialup). I didn't offer to fix the machine. I just gave her an old XP box I wasn't using, but told her I wanted her to get DSL in return for a new free computer. Seemed only fair to me.
If you're doing folks a favor, it's just fine to require them to do it in a way that makes it easy for you as well.
I'm not in front of a Mac now, but my understanding was the new Flip4Mac 2.0, which Microsoft is distributing, does support WMV9 Advanced Profile (probably what you're calling WMV10). It wasn't supported in the old Flip4Mac. The new version also got a LOT of performance tuning for G4 and G5, so you can actually play back HD WMV content on today's high-end Macs.
I've been working with a Dell XPS laptop, 17" @ 1920x1200. I needed it for HD video playback demos, but I feared it would be unusable. As it is, I've had no problem at all doing my email, web, design, etcetera. And the extra real estate is great. Still young eyes at 35?
Going back to the 17" PB @ 1440x900 seems so... blocky.
Hard to think I spent a year at 512x384 B&W, and ~5 years at 640x480 8-bit:).
I recently joined Microsoft as a blue badge employee. I had a conversation with someone I've known for ages who is a relatively recent orange badge hire. I can't say what things used to be like, but I haven't seen antipathy towards contractors, nor heard the complaints like the article mentions. The only issue along these lines I've seen is with confidential information. Since contractors aren't really Microsoft employees, they need to have their own NDAs, and by default can't be told information that's Microsoft confidential from other companies.
Also, there's a lot of transition between the groups. Lots of blue badges used to have orange badges. And I know some folks who have gone from blue to orange if they wanted to work remotely or something.
Well, even if one encoded 24p at 60p, one would just use frame repeat tags, so bandwidth wouldn't change. You'd just get another flavor of 3:2 pulldown, with an alternating pattern of three and two repeated frames.
Actually, VC-1 is just the name for the SMPTE-standardized version of the WMV9 and WMV9-Advanced Profile video codec. There isn't any standardized version of WMA (although open source implementations certainly exist).
You're right on the license fees - one can get those from MPEG-LA without having to get approval, or write a check to, Microsoft directly.
Blu-ray, like HD DVD, can use any of MPEG-2, VC-1, and H.264 for a video codec.
While there are lots of good H.264 and VC-1 HD encoders in development (I'm particularly fond of Inlet's Fathom HD), MPEG-2 encoders are faster and more mature these days. If you've got space to burn on a disc, using MPEG-2 would be simpler today than the modern codecs.
That said, I expect a lot of HD content to get released on red laser (DVD-9) media, using the advanced codecs. VC-1 can do a great 2.5 hour movie on DVD-9.
They've only JUST NOW finished the first completed disc? Crazy
I was bored this summer, and made a feature-length HD DVD using MPEG-2 and Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. In a weekend. Targeting DVD-9 media. Looked pretty good, and would have looked great if DVDSP4 supported using H.264 for 1080 content, or VC-1 at all.
I can't share that disc image unfortunately, but I can, once again, share this link to a HD DVD disc image I made before I tried the feature. A mix of MPEG-2 and H.264, 720 and 1080, i and p. Plays back perfectly in DVD Player 4.6 on a G5 Mac, and probably in other software players as well.
The height of the laptop is the limiting factor for whether it can be used on an airplane in coach. Once you're at max height, the only place to go is wide.
I've got a 17" PowerBook, and if I'm going to work on the plane, I need to get a 1st class upgrade, or at least exit row or bulkhead.
Honestly, I think CinemaCraft is a little overrated. Nothing wrong with it, but I generally get better results out of both Compressor 2 and ProCoder/Carbon. And yes, this is backed up by double-blind third party quality review - I've got an article about this coming out in DV Magazine in a few weeks.
Yeah, has anyone come up with a plausible theory for how hiding Luke from his dad by putting him with his dad's half-brother (?) and wife, whom his dad knows, on his dad's home planet, was a good idea.
Also, why did Vader let them get slaughtered like that during the search for Luke.
