Ok, ok,
you found me out, I'm an anti-Blu-ray subversive (actually, I'm anti spending over $300 on a movie player but that's neither here nor there). Just so everyone knows there is no bad blood between
Blu-ray and
HD Beat we've got some good news to report.
A small company called
Blue Ray Technologies claim they have
solved production issues with Blu-ray disc manufacturing that have lead to as much as a 75% defect rate, and lower that to 25%, drastically cutting costs. We'd love to take these guys seriously but in light of
Nintendo's Wii, wii're taking naming very seriously and adding an E to the end of the technology does not cut it. Also, if current failure rates are at 75% for disc replicators, we don't want to see anyone's face when their
$47 TDK dual-layer Blu-ray BD-R makes a coaster, ouch. However if they can really help get prices down we're all for it.
Also, TDK has
issued a release that they have developed a prototype 200GB Blu-ray disc that uses six 33GB layers to hold data. Sounds interesting; hopefully we'll see production versions soon.
See? We can say nice things about Blu-ray...even though it's not out yet and delays make us
very very angry.
[Via
CDRinfo &
Newlaunches thanks for the
tip!]
Blue Ray Technologies was expecting business to boom shortly after the format war concluded, and apparently the shock is in full effect. According to founder and chairman Erick Hansen, America's "first indie Blu-ray disc manufacturing plant is now becoming the largest indie [and Profile 2.0-friendly] Blue-ray Disc mastering facility in the US." When all is said done, the facility will be "the only indie that can handle rewritable disc mastering and will provide pre-mastering as well," not to mention being the only one that can make a rewriting stamper. Granted, most of this stuff amounts to a huge pat on the back, but the expansion of independent films on BD is certainly healthy for the industry at large. Now, if only the hardware to watch these films on were more affordable, we'd really have a match made in heaven.
Toshiba made a formal announcement today with regard to the state of HD DVD. Unfortunately, it wasn't the white-flag surrender we had hoped would bring a swift end to the format war. In a statement made by a Toshiba spokesman, the firm said, "Toshiba has not made any announcement or decision. We are currently assessing our business strategies, but nothing has been decided at the moment." This came as its 
