BlueRay Disc is the new media/standard you've been talking about. Sony and 8 other companies (Pioneer, Toshiba, JVC I think and so on...) agreed so far to use it as the next-gen standard, and Pioneer even put the first BlueRay recorder onto japanese market in last year.
BluRay is a next-gen DVD standard that uses blue laser ray when reading disc (it's name comes from that technology) which allows different DVD mastering and in final pretty big data-space: BlueRay DVD discs can hold up to 33 GB of data on one layer/side of the disc.
It should allow enormous movie-quality in playing on HDTV or high-res plasmas and so on without any need to compress picture in any kind of MPEG compression which is used for DVDs today. It would do a lot for the audio too, and by making it a recordable in computer use, it would make a high impact for all the users that needs a reliable and carriable high-capacity disc in size of just one disc (its a 33 GB we are talking about, do not forget). And it is "normal" DVD backwards compatible, which is very very important.
Right now, BluRay is considered as an very immanent standard which should replace DVD in very short time of just one or two years. Of course, the new standard would have a hard time in the market: normal DVD has been here for just few years now and in worldwide terms it's a pretty new standard. Making the consumers throw their new DVD players into garbage and buy a new standard is a pretty opportunious thought, no matter of how many companies agreed about the new standard.
But, there is a Catch 22. And it's called PlayStation. And IMHO, it's the only way it can be done.
PlayStation 2 did so much for the DVD market, as no hardware eevr did for any media standard. DVD capabilities of PlayStation 2 broadend DVD and home-entertainment market in every way, including surround recievers, TV sets and so on. In just 4 years Sony has shipped 70 millions PS2 consoles worldwide, making it 70 millions DVD players worldwide. No DVD manufactorer will EVER ship that amount of players.
If PlayStation 3 come with BluRay as an standard - and notice again that BlueRay is "normal" DVD backwards compatible - it would introduce the new standard in a glympse and it would spread it worldwide as fast as new consoles can be shipped and produced. I think taht Sony is very certain in prediction that PS3 will make even bigger and wider impact then PS2, but that remains to be seen. No matter what, BluRay could be the media for new console and do not be surprised if that really happens. Only thing taht could make problems is the speed of data stream from disc to processor, but I think I just can't say enough reliable info about that subject.
We will see, no doubt about that. Blue or red, it'll be Sony
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