It appears the big guns are still having problems trying to combine the two competing blue laser DVD formats: Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Although further talks have not been ruled out, these formats are going into production shortly. Toshiba want HD-DVD units out by the end of the year and so need to start developing software this month, Sony have announced that the Playstation 3, due early 2006, will be Blu-ray capable.
In terms of backing, Blu-ray seems to have the upper-hand with Sony, Samsung, Apple, Disney and Dell behind it, but HD-DVD has Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo and several Hollywood studios on it’s side (though Sony owns a couple of studios too, obviously Disney do and Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs also runs Pixar Animation). In actuality there is a fairly equal split between the two formats from both manufacturers and media companies.
Some people are suggesting that format problems may be ironed out by the playback machines but I’m not so sure this is a good idea. The storage capacities differ somewhat, with a two-layer Blu-ray disc holding about 54GB of data, while an equivalent HD-DVD disc will only hold 30GB. Blu-ray also offers three- and four-layer varients which will hold up to 200GB. Technologically, HD-DVD looks the weaker of the two, but it has already been selected as the format to supersede current DVDs by the DVD Forum and is easier and cheaper to manufacture. The Blu-ray Disc Association (the group of companies that are developing Blu-ray), argues that HD-DVD doesn’t have enough storage capacity for High Definition video and that their format has better future-proofing.
The question is, will HD-DVD’s short-term benefits buy it enough time and market to allow it to make up the gaps in it’s technology? Remember, the best technology doesn’t always win, Betamax was a superior format to VHS, but the latter won the war.
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