zippyjuan

Blu-Ray Discs Readers Now Standardized

BD-ROMs Coming into PCs, Consumer Electronics Near You
by Anton Shilov
08/12/2004 | 08:48 AM

The Blu-ray Disc Founders have approved version 1.0 of the BD-ROM physical-format specification and made it available to disc manufacturers and other interested parties.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by thirteen leading consumer electronics and PC companies, such as Dell, Hitachi, HP, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson. The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition television (HDTV). Blu-ray makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 27GB disc. There are also plans for higher capacity discs that are expected to hold up to 54GB of data, according to Blu-Ray.com web-site.

The Blu-ray Disc Founders approved the BD-ROM physical specification within the general timeframe originally outlined in the BD-ROM development roadmap. The completion of the physical specification is an important step because it provides disc manufacturers with the information they need to prepare their BD-ROM (Blu-Ray Discs Read Only Memory) disc production lines.

“Blu-ray Disc (BD) is on schedule for companies to introduce BD-ROM players, drives and prerecorded software to consumers beginning in late 2005,” said Maureen Weber, general manager of HP's Optical Storage Solutions Business.

Interested parties can obtain the format specification by contacting the Blu-ray Disc License Agent and executing the required license agreement. Companies interested in developing, manufacturing and selling BD-ROM products must sign a license agreement to comply with the format specifications.

“Given the strong support from consumer electronics, PC and media manufacturers for BD, a wide variety of products is expected to eventually be available in every segment of the market,” Mr. Weber added.

Sony Entertainment recently said it would use BD-ROM in its next-generation Sony PlayStation 3 console, which may popularize Blu-Ray discs and rapidly drive them into mainstream market.

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I add new pictures to my photo gallery pretty regularly. You can see them here if you are interested: http://www.pbase.com/jeffryz

redcolours

i wonder if it will read other media (CDR/RW, DVD+/-R/RW/DL)?

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there are pictures, but no,nothing happens on my site.

Cheesypuff

don't forget 1.44 floppy drives also...

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Life is like toilet paper, long and useful!
The stars at night, are big and bright *clap 4x* deep in the heart of TEXAS!

bachviet

It is going to cost a bundle.

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Dell Dimension 9200 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4GHz) | 4x1GB DDR2 | 256MB nVidia GeForce 8800GT

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Bires

Great news. I'm sure BD-RWs will have a red laser inside as well.

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Five years...

Mpowered

I really hope you're being sarcastic. What would be the point of that? Sorry it's really hard to tell without the sarcasm tags

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"Leaders? What leaders? **** these so called leaders! I don't respect them. I respect those who take action without being a leader."
-Tommy Boomfiger

Bires

No. I'm not. It makes sense to build all-in-one drives for backward compatability, esp for OEMs like Dell and HP. Most people (the lemmings) don't like having separate drives to do different things.

hapoo

Would you need a red laser to read older media? The blue laser has a higher "resolution" which shouldn't mean that it cant read cdroms.

Bires

I wondered about that too. Most likely, you would, since the blue laser may not read and write correctly older CDRs and CDRWs, since the photodyes on these discs respond to red laser-light.