Blu-ray Disc set to replace DVD
AFP - Nine major international technology firms unveiled the "Blu-ray Disc", a new digital optical disc format that will eventually replace the popular DVD.
"It is a truly remarkable format, marking a new era," corporate senior executive vice president of Japan's Sony Corp Shizuo Takashino said after posing with a model of the disc.
The new invention is 12 centimetres in diameter, the same size as compact discs (CDs) and digital versatile discs (DVDs).
But the Blu-ray will use a blue laser to burn codes on to the disc instead of red -- multiplying the maximum data capacity of a single density, one-sided disc by five, to 27 gigabytes.
A DVD can only store 4.7 gigabytes of information.
The new format is capable of recording over two hours of digital high definition video and 13 hours of standard television broadcasting, the firms said.
The current DVD can record just 133 minutes of regular TV broadcasts.
The companies also plan a double density disc with a 50-gigabyte capacity that will increase the capacity by twice as much again.
Aside from Sony, other technology giants involved in the venture include South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and France's Thomson Multimedia.
Licensing to other industry groups to develop products for the technology will begin in the next few months.
But the firms said they would head in their own directions in developing products for the format, and none were prepared to name a date for when their versions would hit the store shelves.
The executive corporate engineering adviser to Pioneer Corp, Masao Sugimoto, said the format would be able to take advantage of the spread of high-definition television, which had reached some 2.3 million Japanese households by the end of 2001.
"(The Blu-ray) is of great significance in terms of the further development of the electronics industry and the high definition broadcasting sector," Sugimoto said.
However the companies, wary of alienating DVD fans, said the new technological products could be made to be compatible with DVDs.
"It is possible," Sugimoto said. "These discs are based on a major base of infrastructure (to support DVDs) and the spread of high-definition television may not be all that sudden. We cannot simply disregard that."
But he said each company would decide individually whether to make the Blu-ray compatible with DVDs.
"This is a technological format and product planning is up to each company," he said.
Some 25.5 million DVD players are expected to be in consumers' hands by March 2002, according to Sony's estimates, a significant market penetration since the gadgets were only hit the market in 1996.
Jan Oosterveld, representing Dutch partner Royal Philips Electronics from the Netherlands, said the companies wanted to avoid the struggle over standards that plagued DVDs.
"You all know the struggle we had to come to one format in DVD. We wanted to avoid that right away," he said. |
