Hot News: Sony Says Blu-ray Will Win

[Damion Chaplin]

http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,126231,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp

"The greater storage capacity of the Blu-ray Disc high-definition movie disc format is giving it an edge over the competing HD DVD format among Hollywood studios, Sony Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer said today. "I begin to sense in Blu-ray that the pendulum is swinging," he said at a briefing with reporters in Tokyo. "It's swinging for one clear reason and that is, when you bring in new technology, do you go for cheaper, transitional [technology] or do you take a chance on future-proof, high technology that will keep you going for many, many years to come?" Features such as multichannel audio, multiple language tracks, and interactivity are all increasing the amount of data that needs to be stored on discs, Stringer said, so studios will come to realize the 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray Disc suits their needs better than the 30GB dual-layer HD DVD format. "This capacity, which seemed too luxurious a year ago, suddenly seems to be absolutely necessary," he said."

Relax, everyone. The war's over! I mean, if Sony says Blu-ray will win, then it must be true, right? :roll: Kidding aside, Stringer does have a good point that Blu-rays are higher-capacity than HD-DVD, but at the moment that means absolutely nothing. Right now they're releasing Blu-ray discs with the same content that their SD-DVD ancestor had. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and predict that by the time the studios start worrying about the capacity of the discs they're using, consumers will already have decided which format to go with. Remember, Beta was technically a superior format but the consumers didn't care. And in the end, neither did the studios.

[Damion Chaplin]

http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,126231,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp

"The greater storage capacity of the Blu-ray Disc high-definition movie disc format is giving it an edge over the competing HD DVD format among Hollywood studios, Sony Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer said today. "I begin to sense in Blu-ray that the pendulum is swinging," he said at a briefing with reporters in Tokyo. "It's swinging for one clear reason and that is, when you bring in new technology, do you go for cheaper, transitional [technology] or do you take a chance on future-proof, high technology that will keep you going for many, many years to come?" Features such as multichannel audio, multiple language tracks, and interactivity are all increasing the amount of data that needs to be stored on discs, Stringer said, so studios will come to realize the 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray Disc suits their needs better than the 30GB dual-layer HD DVD format. "This capacity, which seemed too luxurious a year ago, suddenly seems to be absolutely necessary," he said."

Relax, everyone. The war's over! I mean, if Sony says Blu-ray will win, then it must be true, right? :roll: Kidding aside, Stringer does have a good point that Blu-rays are higher-capacity than HD-DVD, but at the moment that means absolutely nothing. Right now they're releasing Blu-ray discs with the same content that their SD-DVD ancestor had. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and predict that by the time the studios start worrying about the capacity of the discs they're using, consumers will already have decided which format to go with. Remember, Beta was technically a superior format but the consumers didn't care. And in the end, neither did the studios.

[Felix Torres]

Originally Posted by Damion Chaplin

Kidding aside, Stringer does have a good point that Blu-rays are higher-capacity than HD-DVD, but at the moment that means absolutely nothing.

Actually, Blu-Ray Discs are *not* higher capacity than HD-DVD.
Not yet.
Not until they actually *ship* a multi-layer disk of *some* kind in quantity to prove their technology works outside the lab.
As of now, HD-DVD is shipping multi-layer Hybrid disks, while BD-ROM is shipping nothing but single-layer.

So, yes, they have a higher single-layer capacity but if they can't do multi-layer, 25GB isn't going to get them very far in the face of 30-45Gb HD-DVDs.
And Sony's use of MPEG2 encoding isn't helping either; witness the barebones BD-ROMs they are shipping because they don't have room for extras...

At some point they will get this done, of course, but by then the game may well be over. Rushing a half-baked incomplete product to market is the surest way to kill it.