The next generation of optical drives based on blue laser technology is in development and it looks like a new format war will be inevitably. Hitachi, LG, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp and Sony are working on the BD (Blu-ray Disc) format while NEC and Toshiba are working on the AOD (Advanced Optical Disc) format. The main application for the ROM (Read Only Memory) versions of the new formats will be HD-DVD (High-Definition DVD) movies.
Blu-ray is developed outside the DVD forum intentionally by the founders. NEC and Toshiba however have proposed the AOD format for the DVD forum but it was rejected in June, mainly because the founders of the Blu-ray format have a majority of the votes in the steering committee. But since 8 of the 17 members abstained from voting a new meeting will be held next week.
To remedy the lopsided membership configuration, the DVD Forum has invited three more companies to join the steering committee. Its deadline for self-nomination was Nov. 7. The activities within the steering committee have resulted in some criticism leveled against the Blu-ray group. 'The Blu-ray camp has its rights to choose to work outside the DVD Forum," said one executive in Hollywood who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 'But I think they have crossed the line by keeping their seats on the forum's steering committee with no genuine desire to cooperate with the forum. They are there to interfere with AOD and suppress their competitors."
Others accused the Blu-ray group of a blatant attempt to undermine more than a year's worth of technical development efforts by engineers from 60 companies in the DVD Forum's working group, who labored to complete the HD-DVD proposal. Many in the Blu-ray camp don't see any conflict of interest, however. Sony's Fidler made it clear that Blu-ray backers 'believed in the need for a new organization outside the DVD Forum due to the new technologies the [BD-ROM] format adopted, including a new physical-disk format and laser technology." Just as the consumer electronics industry moved from infrared with CD to red laser with DVD, and now on to blue laser for high definition, the Blu-ray camp sees it as a natural progression to set up a completely new industry group outside the DVD Forum. |
Both formats will (of course) also have new stronger copy protections. For example BD-ROM will use an encryption algorithm based on 128-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). You can read the complete interesting article here.
Source: EE Times
