Apple joins Blu-ray consortium

bobw

bobw

The Late: SuperMacMod
By Paul Kallender, IDG News Service
March 10, 2005

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/03/10/HNbluray_1.html

TOKYO - Apple Computer has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), adding further industry support for the high-capacity optical disc standard, the association announced Wednesday at Cebit.

Apple joined the association Tuesday during a meeting held in South Korea, Victor Matsuda, vice president of the Blu-Ray Disc Group, said at a news conference here.

The Blu-ray association is a group of companies that promote the optical disc standard, which is seeking to replace DVDs for storage and playback of HD (high-definition) content.

Apple's role has yet to be officially announced, but the company is expected to help the association in its efforts to finalize copy protection measures for contents, said Victor Matsuda, vice president of the Blu-ray group.

http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.php/archive/3266/
 
but how long would it take to see mobile macs with such optical drives? I wouldn't mind to have a powerbook that could burn up to 50gb on a cd-sized media..
 
Problem with that is that they need to develop the drive. Most bluray drives are big ole things right now.

However, this gives me a bright ray of hope for the future :)
 
Well I guess we'd see the 'normal' procedure. There'll be a PowerMac with the, erh, "UltraDrive" first and a few months or a year after that, we'll see them in PBs, too. I guess it's still too far away right now... I think when they're widely available (and cheap), I'll get an ATAPI one with which I can replace my DVD-RW in the FW enclosure...
 
Is blueray in principle a similar technology like DVDs and CDs? In other words: will I be able to burn my DVD-+R/RWs and CD-R/RW with such a drive as well?
 
yes. blue ray is just using a blue laser instead of a red one. the blue laser is smaller so data can be packed closer together. you should still be able to write to regular DVDs and CDs
 
No, I guess they'll simply have more lasers on board. Much simpler to accomplish...
 
yes I believe it was mentioned somewhere that consumer drives would have a blu and a red laser in so to be backwards compatible with CD, and DVDs
 
While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup and allow playback of CDs and DVDs. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space, so it's possible to fit more data on the disc even though it's the same size as a CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB.


http://www.blu-ray.com/info/
 
BenQ brags of Blu-ray first with new drive 11:22AM
BenQ is the first of the major peripheral manufacturers to announce a high-definition optical drive. Its Blu-ray unit was developed jointly with Philips and was unveiled at CeBit, Hannover. It will be available in the second half of this year.

The DBD Triple Writer BW1000 is built around Philips' triple-laser optical pick-up, which enables blue, infra-red and red lasers to share the same optical pathway. As a result drives are capable of read/write support for CDs and DVDs in addition to Blu-ray.

Blu-ray discs will be available in two sizes: 25GB single-layer and 50GB double-layer.

The Blu-ray format received a major boost this week when Apple joined the board of the Blu-ray Disc Association. It is one of two rival high-definition disc formats, the other being HD-TV. The major film studios are split over which technology to back.

Sonic Solutions, which manufactures leading optical disc authoring software for both Mac OS X and Windows, has also backed Blu-ray, announcing in January that its applications would provide Blu-ray burning capabilities by the summer.

The company used BenQ's new drive to show its new AuthorScript Blu-ray Data Recording Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as Blu-ray support in its RecordNow and CinePlayer HD applications.

AuthorScript is Sonic's core burning engine and is used by many software developers, including Adobe, Microsoft and Sony. The new SKDK will enable developers to add Blu-ray support to their applications. The SDK will be available for licensing in the summer.


Simon Aughton

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/70302/benq-brags-of-bluray-first-with-new-drive.html
 
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