Petteri Pyyny
26 Dec 2004 3:59
The war between the Blu-Ray camp and the companies supporting the HD-DVD doesn't seem to take holidays. Just recently, the HD-DVD camp introduced a hybrid DVD/HD-DVD disc that could store both, standard "old-fashioned" DVD material (upto 4.38GB) and also 15GB of HD-DVD material on a separate HD-DVD layer and thus could be used also with current generation of DVD players.
Now, JVC has released a similar solution for Blu-Ray discs -- the new hybrid Blu-Ray/DVD disc takes a further step and provides a Blu-Ray layer that can be read with Blu-Ray players, but also two layers (equivalent of 8.5GB) for DVD storage, thus making it possible to store regular dual layer DVD to the DVD layers and a 25GB high-defition version of the movie to the Blu-Ray layer.
So, the fight for the crown of "the next generation DVD" is still heating up -- even when the most of the world doesn't even have HDTV -capable TV sets and only Blu-Ray camp has actual products already on store shelves (and only in Japan). Now, which camp will bring out a quad-layer discs that could store two layers of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD data and two layers of DVD data? And when we will see recordable versions of such discs? As both groups plan to bring out their products to consumers by end of 2005, next year will be very, very interesting in terms of digital video..
Source: JVC press release