Singulus to support Blu-ray Disc mass production
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DECEMBER 03, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - TOKYO -- Blu-ray Disc will take an important step forward next year when Singulus Technologies AG begins selling machines for mass producing read-only versions of the discs, the company said this week.
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Victor Company of Japan has developed a Blu-ray/ DVD combo ROM disc, with the company claiming to be the first to do so. According to the company, the format enables storage of video content in both high definition and standard definition.
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A consortium of Chinese university engineers and government officials, in cooperation with a Chinese video standards group that includes globally recognized manufacturers, plus the DVD Forum, have come to an agreement on a standard specification for a blue-laser disc mechanism and format specifically for the Chinese market. It means China could be producing low-price HD DVD mechanisms by this next summer.
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Japan's TDK has developed a single-sided recordable blue laser disc prototype with a capacity of 200GB
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New disc could ease the transition to the next-gen DVD standard, company says.
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Clever 'perpendicular recording system' boosts storage capacity
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German compact disc and DVD equipment company Singulus and Japan&#39;s Sony have teamed up to develop a new technology for music and video discs, Singulus said on Tuesday.
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Using a novel new approach, scientists at the Imperial College in London are on the path to optical storage that dwarfs the capacities of current DVD&#39;s and even upcoming, blue laser-based discs.
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Company is the latest to choose sides in the next-generation DVD format battle.
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A HARDWARE from the Land of the Rising Sun, JVC, has signed up to the Blu-ray format and joined the Blu-ray Disc Association. Although the public commitment to the next generation DVD standard is new, JVC
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Toshiba has hammered another nail in the Blu-Ray coffin, by announcing a dual layer HD-DVD and DVD disc. This means that studios will be able to sell discs that have the DVD version on one side and the HD-DVD
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(InfoWorld) - Supporters of the Blu-ray Disc format came to Berlin armed with key announcements to underscore their commitment to the next-generation movie disc. The announcements included a flood of new Blu-ray Disc releases, a decision by Acer and China Huala GroupÂ to join as hardware partners, and the establishment of a Blu-ray Disc authoring center in China. They were made Thursday at a news conference organized by the Blu-ray Disc Association at the IFA consumer electronics show. Among some of the big-name movies to appear in the Blu-ray Disc format in the coming weeks are Spider Man from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 300 from Warner Home Video, and a special edition of Sleeping Beauty from Walt Disney. "We've been involved with Blu-ray Disc from the very beginning," said Stephen Foulser, vice president of marketing and business development for Disney in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region. "We will be launching 30 new titles in the format." More than 300 movie titles are currently available in the Blu-ray Disc format, a number that studios plan to nearly double by the end of the year, according to David Walstra, vice chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association. Eight manufacturers of consumer electronic products are now on board, he said. The number of studios supplying content and manufacturers building players are key to the take-up of any new disc format, according to Danny Kay, executive vice president of research and development at 20th Century Fox. Based on the numbers of both of these groups, "the market for Blu-ray Disc is very compelling" he said. "We believe Blu-ray Disc is really the only way to go." Kay declined to comment on the decision of Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation to throw their support behind rival HD DVD, saying only that both studios had access to the same market data as Fox and the other studios. On the device front, Acer will join Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and LenovoÂ as contributing members to the Blu-ray Disc Association, said Walstra, a Sony executive who is also deputy chairman of the association. Huala, a major manufacturer of consumer electronic products in China and supplier of content, has also agreed to become a contributing member, according to Walstra. In addition, the company will team with the China Film Group to establish a Blu-ray Disc authoring center in China, he said. None of the industry executives associated with the Blu-ray Disc Association were prepared to answer a question on whether the expansion into China could lead to greater concerns about software piracy
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Company, one of the core backers of Blu-ray, will also support its rival format.
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Sony and blue-laser diode maker Nichia have developed a component that they say is vital to realizing support for Blu-ray Disc and DVD discs in portable devices, they announced this week.
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JVC has developed a combination Blu-ray/DVD disk that it says will ease the transition from traditional DVD to next-generation high-denfinition video.
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(InfoWorld) - Hitachi Maxell has developed a thin optical disc that could lead to data cartridges capable of storing terabytes of information. The Stacked Volumetric Optical Disc (SVOD) is less than a tenth of a millimeter thick and it's from this thinness that the technology has an advantage over current CD, DVD, and blue-laser discs, all of which are 1.2 millimeters thick. Many of the discs can be stacked together to realize a large data storage capacity in a small space, said Akira Ijichi, assistant department manager of the company's recording media sales department. Working prototype discs on show at this week's Ceatec Japan 2006 exhibition in Chiba, Japan, are based on DVD technology and each holds 4.7GB. Hitachi Maxell envisages cartridges of 100 discs would be only a few centimeters thick but would be able to offer a total capacity of 470GB, said Ijichi. To keep the discs safe each is housed in a protective sleeve inside the cartridge. The cartridge slots into a dedicated drive and the discs are pulled out of the cartridge automatically by a mechanism inside the unit and mounted into the drive. Making the discs so thin doesn't come without its problems. The discs are flexible but optical disc systems require a rigid disc so that the laser remains in focus on the disc's surface. To get around this problem, Hitachi Maxell has fitted inside each drive a 0.6 millimeter-thick piece of glass through which there are holes. Air is drawn through the holes when the disc spins causing the flexible disc to be drawn against the rigid piece of glass to make it flat. The disc marks a different approach than that of many competitors, which are fixed on increasing the storage capacity by using ever more complicated storage technology to cram data more closely together on a disc. HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc achieve higher because the storage bits are smaller and next-generation systems in development rely on holographic technology. Hitachi Maxell has basically finished development of the system but doesn't yet have commercialization plans, said Ijichi. It is considering working with an optical drive maker to develop a better drive for the system. It's targeted at commercial storage applications. The company says that a system about the same size as a tower PC and will be able to hold 4.7TB of data. A 19-inch rack mount model will be able to hold three times that amount of data.
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Discs offering high-definition images using blue lasers likely will rule the market starting in 2005. By Jonathan Sidener. A pessimist might say that right about the time the last person on the planet buys