Compatibility At Issue in Industry’s Transition to Higher-Density Recordable Blu-ray
Amid a world gone streaming, Sony held a Blu-ray news briefing in New York Tuesday to reaffirm the relevance of the Blu-ray format now and in the future. Pushing the physical Blu-ray ecosystem over cloud-based content, executives from Sony -- a co-inventor of Blu-ray that’s involved in the format chain from content creation to playback -- made the case for Blu-ray’s recordability, flexibility, robustness and capacity. Darin Scott, senior vice president of marketing, said consumers these days want a choice in how they view content and Blu-ray is one of those options whether for a standalone player, PC or PS3. “With increased high-bandwidth content, expanding storage needs and flexible solutions are needed,” he said. Even VAIO laptops that record to hard disks need the “stability” of a recordable Blu-ray drive, he said.
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Ralf Wolf, director of technical services for Sony Optiarc Europe, said the storage capability of Blu-ray is “virtually endless” and suitable for “all formats” including Full HD 3D. Maximum storage capacity of Blu-ray BD-XL Discs is currently 128 gigabytes, although recordable discs top out at 50 gigabytes for the consumer market. A disc needs roughly 60-70 gigabytes for a standard Blu-ray 3D movie, he said. He showed a 3x/4x 100-gigabyte BD-XL disc currently available for the professional market for medical and video surveillance applications and said a consumer version of the disc is due to arrive in the U.S. consumer market before the end of the year. The 100-gigabyte disc can hold a two-hour 3D Full HD movie, but for most consumers who shoot in smaller chunks of time, the high-capacity disc would be overkill, Wolf said. Older BD-ROM drives and PS3 players won’t be able to spin the new discs, but “all the drives now coming to market support 3D and BD-XL,” Wolf said. PS3 users who want to view BD-XL-based 3D movies will need to upgrade to future hardware because current PS3 players won’t be firmware-updatable to BD-XL, he said.
Wolf referred to the “next step” for Blu-ray being a player built into to Bravia TVs. A company spokesman later clarified that combo Blu-ray/flat panel Bravia TVs are being sold in “certain European markets” but the company has no current plans to launch the category in the U.S. “Markets are very different in their approaches,” he said, and European markets tend to have more integrated products and home theater systems that are smaller in scope and size than those in the U.S.
To date, some 25 million U.S. households have TV-connected Blu-ray devices, including PS3 and PC products, according to Victor Matsuda, vice president of the Blu-ray Disc group. More than 3,000 Blu-ray titles are available, Matsuda said. Sales of Blu-ray titles rose 68 percent in 2010, he said. He cited a Digital Entertainment Group survey of 3,100 3D TV households that indicated the top viewing choice for 3D content was 3D Blu-ray films at 78 percent, closely followed by Blu-ray animated movies at 77 percent. Live football games were fourth on the list, despite the relatively sparse amount of 3D football that’s been delivered thus far.
On the PC side, Sony focused on 2D editing solutions versus 3D in its 3D-ready PCs. Kevin Sather, product manager in the IT and portable audio division, told us that lack of standards on the 3D recording side have prevented the company from going forward with a 3D editing solution. With the recently introduced F and L series laptops, the company is focusing on 3D “consumption” and 2D Blu-ray burning in its VAIO line, Sather said.