The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has held an information seminar in Japan where it presented recent and future enhancements of the
Blu-ray Disc format. The BD-ROM version 1.0 physical format specifications were
finalized in June and its main application will be pre-recorded HD (High
Definition) movies. The logical format including what codecs the specifications
will support is however not finalized yet.
For the write-once BD-R format and the rewritable BD-RW
format the version 1.0 resp. version 2.0 of the physical format specifications
are scheduled to be finalized in September resp. October. These specifications
include support for 2x write speed (1x = 36 Mbps) and 50 GB double layer discs. Next year version 1.1 of BD-R is expected with support for 4x write speed and future plans for the BD format also include 100 GB quad layer discs (4 layers with 25 GB in each layer).
The presentation in Tokyo and those in the US last week were held to explain the format and promote a new association that will be open to any company in the industry. Wide support is important for any new standard and especially so for Blu-ray Disc because its competing against HD-DVD in a market where consumers have shown in the past a strong preference for a single standard.
Both the Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD groups see the support of content providers, especially movie studios, as vital and the events in the US last week included promotions to Hollywood studios, said Morise. For such companies a key issue is the time and cost of producing a single disc. Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD groups generally agree on production cost and both say they expect the discs to cost a little more than DVDs to produce. |
The competing HD-DVD group with NEC and Toshiba also held a similar information seminar in Japan recently so it looks like this format war heats up. More information about the BD seminar is available here at Macworld and the Japanese website watch.impress.co.jp has also a lot of pictures and information from the presentation here.
Source: MacWorld
