Storage Toolkit

Blu-ray and HD DVD face-off in Vegas

Richard Shim CNET News.com

Published: 07 Jan 2005 13:25 GMT

The battle over next-generation DVD formats heated up on Thursday as groups supporting two incompatible and competing technologies introduced new partners and revealed further details of what consumers and manufacturers can expect to see from them in the coming year.

Groups representing the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD -- blue laser formats aiming to become the technology to replace DVD -- made their announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Both formats offer storage capacities of about 10 times what DVD can hold. DVD discs store about 4.7GB of data on a single side, while a Blu-ray Disc can hold up to 50GB and HD DVD can hold 30GB.

The Blu-ray Disc Association introduced Sun and Texas Instruments, along with several games publishers, as the newest members of their group. The companies will assist in the development, promotion and marketing of the Blu-ray Disc format.

Blu-ray recorders and discs are expected in early 2006. Companies in the Blu-ray Disc Association include Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Dell among others.

Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo are among the leading electronics makers backing the HD DVD format. Toshiba said that HD DVD recorders and notebook drives would be available in the fourth quarter of 2005. HD DVD is based on technology similar to that used in DVDs, which can reduce time and cost of manufacturing discs and recorders, according to HD DVD supporters.