TOKYO -- Japan's Ricoh Co. said Thursday that it will be ready to supply an optical component that reads both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs next year -- a move that could defuse the battle between rivals Toshiba and Sony over next-generation DVD formats. Toshiba Corp. and its allies have been pitting the HD DVD format against Blu-ray, an alternative standard pushed by Sony Corp., raising fears of a repeat of the VHS-vs.-Beta battle over the format for videocassette recorders in the early 1980s. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray technology can deliver dazzling high-definition video and can store much more data than today's DVDs, but related hardware has so far been incompatible. Tokyo-based Ricoh's new component, however, uses a diffraction plate designed to adjust the laser so that light focuses properly for each disc format, allowing a drive to read all formats, according to company spokesman Satoshi Aoki. "Ricoh is the first in the world to announce this hybrid technology," Aoki said. "We believe it's groundbreaking." The component initially will read only discs, though Ricoh hopes to improve its laser so it writes in all formats, Aoki said. The company will be ready to deliver components to electronics makers by the end of 2007, Aoki said. [link=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/277540_nextgendvd14.html]Source[/link] At last, we will get something in the market which solves the problem of having two expensive players.....
By replacing it with one really really expensive player? I dont see the benifit of HD-DVD or Bluray... if i want HD content i'd rather just get 10 Mbit broadband [or higher] and download/stream whatever i want! I'm quite looking forward the 1 TB 8cm disk tho... as it means petabyte hard drives arnt that far away (<10 years?), you can allready get 1 TB Hdd's (allthough there double form last time i saw one)
But the maximum I've heard is 750GB by seagate. or maybe you are talking about desktop support to the maximun memory... Are you?
Nope, i saw a 1TB hard drive... it was basically two 512GB Hard drives Glued together... with one SATA & Molex socket. (it was the same height as 2 hard drives...)
