Sony shines light on Blu-ray DVD plans

Sony says it's ready to deliver its first blue-laser DVD recorder, which the company promises will let discs hold up to five times more data than current red-laser DVD models.

The Japanese parent of Sony Electronics announced Monday that its Blu-ray Disc Recorder would be released in Japan on April 10, priced at around $3,800. The company would not comment on U.S. availability.

Sony's DVD recorder could give the company a head start in what many expect will become a popular niche, not only because the Blu-ray device has high storage capacity but also because it comes with a built-in broadcast digital tuner. Digital satellite broadcasts are slowly becoming available in Japan, the United States and elsewhere, and Sony is aiming to get an early start at attracting consumers in the market for high-definition TV products.

"The market has already been established, and although it's still looking for direction, there will be a growing number of users who want high-definition recording," said Sony spokeswoman Shoko Yanagisawa.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, Sony President and Chief Operating Officer Kunitake Ando said that recordable DVD Blu-ray products would appear this year, initially in Japan. At the time, Ando said that the technology was ready, but that there were some licensing issues that still needed to be worked out.

In February, the nine companies promoting Blu-ray Disc technology--a next-generation recordable DVD format using blue-violet lasers--announced the start of licensing. Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony and Thomson are known as the "Blu-ray Disc Founders" and have been pursuing a broad acceptance of the format.

Blu-ray technology is designed to allow a single-sided, 12-centimeter disc to hold up to 27GB of storage. (Currently, most DVDs hold 4.7GB of data.) The technology uses a short-wavelength blue-violet laser--instead of the red lasers in current optical drives--to read data off discs.

The higher-capacity Blu-ray discs should enable owners to record high-definition broadcasts, which offer better picture quality than the more broadly available TV broadcasts. Sony's new device records and plays back Blu-ray discs, but can also play back DVD, DVD-RW, DVD-R, CD and CD-RW discs. However, the recorder won't be able to read DVD-RAM or DVD+RW discs.

Companies are already developing products using Blu-ray technology. Philips has demonstrated a prototype miniature Blu-ray disc drive with a 3-centimeter disc that can store up to 1GB of data. Typical CDs, measuring 12 centimeters in diameter, can hold up to 650MB of data. The prototype drive is suitable for use in portable devices such as digital cameras, handheld deivces and cell phones. Philips has been working to shrink the drive.

Sony has developed a similar product.

Last year, Toshiba and NEC proposed a rival blue-laser DVD format, which uses existing DVD plants and equipment and would minimize the investment needed to popularize the next-generation DVD format. The format would provide storage of only 15GB for read-only discs and 20GB for read-and-write discs. Toshiba is looking to have its blue-laser DVD recorder on the market in about another year, according to a company representative.

The introduction of rival blue-laser DVD recording technologies could lead to a replay of the competition surrounding red-laser DVD recordable formats, which has caused some consumer confusion and slowed sales.

Reuters contributed to this report.

[PSiKoTiC]

Blu-Ray Home Invasion?

Perhaps I've missed something regarding 'Blu-Ray' Technology. From my understanding the Major push atleast on the corporate end of this deal is Digital Rights Management (which is a joke .. I'll get to that in a sec)

Ok .. the Blu-Ray format apparently can hold and store more data that current generation DvD players; it's Manafacture costs of the disks are actually higher than HD DvD's or current DvD formats. (You need a dedicated Blu-ray assembly line; you can't use exsisting ones)

The specs on the Blu-Ray player are that the player must have a 24/7 internet connection to the internet; Who's paying for this extra connection? (atop the obvious player and change over costs) I got my 20$ saying the Motion Picture Assoc. of America isn't; so the consumer gets another 'subscription bill'.

Now .. getting to what I find seriously disturbing; and a tad worried that no one has even mentioned this issue in any length. Various 'un-named' motion picture distributers can Read; Write; Modify; and yes; intentionally sabatoge your hardware/firmware in the player. Is this not getting the least bit carried away; are we seriously so bankrupt that we'll actually pay for another inet connection so various movie distributers can litterally hack our hardware whenever they see fit?

Yes; I do believe the movie companies do have rights to their materials; but the consumers rights have been thrown right out the window. Adding an additional 'consern' you have hardware; connected to the internet 24/7; and it is possible for someone to 'self-destruct' the player. Mark my words 2 years from now; 12 year old script kiddie pushes big red button; wipes all blu-ray players in america clean. ;)

So us; the end consumers are stuck with this extra cumbersome bill; for this useless content rights management system. Why?

Useless DRM system; lets touch on that. I bring you back to January 1999. Napster. DRM with video or audio is no different matter.
As apple iPoD and Creative's many 'original' Mp3 players have made clear; stopping this isn't a matter of locking it down; it's about creative marketing.

I'll give you the example of an music file, Some new 'unbreakable' encryption scheme and a 100% fool proof way to secure that only people with legitiamate copies can run this, it is still flawed. The end result is the cat is already out of the bag. The end product is Audio. So no matter how well encrypted. or how good DRM you have; one person can legitimatley purchase the audio 'file', Play the super encrypted file; Plug the audio out; back into their computer; re-encode it as an mp3. And volia. Perfect system just broke.

This same practice holds true with movies; the 'DiVX' revolution with movies where only a small non-noticable quality is lost in compression, the only actual barriers which would prevent a 1:1 copy using a Blu-Ray player to a DVD format is simply the size of the data; which can either be compressed; or a larger non-drm media used.

In short what I'm getting at here is; aside from invasion of privacy; (this is still assuming that the motion picture association is keeping their hands out of the cookie jar; such as recording your play habits, or what kind of pornography you decide to watch on your new Blu-Ray player; and when)
this seems like a costly idea to the consumers; with no real benefit as the DRM still isn't happening. I do believe however in equal rights and management of them; but at what cost to the consumer; both monetary and civilly.

The motion picture association is pro blu-ray? Of course it is; I will cost them little more to have a whole lot more 'prying' into it's viewers habits. Personally I like to sit down and watch a movie/dvd to get away from a computer/the internet and it's con's. Not to bring them along for a ride.

However maybe I missed something critical here; I've been following this from the start here, and no one has even blinked at this to my amazement. (prolly mezmerized by the blue new lazer beam)

My thoughts;
Not yours;
Feed-back is much appreciated/welcomed

-PSiKoTiC-

RE: Blinding Blue Light

Although I must agree with your rants on DRM, the destruction of consumer rights, etc., I am very curious: what are your sources? I havent read anywhere about blu-ray needing a steady connection to the internet, or about the manufacturing costs. Can you direct me to the source of this information?

[katsarts]

Don't worry about it

Yah, things might seem worrying now, and even if _those_ players do require a 24/7 net connection(which would royally suck for dial-up users), someone somewhere will produce one without a required net conenction, they can't make it a law to require a net link.

Plus, a 24/7 net conenciton would be unrealistic and would contrain sales due to the following factors.
1. Some people don't have the internet. Yah thats right there are actually people without it, i'm not to far away from that right now.
2. It may not accept dial-up. Wow, really, yes, dial-up that ancient arachic way of connecting to the internet. Alot more people have dial-up then broadband, which trying to target bb people only, would not allow the people with dial-up and the people without internet at all to use thier product.
3. People who are paranoid about beeing spied on or getting hacked... yah me, you, the guy next door.

So yah, don't worry, someone will produce a non-net one. The large bandwidth and storage space of those disks sound rather nice to me, and I am not about to kick them out because of first gen hardware.