Before #3 came out, I always figured we'd have some kind of "memory wipe" take place as part of him becoming Vader to explain all these inconsistencies. Something like the emperor taking away his past so he would be a more loyal follower or something. Didn't happen though.
I'm sure some fan or another has a detailed web site explaining why all this makes sense:).
The HD DVD physical format has been complete for quite a while. Are you citing some information to the contrary? Or just making a false assumption based on the "not much like the movie format Blu-ray" Blu-ray products being available in Japan?
I've recently been told that the current generation BR storage products shipping in Japan are actually incompatible with the BR-ROM format movies are going to use.
I'm feeling like the shipping Blu-ray products are a stepping stone on the way to Blu-ray movies like Javascript was a stepping stone on the way to Java:).
Lots of folks are throwing around lots of scary numbers about how much bandwidth will be needed for HD movie downloads. The good thing is that they can be much smaller than many seem to fear.
I posted this in the last HD disc thread, but here it is again: a very hard movie trailer, encoded at 1080p24, at 8 Mbps VBR. And bear in mind this is unusually challenging content. And bear in mind we're about to see a next generation of codecs (VC-1 Advanced Profile and High Profile H.264) which will give us another very welcome boost in compression efficiency.
Note the data rate here is also sufficient for putting a HD feature on DVD-9 media.
All that said, 8 Mbps at a 4 Mbps download gives 4 hours to download a 2 hour movie. Way faster than Netflix, and WAY better looking (6.5x the pixels!).
Having RW media certainly isn't a mark against Blu-ray as a movie format, but it isn't really an advantage either. It's not the same manufacturing process as movies will use, and the players don't support the actual movie data. It's like saying having a few thousand CD-RW drives on the market gets you close to making SVCD a mass-market format.
And, again, I MADE a HD-DVD disc image months ago, as referenced earlier. You can download a.dmg disc image of it here:
HD DVD is 6-12 months closer to mass market release at this point. Spec is farther along, production lines for media are farther along, and movie-format players are farther along.
Yes, there are RW Blu-ray devices in Japan, but not many of them, and NONE OF THEM ARE MOVIE PLAYERS. They use the RW flavor of BR optical media, but that's it.
Ah, but a HD DVD line can switch between HD DVD and normal DVD, so it's already got a huge market already. And you don't need to build a new line - you upgrade your DVD line to HD DVD, and keep on making DVDs. Blu-ray just does Blu-ray. So it's much riskier, as well as being much more expensive.
As for player? There are 0 Blu-ray movie players in the world now, Japan included. They have storage devices using the optical format, but the actual bitstream for the discs hasn't been fully defined yet.
As for "increasing stream of Blu-ray revenue" do you have a citation? For mass-produced media? Nothing plays them yet!
Eh? There aren't any lines that can mass produce dual layer Blu-ray discs yet. They've got stuff in the lab, but not for mass production.
Sure, the DRIVES will support dual-layer (although there have been some rumors that maybe not the PS3, but I can't imagine that's true). But the discs you can actually by will be SL for a while, but HD DVD will be DL at launch.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I certainly can't disprove what I don't know, but I can definitely share what I do :).
It's a mystery to me why Sony hasn't been serious about advanced codec. Note that Blu-ray was originally going to be MPEG-2 only - they added VC-1 and H.264 later when it was clear that HD DVD + VC-1 could store more minutes of content at a given quality level than Blu-ray. But Sony themselves have stated all their launch titles are going to be MPEG-2 due to technical limitations, and they're making the authoring tools. If Blu-ray survives, this will probably change eventually.
I haven't been tracking the recordable media capacity tightly. I'll see what I can find out though.
I like to think that the line is derived from reality - I joined Microsoft a few months ago because I thought they were doing great stuff in digital media, not the other way around. For specific answers
1. Sure cost of disc matters. Whoever has the cheaper format offers more margin per disc assuming the same retail price, making it more cost effective to release more titles.
2. VC-1 is about 1/2 as complex to decode as H.264 High Profile, which makes computer-based playback a lot easier. Won't matter for DSP-based solutions, as you say.
