Posts Tagged ‘Blu-ray’

It is scary to watch Sony and technology standards. They love them, but often pick losers or buy a win at a horrid cost. Memory Stick was a loser, Blu-ray was a pyrrhic victory over HD-DVD that cost them the game console business and contributed to their huge losses over the years. Currently LG and Sony are having a bit of a tiff: LG has completed a study showcasing that the passive 3D technology that is used in theaters is more attractive than the active technology most TV makers are now selling. Sony is disputing these results, arguing that only 1 in 6 TVs sold is passive 3D TV.

CES 2011 was surely not the big Google TV event many would have predicted a month ago, but Google is making subtle progress to build its army of supporters.

There is a sure way to extinguish that last light that keeps current 3D TVs on life support. Keep content scarce to support nose-bleed prices and keep movies out of reach for average consumers. If you want to see Avatar in 3D at home today, you will need to shell out at least $300 and possibly as much as $400.

If there has been any doubt, Microsoft has reminded us that there will be no Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360. While the decisions was initially led by thoughts to keep the cost low, the company now says that it will be passing by the format and keep its online path in its focus.

It may seem that Steve Jobs is on a lonely crusade against Adobe’s Flash format with the rest of the industry simply waiting who this battle will turn out. While Adobe is rallying support for Flash, Apple receives support from a rather unexpected ally, the adult film industry. The founder of Digital Playground, one of the porn heavyweights in the U.S., told ConceivablyTech that it will abandon Flash as soon as the desktop browsers fully support HTML 5. We also learned that 3D is just not there yet and that online movie streaming is unlikely to replace Blu-ray discs anytime soon.

Blu-ray continues to miss the mark in consumer acceptance. Previous conservative estimates that Blu-ray would surpass the DVD as dominant home entertainment media are now revised as Strategy Analytics now expects Blu-ray to outsell the DVD in 2013.

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) announced two new media formats for the Blu-ray disc, which will provide substantially more storage capacity than the current one- and two-layer version of the disc. The specifications for BDXL (High Capacity Recordable and Rewritable discs) and IH-BD (Intra-Hybrid discs) are expected in the next few months. The IH-BD will combine a protected and writeable portion of the Blu-ray disc.