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Friday 21st May 2004

Blu-ray backers band together 12:16PM, Friday 21st May 2004

The battle lines for next-generation optical format wars are being drawn. The struggle to establish industry momentum has taken a new turn with the formation of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) by Sony and other electronics companies.

It is intended to help promote the next generation optical drives that enable over two hours of recording on a 27GB disc (about 13 hours of standard-definition television) and up to 50GB on a dual-layer disc.

The new group will incorporate the existing Blu-ray Disc Founders (a group formed in May 2002), reports the NE Asia Online website. And it is intended to draw more companies from a wider range of industries to participate in the creation of standards.

Comprising Dell, HP, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita (Panasonic), Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics,

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Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson, the home for the Blu-ray Disc Association on the Web is www.blu-raydisc-official.org.

Notable by their absence, however, are Toshiba and NEC. These companies are a force behind HD-DVD, a rival next-generation optical drive technology. While Blu-ray is currently gaining momentum, an advantage of HD-DVD is its backwards compatibility with the existing DVD format, which will be a strong selling point for consumers looking to avoid having to recreate their DVD collection.

One Blu-ray development that perhaps addresses such concerns is the 'three-in-one' Sony prototype we reported on yesterday. The new device bonds together a blue-violet semi conductor laser chip and a two-wavelength semiconductor chip for red and near infrared lasers, and this enables the Blu-ray, DVD and CD formats to be accommodated.