BEYOND BLU-RAY AND HD-DVD

The options for high-definition video open up this month with the arrival of both Sony's Playstation 3 and an add-on for Microsoft's 18 month old Xbox 360 console.

The Blu-ray drive built into the $1199 PS3 machine and the $249 HD-DVD drive from the Xbox will allow you to play new DVDs that hold many times the amount of data regular DVDs store.
That means movies can be delivered in higher resolution boasting better image and sound quality and interactive features beyond the standard menus of DVDs.

(graphic by Phil Welch, Herald on Sunday)

I recently watched the latest Bond flick Casino Royale and a preview of the rather bloody historical action movie 300 in high-definition on the PS3 and the improvement when viewed on a high-definition flat screen TV is remarkable when compared to a standard definition picture.
Blu-ray and HD-DVD drives are also being built into computers and DVD recorders allowing you to duplicate the entire contents of your computer hard drive or record hundreds of hours of TV on a single disc.

The consumer electronics industry is divided in its support of the rival Blu-ray and HD-DVD systems and Hollywood has also taken sides in the latest technological battle. Expect to see movie titles in both formats begin to pop up in stores in the next few months.

But even as the new generation of DVD players roll off the production lines in increasing numbers, scientists in the US are working on their successors, and once again, rival technologies will likely lead to yet another next generation battle for supremacy.

New discs will be released in the next few years that offer 300 times as much storage as today's DVDs. That's 1.5 terabytes of data on a disc, or twenty times the capacity of an average computer hard drive. The massive boost in storage comes down to a new way of packing information onto a disc - holographic storage.

While current DVDs use a reflective, pitted surface on the disc to store information, holographic discs create a 3D image within the disc, storing multiple images containing the data on the same light-sensitive polymers making up the disc.

When the disc drive's laser is shone on the disc at different angles, different layers of information stored on the same sliver of disc are revealed. It's sort of like looking at a painting from different angles and detecting new attributes each time.

Two American companies - InPhase and DCE Aprilis are developing differing versions of holographic storage, which is being closely examined by consumer electronics makers planning their product roadmaps beyond Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

The new discs will require a completely new drive to play them and will likely be slightly larger than today's DVDs. Initially, the drives will be very expensive - tens of thousands of dollars, and used only in the bsuiness sector for large-scale data back-up.

But eventually, they will form the basis of a new format for consumers, allowing even higher resolution video to be squeezed onto a disc. For us consumers, that will mean a better home theatre experience if we invest in the new drives and even higher resolution TV screens. That's something to think about when you produce your credit card to buy that long sought after Blu-ray player. It's the next big thing, but it's already on the road to obsolescence.
petergnz@gmail.com

THE PS3 AND BLU-RAY
High definition Blu-ray drives get their mass market debut on March 23 when the Playstation 3 goes on sale in New Zealand. A gaming console featuring Sony's impressive Cell processing technology, a 60GB hard drive, numerous connectors for digital cameras, game controllers and music players as well as wireless and Ethernet networking, the Blu-ray drive makes it ideal for playing high quality movies. Retailers are yet to confirm details of what Blu-ray movie titles will be available at the PS3's launch. One title, Casino Royale, will be given away when new PS3 owners sign up the the Playstation Online netwwork. Son'y has some 4000 copies to give away locally.
Price: $1199
www.playstation.com

THE XBOX ADD-ON
Available from later this month, the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 connects to the games console and displays movies in native high-definition (1080i resolution). That means movies recorded in high-definition will look much better when played on the Xbox add-on drive and a suitable high definition TV set. A dual-sided HD-DVD disc can store 30GB of data, six times more than a regular DVD. The drive also supports hybrid discs which come with HD-DVD and standard DVD recorded on the disc, so it can be played back at standard definition on regular DVD players. Interactive features such as the ability to flick through chapters while a movie is playing and watching behind the scene footage play in a pop-up screen during the movie, give greater flexiblity when it comes to navigating the contents of a disc.
Price: $249
http://www.xbox.com/

BEST OF CES SO FAR

L've covered probably 60 per cent of the stands at CES and highlights include:

LG's stand - its large LCDs are amazing and the LG Shine is a great evolution on the Chocolate. The Blu-ray, HD-DVD combo drive is great.
Microsoft - they've gone all out to impress and several things do - Home Server, bringing Xbox Live to Vista PC gamers, IPTV over Xbox Live (the demo wa simpressive, but our broadband speeds won't support it for a few years). The Zune integration into the Ford cars also looks good.
HP - Their new media centre PC with touch screen is a beautiful device and perfect for (upperclass) lounges. Don't know the price but it can't be cheap.
HD-DVD stand - A great place to kick back and watch King Kong in hi-def.
Nokia - the N800 internet tablet is pretty nice, especially with Skype functionality. Still, I'd rather see a built-in hard drive than 128MB of onboard memory and two SD card slots.

An alternate version to the story on the Herald website at the moment.

TECHNOLOGY

By Peter Griffin

LAS VEGAS – It was a competition to see who could talk louder on the phone yesterday as the US technology industry reluctantly made way for their new rival in the mobile phone business, iPod maker Apple.
Confirming widespread speculation that it was developing a music player and phone in one device, Apple used its MacWorld conference in San Francisco to unveil the iPhone, a slim, black mobile that Apple boss Steve Jobs hopes will “make history”.
Jobs aims to sell 10 million iPhones to claim one per cent of the mobile phone market by 2008 and will use the popularity of its iTunes music service to try and do so.
Apple has sold 67 million iPods since 2001 and 1.5 billion iTunes.com songs.
The iPhone will come with either four or eight gigabytes of memory, enough to store thousands of songs – as much as Apple’s existing iPod Nano music players. The iPhone will sell for US$500 – US$600, though the phone will not go on sale here until next year.
Apple is working exclusively with mobile operator Cingular to launch the iPhone in the US. It’s unclear yet whether the iPhone would be made available to both Vodafone and Telecom on its debut here.
Among the many details of the phone up in the air until yesterday was its name. Networking equipment maker Cisco owns the ‘iPhone’ trademark and has been negotiating to licence use of it to Apple.
But those discussions were reportedly unfinished when Jobs demonstrated the functions of the new phone in front of an audience of thousands.
Music on the phone has also been a strong theme at the other big technology show under way this week, the CES electronics expo being held in Las Vegas.
News of the iPhone’s arrival stole the thunder of computer industry veteran Michael Dell, who urged the computer makers to adopt recycling programmes and kicked off a scheme at Dell to plant a tree for every computer it sells.
Elsewhere at CES, show visitors watched Jobs deliver his speech as several of Apple’s rivals Nokia, LG and Motorola among them, launched their own new phones. The debut of the iPhone effectively kills the Motorola Rokr, a phone Apple developed with the mobile handset maker that has not been eclipsed by the iPhone which Apple has developed itself.
The arrival of Apple TV continues another theme of CES – the move towards a digital hub for the lounge where users can store music, videos and photos and stream content wirelessly from their computers to their TVs. Apple TV, which will sell from next month for $498, tackles the market Microsoft has so far held with its Windows Media Center software, which has been built into several versions of Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista, which goes on sale later this month. Apple with Apple TV will join Microsoft with its Xbox 360, Sony with the Playstation 3 and a large number of other companies in the battle to become the device of choice for the digital living room.
Peter Griffin attended CES as a guest of Microsoft