Many of you already have a DVD burner in your computer. Yet at 4.7 GB it still seems small when trying to backup hard drives of 100 GB or larger. Even with the new dual layer DVD burners this is still a problem. With Sony and JVC having video cameras in the new HDV format corporate, governmental, educational, event, and high-level amateur videographers will be able to produce high definition videos. There are predictions that in less than five years HDV cameras will replace standard definition DV cameras at the consumer level. Yet the current standard DVD format can only have half an hour of high definition video put on them. The upcoming blue laser DVD formats may be the answer to these issues. However, there are forces that are expected to provide some chaos and confusion in their introduction, which will include another format war.

There are some blue laser DVD type of recording devices already on the market, but like DVD-RAM that came early in the DVD product life cycle, they are targeted toward a narrow market and wide use is not to be expected. There are three different viable blue laser DVD formats proposed, but all will use disks that are the same diameter as standard DVDs.

The first is HD-DVD. This is from the DVD Forum, the same people that brought you the DVD. The storage space on this is up to 20 GB single layer and 40 GB dual layer (15 GB & 30 GB for ROM and recordable, 20 GB & 40 GB for rewritable).

Some companies were not satisfied with what was going on within the DVD Forum in regards to HD-DVD. This group was lead by Sony, which came up with the Blu-ray Disc. The storage space on it is up to 25 GB single layer and 50 GB dual layer, with the possibility on increasing the number of layers to as many as eight later. Both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc players will be able to play standard DVDs and CDs. Both formats will at least use the video codecs MPEG-2 Hi-Def/Standard-Def, MPEG-4 AVC High Profile, and Windows Media 9. They will also have native multi-track surround sound to be used in 5.1 sound systems or higher.

There is also a standard being used in mainland China called EVD. It was developed as an alternative to DVD so the Chinese would not have to pay the DVD licensing fees and to keep local control of the technology. It has made its way to some surrounding countries. The plan is to extend the standard to incorporate blue laser and other more up-to-date technologies making it comparable to the other two viable competing high definition DVD formats.

The winner should be either HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc. The blue laser EVD is only expected to be a widely used format in Asia. Blu-ray has the backing of more hardware manufacturers (Sony, Dell, Hewlett Packard, LG, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Sharp, Samsung, & others) than HD-DVD (Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, and others). Both have lined up Hollywood studios amounting to about half of the current DVD movie sales (HD-DVD: Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, & New Line Cinema. Blue-ray: Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, & Disney).

Right now Blu-ray Disc is considered to have a slight competitive edge over HD-DVD, but it could go either way in the expected long drawn out fight like there was between VHS and Betamax videotape formats.

For the price to come down on high definition DVD players and writable/rewritable drives to the consumer and general office use levels there needs to be a perception by the manufacturers that there will be a high demand for these products (mass production begets low costs). Last time it was the release of major Hollywood movies on the DVD format that caused this demand, so the manufacturers are thinking it will be the same this time. This allows the Hollywood studios to have great influence over the next generation DVD formats.

The movie standards for both HD-DVD and Blue Ray Disc are finalized. However, the standards for interactivity on the disk and Internet/Web are not expected to be finalized until early 2006, which mean they won't be included in players until late 2006. Some of the Hollywood studios have expressed that they do not want players out there that will not have the full functionally that they would wish. This is a problem of them not wanting to make decisions on a mixed installed base and then requiring first adopters to have to replace their player to get full functionally of the format within two years. This also allows them more time to work on their new 128 bit encrypted disk copying protection/digital rights management system called Advanced Access Control System (AACS). However, many of both the HD-DVD and Blu-ray manufactures have announced they plan to release players by late 2005.
Hewlett Packard says they also want to start including Blu-ray writable drives in their desktop computers starting in late 2005 and notebooks in 2006. Sony's Playstation 3 to come out in 2006 will be able to use Blu-ray discs.

However, there is a question about how many movies will be released in the formats, the lack of which could delay the launch of the players. Yet it is likely the competition between HD-DVD and Blue-ray will mean the players will launch on schedule anyway.

The proposed next generation DVDs will have 4-5 times the storage capacity of current standard DVDs. It is expected that there will be another face off between standards, this time between HD-DVD and Blue Ray Disc. There could be a delay in the wide scale distribution of players and recorders because of Hollywood's influence and the delay in interactivity standards for the formats, but competitive forces will probably mean the late 2005 launch will go ahead as scheduled. It is too early to tell which format will win.

Timothy Everingham is CEO of Timothy Everingham Consulting in Azusa, California. He is also Chair of the Los Angeles Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH, the largest chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques and one of Southern California's significant professional organizations within the entertainment and media industries. He graduated from with honors with the double majors of Management Information Systems and Accounting from of California State University, Fullerton. In addition he is the Vice President of the Windows Media Users' Group of Los Angeles. He is also part-time press in the areas of high technology, computers, video, audio, and entertainment/media and has had articles published throughout the United States and Canada plus Australia, England, & Japan. He is a member of TUGNET. Further information can be found at http://home.earthlink.net/~teveringham