Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD

CeBIT update

Strategies

From all the press conferences and the discussions we had at CeBIT,
there’s a clear difference in strategies between the two camps. HD-DVD
camp considers its format is mature, and after the last technical details
are sorted out in June, production will start full speed. For instance,
NEC plans to sell its first HD-DVD drive this summer (ROM only),
followed by a drive supporting HD-DVD-R and HD-DVD-RW by the
end of 2005.

On the other hand, Blu-ray camp is still working on the BD format and
fixing some compatibility problems. They consider that the high definition
market will be marginal in 2005, and therefore prefer to take their time to
perfect their products. The target is to obtain a mature and more performant
format for 2006, where HDTV is believed to get a real start with the World Cup.

Two different formats – two different marketing strategies. While the companies
around HD-DVD will start on the market with players first, Blu-ray is focusing
their efforts on the burner devices. This seems to be logical when we consider
that some of Hollywoods most important studios are also main backers of HD-DVD.

Prices

Depending on whom you talk to, the manufacturing cost of BD discs is
between 2 and 4 times the price of HD-DVD discs. However, this takes
into account the initial cost of the new manufacturing machines (which
are needed because of the 0.1 mm technology), and it is expected that
this multiplication factor will decrease with time. Note also that we’re
talking here about the manufacturing cost of the discs, which represents
only a few percents of its final retail price.

One of the issues we had with HD-DVD was that the -RW format was
completely different from the -R and -ROM formats (see the article).
It seems the reason for this choice was that HD-DVD camp wanted
to achieve higher performances (storage capacity and access times)
with rewritable media than with the other two formats, thus they borrowed
some technologies from DVD-RAM. According to NEC, these differences
will not cause any extra cost for the customer.
  
Copy Protection

One of the issues we had with both copy-protection mechanisms was
the single player revocation scheme, which allows content distributors to
blacklist a given player model. It turned out that drive manufacturers are
also quite annoyed by the practical implications of this scheme, which
was apparently imposed to them by Holywood Majors. At the moment,
it is still not known if and how this feature will be used.

After the HD-DVD press seminar it was clear that copy protection is
still a key concern for HD content providers. One major obstacle to prevent
HD content piracy is of course PC drives, since data can be copied from
the optical media to the hard drive. The HD-DVD camp is well aware of this
problem and explained that they are currently working with PC manufacturers
to define a new PC architecture which could guarantee the security of HD
content. MemoryTech, a company involved in disc manufacturing , even
explained that they were working on a new copy protection scheme combining
the BCA (Burst Curring Area, the bar code in the center of some discs)
with an internet connection.

We couldn’t get any definitive statement from the BD camp whether
they would stick to their own BD-CPS scheme or whether they would
adopt AACS. This is still to be decided as part of the finalization of
the BD format.

Lens developments

Samsung Electronics, a board director of Blu-ray told us of developments
regarding the laser lens. As you may know the writing and reading of BD,
DVD and CD requires an optical unit which contains 2 laser lenses, one
for reading and writing of the red laser technologies and one for reading
and writing of Blu-ray. The companies are now on the way to develop a laser
lens which is capable of red and blue laser technologies. This will make
it possible to manufacture much smaller devices, which is a requirement for
portable player and notebook drives.