The fight over high definition recording

An important factor in the drive for more capacity in storage media is the attraction of high definition (HD) films and television. This offers the same sharpness available when watching a DVD film on your PC (just try it). The trouble is that showing HD on televisions needs a lot of memory in storage media.

There have been continual efforts to squeeze out more and more memory capacity from disks. On average, a CD playing sound needs about 8.8 MB per minute; a DVD video needs 35 MB per minute; while an HD video needs over 200 MB per minute. This means that a standard DVD will only be able to show about 10 minutes of HD.

Any attempts to enable HD technology is likely to involve “disruptive technology” – the scrapping of old equipment and assembly lines. Quite apart from the problem of encouraging customers to buy new equipment, there is the dilemma of which format they should buy. Blu-Ray Disc® and HD DVDs are the leading contendors. We have been here before, in the struggle in the late 1970s and the 1980s between video formats Betamax and VHS®.  Betamax was technically superior but could not record longer programmes such as films, and was generally outmanouevred in the publicity war.

In February 2002 Sony, Matsushita and Philips announced their new DVD concept, Blu-ray. I believe that the relevant patent is WO 03/100702, which was applied for by all three companies. Oddly, it carries a “priority date” of the initial filing for May 2002, which is later. Perhaps they were still working out the details when they made the announcement. It is my Patent of the Month

Four Japanese and two Dutchmen are listed as the inventors. It uses a 0.1mm disk substrate layer that allows up to 23Gbytes of storage on one side of a DVD. That requires new tooling and equipment, raising production costs.

It is backwards compatible with DVD or CD. It uses violet-blue lasers, which have a shorter wavelength (450 nm) than normal lasers, so that substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format, which uses a red 650 nm laser.

Because Blu-ray places the data recording layer close to the surface of the disc, early discs were susceptible to contamination and scratches, and had to be encased in plastic caddies for protection. This would have been likely to hurt sales, and the discs now use a layer of protective material on the surface through which the data is read. Those eager to learn more about the technologies will find plenty in a Wikipedia article

Like many others, I have an “HD-ready” television, so I can in theory use the new technologies. The number of HD televisions in the UK shot up from 700,000 to about 2.4m in 2006, but less than 10% of owners can actually watch HD programmes on them. Many of these are those who subscribe to channels such as Sky. Freeview is not the answer, as the broadcasting spectrum does not have the capacity to transmit HD television using Freeview's current MPEG2 compression technology. More capacity will be released by switching off analogue television signals between 2008 and 2012, but Ofcom, which is reviewing the distribution of this "digital dividend", is reported to be more inclined to listen to competing demands from for example mobile phone companies and wireless broadband providers.

The first titles were released on Blu-ray in June 2006. The format is exclusively supported by Columbia Pictures and MGM, both owned by Sony, as well as by Disney, 20th Century Fox and Lionsgate. HD DVD is exclusively supported by Universal Studios and the Weinstein Company. Film companies that are willing to release material in either fomat include Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema.

What was, perhaps, a fatal blow in the struggle for market share was struck in June 2007. Blockbuster, Inc., the largest chain of video game and DVD rental shops in the world, announced that its next batch of HD DVDs would only be the Blu-ray format. If films are mostly available in one format, customers will naturally buy the machine for that format. Similarly, Dell and Sony (of course) are only prepared to provide the capacity to play Blu-ray. It is estimated that Blu-ray is outselling HD DVDs by three to one.

As for the machines themselves, initial costs in the UK are in the region of £1000 but this is likely to come down, as is customary with new technology. Perhaps the answer is in machines that can handle either technology. One patent application that offers such a solution is WO 06/071809, published in July 2006 by Warner Home Video Inc. There is also Samsung’s BD-UP5000 model.