Microsoft, HP unveil their new high-def video disc formats

May 6, 2005

More news from the Home Entertainment show in Manhattan. Just as we are coming to grips with a possible truce in the Blu-ray camps, a couple more companies have decided that the consumer is ready for more choices. How about a little high definition red laser action from Microsoft and even Hewlett-Packard?

A Microsoft executive, Ed Bland, let on that his company's forthcoming second-generation game console - now expected to be called Xbox 360 - will deliver high-definition content using a conventional red laser pickup and the DVD-ROM discs found in current game consoles, computer drives and video disc players.

By contrast, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats require finer-focusing blue lasers, as well as new breeds of higher-capacity discs.

Hewlett Packard also was at the Home Entertainment Show, showcasing high-resolution video recording on its latest generation of Media Center PCs, designed for living room use (and so re-labeled "Digital Entertainment Centers").

While recordings are limited to the content nabbed from a built-in broadcast HD tuner, users will be able to store these shows in true high-def quality on a hard-disk drive and (more curiously) in "high bit rate" form on the centers' optional DVD recorder.

Just one hour of higher resolution content can be captured by the HP system on a dual layer DVD- or DVD+ recordable disc, a throwback to the cassette capacity of the first Betamax tape recorders. But the discs will then be readable by any current DVD disc player and will "look better than the best commercial discs, especially if you have a new DVD player that upconverts the output to a 720p signal," said an HP demonstrator. The three-model line goes on sale next week for $1,500 to $2,600.

HOW X MARKS THE SPOT: To deliver high-definition images from games and videos, Xbox 360 will deploy a Microsoft-developed data-encoding scheme (or codec) called VC-1.