News and New Products

Blu-ray Makes Play for European Market

By Richard Wilson -- Electronics Weekly, 8/25/2006

IFA, the consumer electronics exhibition which will take place in Berlin next month, will see the European launch of Blu-ray Disc.

According to Peter Weber from Panasonic Europe: “Not only does it represent the European launch for Blu-ray Disc, it is the first ever consumer electronics show where market ready products will be showcased. Until now, everything has been theory, vision and hope now, it is reality.”
 
In June, Samsung Electronics shipped the first Blu-ray disc players to retailers in the US.

This was a significant milestone for the high quality video recording media which is likely to compete in the market with rival technology known simply as HD DVD. Toshiba, a backer of the HD DVD specification, announced its first two products earlier in the year.

Blu-ray backers Philips and Sony plan products in the near future.

Blu-ray, which is claimed to support five times the picture resolution of existing DVD TV recording systems, is seen as a key element in the widespread introduction of high definition TV.

It is the support of the big movie studios which will be critical to Blu-ray’s successful introduction. “As always, hardware is nothing without content. Consumers will go with the option that offers the best possible video quality,” said Weber.

Disney is to become one of the first Hollywood studios to provide original, high-definition content in the Blu-ray format. This means seven out of eight Hollywood studios are releasing their high-definition content on Blu-ray discs.

A single layer Blu-ray disc will hold up to 25GByte of data and a double-layer disc up to 50GByte of data.

Electronics Weekly is the London-based sister publication of Electronic News.