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Sony shrinks Blu-ray lasers, drives cost down

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  • Sony shrinks Blu-ray lasers, drives cost down

    Developed jointly with Nichia of Japan, the new laser unit is just 3mm thick and should help manufacturers miniaturise the hardware in their Blu-ray drives. Sony says it imagines the device ending up in 9.5mm laptop drives sometime this year.
    http://www.tech.co.uk/home-entertain...370&source=rss
    "Women don't want to hear a man's opinion, they just want to hear their opinion in a deeper voice."


  • #2
    One more nail in the HD-DVD coffin.

    Reports say HD-DVD player sales plummeted after Warner announced Blu-ray only support.

    According to raw retail data collected by NPD, consumers bought just 1,758 HD DVD players the week of January 12, down from 14,558 players the week before. In contrast, consumers bought 21,770 Blu-ray Disc machines, up from 15,257 the previous week.
    If Sony can get the cheaper Blu-ray players out before HD-DVD can catch it's breath, the game is over.


    “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
    –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

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    • #3
      As far as I'm concerned, the game is already over with Blu Ray winning. Here's what I see happening with the news above about the cheaper players...

      1-Sales of Blu-Ray players will increase, whether it's PS3's (Sony is making cheaper version as well) or set top.

      2-the remaining studio's currently staying with HD-DVD will suffer in sales as a result, and rethink their options, do they pay the penalties and opt out of their contracts now and jump ship to Blu ray- or wait. I find the former to be the case

      3-The Pron industry will quickly jump into Blu-Ray due to reduces sales.

      4-OR....hardware manufacturer's will bite the bullet and produce dual HD-DVD and Blu Ray players and sell extremely cheap to satisfy the majority.

      5-in the PC markey we are seeing wide spread Blu Ray players/burners from Pioneer LG etc. but not a single HD-DVD burner is yet on the market

      6-As a result, and mainly due to availability of burners and the capacities of Blu ray, companies like Adobe are only supporting blu-Ray from a software perspective.

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      • #4
        Indeed - I always felt that the multiple inroads BluRay had would result in it winning, PS3 and PC drives. Now I think it's time to say it has won. I just cannot imagine a studio switching to HDDVD now.
        Meet Jasmine.
        flickr.com/photos/pace3000

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        • #5
          Its moot. Blu-Ray is clearly dead as disco.
          Q9450 + TRUE, G.Skill 2x2GB DDR2, GTX 560, ASUS X48, 1TB WD Black, Windows 7 64-bit, LG M2762D-PM 27" + 17" LG 1752TX, Corsair HX620, Antec P182, Logitech G5 (Blue)
          Laptop: MSI Wind - Black

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          • #6
            Disco will never die!!!

            Anyway, Netflix has announced they will only do Blu-ray rentals, and shunned HD-DVD. With Blockbuster already announcing Blu-ray only rentals, that puts a few more nails in the HD-DVD coffin.


            As for HD downloads ... it won't happen in the US any time soon. With all the major cable internet providers traffic shaping and starting to charge per GB (over a set ceiling) there is no way people are going to download a 5-6 GB file to watch an HD movie. Their internet rates would skyrocket and it would be cheaper to buy the media. Not only that, but with the piss poor download rates you get it would take 1-2 days just to download it and streaming would be out of the question.

            It's pretty sad really. Makes me glad my telco/cable provider is small and doesn't give a damn.
            “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
            –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

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            • #7
              It's pretty sad really. Makes me glad my telco/cable provider is small and doesn't give a damn.
              no kidding.. I am with the last privately owned cable company in Canada, and they offer more speed than the big guys, with no caps .. though they seem to shape torrent traffic a bit, limiting them to 300K down/ and Max 50K up on a 9Mbit/1Mbit connection.
              We have enough youth - What we need is a fountain of smart!


              i7-920, 6GB DDR3-1600, HD4870X2, Dell 27" LCD

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              • #8
                Those people that were describing Blueray as "Betamax" etc tended to be those people who just don't like Sony.
                They also hate AOL, despise Microsoft, hate EA....etc
                Personally I'm no hardware/software whore and will buy the "best available" and I really don't care who makes it.

                Watching Sony in operation during the whole HD-DVD Vs Bluray thing I think basically "Sony wanted it more".
                They really did do everything and now they have the support of the majority of the film studios there really is no way they can (or should) lose.
                There has only really been one "mistake" with regards Blueray and that is the inability to upgrade Profile 1 & Profile 1.1 players to Profile 2.
                Obviosuly the technology to upgrade from the old profile to the newer one exists as the PS3 can be upgraded.
                So quite why the odler stand-alone players cannot I don't know.

                Profile 2 players will soon hit the market, this will force down profile 1 & Profile 1.1 players to peanuts (and they will still be good players to have - all you'll lose out on is the online content).

                I'm ready to make the jump to Blueray for my film watching - I'll just give it a few more months for the stand-alone players to sort themselves out as I really don't want to buy a PS3.
                It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.
                Trolls might not be quick thinkers but they don't forget in a hurry, either

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                • #9
                  Sharp makes laser to enable 6x, dual-layer Blu-ray laptop recording

                  Sharp just introduced their latest, itty bitty blue laser. While maintaining the same 3.3-mm diameter of their previous package, Sharp's new GH04P25A4G semiconductor laser manages to boost the power to 250mW. That little trick should make 6x recording speeds to dual-layer BD media in laptops a reality. They've also announced a similarly speced 5.6-mm (GH04P25A2G) jobbie for desktops. Both are shipping now in ¥50,000 sample quantities with mass production set to begin in April. That translates to about 462 US dollars -- not that the US manufactures CE equipment anymore. [Via Impress]

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                  • #10
                    I'm starting to think a nice little HTPC would be great. Updatable, fast, universal, and can even play all that online HD content that JJ won't stop posting about
                    Q9450 + TRUE, G.Skill 2x2GB DDR2, GTX 560, ASUS X48, 1TB WD Black, Windows 7 64-bit, LG M2762D-PM 27" + 17" LG 1752TX, Corsair HX620, Antec P182, Logitech G5 (Blue)
                    Laptop: MSI Wind - Black

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                    • #11
                      So since they've driven the COST of the lasers down... do you think they'll bring the QUALITY up? Because I haven't owned a Sony product with a laser in it, other than my aging PS2, in... 10 years? Largely because every damn one has a laser that burns out prematurely.
                      The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!

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                      If only life were as easy as you
                      I'm the least you could do, oh yeah
                      If only life were as easy as you
                      I would still get screwed

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                      • #12
                        hmm, never had probs with the laser of my ps2 and it's nearly four years old now.
                        "Women don't want to hear a man's opinion, they just want to hear their opinion in a deeper voice."

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Chrono_Wanderer
                          Hmm... what provider is this?

                          I'm using teksavvy, its awesome. 6M/800 for $30 with no traffic shaping...
                          I am with ACI ( www.aci.on.ca) . I cannot get much more than 1Mbps on ADSL here, unfortunately, otherwise I would consider teksavvy, especially, if you get the redflagdeals.com group rate
                          We have enough youth - What we need is a fountain of smart!


                          i7-920, 6GB DDR3-1600, HD4870X2, Dell 27" LCD

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