It’s been known for some time now, the next generation of optical disks is rolling out this summer and this fall. HD-DVD players are already on the market but their main competitor, Sony, has plans to release their answer to HD content with the launch of the PS3. Many may be sceptic knowing that Sony is the main backer of this technology considering the fallout of their recent UMD.
UMD is the custom media storage that came with Sony’s PSP gaming console. Their PlayStation Portable got a fair success but Sony had in mind that the UMD (Universal Media Disk) would be massively used to bring movies to the portable era. However, the last few months have proven that the UMD is not very popular amongst users and movie studios. With the upcoming PS3 someone may wonder if Sony will fail again, or loose the war like with their old Betamax.
In short I think the answer is no, they have everything on their side to make Blu-ray a major success. Let’s review the current specs of both formats before going deeper on the subject.
UMD
- Dimensions: approx. 65 mm
- Maximum capacity: 1.80 GB (dual layer), 900 MB (single-layer)
- Laser wavelength: 660 nm (red laser)
Blu-ray
- Dimensions: approx. 120 mm
- Expected capacity: 50 GB (dual layer), 25 GB (single-layer)
- Laser wavelength: 405 nm (blue laser)
The thing that must be understood about UMD is that it brought a lower technology that currently available DVDs. As for the Blu-ray disc it brings an upgrade for high definition content. Let’s say you decide to get a PSP and buy a movie with it. The UMD movie is down scaled to fit on the small UMD and resolution of a PSP. So you have to buy a movie that is readable on one hardware only. If you add the fact that current DVDs can be cheaper and can be played on many different devices confirms the demise of the UMD.
However, the Blu-ray will be a new story since Blu-ray players are already announced and it will not be specific to one console (PS3). You also have to consider that the movies will have a much higher resolution and if wanted could be down sized by the user. It is obvious that there will be a war between this new breed of “DVDs” but I believe that they will eventually balance themselves out just like DVD-R and DVD+R are right now. I have an LG DVD burner that can handle all current DVD formats, LG even announced that they will do the same for Blu-ray and HD-DVD.
All things considered, Blu-ray is not an attempt to grab more money from users by making them buy the same movie in multiple formats, it’s rather an upgrade that had to come up one day or another.