Petteri Pyyny
13 Feb 2003 13:59
The group of companies who have developed one of the competing future blue-laser DVD replacement technologies, called as Blu-Ray Disc Founders, have announced that they will begin licensing the technology to other companies on 17th of February.
Licenses for the format and logo cost between $20,000 and $60,000, depending on the use. The copy-protection licensing costs between $4,000 and $12,000 annually. One Blu-Ray disc will hold approximately 27 gigabytes of data per side, compared to the recordable DVD disc that can hold "only" 4.36GB of data (or dual-layer pressed DVD-9 which can hold appx. 8.5GB of data per side).
Companies behind the Blu-Ray include Pioneer, Matsushita (owns brands such as Panasonic), Sony, Philips and Samsung. But unfortunately their efforts weren't appreciated by the DVD formats' governing body, the DVD Forum, which chose to use a competing technology in its official "Next Generation DVD" discs, developed by NEC and Toshiba.
Source: News.com