Can a 51Gb HD DVD beat Blu-ray at 50Gb?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 04 March 2007 15:03

Your IT - Entertainment

Despite reports that Toshiba’s new 51Gb HD DVD has been submitted for approval, this hasn’t yet happened – but even if it was, will it make any difference?

In the war for technological supremacy, companies like to boast how their devices are better than the competition. In the world of LCD and plasma TVs, this means that the competition makes a screen 1-inch larger, which is then bettered by another inch.

Now in the world of next-generation, high-definition discs, the same looks set to happen again, with Toshiba having created a prototype 3-layer HD DVD disc, with each layer now holding 17Gb instead of 15Gb, for a total size of 51Gb, or 1Gb larger than Blu-ray’s 50Gb discs.

While plenty of sites have reported that the new disc had been submitted for approval, PC World has quoted Toshiba as saying that it isn’t so, with Toshiba spokesperson Junk Furuta saying that: “We're puzzled ourself by where these reports came from.”

Toshiba have a couple of problems in getting this disc not only to market as a successful competitor to Blu-ray, but as the format that consumers prefer. The first is that existing HD DVD players probably won’t be compatible with the new discs, meaning new players will need to be purchased. If existing players can be firmware upgraded, all good and well, but normally, a new disc format needs a new reader.

Then, while the disc still hasn’t even been submitted for approval, which is meant to happen in the first half of 2007, Sony are powering ahead with Blu-ray. Not only have they (and Blu-ray licensees) sold more Blu-ray players than Toshiba and its licensees have with HD DVD, but Blu-ray boats a much larger movie library that is growing much faster than HD DVD, at least at the moment.

Blu-ray have also long ago spoken of a 100Gb Blu-ray format that squeezes four layers onto a disc at 25Gb per layer, although existing Blu-ray players are known to not be compatible with the disc that doesn’t exist outside the labs yet anyway.

So, while the new 51Gb HD DVD disc sounds great on the surface, for now it’s little more than an announcement that has to battle the Blu-ray onslaught that is underway as we speak.

Unless Toshiba can really put a rocket under the HD DVD format, the 51Gb HD DVD disc may well be too little of an improvement over Blu-ray arriving far too late to make any difference.