AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - U.S. computer makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell said on Monday they would support a new DVD standard with much higher storage capacity which is being promoted by 10 electronics companies.

Dell and H-P, the world's largest personal computer makers, said they would support the so-called Blu-ray DVD technology, which allows for recording of up to four hours of high-definition television on a single disc.

"H-P believes Blu-ray Disc is the most consumer-friendly technology choice for the next generation of removable storage," John Romano, senior vice president at H-P, said in a statement.

Gerry Smith, vice president of peripheral development and procurement at Dell, said the technology was an obvious choice given the additional storage capacity offered and the broad support from consumer electronics and PC manufacturers and large entertainment companies.

Blu-ray is competing with another new blue laser-based DVD technology from Japan's Toshiba and NEC.

Blue lasers have a shorter wavelength than the current red lasers, which allows for a thinner light beam which can read and write smaller bits of information on a disc.

Among the 10 companies promoting Blu-Ray are Hitachi, LG Electronics, Philips Electronics, Sony and Thomson.

Although the support of the two main PC makers is a shot in the arm of the Blu-ray group, the rival technology from Toshiba and NEC won the support of the DVD Forum in November.

The DVD Forum is the alliance of some 220 DVD companies, including electronics and media firms.

The DVD industry has seen other format wars. There are five different rewriteable red laser technologies on the market, many of which will not play discs recorded with a competing standard.

Crucial in the blue laser battle will be the support of the Hollywood movie studios, which are expected to adopt just one standard for pre-recorded (read-only) blue laser DVDs.

"The BD-ROM (read-only) format, developed in collaboration with Hollywood studios and the IT industry, is expected to be available early 2004, allowing for BD-ROM products to be available by the end of 2005," the Blu-ray group said.

AOD uses MPEG-4 compression to hold 4 hours of this resolution. The discs best aspect over its competters is they can be made with the same assembly lines as SD-DVDs while Sonys Blu-Ray discs will require expensive new assembly lines. HD-DVDs will be 20 percent cheaper then Blu-Ray with no disadvantage whatsoever in terms of prerecorded media. Both formats will hold 4 hours of 1920 x 1080 resolution. Blu-Ray does have a slight advantage in recording Blu-Rays can record 2 hours of High Definition while HD-DVDs can only record 1.5 hours. Though since HD-DVDs will be cheaper it kind of balences its self. They still have work on the copy protection system but we should get the first HD-DVD products in America by late 2005 - early 2006 area.

Originally posted by Dammit

More info.

http://www.audioholics.com/ces/ces20...2004_day3.html

Originally posted by vivarey
Not to mention, AOD players WILL be backwards compatible with our current DVDs, but Blu-Ray players will not.

Originally posted by Frank S
I hear this ALL the time and it is a comment that is not true! The players that will be made with Blue-Ray technology WILL be compatible with existing DVD's. They just will have a second laser pickup to do so just like the early DVD players that had dual pickup (one reading DVD's the other reading CD's).

Originally posted by Dammit
I'm more concerned with the cartridges that Blu-Ray will use. For those that haven't seen it, it's just like a larger version of Sony's Mini-Disk that never took off and every bit as stupid. I had one of those things and the metal cartridge doors break very easily, the disks still get dirty (and how are you supposed to clean them?) and aside from being plain unnecessary, it will no doubt add to the manufacturing cost which will be passed on to us. And how will it play a standard DVD? Will you have to go buy some type of cartridge to put your old DVD's in when you want to play them?

Sorry but my Mini-Disk experience has completely soured my opinion of such a contraption. Give me a bare disk any day.

Originally posted by Sathlin
blue ray will not be using cartridges. and the players will be backwards compatible.


read this, a great article from the digital bits, and it has pics.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...04/report.html

Blu-ray has made it clear that they are only supporting MPEG-2 as the video codec (at a data rate of 24 Mbps - the same as D-VHS). AOD (HD-DVD) will use a new high efficiency codec, specifically either H.264 or Windows Media 9, which can achieve a superior picture quality to Blu-ray at data rates of 10-12 Mbps.

So what does this mean: It means that even though a dual layer AOD disc will be only 30 Gbytes (compared to Blu-ray's 50 Gbytes disc), the AOD disc will actually hold more audio/video playtime!! So why doesn't Blu-ray adopt a high efficiency codec as well ... that is a very good question ... one reason would be that the already released Blu-ray recorders support only MPEG-2 video - so if Blu-ray switches to a more advanced compression scheme future pre-recorded movie titles won't play on the current Blu-ray recorders. As an aside, you will noticed that the other Blu-ray companies have not released Blu-ray recorders and in fact are waiting until the application layer is finalized for Blu-ray first - although my sources say that Sony (who is the is the defacto head of the Blu-ray consortium) is holding the line on MPEG-2 video compression to the dismay of several of the other companies.

Originally posted by hmurchison
In my opinion Blu-Ray would have been cool had they not shackled it with MPEG2. Blu-Ray with H.264 would have been SWEET. Alas that's not likely to happen. I'll side with the lower production costs which will win out with Hollywood. Profits have to come somewhere and the additional expense of Blu-Ray is not going to make matters any easier.

Originally posted by Dazed
But if the studios dont pick Blu-Ray wont we get into the situation where some films are on one format and all films from the Sony owned studios are on the other.

I can see the advertising now "Spider-man 3 only on Blu-Ray"

Originally posted by vivarey
I doubt it, since the studio would face huge losses in DVD revenue for the film... which they pretty much count on these days. If anything. Blu-ray could go the way of Minidisc-- successful in a niche market as high quality recordable media. Blu-ray recorders are already out and being pushed for their high capacity data storage capabilities.

AOD uses MPEG-4 compression to hold 4 hours of this resolution.

Originally posted by Freud
I've used literally thousands of Sony Minidisks since 1996...and have never had one of them break in any way.

This is a terrific format to protect the HD-DVD disk.

Originally posted by Freud
I've used literally thousands of Sony Minidisks since 1996...and have never had one of them break in any way.

This is a terrific format to protect the HD-DVD disk.

Originally posted by jough
the higher recording capacity of Blu-Ray (2 hours instead of 1.5 hours of HD-TV) means that most films won't even fit on an AOD/HD-DVD. So it won't work as a home recording format. And then, my friends, it dies.