TDK announces 100GB Blu-ray disk, Panasonic tells Toshiba to back down, and Star Wars Episode III was actually good. What is going on here?

TDK announced it has succeeded in creating a Blu-Ray disc which will use 4 layers to store data, each layer with a capacity of 25GB, totaling 100GB. If the new format is approved by the BDA, the first 100 GB Blu-Ray discs won?t appear until 2007. Ok now, the ?mine is bigger than yours? aspect of this tiff is getting ridiculous. I thought that was an American thang.

If Blu-ray was so convinced that it has the bigger and better format, then why is Kunio Nakamura, Panasonic pres., so adamant on HD-DVD yielding? According to Nakamura it is up to Toshiba Corp. to yield, making clear that Matsushita and its partner Sony Corp. won’t budge in the negotiations.

It seems both camps don?t want to contest to the other and both think they have the better format. Therefore, how can anyone believe that Toshiba and Sony are going to compromise on a unified format? It?s just blind hope coming from us consumers, who don?t want to lose out on the best hi-def DVD experience possible. But the main question is not are they going to unify? What you should be asking is does this 100GB disc give Sony a higher advantage of dominating the HD market?

According to various news sites, “the launching of this disc comes only to give Blu-Ray an even bigger edge over HD-DVD regarding storage capacity.” Yes regarding storage capacity but if that was the deciding factor in this format-war, there would not be a war. When Toshiba came out with the 45GB 3 layer HD-DVD a couple of weeks ago, no one was praising their efforts of coming within 5GB of Blu-ray.

So why is 100GB such a big achievement, because Sony made it? When it comes down to HD movies and content, you are not going to need 100GB. Plus this 100GB disc has the propensity to be fragile and delicate and cost so much that the movie studios, who will still decide the winner of this battle, are not going to touch it. Sony and Panasonic will dominate the data storage industry, which is what a 100GB disc is needed for, not for movie watching.

R.Hollis

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 21st, 2005 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Blu-Ray News, HD-DVD news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.