3. Well, iHD is quite flexible as well. I've yet to hear a compelling example of something that iHD can't do for movies that Blu-ray's Java can, but there are certainly examples to the contrary, like picture-in-picture.
4. That's been argued, but lacking good release dates for the PS3, or detailed info on how the Blu-ray support is going to work, it's hard to make a good comparison. I suspect you'll be able to buy a XBOX 360 + HD DVD accessory before PS3 launches in the USA. Really, when with the PS3 be available, in what volume, and what price? We know you'll be able to buy a HD DVD player in about 33 days, at $499 list.
5. "In the lab" means that there aren't any production lines that can make dual-layer Blu-ray, but there are a number of production lines that can handle dual-layer HD DVD. HD DVD is launching in five weeks - it's well out of the lab at this point.
Interesting theory, but wrong on its face. All the codecs in question (MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264) are fully and publically documented. Picking one over the other wouldn't help or hurt piracy.
Well, it has been suggested that one of the reasons that Blu-ray used MPEG-2 is that they were assuming they'd get the 50 GB dual-layer format working much easier than they had, so they could use the least efficient codec, meaning any rip from the disc would be unweildy in size. Which is really Sony shooting themselves in the foot, since they don't have 50 GB out of the lab yet, nor non-MPEG-2 authoring tools, so they're going to struggle to get long movies onto single discs.
In practice, AACS DRM is very well designed. I wouldn't assume any deCSS like solution for it will happen. On the flip side, there is Mandatory Managed Copy, so there will be a legal way to rip for Media Center use.
FWIW, I work in Amir's division, as Program Manager for Video Encoding.
Oh, there are still some very substantial differences. Even though both use the same laser diode, Blu-ray uses a much thinner substrate, so the optical head is closer to the actual pits. In theory this means it can have higher data density (15 GB per layer instead of 25 GB per layer). But in practice, this has meant:
HD DVD can do dual-layer very easily for 30 GB, while Blu-ray still hasn't gotten dual-layer out of the lab, meaning that mass market titles will be single layer 25 GB.
Blu-ray discs are harder and more expensive to make, for both manufactured, and writable/rewritable.
Sony has also failed to get a way to actually use any advanced codecs other than MPEG-2 working yet. Which means that for near-future HD titles, we're looking at:
HD DVD @ 30 GB running VC-1 (you can do all of LOTR:ROTK:EE on a single side of a single disc with that).
Blu-ray @ 25 GB running MPEG-2 (where anything much over 2 hours can start having some quality degradation compared to the source).
Also, Java is a relative nightmare for developing movie content versus iHD. It's akin to building a web site completely as an embedded Java applet v. using XHTML. With iHD we can build great stuff, like having picture-in-picture of the director popping up for audio commentary. It's also not clear what the baseline support of Blu-ray players for interactivity is going to be - a number of players look like they might support a small subset of what's possible. With HD DVD, all players will support iHD.
HD DVD v. Blu-ray isn't unlike XBOX 360 v. PS3. Sure, the PS3 sounds great on paper. But Sony's betting the farm on SO many new technologies, the failure or delay of any one of throws the whole thing off. If they could make either PS3 or Blu-ray work perfectly and on time, that'd be one thing. XBOX 360 and HD DVD are shipping and shipping in a month respectively, and rock. Rocking, shipping products beat rocking paper specs with questionable ability to implement any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
This sub-thread has more heat than light!
You will be able to play a physical HD DVD in any physical HD DVD player. The net access is about making a legal copy of the media for use in a media center. You'll be able to play in disc in your library on any other player, without net access, just like you can with a DVD.
HD DVD trades better cryptographic security for more flexible end-user rights. with Mandatory Managed Copy, any HD DVD can be transferred, legally, to other approved devices. While this is technically capable (via deCSS tools) with DVD, it's illegal.
Sony's a major patent holder in Blu-ray, but hardly the only one, or the majority one. For example, Blu-ray includes the VC-1 video codec, so Microsoft will also get a cut of every player sold.
