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Formats Reconciliation
The reconciliation efforts to unify the two competing formats gained strength at CES
2005, the efforts were lead by Toshiba (HD DVD) and Sony (Blu-ray). Unfortunately,
the efforts failed shortly after, and the two formats were left heading to a market
war. The history of CE has demonstrated many times that market wars are not good
for establishing formats or standards, much less for consumers.
Phillips indicated that the war of formats is driven by the goal of collecting future
royalties for the standard patents of the adopted format. Additionally, computer
companies would produce PCs with drives that go along with the format they
support, Blu-ray on Dell PCs for example.
Regarding plants for disc reproduction, when the formats where not even released, it
was estimated at $150,000 the cost for adapting an existing DVD plant to been able
to produce HD DVDs, while it would cost about $3 million for the adaptation of the
same plant to produce Blu-ray discs. Sony responded by saying: “Blu-ray costs
would quickly come down and the difference between costs of the two formats would
be minimal.”
According to Shina Abe, who runs the Panasonic replication task for Blu-ray, a test
was made to measure the time it takes to produce a Blu-ray disc at a Panasonic
plant in CA. It took about 4.5 seconds, and the expectation is to reduce that time to
3.5 seconds per disc.
Regarding combo lasers, a HD DVD single pickup with objective lens was reported to
be able to hold 3 lasers (CD, DVD, and HD DVD), while Blu-ray objective lens are
more complicated and more costly to implement in a similar feature, but it would still
possible to make the combo pickup. Check the Universal Player chapter below.
In 2006, Toshiba declared they would “still like to develop a unified format for
advanced optical DVD discs, but two competing -- and incompatible -- products are
likely to hit the market at first”.
"We have not given up on a unified format. We would like to seek ways for unifying
the standards if opportunities arise," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told an
annual shareholders' meeting.
Associations of the Formats
Sep 06
Sun Microsystems, the developer of the Java environment employed in Blu-ray,
announced their association with the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) and became a
member of the board of directors, joining more than 170 companies already
belonging to the association, among which are Apple, Dell, HP, Hitachi, LG
Electronics, Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic (Matsushita Electric), Pioneer, Royal
Philips, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony, TDK, Thomson, Twentieth Century Fox,
Walt Disney Pictures and Television and Warner Bros. Entertainment.
The company declared plans to include Blu-ray technology into its Java platform and
offer its interactive capabilities to the format’s movies, games, or other content.
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