Feuerwizard
May 24th, 2004, 11:16 am
Tokyo-based Sony Corp. heading a 13 member group have formed the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) to promote the system over rival blue-laser technology. The BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association) represents an expansion of the 13 members' Blu-ray Disc Founders (BDF) organization, formed in May 2002. Choosing a new name opens the way to allow other firms to join. The BDF consortium said it will invite companies from a wider range of industries to play a part in the development of the emerging DVD format.
The original group of 13 companies consisted of consumer electronics, PC and storage makers: Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson Multimedia.
Another industry association, which includes industry giants like Toshiba and NEC, has been working on a competing disc technology, now called HD-DVD. They claim that it will be compatible with current DVD standards.
The Blu-ray Disc format uses blue-laser light and is a potential successor to today's red-laser DVD technology. Blu-ray Disc technology allows up to 27GB of storage on a single-sided disc, compared to the 4.7GB on current DVDs, which is more than 5 times the present storage space offered.
Backers of the Blu-ray aim to make the technology the widest-used format for high-definition optical storage, in hopes of capitalizing on the growing use of digital content, and as high-definition television begins to take off.
Philips has already demonstrated a prototype miniature Blu-ray disc drive that uses a 3cm disc that can store up to 1GB of data compared to a typical CD measuring 12cm in diameter which can hold up to 650MB of data.
Products based on the BD-ROM and BD-R formats are set to be released in the second half of 2005.
The original group of 13 companies consisted of consumer electronics, PC and storage makers: Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson Multimedia.
Another industry association, which includes industry giants like Toshiba and NEC, has been working on a competing disc technology, now called HD-DVD. They claim that it will be compatible with current DVD standards.
The Blu-ray Disc format uses blue-laser light and is a potential successor to today's red-laser DVD technology. Blu-ray Disc technology allows up to 27GB of storage on a single-sided disc, compared to the 4.7GB on current DVDs, which is more than 5 times the present storage space offered.
Backers of the Blu-ray aim to make the technology the widest-used format for high-definition optical storage, in hopes of capitalizing on the growing use of digital content, and as high-definition television begins to take off.
Philips has already demonstrated a prototype miniature Blu-ray disc drive that uses a 3cm disc that can store up to 1GB of data compared to a typical CD measuring 12cm in diameter which can hold up to 650MB of data.
Products based on the BD-ROM and BD-R formats are set to be released in the second half of 2005.