You don't mandate requirements for your extended support network. I've got neighbors, family, friends I support - probably a dozen machines in all. I don't say it like "my way or the highway" but I absolutely mandate upgrades for those folks.
For example, last week a family friend had her Win98 box spywared again (even though she was on dialup). I didn't offer to fix the machine. I just gave her an old XP box I wasn't using, but told her I wanted her to get DSL in return for a new free computer. Seemed only fair to me.
If you're doing folks a favor, it's just fine to require them to do it in a way that makes it easy for you as well.
I'm not in front of a Mac now, but my understanding was the new Flip4Mac 2.0, which Microsoft is distributing, does support WMV9 Advanced Profile (probably what you're calling WMV10). It wasn't supported in the old Flip4Mac. The new version also got a LOT of performance tuning for G4 and G5, so you can actually play back HD WMV content on today's high-end Macs.
I've been working with a Dell XPS laptop, 17" @ 1920x1200. I needed it for HD video playback demos, but I feared it would be unusable. As it is, I've had no problem at all doing my email, web, design, etcetera. And the extra real estate is great. Still young eyes at 35?
:).
Going back to the 17" PB @ 1440x900 seems so... blocky.
Hard to think I spent a year at 512x384 B&W, and ~5 years at 640x480 8-bit
I recently joined Microsoft as a blue badge employee. I had a conversation with someone I've known for ages who is a relatively recent orange badge hire. I can't say what things used to be like, but I haven't seen antipathy towards contractors, nor heard the complaints like the article mentions. The only issue along these lines I've seen is with confidential information. Since contractors aren't really Microsoft employees, they need to have their own NDAs, and by default can't be told information that's Microsoft confidential from other companies.
Also, there's a lot of transition between the groups. Lots of blue badges used to have orange badges. And I know some folks who have gone from blue to orange if they wanted to work remotely or something.
Well, even if one encoded 24p at 60p, one would just use frame repeat tags, so bandwidth wouldn't change. You'd just get another flavor of 3:2 pulldown, with an alternating pattern of three and two repeated frames.
Actually, VC-1 is just the name for the SMPTE-standardized version of the WMV9 and WMV9-Advanced Profile video codec. There isn't any standardized version of WMA (although open source implementations certainly exist).
You're right on the license fees - one can get those from MPEG-LA without having to get approval, or write a check to, Microsoft directly.
Blu-ray, like HD DVD, can use any of MPEG-2, VC-1, and H.264 for a video codec.
While there are lots of good H.264 and VC-1 HD encoders in development (I'm particularly fond of Inlet's Fathom HD), MPEG-2 encoders are faster and more mature these days. If you've got space to burn on a disc, using MPEG-2 would be simpler today than the modern codecs.
That said, I expect a lot of HD content to get released on red laser (DVD-9) media, using the advanced codecs. VC-1 can do a great 2.5 hour movie on DVD-9.
They've only JUST NOW finished the first completed disc? Crazy
m g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90
I was bored this summer, and made a feature-length HD DVD using MPEG-2 and Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. In a weekend. Targeting DVD-9 media. Looked pretty good, and would have looked great if DVDSP4 supported using H.264 for 1080 content, or VC-1 at all.
I can't share that disc image unfortunately, but I can, once again, share this link to a HD DVD disc image I made before I tried the feature. A mix of MPEG-2 and H.264, 720 and 1080, i and p. Plays back perfectly in DVD Player 4.6 on a G5 Mac, and probably in other software players as well.
http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.d
The height of the laptop is the limiting factor for whether it can be used on an airplane in coach. Once you're at max height, the only place to go is wide.
I've got a 17" PowerBook, and if I'm going to work on the plane, I need to get a 1st class upgrade, or at least exit row or bulkhead.
Honestly, I think CinemaCraft is a little overrated. Nothing wrong with it, but I generally get better results out of both Compressor 2 and ProCoder/Carbon. And yes, this is backed up by double-blind third party quality review - I've got an article about this coming out in DV Magazine in a few weeks.
