Sony shrinks Blu-ray lasers, drives cost down

[Rakido]

Developed jointly with Nichia of Japan, the new laser unit is just 3mm thick and should help manufacturers miniaturise the hardware in their Blu-ray drives. Sony says it imagines the device ending up in 9.5mm laptop drives sometime this year.

http://www.tech.co.uk/home-entertain...370&source=rss

[Jammrock]

One more nail in the HD-DVD coffin.

Reports say HD-DVD player sales plummeted after Warner announced Blu-ray only support.

According to raw retail data collected by NPD, consumers bought just 1,758 HD DVD players the week of January 12, down from 14,558 players the week before. In contrast, consumers bought 21,770 Blu-ray Disc machines, up from 15,257 the previous week.

If Sony can get the cheaper Blu-ray players out before HD-DVD can catch it's breath, the game is over.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=9059058&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_top

[Elie]

As far as I'm concerned, the game is already over with Blu Ray winning. Here's what I see happening with the news above about the cheaper players...

1-Sales of Blu-Ray players will increase, whether it's PS3's (Sony is making cheaper version as well) or set top.

2-the remaining studio's currently staying with HD-DVD will suffer in sales as a result, and rethink their options, do they pay the penalties and opt out of their contracts now and jump ship to Blu ray- or wait. I find the former to be the case

3-The Pron industry will quickly jump into Blu-Ray due to reduces sales.

4-OR....hardware manufacturer's will bite the bullet and produce dual HD-DVD and Blu Ray players and sell extremely cheap to satisfy the majority.

5-in the PC markey we are seeing wide spread Blu Ray players/burners from Pioneer LG etc. but not a single HD-DVD burner is yet on the market

6-As a result, and mainly due to availability of burners and the capacities of Blu ray, companies like Adobe are only supporting blu-Ray from a software perspective.

[Pace]

Indeed - I always felt that the multiple inroads BluRay had would result in it winning, PS3 and PC drives. Now I think it's time to say it has won. I just cannot imagine a studio switching to HDDVD now.

[Mehen]

Its moot. Blu-Ray is clearly dead as disco.

[Jammrock]

Disco will never die!!!

Anyway, Netflix has announced they will only do Blu-ray rentals, and shunned HD-DVD. With Blockbuster already announcing Blu-ray only rentals, that puts a few more nails in the HD-DVD coffin.


As for HD downloads ... it won't happen in the US any time soon. With all the major cable internet providers traffic shaping and starting to charge per GB (over a set ceiling) there is no way people are going to download a 5-6 GB file to watch an HD movie. Their internet rates would skyrocket and it would be cheaper to buy the media. Not only that, but with the piss poor download rates you get it would take 1-2 days just to download it and streaming would be out of the question.

It's pretty sad really. Makes me glad my telco/cable provider is small and doesn't give a damn.

[Tjalfe]

It's pretty sad really. Makes me glad my telco/cable provider is small and doesn't give a damn.

no kidding.. I am with the last privately owned cable company in Canada, and they offer more speed than the big guys, with no caps .. though they seem to shape torrent traffic a bit, limiting them to 300K down/ and Max 50K up on a 9Mbit/1Mbit connection.

[Paulr]

Those people that were describing Blueray as "Betamax" etc tended to be those people who just don't like Sony.
They also hate AOL, despise Microsoft, hate EA....etc
Personally I'm no hardware/software whore and will buy the "best available" and I really don't care who makes it.

Watching Sony in operation during the whole HD-DVD Vs Bluray thing I think basically "Sony wanted it more".
They really did do everything and now they have the support of the majority of the film studios there really is no way they can (or should) lose.
There has only really been one "mistake" with regards Blueray and that is the inability to upgrade Profile 1 & Profile 1.1 players to Profile 2.
Obviosuly the technology to upgrade from the old profile to the newer one exists as the PS3 can be upgraded.
So quite why the odler stand-alone players cannot I don't know.

Profile 2 players will soon hit the market, this will force down profile 1 & Profile 1.1 players to peanuts (and they will still be good players to have - all you'll lose out on is the online content).

I'm ready to make the jump to Blueray for my film watching - I'll just give it a few more months for the stand-alone players to sort themselves out as I really don't want to buy a PS3.

[Marshmallowman]

Sharp makes laser to enable 6x, dual-layer Blu-ray laptop recording

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/14/sharps-laser-to-enable-6x-dual-layer-blu-ray-laptop-burning/

[Mehen]

I'm starting to think a nice little HTPC would be great. Updatable, fast, universal, and can even play all that online HD content that JJ won't stop posting about

[Gurm]

So since they've driven the COST of the lasers down... do you think they'll bring the QUALITY up? Because I haven't owned a Sony product with a laser in it, other than my aging PS2, in... 10 years? Largely because every damn one has a laser that burns out prematurely.

[Rakido]

hmm, never had probs with the laser of my ps2 and it's nearly four years old now.

[Tjalfe]

Hmm... what provider is this?

I'm using teksavvy, its awesome. 6M/800 for $30 with no traffic shaping...

I am with ACI ( www.aci.on.ca) . I cannot get much more than 1Mbps on ADSL here, unfortunately, otherwise I would consider teksavvy, especially, if you get the redflagdeals.com group rate