Acer backs Blu-ray as format war hots up

 

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By Ross Burridge in Berlin

Posted on 31 Aug 2007 at 11:56

The Blu-ray Association (BDA) press conference at IFA witnessed unprecedented levels of aggression, with a slew of blockbuster title announcements and sales statistics intended to prove that Toshiba's HD DVD format is already dead in the water.

The big news, however, is that manufacturer Acer is becoming a contributing member of the BDA, as is the China Huala manufacturing group, which is responsible for producing much of the cheap AV hardware coming out of Chinese factories.

"With increasing demand and expectation for richer media content, Acer is adding Blu-ray Disc technology into our notebooks and enabling users to experience high-definition content, playback and storage," says Campbell Kan, Vice President of the mobile computing business unit at Acer.

With representatives of companies such as Disney describing themselves as "aggressively optimistic" about the format, and the claim that Blu-ray titles are now outselling HD DVD at a ratio of 3:1, Warner was the only major film distributor present to remain format agnostic, acknowledging that "we live in a two-format world".

Blu-ray's technology partners have also been extremely bullish. At a 90-minute keynote, Panasonic's COO and European President, Joachim Reinhart, repeatedly stressed the company's strong commitment to Blu-ray, suggesting that once HD broadcasting becomes more widespread in Europe, the "war will soon be over".

But PC Pro's discussions with a leading dual-format title developer suggests the story is still far from clear-cut. The development and duplication of Blu-ray was described as "a nightmare", with the format still lacking a fully-approved standard, and many of its much-vaunted interactive features simply failing to work across different players.

With Paramount/Dreamworks last week announcing its move from dual-to exclusively HD DVD-format, this developer at least is convinced that Blu-ray's dominance is far from assured.