Blu-ray hits back as Panasonic launches PC drives
Matsushita Electric is to mass-produce Blu-ray Disc drives based on GaN lasers for both notebook and desktop PCs early next year through its Panasonic electronics brand.
Sample shipments of the recordable drives, which are the first of their kind to be released, will begin this month.
Volume production of drives for use in desktop PCs will follow in January 2006, while the slimmer notebook version of the technology is expected to follow suit in March.
The announcement comes just days after Matsushita s rival Toshiba launched its HD DVD drive for notebook PCs.
The Panasonic notebook drive features a glass plate prism that is said to reduce the size of the optical pick-up housing the blue-violet laser by a factor of 12.
And while previous incarnations of the Blu-ray discs have featured a cartridge format unlike current CD and DVD technology, a new "bare-disc" has been developed for use with the slimline drives.
Leading PC maker Dell, which is one of the key partners in the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), is planning to promote the 50 GB drives through its desktop and notebook range of PCs.
Matsushita and its collaborators in the BDA have also hit back over "inaccurate information" spread by Intel and Microsoft that the rival high-definition (HD) DVD format is superior to Blu-ray.
In a statement, the BDA stressed that Blu-ray's read-only and recordable storage capacity were much greater than that of HD DVD, that its content protection system was identical, and that Blu-ray players were backwards-compatible with CD and DVD formats.
In what looks like being a critical period in determining the eventual winner of the next-generation format war, the movie studio Paramount Pictures is widely reported to have swung behind the BDA. Having previously only pledged support for HD DVD, the Viacom-owned company is saying officially that it supports both groups.
Toshiba said in a statement that it is still collaborating with the studio and that the lower cost and greater productivity will ultimately favor the HD DVD format over Blu-ray.
"Once HD DVD comes to market at the end of 2005 in Japan, and early next year in the US as planned, it will not take long to know which format really delivers the benefits of high definition to the consumer," said Toshiba. "In terms of development, HD DVD is far in advance of Blu-ray."
