Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD: DVD's Successor

One of these new technologies will be the replacement for the DVD disc, which will be a battle the likes of which has not seen since Beta vs. VHS.

Both are based on the same basic technology; they replace the red lasers currently in DVD burners with blue lasers, which use a shorter wavelength to store information, allowing more data to be stored on a normal disc. While a standard CD will be able to hold about 1.4GB with this new technology, there are discs being developed that will hold 30GB for a dual-layer HD disc. Sony claims that their format could eventually hold as much as 200GB (eight-layer disc)!

This technology would allow almost an entire season of your favorite TV show to be on one DVD disc (analog format). In High-Def format, a standard Blu or HD disc can hold about 27GB, or two hours of High-Def video. High-Def’s picture and sound quality is five to seven times greater than normal analog quality, requiring much more storage.

Here are the positives and negatives of each.

Blu-Ray:
-Backed by Sony, HP, Panasonic’s parent company Marsushita (developers of VHS), and Dell.
-HP and Dell control approximately 30% of the world’s computer sales.
-Sony can use next generation Playstation at a launching platform of their Blu-Ray campaign. (Sony officially announced Bly-Ray as the official media type for P3, due to release in 2006.)
-Sony led consortium recently acquired MGM, along with their back-catalogue of movies.
-Endorsed by weblog Gizmodo.

HD DVD:
-Developed by Toshiba and backed by Sanyo and NEC.
-Supported by Time Warner, and gaining support from Paramount, Disney, and Universal.
-Endorsed by the DVD forum, which only endorses one format.
-Claims low transitional costs between current DVD and HD formats.

Blu-Ray recorders are already on sale in Japan, but Toshiba looks to launch their HD DVD recorders (in Japan) in early ’05, and laptops with HD drives in the last quarter of ’05. Expect to see DVD players for the new standard hit the market in time for next Christmas. By that time, the standard should be set, either Blu or HD format. Basically, it boils down to which format has the wider selection of movies available. This is a contest Sony has lost before (Beta).

Don’t worry though, the new HD and Blu players will be reverse-compatible with DVDs so you won’t have to replace your movie library just yet.