The Blu-ray Disc Association has already forgotten about HD DVD and is bracing itself to do battle on a number of new fronts. In an interview with TechRadar today, BDA chairman, Frank Simonis, said that the main battle has always been to educate and to excite those people who have bought HD televisions. He also commented on a still-alive rival HD format, HD VMD.
Simonis said that Blu-ray was always going to win the format war against HD DVD because it's a better format.
“Our prime focus now is to excite our customer; those who have already invested in HD Ready screens, by offering the ultimate HD source,” he said.
Simonis said that now the HD DVD format has been slain, the market is a lot less murky. He added that there were strong indications that owners of HDTVs were now ready to invest in Blu-ray.
Blu-ray looks to future
However, he also said that there is a great deal of work still to be done before Blu-ray can succeed as an optical format.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done, particularly to get the supply chain ready for the mass market,” he said.
Simonis remained dignified and refused to gloat about the epic implosion that the HD DVD format has undergone over the last two months and, in particular, the last week.
He preferred to talk less of Toshiba and more about the future of the Blu-ray Disc format.
“We’re just pleased that this discussions is now over and we can move on to other things, like getting people interested in Blu-ray and showing them how good it is.”
Blu-ray vs HD VMD?
While the world focuses on the collapse of HD DVD, there is in fact another HD disc format out there other than Blu-ray. British company, New Media Enterprises, is still promoting its format HD VMD (High Definition Versatile Multilayer Disc) which offers HD picture at a much cheaper price than Blu-ray.
HD VMD uses the same 12cm disc as a regular DVD, but a proprietary manufacturing process increases the number of layers and so adds extra capacity. HD VMD discs typically have a storage capacity of 5GB per layer with triple-layer pre-recorded discs already available.
HD VMD even uses similar red laser technology to that found in DVD and is capable of delivering 1080i/1080p video signals at a bit rate of 45Mbps (Megabits per second).
Simonis says that while his organisation is aware of VMD, it doesn’t see it as a major threat in the mass market.
“We will always monitor their developments, however what with the growing support from the studios over the last months, including the recent announcement from Universal, we are confident that we have the right offer for the consumers.”
