Version 1.0 of the Blu-ray read-only disc specification is complete.
The Blu-ray Disc Founders said players and discs for the format are not expected to be available until late 2005. Other aspects of the read-only version, such as which codecs to support, have yet to be determined.
Blu-ray Disc, and rival format HD-DVD, are considered next-generation DVD technologies and are based on blue lasers. Current DVD technology is based on red lasers. The blue-laser technology will allow greater storage capacities, up to 50GB for dual-layer rewritable disks, compared with 4.7GB on current DVDs.
The two blue-laser formats are incompatible. However, both are compatible with current DVD playback.
The Blu-ray Disc Founders group consists of 13 member companies: Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp Electronics, Sony, TDK and Thomson.
HD-DVD is backed by NEC and Toshiba.