Yeah, has anyone come up with a plausible theory for how hiding Luke from his dad by putting him with his dad's half-brother (?) and wife, whom his dad knows, on his dad's home planet, was a good idea.
:).
Also, why did Vader let them get slaughtered like that during the search for Luke.
Before #3 came out, I always figured we'd have some kind of "memory wipe" take place as part of him becoming Vader to explain all these inconsistencies. Something like the emperor taking away his past so he would be a more loyal follower or something. Didn't happen though.
I'm sure some fan or another has a detailed web site explaining why all this makes sense
Public demos of a *laptop* HD DVD drive enough for you?
e ils-a-laptop-with-hd-dvd-drive-to-showcase-technol ogy/
0 1.htm
e xt-gen-dvd.ars/21 10.html
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000943061481/
http://news.techwhack.com/2182/041013-toshiba-unv
And for HD DVD-R media:
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2005_06/pr08
On replication issues:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/n
http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/10381/145
The HD DVD physical format has been complete for quite a while. Are you citing some information to the contrary? Or just making a false assumption based on the "not much like the movie format Blu-ray" Blu-ray products being available in Japan?
:).
I've recently been told that the current generation BR storage products shipping in Japan are actually incompatible with the BR-ROM format movies are going to use.
I'm feeling like the shipping Blu-ray products are a stepping stone on the way to Blu-ray movies like Javascript was a stepping stone on the way to Java
Lots of folks are throwing around lots of scary numbers about how much bandwidth will be needed for HD movie downloads. The good thing is that they can be much smaller than many seem to fear.
M bps+VBR.torrent?75320A1EBA045F4BCC75992F2461E9FAC5 952498
I posted this in the last HD disc thread, but here it is again: a very hard movie trailer, encoded at 1080p24, at 8 Mbps VBR. And bear in mind this is unusually challenging content. And bear in mind we're about to see a next generation of codecs (VC-1 Advanced Profile and High Profile H.264) which will give us another very welcome boost in compression efficiency.
http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/The+Island+8+
Note the data rate here is also sufficient for putting a HD feature on DVD-9 media.
All that said, 8 Mbps at a 4 Mbps download gives 4 hours to download a 2 hour movie. Way faster than Netflix, and WAY better looking (6.5x the pixels!).
Having RW media certainly isn't a mark against Blu-ray as a movie format, but it isn't really an advantage either. It's not the same manufacturing process as movies will use, and the players don't support the actual movie data. It's like saying having a few thousand CD-RW drives on the market gets you close to making SVCD a mass-market format.
.dmg disc image of it here:
m g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90
And, again, I MADE a HD-DVD disc image months ago, as referenced earlier. You can download a
http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.d
HD DVD is 6-12 months closer to mass market release at this point. Spec is farther along, production lines for media are farther along, and movie-format players are farther along.
RW Blu-ray optical media, yes.
But no mass-produced ROM media, no movies, and no players supporting the Blu-ray movie format.
Yes, there are RW Blu-ray devices in Japan, but not many of them, and NONE OF THEM ARE MOVIE PLAYERS. They use the RW flavor of BR optical media, but that's it.
No mass-produced ROM titles.
No movie titles.
No players with movie playback capacity.
Ah, but a HD DVD line can switch between HD DVD and normal DVD, so it's already got a huge market already. And you don't need to build a new line - you upgrade your DVD line to HD DVD, and keep on making DVDs. Blu-ray just does Blu-ray. So it's much riskier, as well as being much more expensive.
As for player? There are 0 Blu-ray movie players in the world now, Japan included. They have storage devices using the optical format, but the actual bitstream for the discs hasn't been fully defined yet.
As for "increasing stream of Blu-ray revenue" do you have a citation? For mass-produced media? Nothing plays them yet!
Eh? There aren't any lines that can mass produce dual layer Blu-ray discs yet. They've got stuff in the lab, but not for mass production.
Sure, the DRIVES will support dual-layer (although there have been some rumors that maybe not the PS3, but I can't imagine that's true). But the discs you can actually by will be SL for a while, but HD DVD will be DL at launch.