Sony turns CDs blue with new Blu-spec CD standard
By Thomas Ricker 
posted November 5th 2008 1:54AM
posted November 5th 2008 1:54AM
P.S. That weeping CD logo above is our Photoshoppery, not Sony's.
[Via Impress]
posted November 5th 2008 1:54AM
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Sony's adding more and more features to their products...
Cost, too.
"Sony's adding more and more failures to their products..."
Fixed.
engadget, its so lame. why do you have to bash sony everytime?
Because engadget loves apple, and apple hates sony (tearful divorce, and all that)...
@ silverblackvoid and Marko:
Come on, this obviously is not going to go anywhere. People in the movie industry are already saying BR will be dead in a few years. Do you honestly think making BR players "backwards compatible" with CDs is going to change anything?
I can see the Wiki entry already: In 2009, after Bluray and the PS3 failed and its stocks plunged to new lows, Sony thought the only way to revive its ailing company was re-releasing the CD with a blue (spelled "blu" for generation x acceptance) coating. This obviously failed too and the company was purchased by toshiba and quickly divided into its divisions and sold off to the Chinese. Ken Kutaragi was recently seen in the gutter.
Yeah but eventually they will need to cut costs on the product so they will remove some features like backwards compatibility.
"It takes advantage of (you guessed it) Sony's Blu-ray Disc technology to press new high-quality discs while somehow maintaining compatibility with regular ol' red-laser CD players."
Eventually the disc will only be able to be played on Blu-ray because Sony decided that nobody really wants to play them on old regular CD players.
Does this make Blu-spec a small thimble of hurt?
Makes perfect sense, blu ray should be blue!
Cds have been working for me for about.. 21 years now? is there something beyond "cd quality" this is supposed to produce? will they last longer? get less scratches? does it even matter anymore?
sony wants to cash in on the colour Blue as much as they can before blu ray becomes even more marginalized in the marketplace.
Blu-spec CD is a specification for an improved version of a conventional Audio CD, introduced by Sony Music Entertainment.
Instead of a traditional infra-red laser, a blue laser is used for recording the pits on the CD master that is needed for disc replication.
The blue laser creates more precise pits, causing less distortion in the optical read-out process and supposedly resulting in higher-quality audio...... However, and despite marketing claims, there is absolutely no published proof or evidence that this technology actually leads to any improvement in the final audio reproduced, since CIRC, the built-in redundancy and error correction system that is part of the CD standard, already takes care of occasional misread bits.
One of the fine ways to empty the customers wallets and buy that same music title for the 6th or more time! AVOID! This we don't need.
Hmm, this has the potential to be huge... I think.
@ GoCarnivore
GoCarnivore said: Hmm, this has the potential to be huge... I think.
YEAH a HUGE repetition of the Betamax fiaso. I do appreciate your carnivorous optimism none the less.
youre an idiot
No thanks . (the price i mean)
I'm at a loss for words......you just can't make this sh*t up.
At least they got a good name this time, BS CD
@MastrCake
hay hay dude, you cant say damn the US anymore, not in this time at least arrogant U.S patriotism is back... for a few weeks at least.
Seriously... last I checked, 100 yen did not equal 1 US dollar!
In January 2007, 100 yen equaled 80 cents.
Damn the American Dollar!!!
Umm, I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but it changes every single day... So yeah... Don't know how to break it to you but last time > checked (30 seconds ago) 100 Yen = 1.002 USD...
Please check your facts before making a fool of yourself again :)
I checked**** - commenting system cut out my 'I' for some reason
$1.002=$1 when you are rounding
I know it changes every day, but you can't deny that the US dollar really sucks right now.
But that is not the topic. The topic is BullShit CD.
MiniDisc needs to be updated to Blu-Ray
Blu-ray UMD FTW.*
*actually FTL
As cool as that would (being a former MD fan myself) it would go nowhere because no one likes moving parts, and flash chips are way cheaper.
No doubt it would have the same fate as the MD-HD
Atro's jokes FTW*
*Actually, FTL
(good job, Gallagher)
this is stupid , sony is milking the blu name ....... F*CK SONY!!
Someone's still weeping over their HDDVD player.
Milking the blu name? What about the 'I' ? Eh? :P
I like blue.....
The drop looks like a twisted eye-ball...
Pah, they own lots of music, technology etc. If it's backwards compatible, fully rippable into mp3 then I see no problem with the standard. But this being Sony, I somehow doubt it.
It come with Blu-Root Kit and some Bluy-Monster Cables
In case anyone thinks the price is high because of the technology, regular CD albums in Japan start from 2900yen a piece.
Well, if it comes with all the Blu-ray issues of DRM and playback problems, Sony has demonstrated its ability to crap all over their consumers face twice within the same year. Most people don't give a crap about music quality. Why? Because, unlike movies, we don't sit still to listen to our music. Listeners are usually doing other things that can distract you from the issues/benefits of ultra quality audio on cd. I'm not saying that the compression found on MP3 files is not noticeable. It is. But unless you have one really crappy encode you can usually tolerate the shortcomings of MP3 compression over its portability advantages.
Oh yeah, screw Sony. I'm not re-buying my CDs just because they come up with some bs to justify the new re-releases. SACD was a failure, and this Blu-spec CD will follow in the same steps.
The reason you're right is the same reason why Sony will succeed. Nobody cares.
Psst... its just a regular CD with a blue tint....
i.e., a PS2 disc at Blu-Ray prices...
wow, thanks Sony...
The way it works probably has something to do with a blue ray Len's ability to refract light. If you ever look at a blu-ray lens you will notice that it has a small lcd on top of the lens. I'm thinking that there are probably 2 data layers: one which a regular CD player can read and another that blu-ray lenses can read also giving you higher bit rates to songs where available while still being compatible with standard old fashion CD players when necessary. Totally a guess though. I read paper on blu-ray refractive technology so it seems plausible.
CDs....I think we've past the point of using CDs. With MP3 and similar formats, CDs are better for Frisbee throwing.
http://www.worldgonemobile.com
Yeah, because MP3s and CDs are indistinguishable.
fasdfadfafaf
tarstastatat
garfsabasbsasb
Much as I would like newer higher fidelity formats to exist, the truth is that people are happy with higher bitrate mp3's even though they're technically not as good as CDs, because their much improved portability makes up for that.
Sony should really just work on a newer higher fidelity digital download format instead. Like, SACD quality but easily downloadable to be played back on a variety of portable players, high end home audio equipment (like, future SACD decks could have a USB port for portable hard drives/flash drives that contain these downloads), a software player, PS3, whatever. Would be a heck of a lot more successful than yet another attempt at a disc format. Nobody wants to go and buy discs, let alone at $25 each lol.
They've been trying to foist ATRAC on the world long past the end of the MD era.
Rather than waste time with CDs on high def CDs, they should come up with a higher def version of MP3. Because although pyshical media is great to own, the vast percentage of music is listened to digitally these days.
Heck, most sound systems dont do proper justice to CDs, let alone a new high def CD.
Its called FLAC.
You know, Blu-Ray MiniDisc is a good idea... I liked them because they protected the disc and were rewritable. Could make a come back lol.
25 to 42 dollars, really? Do these magically beat out dual-layered DVDs or something? When would these actually be useful? Sounds like they're taking a page out of Toshiba's book with their super hyper awesome DVD upscalers that look like BluRay.