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Blu-Ray -vs- HD-DVD: The DVD Format Wars Heat Up Once More
A division of the DVD Forum will meet in New York next week to vote on a next-generation optical-disk format. Latest information say that its pretty unlikely that Blue Ray will receive official DVD forum backing, as the joint NEC/Toshiba proposal for HD-DVD (AOD) seems to be gaining some momentum (still no final decisions taken though). Whatever happens there will be competing formats during the second half of 2004.
Sixty companies took part in the forum's technical working group to develop the high-definition (HD-DVD) format, and some of them are also members of the opposing Blu-ray Disc ROM (BD-ROM) camp. Blu-ray was developed by 10 powerful consumer electronics companies, including Sony, Philips, Hitachi, Sharp and Samsung. All 10 are members of the DVD Forum's steering committee.
Efforts to control the next-generation format have split the consumer electronics industry in two, and the stakes are high. Whichever format the market eventually embraces is expected to give consumer electronics manufacturers control over the technology that underlies upcoming DVD systems, and to protect them from the price deterioration now being seen in DVD players manufactured largely by Chinese OEMs. Next-generation systems promise to deliver a high-definition movie on a single disk, and are expected to build momentum for HDTV set sales.
Some industry observers believe HD-DVD could offer a smooth, seamless transition from today's standard-definition DVD to high definition, but they also acknowledge that the proposal faces a battle. The HD-DVD camp is hoping to commercialize its products in time for Christmas 2004. BD-ROM proponents are planning to introduce their high-definition optical-disk player, which will not be compatible with the DVD Forum's specification, in late 2005.
While the DVD Forum's technical working groups have already completed round-robin verification tests and approved the HD-DVD spec, it still awaits final approval from the steering committee. The spec that is up for vote this week includes four high-efficiency codecs-H.264, Windows Media9, MPEG-2 or a hybrid of MPEG-2 and H.264. It also specifies a blue-laser diode technology. The proposal is based on Advanced Optical Disc (AOD) technology, co-developed by Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp. as a successor to the current DVD specification.
Designed to maintain full backward compatibility with current DVD disks, AOD adopts the same bonded-disk structure as the red-laser DVD current systems now in use, including the same thickness of the substrate disk and the same process for replication. But the data capacity is increased three to six times to store a high-definition movie, according to HD-DVD proponents. AOD's disk capacity is 15 Gbytes for a single-layer ROM disk, 30 Gbytes for a dual-layer disk and 20 Gbytes for a single-layer rewritable disk. The dual-layer rewritable disk is provisionally defined as 35 to 40 Gbytes.
Read the full article over @ CDRInfo.com
Sixty companies took part in the forum's technical working group to develop the high-definition (HD-DVD) format, and some of them are also members of the opposing Blu-ray Disc ROM (BD-ROM) camp. Blu-ray was developed by 10 powerful consumer electronics companies, including Sony, Philips, Hitachi, Sharp and Samsung. All 10 are members of the DVD Forum's steering committee.
Efforts to control the next-generation format have split the consumer electronics industry in two, and the stakes are high. Whichever format the market eventually embraces is expected to give consumer electronics manufacturers control over the technology that underlies upcoming DVD systems, and to protect them from the price deterioration now being seen in DVD players manufactured largely by Chinese OEMs. Next-generation systems promise to deliver a high-definition movie on a single disk, and are expected to build momentum for HDTV set sales.
Some industry observers believe HD-DVD could offer a smooth, seamless transition from today's standard-definition DVD to high definition, but they also acknowledge that the proposal faces a battle. The HD-DVD camp is hoping to commercialize its products in time for Christmas 2004. BD-ROM proponents are planning to introduce their high-definition optical-disk player, which will not be compatible with the DVD Forum's specification, in late 2005.
While the DVD Forum's technical working groups have already completed round-robin verification tests and approved the HD-DVD spec, it still awaits final approval from the steering committee. The spec that is up for vote this week includes four high-efficiency codecs-H.264, Windows Media9, MPEG-2 or a hybrid of MPEG-2 and H.264. It also specifies a blue-laser diode technology. The proposal is based on Advanced Optical Disc (AOD) technology, co-developed by Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp. as a successor to the current DVD specification.
Designed to maintain full backward compatibility with current DVD disks, AOD adopts the same bonded-disk structure as the red-laser DVD current systems now in use, including the same thickness of the substrate disk and the same process for replication. But the data capacity is increased three to six times to store a high-definition movie, according to HD-DVD proponents. AOD's disk capacity is 15 Gbytes for a single-layer ROM disk, 30 Gbytes for a dual-layer disk and 20 Gbytes for a single-layer rewritable disk. The dual-layer rewritable disk is provisionally defined as 35 to 40 Gbytes.
Read the full article over @ CDRInfo.com
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