Virtual Report from CES
It look as as if the Blu-Ray folks finally finished their specification and announced it today at CES.
Las Vegas– January 5, 2006 – The Blu-ray Disc Association announced today that the format specification is complete and that licensing is ready to begin for BD-ROM, BD-RE and BD-R. The completion of the specification now enables content providers and manufacturers to begin the process of producing Blu-ray Disc products for a wide variety of uses.
The Blu-ray Disc Association approved these specifications on January 2, 2006. Licensing of the BD-R and BD-RE 2.0 specifications began December 26, 2005. Specifications have been approved for the Blu-ray Disc single (25GB) and dual (50GB) layer specifications…
[and] more than 20 companies announce Blu-ray Disc products, including players, recorders, high definition computer drives, recordable media and PC applications, as well as over 100 movie and music titles.
I guess the arguments over which standard is best can be on somewhat more solid ground now that the standards actually exist.
So which one is this VHS or Beta?
What happened with HP then? Did they have some sort of objection on blueray standard?
That Pioneer unit illustrating this post – it looks remarkably like an old Philips Video 2000 VCR – the format that Philips lauched to compete against Beta and VHS. You could flip over the cassettes like regular audio cassettes, and get up to 16 hours of recording in LP.
Have a look here – http://www.beoworld.co.uk/images/v2000vr2023.jpg
Yup, it disappeared without a trace… Even before Beta…
I am a little leery of anything SONY is involved in. Their track record the past year has not been stellar.