As reported this week, the DCA (Doug Carson & Associates) have announced they have successfully mastered the first 3X DVD ROM for HD DVD commercial use. What does that mean for the avid HD DVD fan? Well it basically means that there is a lower cost alternative to the HD DVD disc already in production, which is a win for the consumer.

The 3X DVD is simply written with the standard DVD red laser technology but combined with the same data structure and guidelines of an HD DVD, which allows for HD content using the AVC, VC1, and MPEG-2 codec’s along with AACS copy protection. The disc will only playback in an HD DVD player and the video quality may not be the same as HD DVD or have the same features available on current HD discs, but it is good alternative for manufacturers.

A couple of examples of where this low cost 3X HD DVD could really shine is with content originally shot in 720p or 1080i and or with 40-50 minutes worth of 1080p extras/supplemental materials i.e. trailers, cast interviews and behind the scenes featurettes. The supplemental 3X disc could be packaged along with the main feature disc allowing for longer play times and or lossless audio on the main disc with longer titles.

R.Hollis

Hitachi and Mitsubishi have announced single layer HD-DVD-R blank media. Re-Writable and Dual-Layer HD-DVD blanks are expected sometime later this year.

This move would obviously signal the launch of HD-DVD recorders sometime later this year, although no specifics are known about the stand-alone recorders at this time.

With HD-DVD laptops popping up everywhere, it should only be a matter of time before HD-DVD player/recorders are launched.

R.Hollis

Ok if 45GB isn’t enough and 100GB is a vast improvement, then 850GB’s ends the conversation, right? If only it were that simple. Believe it or not Iomega has patented a 850 Gigabyte optical disc. Yeah that’s basically 10 times better than the best of Sony’s Blu-ray discs, of course there’s one catch.

Much like Sony?s announced, but still to be seen 100GB Blu-ray disc, Iomega’s “Reflective Nanostructure” technology is still on the drawing board and not in production. I’m of the opinion that anything in the neighborhood of 35GB is probably sufficient for high definition movies on a disc, as even with MPEG2 encoding they top out at around 28GB’s, but others will argue the merits of more storage space endlessly.

If either Sony or Toshiba could partner up with Iomega on an up-coming HD-DVD format (it’s too late now), the storage issue would be a moot point once and for all.

Michael.G