Blu-Ray, the next adventure......

Ready too get hammered with Blu-Ray technology. Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA), annouced they have just completed a survey of consumers an they favor Blu-Ray. Lets see...I'm in the business, have not seen a disc or burner, yet BDA found 1,200 consumers with opinions to favor their technology. 20% we're honest enough to have no-clue as to what Blu-Ray was, so I feel a little better....

Focus point of this technology is being able to work with HDTV for better clarity. That's right record your own movies and TV programs. Did we not and currently have to deal with copy-right issues with the Music industry, Sony in particular. Oh that's different, because you have to BUY one of their units too accomplish this task. People don't copy and share movies like music. Please.....

One point that seems to be glanced over an never really addressed, backward compatibility. Blu-ray the actual color of the laser, can burn more into a given space than current Red color laser most of us have. Throw a little chemical magic on the surface, presto a new disc. We learned this from European companies expanding DVD discs, 9.6 gig.

In 2004 Panasonic released the first Blu-Ray burner to the Japanese market, gone in 60 seconds. Courting a corporate client of ours I convinced them to go thru their Japan office and get one, they did. {Storage is storage the key business issue for 2006} At the time the disc's were not ready, they came a week later. So being over zealous we went ahead an used a 4.7GB disc. Ready, it burned 15GB on the disc. Talk about jaws dropping. Currently Panasonic has announce pricing for the new Blu-Ray Disc:

• Rewritable, 50GB Single-Side, Dual Layer $59.00
• Rewritable, 25GB Single-Side, Single Layer $24.99
• Write once, 50GB Single-Side, Dual Layer $42.99
• Write once, 25GB Single-Side, Single Layer $17.99

Two hours of HD video or 13 hours of standard video can be stored on $18 disc. Ok, my entire family's video collection can be assembled into a 2 Disc archive for future publication. The players are lining up: Sony, Samsung, Phillips, Pioneer, Dell and HP. Since you won't come too the computer store, we'll just be in your living room.

Oh, before I forget, the burners are 2X, slowest standard DVD 4X. So I can burn more data if I'm willing to spend more time.....There's a concept.