AfterDawn: News

Blu-Ray DVD drives for PCs by March

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. announced yesterday plans to ship Blu-Ray drives for PCs to manufacturers in March 2006. Negotiations have already began with several manufacturers including Dell and Hewlett-Packard; both company's strongly support the Blu-Ray disc format over Toshiba's HD-DVD format. The announcement comes after Toshiba's unveiled plan to sell PCs with HD-DVD early in 2006.

The two sides in the "format war" have so far failed to reach an agreement on a possible unified standard, but Toshiba President Yoshihide Fujii told the Japan Times that a unified standard is still possible and that Toshiba is "flexible" and willing to compromise. He blamed the Blu-Ray group's failure to convince Toshiba of the reliability of Blu-Ray's disc structure for the break down of talks back in June.



Now both sides are already making plans for product launches for each of the formats. Matsushita displayed a Blu-ray DVD drive at a combined exhibition of advanced technologies on Tuesday. The company demonstrated technology to halve production costs at the exhibition called CEATEC Japan 2005, demonstrating what it believes to prove Blu-Ray's superiority.

NEC Electronics Corp., a semiconductor subsidiary of NEC Corp, supports the HD-DVD format but has also joined Blu-ray promotion group, the company officials said. Since both Sony and Toshiba are key NEC customers, the manufacturer has indicated its readiness to adopt both formats.

Source:
Yahoo Asia

Written by: James Delahunty @ 5 Oct 2005 9:16

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• 14 comments

• Auslander

  oy, vhs vs. beta max all over again. i say we shoot the head dudes of both sides, and actually let the consumer choose what they get to buy, for once.

  5.10.2005 09:35 #1

• evilh0ly

  straight up i can c blue ray's gonna dominate.

  5.10.2005 10:08 #2

• Reasons?

  I'm buying one, only because you have to have it, to start wrk on circumventing the protection. My take on it: It'll be a huge software war, like DVD decryptor, and then we'll need to chip the player/recorder(s) to use the discs.

  5.10.2005 10:17 #3

• rooster33

  it looks to me like blu-ray will win out. the seem to have the edge now. they might just win because they have the cooler name. i mean come on, doesn't blu-ray just sound so awesome?

  5.10.2005 11:26 #4

• evilh0ly

  rooster i totally agree
  
  blue ray sounds futuristic and kind of awesome
  hddvd sounds like some geeky sh!t.
  

  80 or less piz get the fxxk out of the left lane.

  5.10.2005 12:25 #5

• DVDGUY84

  what is going on these days i mean i dont mind that they come out with these new dvd's but cant they at least keep the standard dvd's out have movies come out on both hd-dvd and standard dvd cause whats the point in buying a new dvd player or a new hd-dvd drive for the computer not everyone in the world is going to buy this the least they can do is hold the standards dvd's for a yr and see how everything goes....

  5.10.2005 16:47 #6

• DVDGUY84

  sorry i forgot blue ray as well lol

  5.10.2005 16:48 #7

• neo1000

  A cooler name? that`s so stupid.

  5.10.2005 19:25 #8

• lxfactor

  lol u would be suprised what a cool name can do... my dad buys things based on the name... if it doesnt sound cool and top quality.. then he wont get it...we seen a 50 dollar dvd player by some company (i forgot), and he went with the 100 dollar one just cus it sounds good...

  5.10.2005 21:27 #9

• 7come11

  some people have more money then brains.

  6.10.2005 09:20 #10

• oyama

  more competition better for the consumer but i do agree with rooster.

  6.10.2005 17:33 #11

• Mr-Movies

  Go Reasons? You do great work and make our lives much better thanks for all of your efforts.
  
  A donation pool should be started for you to buy a few burners to play with. If a DRM type chip needs to be replaced or modified you could use several to work on.
  
  I think Blu-Ray will dominate, I hope so for the greater capacities, but I’m glad that HD-DVD is making a run for it unlike many others. If companies like Sony have a monopoly they will gouge the hell out of us for their product. On the down side you may have to have a Blu-Ray burner and a HD-DVD player until they come up with a combo drive for the PC. For SA units you’ll have to have both or if Reasons? Works out a fix we will be able to convert to Blu-Ray and only have need of a Blu-Ray player. Of course that’s assuming that DVD-BR’s aren’t $60 USD a piece.
  

  10.10.2005 07:06 #12

• lxfactor

  yea
  

  Lex Factor
  

  30.10.2005 10:31 #13

• bliberal

  If the blu-ray or HD format yields 24 Gigabytes per side, the only practical use of the extra bytes would be to use far less compression to write a movie. It looks like 3 times less compression, so that would be good. We could also benefit from less compression for sound. Laser discs allowed 1.5 megabits for DTS where DVDs allow for 750 kilobits. Improved video and sound would benefit us greatly.
  I personally do not want to be faced with having to buy two movies on the smae disc. It would be bad news to have to pay for two films on one disc if the two films were, for example, "War of the Worlds" (the good one) and "Whose Yo Mama" or "Trembling Before God" (Crap I'd never buy). I would never pay more than $25 for a video DVD regardless of the technology.
  I wonder if Block Buster would welcome having to change
  to the new format? In a perfect world, the manufacturers would sell DVD players that played both red light and blu light discs.

  2.12.2005 10:42 #14