Very cool news. I had written about the new Blu-Ray disks before here, here, here, here, here and here.
Basically, Sony took a standard DVD recorder, switched the laser from near Infrared to near Ultra Violet. The smaller wavelength allows data to be packed closer together and there is a corresponding increase in the amount of data that can be packed onto a disk. An elegant hack getting a capacity of 25GB on a single layer media just by changing the optics -- a gain of over six times.
Of course, other people couldn't let this stand so a competing standard HD-DVD was developed by Toshiba.
This has less capacity and the media is more complex (three layers) and therefore more expensive.
Fortunately, manufacturers have been tending towards Blu-Ray and this article at ArsTechnica gives some happy news:
Blu-ray wins two more backers, while HD DVD looks doomed
Late last week the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) pulled an Ace out of its sleeve and announced that not only will they support the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), just like HD DVD, but that they're adding two more weapons in the fight against piracy: BD+ and ROM-Mark. The ploy seems to have worked, because not only did it net them Twentieth Century Fox, but this week two other companies have hopped on board with Blu-ray.
Earlier this week Universal Music Group said that they would adopt Blu-ray as the standard for their next-generation audio discs�a nice catch for the BDA. Even better, Lion's Gate Home Entertainment today said that they, too, want on the Blu-ray bandwagon.
Stick a fork in it, it's done... I hate to think of how much money Toshiba spent on this.
It was an overly complex kludge from the beginning.
What manager approved it and are they still employed by Toshiba? Sheesh!
