[nikomat 33223] Re: Good bye,Betamax

[Shin SUGIYAMA <ssugiya@biol1.bio.nagoya-u.ac.jp>]

>やぁ、rin@NewFM2です。
>#人の尻馬に乗って同様記事(^^)
>ソニーのベータマックスの生産終了決定。
>http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/News/ServiceArea/Betamax/
>ベータはハードウェアビジネスからソフトウェアビジネスへの
>転換期の製品だったと思います。
>
すぎやま＠こちらもです
DVDのformatで面白い話を目にしました。


Reuters News Agency
BREAKING NEWS


Tokyo   Rivalry among industry titans over next-generation DVDs heated up on
Monday when Japan's Toshiba and NEC said they would propose a cheaper type
of high-capacity disc incompatible with the Blu-ray format advanced by Sony
and others.

  Toshiba said its format for blue-laser DVDs, set to hit the market next
year and able to store huge volumes of data thanks to blue light's short
wavelength, was more compatible with existing red-laser DVDs and would
smooth the transition from red to blue.

  "From the consumer's side, when a new type of player comes out, they still
want to be able to watch the DVDs they already own," said Toshiba
spokeswoman Midori Suzuki.

  "From the manufacturer's side, with our format they can use many of the
same facilities they use to make existing DVDs, so costs are much lower."

  Despite such arguments for cost and convenience, the format would be
incompatible with the Blu-ray standard for blue-laser DVDs unveiled in
February by Sony Corp, Panasonic brand maker Matsushita Electric Industrial
Co. and seven other electronics giants from Japan, South Korea and Europe.

  The world's DVD equipment makers have already been hurt by a fragmentation
of formats for red-laser DVD recorders, blamed for hindering the take-off of
that market.

  Although DVD recorder sales have been strong in recent months, several
industry executives have urged that blue-laser players and recorders avoid
the mistakes of their red-laser predecessors.

  Toshiba's Suzuki played down concerns about a format war, saying Blu-ray
may be a logical next step in the longer term and Toshiba was still doing
development work on that format.

  "In the future, these two would not necessarily be competing standards,"
she said.

  "We don't have any concrete scenario, but we are working on development [of
Blu-ray], and that will be the easier technology to implement as storage
capacity needs increase."

  The Blu-ray format offers at least 23.3 gigabytes of storage on a single
side of a disc, enough for a two-hour movie in the high-definition format,
compared with Toshiba's 15GB to 20GB.

  Red-laser DVDs typically hold about 4.7GB per side.

  But the Blu-ray DVDs will require greater capital investment by
manufacturers and will feature protective cartridges and other quirks that
may make compatibility with existing products costly and difficult.

  Suzuki said technological advances, including image compression techniques
and using semi-transparent materials to record two layers of data on a
single disc side, meant that 15GB to 20GB would initially be enough for
recording high-definition motion pictures.

  She added Toshiba and NEC were hoping to make a formal decision this week
on submitting their format to the DVD Forum, an industry group of more than
230 companies that defines DVD format specifications and aims to promote DVD
use.

  Toshiba, Japan's biggest chipmaker and a major player in DVD equipment, was
one of the few Japanese electronics giants not to join the Blu-ray
consortium.

  A Sony spokeswoman said her company's commitment to Blu-ray was unchanged
and she declined to comment on whether the Toshiba-NEC format would pose a
threat to acceptance of Blu-ray as an industry standard.

  The other members of the Blu-ray consortium are Japan's Hitachi Ltd.,
Pioneer Corp. and Sharp Corp., South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
and LG Electronics Inc., Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands and
France's Thomson Multimedia