Petteri Pyyny
11 Sep 2002 16:51
Company called Intersil who develops laser controller chips found inside various DVD and CD players and writers, has announced the availability of first Blu-Ray laser controllers.
Otherwise totally useless news blurp for Joe Average, but this is anyway a clear sign that the industry is preparing to ship first Blu-Ray devices in beginning of 2003 as promised. Blu-Ray, which uses blue-laser technology instead of red-laser technology (which is used with DVDs and CDs), can store 27GB of data per side on regular 12cm disc (yes, for imperial measurement users out there, 12cm is the size of a regular CD or DVD disc).
Blu-Ray will face tough obstacles on its way to be adopted as a next-generation storage media -- DVD Forum hasn't yet decided whether they will develop HD-DVD using blue-laser technology and MPEG-2 or do they stick with current red-laser DVD technology and start using MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2. To add the possible confusion, NEC and Toshiba jointly announced a competing blue-laser technology in last month. Exactly the scenario everybody has been scared of.
Source: Intersil Press Release