Came across this last week, which was surprising (to me, anyway) because I had thought the Blu-Ray stuff was still a few years away from turning into real consumer durables:

(Tokyo) Feb 13: The nine companies promoting Blu-ray Disc technology--a next-generation recordable DVD format using blue-violet lasers--announced Thursday that licensing will begin Feb. 17. Blu-ray Disc technology allows for 27GB storage capacities on a single-sided 12cm disc. Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony and Thomson are known as the "Blu-ray Disc Founders" and have been pursuing a broad acceptance of the format. The licensing agreements, which are 10-year renewable contracts, will include the right to use the Blu-ray format and logo as well as the content protection specifications.

Companies already have been developing products using Blu-ray technology. Philips has demonstrated a prototype miniature Blu-ray disc drive that uses a 3cm disc that can store up to 1GB of data. The prototype drive is suitable for use in portable devices such as digital cameras, handhelds and cell phones.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Sony Chief Operating Officer Kunitake Ando said recordable DVD Blu-ray Disc products will appear this year, initially in Japan.

Regards

Mark

That sounds cool. I think those types of varied applications are more likely to accept the new technology. I find it very unlikely that the format would take over in DVD movies, though. It would, however, be very cool as an optical storage drive for PC's, but I'm quite happy with my current DVD writer.

I'd definitely like a cell phone with a gig of memory.

I'd definitely like a cell phone with a gig of memory.

Why, to store phone numbers?

Cell phone / MP3 Player / video player / better software

I know what you mean, but: no

Heh.. Yea, I figured from the first post that having a Gig of memory for a MP3 player or one of the other devices would be cool, but I was wondering why you specificly mentioned only the cell phone..

Mostly because cell phones were mentioned in the post. I would welcome a device like that. I don't have much use for just an MP3 player, so a combo like that would be nice.

divx on my cell phone, drool!!!

I just hope it won't take as long to agree on a standard when it comes to writable blu-ray discs. It's been a couple of years now for the DVD format and they still haven't decided wether it should be DVD+ or DVD-.

The recent boom in DVD writers has allowed them to become more mainstream and everything is pointing towards DVD+ now. The media is cheaper and living-room DVD players seem to be more forgiving in playing that format. Also, most big brands (including Plextor) are now selling DVD RW+ drives, and not DVD R- (with the exception of the Sony drive which is able to handle both formats)

I was looking into buying myself a Sony, but now I think I'll get a Plextor instead. Plex has never let me down (I've had 6 Plextor drives up 'till now), and and as said before : it looks like DVD R- is going to loose the fight anyway.

The recent boom in DVD writers has allowed them to become more mainstream and everything is pointing towards DVD+ now.

I'd be interested to see actual market share numbers on this. A few major computer companies hopped on the DVD burning bandwagon first and used DVD-R. Two of them would be Apple and Compaq. Anyone have numbers on how many units they managed to sell before DVD burners found their way to Best Buy shelves in any decent quantity?

The new Blue-laser DVD technology sounds REALLY cool - and the idea of storing that much data on a DVD is staggering. BUT - I've noticed that even traditional DVD's are highly susceptible to malfunction due to scratches and other irregularities since the pits are so densely packed in there. I wonder how the blue-laser DVD will behave to that respect.

- trs

Even sooner than that, apparently:

Sony unveils Blu-ray Disc optical disk recorder-player

Tuesday, March 4, 2003 at 09:20 JST
TOKYO — Sony Corp said Monday it will start marketing on April 10 an ultra-large-memory Blu-ray Disc video recorder-player combining optical disk and blue laser technologies.

The Blu-ray Disc, an optical disk-based video recording technology, provides 23 gigabyte storage memory capacity — five times that of DVD.

The Sony recorder-player, codenamed "BDZ-S77," will sell for 450,000 yen. It comes with a BS digital decoder for receiving digital video signals beamed from broadcasting satellites.

In the event that the technology is used to record conventional TV programs beamed from terrestrial TV broadcasting stations, each disk can hold up to 12 hours of such content. The Sony recorder-player also can play back DVD and CD.

In tandem with the April release of the recorder-player, Sony will put on the market Blu-ray recording disks that will carry a retail price of 3,500 yen per disk.


Regards

Mark

For the Yen-impaired (like me):

450,000¥ = US$3,825.55 = UK£2,417.66 = €3,507.45
3,500¥ = US$29.75 = UK£18.80 = €27.28

as of 10:44 EST March 3, 2003, according to http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?u.

/me ponders waiting on buying that DVD burner for anotherwhile...

I got the impression that this Sony device is a set-top box, not a computer drive.