GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us Sony will ship second generation consumer oriented Blu-Ray video recorders by the end of the year. The new drives will support single-side, dual-layer Blu-Ray rewriteable discs with a total capacity of 50GB, more than doubling current capacity.
| The second-generation machines will also support the so-called 'BD-ROM' format - the Blu-Ray equivalent of today's pre-recorded DVDs, Sony said. As yet, the BD-ROM specification remains incomplete, but Sony hopes to have it ready in April. Holding up the final version of the spec. is the question of what, if any, copy protection mechanism to mandate. Sony's movie division has said it will release content on BD-ROM in time for the 2005 Christmas sales season.
Sony's current 23GB BDZ-S77 Blu-Ray video recorder |
According to the article at the Register, Sony has also hinted at two models, one possiblty with a hard drive that may be used for PVR time shifting.
Source: The Register
