AfterDawn: News

Sony to announce development of 200GB Blu-ray disc

Next month, Sony is expected to announce the development of an 8 layer blu-ray disc that is capable of holding up to 200GB. The company will make the announcement at the International Symposium on Optical Memory 2004. Sony also plans to commercialize a 4-layer 100GB version in 2007. "The advantage of Blu-ray over DVD is definitely capacity and we are extending our multilayer performance. The 8-layer is a technology demonstration. We haven't decided when we are going to commercialize it yet," said Sony spokesman Taro Takamine.

Blu-ray technology is currently battling with HD-DVD technology to replace conventional DVDs. Sony and Matsushita sell blu-ray players but they are still very expensive. A market will not develop for either technology until Hollywood studios can be sure that they can protect their content against piracy. Blu-ray Disc backers announced that they added the MPEG4 and VC1 video codecs at the beginning of September. This will allow much better quality video under heavy compression. Sony also announced earlier this year that blu ray discs will be used with its upcoming Playstation 3, which is expected to reach the market in 2006.



Source:
Digit Online

Written by: James Delahunty @ 21 Sep 2004 14:52

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• 7 comments

• Pop_Smith

  What the? 8-layers? I can see it now,
  BLU-RAY A FLOP, SONY FILES FOR CHAP. 11 PROTECTION,
  
  One strong point in Newspaper:
  Extremely too common write errors, caused by the multitude of layers, was a major player in the failure of the Blu-Ray media and burners.
  
  LOL, just my opinion
  
  P.S. whats next? 16-layer 400 GB disks so you can backup your whole new 400GB Maxtor HDD to one disk?
  
  P.P.S. D/L price:$15 or $10 a piece (2 layers)
  Blu-Ray price: $60 or $40 a piece (2 layer price time 4 = $ony???) Just Kidding :)

  My Comp:
  Dell Dimension 8100
  Pentium 4 1.3 GHZ
  640 MB RAM
  40 GB HDD
  120 GB HDD
  Nvidia GeForce 2 64MB
  Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card
  NEC 5800-A
  Windows XP Home

  21.9.2004 15:04 #1

• OzMick

  Nah, Sony will never go broke, there will always be suckers buying enough of their other overpriced gear because they think the name means quality. Hell, even I've been stung on a couple occasions by them, but at least what I bought worked satisfactorally. Many friends haven't been so lucky.
  
  Still, I think it is a bit of a waste of time making anything that large in the current market, the most they would ever realistically sell for backing up purposes would be one or two per person, not to mention the price. Heck, dual layer DVDs aren't even worth bothering with at the moment, let alone 8 layer discs of a commercially unproven technology.

  21.9.2004 17:04 #2

• Toiletman

  Quote: Sony also announced earlier this year that blu ray discs will be used with its upcoming Playstation 3 Is this not a very good protection method? We have to spend maybe $40 a Blu-ray-R and maybe $400 a Blu-Ray burner just to backup our games? I say, that's pretty spiffy!
  
  Anyway, on the note of these 200GB discs, there's no point developing technology that NO ONE needs yet.

  21.9.2004 18:22 #3

• punx777

  all new technology is very expensive when it first comes out.... as soon as all the rich people stop buyin em they lower the prices to more reasonable levels...... i meen dvd players...they started out at what 500 bux for a single disk player? something around there... now you can buy a apex at wallyworld for 28 bux.

  21.9.2004 18:52 #4

• djgizmo

  Punx is right on the money. Remember, Sony was one of the orginal developers of DVD, that we all use today. They know what their doing. Develope something today for people to use tomorrow. DVD's didn't start catching on big time till about 2000, and now you'd be pressed to find a new sony VCR anywhere.
  
  Bluy-ray has been in developement for over 10 years. When they release DVD, they saw how much more the could push things to the limit. Blue-Ray will use a narrower beam than the regular dvd. So put that with the use of multiple multiple layers and you'll get the 200 GB disks... now after format I would suspect that you wouldn't be able use more than 150 GB.
  
  The big buyers of these would probably be medium to large Corporate companies who need to provide a portable, but large back up. Also, I could see these being used in DVR boxes for people to backup entire seasons of their shows.
  
  good luck to all

  21.9.2004 21:37 #5

• Soulreave

  a 200gb disk WoW. that would be so awesome for backing up stuff with.
  
  but a 200gb dvd?!@
  dvds cost fractions of a penny to make and are more expensive than vhs tapes i cant imagine the price of these new movie/game disks

  1.11.2004 06:09 #6

• DBZB126

  200 GB is whole lot but it will be harder to copy
  MUCH HARDER.
  but the games will probably like CRAZY GOOD
  
  and i wonder if a mod chip can play blu-ray discx

  7.3.2005 05:48 #7