Video wars: round 2
Toshiba to Sell HD-DVD players in USA first (my italics) according to the Washington Post. It's ironic that a Japanese company is selling these new players in March, abroad. Apparently the Japanese will only get them when a "copy protection issue" is sorted out.
Normally the Japanese get new technology before anyone else e.g. video game consoles as shown by this BBC News article about the Playstation 3, " "We think September could be the right time for Sony in the US and November in Europe,"...., "Japan a bit earlier, say June or July" "
Anyway, it sounds like HD-DVD will be getting to market first - ahead of Blue Ray. With the techies beating the marketeers with an obvious acronym, it should get the edge as consumers will quickly realise the new disc is a DVD and wrongly assume it is for High Definition TV (HD is actually High Density).
Who the hell is going to work out what "Blu-Ray" is? Punters will assume it's something to see when diving the Great Barrier Reef.
Needless to say, even though both formats use blue lasers (rather than the red lasers for CDs & DVDs), Blue Ray is more advanced. It can store 25 GB in a single layer versus only 15 GB in a single HD-DVD layer. Dual layer recordings will also be available, offering 2x the data stored.
It sounds like the Betamax vs VHS wars all over again.
Of course, some think both formats will be annhilated by HVD, according to Softpedia, which will offer 1000 GB of storage using both blue and red lasers in a single ray. Alas, it won't be backwards compatible with DVDs, unlike the other 2 formats.
Normally the Japanese get new technology before anyone else e.g. video game consoles as shown by this BBC News article about the Playstation 3, " "We think September could be the right time for Sony in the US and November in Europe,"...., "Japan a bit earlier, say June or July" "
Anyway, it sounds like HD-DVD will be getting to market first - ahead of Blue Ray. With the techies beating the marketeers with an obvious acronym, it should get the edge as consumers will quickly realise the new disc is a DVD and wrongly assume it is for High Definition TV (HD is actually High Density).
Who the hell is going to work out what "Blu-Ray" is? Punters will assume it's something to see when diving the Great Barrier Reef.
Needless to say, even though both formats use blue lasers (rather than the red lasers for CDs & DVDs), Blue Ray is more advanced. It can store 25 GB in a single layer versus only 15 GB in a single HD-DVD layer. Dual layer recordings will also be available, offering 2x the data stored.
It sounds like the Betamax vs VHS wars all over again.
Of course, some think both formats will be annhilated by HVD, according to Softpedia, which will offer 1000 GB of storage using both blue and red lasers in a single ray. Alas, it won't be backwards compatible with DVDs, unlike the other 2 formats.
posted by Iconochasm at 1:52 pm
1 Comments:
Actually, it is Blu-Ray not Blue Ray. It also comes with a new spin on region coding, that lumps the US and Japan (plus most of East Asia) together in Region 1, and puts us Europeans together with Africa in Region 2. Yay. I don't think.
Post a Comment
<< Home