Sony ships 25GB Blu-ray recordables; 50GB to come in June

Lest anyone question their position as king of the Blu-ray mountain, Sony has announced that it has started shipping single-layer 25GB Blu-ray discs, and will begin follow up with 50GB discs in June. Yes, we know that TDK has already announced their own dual-layer discs (and is even working on eight layer 200GB versions), but it looks like Sony may just get their 50 giggers out the door first. Pricing is set at about $20 per disc for the single-layer version and $48 for the 50GB discs. Yes, that's right. The higher-capacity disc will have a higher per-GB price than the single-layer version. Such is the price for burning on the cutting-edge (and, no, we're not even going to try to visualize that horribly mixed metaphor).

[(Unverified) Posted May 7th 2006 7:41AM]

Now imagine while you were burning a $48 BD disc and half way, your PC froze.

[(Unverified) Posted May 7th 2006 9:58AM]

I take all your points, but M$ wasn't my main argument - just a subpoint, relating to customer convenience in not having to purchase a codec pack to watch BR.

Perhaps i should have prefaced all my arguments with a neutrality statement - i have no bearing or preference to the two formats, i just disagreed with a lot of your statements.

And i still don't honestly understand your point about Bluray and a CRT - both formats are under the same AACS specification, so the HDCP problems of transmitting over anything but HDMI (or DVI) are still present. Where is the difference, hardware or software, between Bluray and HDDVD, that means that only one can be used with a HDTV? I know i'm going against what many people have said here, but i still fall back on the market analysis statements that have said that xbox 360 +addon may well be cheaper than PS3.

And my argument that HD will probably be cheaper when it is fully launched is meant comparitively, in terms of $/GB.

If i'm missing something crucial, let me know. I'm not arguing for the sake of it, just putting forward my perspective.

Cheers,
Jamie

[(Unverified) Posted May 7th 2006 5:46PM]

I believe DVI cant take HDCP?

[(Unverified) Posted May 19th 2006 9:38AM]

I recall the days when recordable DVD drives were coming of age, and there were about 4-5 different, incompatible formats. Everyone was saying that there would be a format war, and there would be no way to build a unit that could handle all formats.

Basically Sony and then several other makers just built a unit that supported all major formats.

I expect the same thing to happen with HD-DVD and BD. I dont see how technical issues would prevent this from happening. Just mount a couple of laser heads on the same transport. If licensing issues prevent it, some chinese companyies will make a lot of money, unless the U.S. government forces the licensers to allow it, which seems reasonable to me.

It is pretty disgusting that these formats come bundled with DRM but not inter-compatibility, so I will recommend to my clients that the best bet is to ignore both of them, or buy a Sony PS3 so at least you get to play games on a subsidized BD Player.