Dell Chooses Blu-ray Format for Notebook

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1334/061211dellbluray/' target='_blank'>http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1334/061211dellbluray/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Dell Inc. added Blu-ray disc capability to its notebook PC line on Monday, making an effort to compete with Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. in the growing market for mobile high-definition video platforms. In addition to showing high-end movies and games, Dell's XPS M1710 notebook could serve as a central node to support digital entertainment throughout the home, the company said. Customers can save 50G bytes of either data or video on a single Blu-ray disc. The ability to read and write data to the discs differentiates Blu-ray from HD-DVD, the competing standard for high-definition video, analysts said. Laptops with HD-DVD capability have lower prices but cannot save data to the discs, said Samir Bhavnani, research director at Current Analysis Inc."</i><br /><br />Colour me surprised - I thought that the laptops shipping with HD-DVD drives included the ability to write to HD-DVD discs. I'm not looking for new notebooks until after the Vista-equipped models ship (because it will mean a bump in baseline onboard GPUs), so I have to admit I wasn't paying much attention to this little detail. Blu-ray is the only game in down then if you need to have massive optical disc storage. In the grand scheme of things though, I have to admit I'm not sure how many people really need more than the 8.5 GB that dual-layer DVDs can offer right now. Will it be enough to sway Blu-ray's sagging fortunes? I somehow think not.

[Felix Torres]

Blu-ray is the only game in down then if you need to have massive optical disc storage. In the grand scheme of things though, I have to admit I'm not sure how many people really need more than the 8.5 GB that dual-layer DVDs can offer right now.

1- The Holographic storage guys are still scheduled to deliver their first data-backup product this month. (Dec 29? ;-) )

2- BD-25 media goes for $15-20/BD-50 media for $35-40, per disk, street prices. Single-layer DVD runs $0.30 or less for namebrand media.

3- The BD-guys focused first on data apps, which is why Apple, HP, and Dell picked it so early, before the consumer DRM issues reared their head. Its worth remembering there *is* a difference between Blu-Ray data disks and BD-rom; being able to burn Blu-ray does not necessarily mean one could burn BD-compatible video disks.

Sometimes bragging rights are just bragging rights.
For data backup-apps, my money is on the holographic system. 100GB per layer.

[Tim Williamson]

How long have we been hearing about holographic storage? I'm guessing it's been at least 5 years. The problem is, unless they get backing from a large corporation, the format will fail. I hope holographic storage does succeed though and is adopted as the standard.

[Felix Torres]

How long have we been hearing about holographic storage? I'm guessing it's been at least 5 years. The problem is, unless they get backing from a large corporation, the format will fail. I hope holographic storage does succeed though and is adopted as the standard.

Maxell a big enough backer for you?

[Tim Williamson]

How long have we been hearing about holographic storage? I'm guessing it's been at least 5 years. The problem is, unless they get backing from a large corporation, the format will fail. I hope holographic storage does succeed though and is adopted as the standard.

Maxell a big enough backer for you?

I guess... :wink:

[gdoerr56]

When you can buy external USB hard drives for less than $0.40 per GB, I don't see a lot of demand for optical storage other than as a distribution media.

I keep a couple of 500 GB USB disks around for back up and archive purposes (all music, photos and video fits on two). They're fast, I don't need to erase them and it's easy to verify the data on the backups.

I hardly burn any DVDs anymore and the only CDs I burn are for music in the car. If my car had built in iPod support, I probably wouldn't do that, either.