Blu-Ray + HD DVD = HD-Blu

Every April Fool's day comes with its load of good and bad jokes. This year was not an exception. This one posted by dvddossier was the obvious one to write but was nicely done and very funny:

“Geneva, Switzerland, April 1st - Early this morning, The Blu-ray Disc Association and The HD DVD Promotions Group announced an end to the high definition "format wars" and said they would now combine the best features of the two competing technologies into a new format to be known as "HD-Blu."” Read it all.

Thanks to Frank for the tip!

Samsung Announces New Blu-ray Burners

Samsung Electronics, announced two new Blu-ray players. The SE-V046 is a Playstation 3 look-a-like external Blu-ray burner equipped with USB 2.0/IEEE 1394.

The SH-B043, an external Blu-ray burner, writes BD-R at 4x, and BD-RE at 2x. The drive uses 2 lens and 2 laser diodes for supporting all BD/DVD/CD formats. The external player will only be available in 2008, while the built-in one will be in store by year end.

Blu-ray Will Have Replaced the DVD by 2010

After announcing the death of HD DVD last January, the Blu-ray disc association said on Thursday it aimed to replace the DVD storage format within three years.
 
"Within three years it will just be Blu-ray," Frank Simonis, the Blu-ray Disc Association's European chairman, said at the CeBIT technology trade show.

This may look as a very rapid change of technology for consumers, but if we a look back at how fast the DVD first penetrated our homes a decade ago, the 2010 objective for the Blu-ray camp may be just be realistic.

Source

Blu-ray/HD DVD Burner From Hitachi-LG

Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) revealed at the CeBit 2007 that they are planning the release of a hybrid Blu-ray/HD DVD burner. The GGW-H10N “Super Multi Blue” drive can read, record, or re-write CDs and DVDs (10x speed for DVD±R, 8x for DVD±RW, 6x/8x for DVD±R DL) as well as playback, read and record single and dual-layer Blu-ray discs (4x or 3.5x speed). HD DVD capabilities are limited to playback.
The company said the drive has an expected price of $1200 and should be available by May. This price is almost twice the price recently announced in Taiwan. Let guess the product will be on the market sooner and cheaper than just announced by Hitachi-LG.

Source

Blu-ray Price Cut of the Day: 33% Off LG Burner

At this pace, Blu-ray players and burners are really going to be affordable before year’s end. Looks like Blu-ray partners all have the same objective. Blu-ray gears price cuts! Is this an effort to stab the HD DVD camp or is it competition finally taking place within Blu-ray manufacturers?

This weeek, LG slashed the retail price of the GBW-H10N Super Multi DVD burner for the Taiwan market by 33%. Retail price is now $605 from $908.

According to Digitimes, this is an attempt to clear inventory but also a strategy from LG to increase its market share, as new BD burners hit the market in the first half of this year. The unanswered question is whether or not Sony, Pionner, Samsung and Philips will follow suit by lowering retails prices for their respective Blu-ray burners.

AACA Not Compromised? Hard to Believe!

According to AACLA and the Blu-ray Disc Association, the Blu-ray anti-piracy system as not been comprised.  Andy Parsons, Chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association US Promotions Committee, said that, “The most important message is that AACS has not been fundamentally compromised. Blu-ray Disc remains the most secure format available for High Definition content distribution.”

AACSLA reports:

Regarding the reported attacks on 2/13/2007, AACS has confirmed that an additional key (called a “processing key”) has been published on public websites without authorization. This is a variation of the previously reported attack (a compromise of a specific implementation) on one or more players sold by AACS licensees. Although a different key was extracted, this represents no adverse impact on the ability of the AACS ecosystem to address the attack. All technical and legal measures applicable to the previously reported attack will be applicable against this attack as well.

It’s hard to believe that the DRM system as not been compromised, at least partially. The hack may not be permanent but is probably a way to get around AACS easily. Looks AACS wants to protect their small ecosystem and not the Blu-ray ecosystem itself.

Via

Burning Blu-Ray Discs at 10X

Nichia, a Japanese company,  developed a blue-violet semiconductor laser diode, featuring a power high enough for burning Blu-Ray and HD DVD media at 10X.

According to Nichia the new laser diode is able to emit pulsed light at 320mW, while it offers a stable operation of 1,000 hours. The diode could be used for optical discs including Blu-ray and HD DVD, allowing 10X speed recording with a double-layer disc and 2X speed recording with a four-layer disc. Currently blue-violet semiconductor laser diodes offer a pulsed output of 130 mW.

Mass production units should start in the first half of 2008.

This is a good news for the HD formats who will need that kind of technology to succeed in the data storage market. Blu-ray and HD DVD movies are going to hit our living rooms like a storm in the next 18 months but nothing is clear about the ability of the HD formats to impose themselves to IT people. 10X burning is a minimum we should expect from the blue-violet technologies.<

via

200Gb Blu-ray Discs has Protective Coat

“One of the consumer worries of Blu-ray Disc vs. HD DVD is the durability of that ultra-thin, 0.1-mm layer protecting your BD-stored data. HD DVDs on the other hand, use a comparatively thick 0.6-mm surface layer just like standard DVDs making them appear -- on paper anyway -- more rugged over the stretch, right? Not necessarily so. At least not when TDK or others apply protective coatings to their optical media. The 6-layer, single-sided 200GB BD disc on the right in the image above is coated with TDK's "Durabis 2" hard-coating technology -- the disk on the left is a standard DVD; both were subjected to equal treatment by the steel-wool and a Sharpie”

Interesting but I hope this kind of protective skin does not add sensitivity to Blu-ray disc reading. The high level of data that needs to be read when the Blu-ray disc is playing means that the fewer layers between the laser and the data the better we are.  My fear is when a laser will lose its adjustment or gets a little bit dirty, it will freeze or skips parts of frame like a regular DVD can do some times.

Time will tell but this is certainly better than definitively scratching the Blu-ray Disc.

Read

250Gb on a Single Blu-ray or HD DVD Disc!

While Toshiba has publicly announced its achievement of a 51Gb-triple layer HD DVD disc, Ritek is disclosing behind closed doors at CES its own achievements in multi-layer HD optical media. The company said that not only they have been able to produce a three or four-layer HD discs, but they have successfully designed HD media with a full 10 layers. The multi-layer process is apparently also applicable to the two competing formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD.

10 layers on an HD DVD would yield 150GB, assuming 15GB per layer. For a Blu-ray disc, the total over 10 layers jumps to 250GB, assuming the base 25GB per layer like the other technologies presented until now. Respecting the same assumptions, it would mean 150Gb for HD DVD since they have 15Gb per layer.

AMD Live! to Support Blu-Ray and HD-DVD

Digitimes reports that AMD Live! will start supporting Blu-ray and HD DVD in the third quarter of 2007.

Both AMD and its rival, Intel, began to embrace the concept of the PC as a consumer device in 2004.
In 2005, Intel announced its consumer Viiv brand and January 2006, AMD unveiled its AMD Live! strategy.

It’s still not clear what consumers are really going to get from the Live! and Viiv brands but this announcement is certainly going to give the blu-violet laser a boost in the year to come.