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High-def rivals in race to market Date: 11/1/2005 |
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Despite onetime promises of a speedier launch, both the HD DVD camp and the Blu-ray Disc group now are focused on 2006 as the dawn of the high-definition era. HD DVD boosters say hardware and movies will be available by March; and the Blu-ray camp ? well, proponents don't specify when their system will be available, except to say definitely in 2006. The ever-slipping launch dates, along with the shifting alliances of companies supporting the two standards, inevitably raise questions about how close either format is to being ready for commercial rollout. Few outside the companies directly involved in the formats' development have seen anything beyond prototype players and a few, essentially hand-encoded demo discs. Toshiba says it will begin commercial production of HD DVD players in December. Sony hasn't provided a date yet for Blu-ray players to start rolling off the line, but if the company expects to include Blu-ray technology in PlayStation 3 consoles when the videogame format launches in the spring, it had better get the Blu-ray factories going soon. So how realistic is either side's plan for a 2006 launch? From a technical perspective, the format closest to being ready for launch is HD DVD. The blue laser used by both formats will require a new type of laser diode and a new optical pickup, but the rest of the guts of an HD DVD player will be pretty much the same as a standard DVD player. HD DVD discs also are essentially the same as standard DVD discs from a manufacturing perspective, though some new mastering equipment will be required. The biggest question mark hovering over HD DVD launch plans involves the matter of studio support. Warner, Paramount and Universal have said they will release HD DVD movies as soon as hardware is available in the U.S., but Warner and Paramount have said recently they also will support Blu-ray. So, although studios might be contractually committed to releasing a few titles on HD DVD to support the format's launch, it's unclear how far they'll go beyond that. Still, Blu-ray's targeting of even a 2006 launch could prove problematic. After all, the format isn't set yet, with moves afoot to change its interactive engine from a system based on the Java programming language to one developed specifically for optical discs by Microsoft and Disney. There also are proposals to tweak the copy-protection scheme and to add an entirely new capability to create low-cost, short-form high-def discs based on existing red-laser technology. Until such wrinkles are ironed out, a hardware manufacturer would be pretty foolish to start building Blu-ray boxes. Meantime, Sony is under intense competitive pressure from other videogame platforms to launch PlayStation 3 as soon as possible and says PS3 consoles will be able to play Blu-ray movies in addition to games. How it's going to pull all that off, it hasn't yet said. Another major hurdle for Blu-ray Disc concerns the discs themselves, whose thin depth present special manufacturing hurdles many feel have yet to be completely overcome. For, though all of the new processes that go into making a Blu-ray disc might work as planned in a lab, getting them to work in a high-speed, commercial replicating plant could take a lot of trial and error--and a lot of time to fine-tune. Were it not for the competition from HD DVD, Blu-ray backers would almost certainly be planning for a 2007 launch, rather than 2006. |
| Source: DVD Exclusive |
