A group promoting and developing a format for a next-generation DVD technology announced on Wednesday the completion of the first version of the specification, paving the way for disk production.
The Blu-ray Disc Founders group said the physical format for the read-only version of Blu-ray Discs is complete, so manufacturers can begin preparing to produce disks. Players and discs are not expected to be available until late 2005. Other aspects of the read-only version, such as which codecs to support, have to be determined. Rewritable Blu-ray Discs and recorders are already available in Japan from Panasonic and Sony. Blu-ray Disc, and rival format HD-DVD, are considered next-generation DVD technologies and are based on blue lasers. Current DVD technology is based on red lasers. The blue-laser technology will allow greater storage capacities, up to 50GB for dual-layer rewritable disks, compared with 4.7GB on current DVDs.
Source: ZDNet
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