9 COMPANIES CONVERGE ON ‘BLU-RAY’ DISC SPECS
Effort to consolidate multitude of recordable next- generation HDTV optical disc proposals got major boost Tues. when consortium of 9 companies announced agreement on basic specifications for format to be called “Blu-ray Disc.” Companies said Blu-ray licensing is expected to start in spring, but products based on new specs still are expected later rather than sooner.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Blu-ray is backed by Hitachi, LG, Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Thomson. Conspicuous absentee is Toshiba, but sources familiar with Blu-ray said it had been invited to participate. Also absent was JVC, which recently held high-profile announcements on HDTV-quality D-VHS. Blu-ray format owes its name to fact it will use 405 nanometer blue laser for recording and playback. Single-sided 12 cm disc will be capable of storing up to 27 GB of data, sufficient for 2 hours of HDTV quality video and sound and 13 hours of recording standard TV broadcasts. Provisions exist in Blu-ray agreement for using double-sided 12 cm discs capable of up to 50 GB capacity, consistent with recent Matsushita proposals. Disc itself is 1.2 mm thick, including 0.1 mm thick “optical transmittance protection layer” common to most of pre-announcement proposals.
Chris Buma, Philips AV program mgr., said it was difficult to delineate which companies contributed which technologies to final Blu-ray specs. But format uses groove recording method common to DVD-RW and DVD+RW rather than land-and-groove method favored by Matsushita and Toshiba for DVD-RAM. Blu-ray group still is discussing whether disc can be bare or must be encased in protective caddy.