Blue Ray Disc Information

In an attempt to avoid a costly format war, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum attempted to negotiate a compromise in early 2005. One of the issues was that Blu-ray’s supporters wanted to use a Java-based platform for interactivity (BD-J), while the DVD Forum was promoting Microsoft’s “iHD” (which became HDi).[24] A much larger issue, though, was the physical formats of the discs themselves; the Blu-ray Disc Association’s member companies did not want to risk losing billions of dollars in royalties as they had done with standard DVD.An agreement seemed close, but negotiations proceeded slowly and ultimately stalled.

On August 22, 2005, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum announced that the negotiations to unify their standards had failed. Rumours surfaced that talks had stalled; publicly, the same reasons of physical format incompatibility were cited.n the end of September, Microsoft and Intel jointly announced their support for HD DVD.Hewlett Packard (HP) made a last ditch attempt to broker a peace between the Blu-ray Disc Association and Microsoft by demanding that Blu-ray association adopt Microsoft’s HDi instead of its own Java solution and threatening to support HD DVD instead.However, the Blu-ray Disc group did not accept HP’s proposal.

The DVD Forum (which was chaired by Toshiba) was deeply split over whether to go with the more expensive blue lasers or not. Although today’s Blu-ray Discs appear virtually identical to a standard DVD, when the Blu-ray Discs were initially developed they required a protective caddy to avoid mis-handling by the consumer (early CD-Rs also featured a protective caddy for the same purpose). The Blu-ray prototype’s caddy was both expensive and physically different from DVD, posing several problems.In March 2002, the forum voted to approve a proposal endorsed by Warner Bros. and other motion picture studios that involved compressing HD content onto dual-layer DVD-9 discs. However, in spite of this decision, the DVD Forum’s Steering Committee announced in April that it was pursuing its own blue-laser high-definition solution.In August, Toshiba and NEC announced their competing standard Advanced Optical Disc.It was finally adopted by the DVD Forum and renamed HD DVD the next year,after being voted down twice by Blu-ray Disc Association members, prompting the U.S. Department of Justice to make preliminary investigations into the situation.Three new members had to be invited and the voting rules changed before the vote finally passed.Blu-ray and HD DVD shared most of the same methods of encoding media onto disks with each other, using the same methods of encoding media onto disks as well as the default method of digital rights management[citation needed], AACS. Blu-ray discs have a higher storage capacity than HD DVD discs had (50 GB vs. 30 GB) and Blu-ray discs also have higher bandwidth (48Mbit/sec vs. 30Mbit/sec), while including more DRM in the specification. AACS encryption is mandatory for Blu-ray but optional for HD DVD.In the meantime, Sony spun off Professional Disc for DATA from the Blu-ray Disc project. It was essentially Blu-ray Disc with higher-quality media and components. The devices were too expensive for the consumer mass market. Instead, it was aimed at the professional data storage space market as a replacement for their line of 5.25″ MO drives. It was announced in October 2003, with the first devices shipping in December of the same year.

Sony started two projects applying the new diodes: UDO (Ultra Density Optical) and DVR Blue (together with Pioneer), a format of rewritable discs which would eventually become Blu-ray Disc (more specifically, BD-RE).The core technologies of the formats are essentially similar.The first DVR Blue prototypes were unveiled at the CEATEC exhibition in October 2000. Because the Blu-ray Disc standard places the data recording layer close to the surface of the disc, early discs were susceptible to contamination and scratches and had to be enclosed in plastic cartridges for protection. In February 2002, the project was officially announced as Blu-ray,[10] and the Blu-ray Disc Association was founded by the nine initial members.The first consumer devices were in stores on April 10, 2003. This device was the Sony BDZ-S77; a BD-RE recorder that was made available only in Japan. The recommended price was US$3800.However, there was no standard for pre-recorded video and no movies were released for this player. The Blu-ray Disc standard was still years away, since a new and secure DRM system was needed before Hollywood studios would accept it, not wanting to repeat the failure of the Content Scramble System for DVDs.