Format
battle
As
the first generation of DVD media and recorders begin to
show their age, a second generation of DVDs promise to provide
more data space and speed in the same size as current DVD
discs. Two formats are fast emerging as competitors in a
quest for international standards ownership.
Both
competing formats use blue lasers. Blue light is known to
have a shorter wavelength than the red light used in currently
available optical drives. This allows the laser beam to make
a smaller spot on the surface of the disc while recording
data. With each bit of data taking up less space on the disc,
more data can be stored on a 4.7-inch disc. As a result,
discs can hold between 15GB and 30GB of data, depending on
the variant of the format used, compared to current DVDs
that can hold between 4.7GB and 9.4GB of data. That extra
space is important if discs of the same size as DVDs are
to be used to distribute movies and other content in quality
comparable to high-definition television.
The
two competing formats are:
Blu-Ray – The
consortium of companies trumpeting the advantages of Blu-Ray
is led by Sony and includes Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi,
LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic),
Mitsubishi Electric, Philips Electronics, Pioneer Electronics,
Samsung, Sharp, TDK, and Thompson Multimedia.
The consortium is the first to provide a commercial Blu-Ray recorder to the
public in 2003. At more than £2,000 the Sony labeled recorder is not
exactly for mass-market consumption. The other members of the consortium
are planning to release their own versions of the Blu-Ray recorder and will
surely signal a dramatic reduction in prices for the new equipment.
HD-DVD – High-Definition
Digital Versatile Disc, is backed primarily by NEC and
Toshiba, both from Japan. Preliminary specifications of
the HD-DVD format allows for 15 gigabytes of data on a
single-side, dual-layer disc and 30 gigabytes for a double-sided,
dual-layer disc. The video codecs used for the format is
backward compatible with MPEG2 (which is currently used
by DVDs), and utilizes MPEG4 AVC (H.264) which is based
on Apple’s Quicktime media standard.
High
hopes