TSST Korea (Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology Corp.) has completed the technical development of its Blu-ray disc drives using the Samsung brand, which offers a storage capacity up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB for dual-layers. If you noticed "Toshiba" up there in the company title, your eyes do not deceive you. Toshiba is providing its own next-gen player models in the rival HD DVD format while Samsung sides with Blu-ray. So, apparently, all bases are covered.
A statement released by TSST focuses heavily on Samsung's Blu-ray plans -- but the firm is careful not to bad-mouth the competing HD DVD scheme in any way. Both incompatible formats use shorter wavelength blue rays, while today's standard DVDs use red lasers to read and write data.
As a result, Samsung said, the blue beam can focus more precisely, enabling it to read information recorded in pits only 0.16 microns long (or more than half as tiny as the pits red laser discs). A single-layer Blu-ray disc's storage capacity of 25GB is about five times the amount of red laser discs.
The Blu-ray disc holds about two hours of HD content (which would handle most feature-length motion pictures) or about 13 hours of SD video. Sadly, there appears to be no significant technical compromise on either side of the battle for the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of HD disc consumers.
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