RSSSony Begins Shipping Blu-ray Discs
By the Betanews Staff | Published May 5, 2006, 12:44 PM
Sony said Friday that it had begun the first shipments of its 25GB single layer discs, and it expected to debut a 50GB dual layer version in June. The discs include the company's proprietary AccuCore technology that offers enhanced reliability and durability, and also made it possible for Sony to offer the discs without a protective cartridge. The discs support a 2x transfer speed and a data transfer rate of 72 Mbps.
The 25GB write-once and rewritable discs will have a retail price of USD $20 and USD $25, respectively. When launched in June, the 50GB discs would retail for USD $48 and USD $60, Sony said. The company also said Friday that its Blu-ray Disc Association had recently surpassed 160 members, which plan to begin releasing the first players and PCs compatible with the format beginning this summer.
Sony's move is interesting here. Here's a website that tracks the success of blu-rays vs. HD DVDs over time. It include a dashboard of graphs and stats, and it's based on data from Amazon.com.
Check it out here: http://www.thedvdwars.com
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|No use for 'em.
At $20 a disk, it'll be chealer to buy IDE drives and throw 'em in a $30 USB enclosure.
Hell of a lot faster, too.
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|$20 to $25 per disk, huh. Well, first I have to fill my gas tank to get to work so I can afford that. Oh yeah, I forgot, I have to pay my mortgage, insurance, taxes, and feed my wife and kids. Darn. I suppose the upper income brackets can afford this toy stuff. I'm tired of chasing obsolete junk. How many years have DVD/RW drives been on the public market now? Maybe six years? (before you start whining about when they were above $1000, I'm only concerned with when they were generally "affordable" to the masses). I suppose with our ever-increasing techno-life, Blu-Ray will be obsolete in 5 years.
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|72mbps? Don't CDs record at a max speed of around 56mbps? DVDs are close to 180mbps? Seems pretty slow to me...I'll just wait and look forward to 8X.
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|It's common knowledge that that gizmodo article is based on a misquote from the Sony Excec.
The $399 PS3 price tag is from Playstation mag, based on insider talk.
Blu-Ray is standard on PS3. Not sure where you got $600 from, there is no way PS3 will be that much, it would be commercial suicide.. Sony know that, we know that..
Likely price for PS3 with Blu-Ray is $399 - $449.
If anything, HD-DVD is going to be the betamax in all this, as there is no consumer recordable format planned, and with the PS3 userbase, it's going to be very hard work to get any foothold..
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|As discussed many places elsewhere, PS3 can do Blu-Ray cheaper that dedicated players, as many of the DSP tasks can be done in software in the PS3, but require dedicated hardware in standalone players.
All the PS3 has to provide, is the pickup and servo drive assemblies and some IO chipsets, eveything else can be done on the cell, and it's supporting chipsets.
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|PC_Tool is right, the cost isn't in the stupid chips but the Blu-Ray drive itself.
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|roflmao...
Honestly, where do you get your information?
What "dedicated" Hardware are we talking about here?
Even if the damn thing (standalone Blu-Ray) came with a built-in Athlon 64 3800+ it'd not make up the gap between current Gen DVD drives and the Stand-alone Blu-Ray players.
Hell, it wouldn't be enough to cut the difference between the PS3 and the stand-alones.
Are you trying to tell us the DSP on these things *requires* that much processing power?
You're joking, right?
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|The price has been officially announced: $500 for the crippled 20GB version and $600 for the regular 60GB version. So much for your silly "it will be cheap because of software DSP" theory. Oh, did I mention that the $500 has no HDMI, no memory card, no Hifi...
QUOTE: "Not sure where you got $600 from, there is no way PS3 will be that much, it would be commercial suicide.. Sony know that, we know that.."
Bwa-ha-ha!
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|Hardly crippled.. For $100 more than a XBox 360, it gets Blu-Ray storage, 20GB HDD, Wireless controlers with motion sensors.
The enhanced model for $200 more than a Xbox 360 has in addition 60GB storage, HDMI ports, wifi, PSP compatability.
If you want to talk crippled, look at the XBox 360 core system, with no HDD, no wireless controllers, no HD storage system, 2 year old technology...
BWA-HA-HA..
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|No not joking. And by the sounds of your comments, you have veyr little knowledge of such things. I assume you had to look up DSP on wikipedia...
Supporting chipsets are a very large cost of a player, not just in components, but manufacturing costs, PS3 has all of this already as part of the main PS3 arcitecture, hence the cost savings.
This has been proven by Sony being able to offer a PS3 with HDD and Blu-Ray for the same cost as a standalone HD-DVD player.
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|"For $100 more than a XBox 360, it gets Blu-Ray storage,"
Which is useless since the only thing it's good for is movies and without HDMI it isn't worth anything.
Oh, and I love how you say $100 more when the PS3 is not even on the shelves yet and won't be for a long time. By the time it is the xbox will be a lot cheaper than it is even now.
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|"This has been proven by Sony being able to offer a PS3 with HDD and Blu-Ray for the same cost as a standalone HD-DVD player."
The reason is because Sony is taking a big loss on each console.
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|The price has to come down to US $1 to be attractive.
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|Yeah....
They probably only cost about $2 or $3 to make each one, but they have invested a lot of money (around a billion, but that's all the companies that support it), and need to get their money back.
The 25 and 50 GBs are probably going to be about $12 and $30 by the end of the year, or early next year.
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|I know, but at least the PS3 is going to be $400, so you can still play BDs cheaply.
But DAMN!!!!!
New technology is expensive.
Just like when DVDs came out.
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|That's still just a rumor, I believe it will be much higher, or will not have the ability to play Blu-Ray movies.
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|You can believe what you like. WHy do you think Sony is being so secretive.
E3 next week, sure Sony will have some major news to blow Microsoft and HD-DVD out of the water..
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|Well there you go. $600, a lame controller with no rumble effects and a ripoff of the Wii's motion sensing, a dull conference that put people to sleep...yeah they really blew Microsoft out of the water all right.
/snicker
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|awesome!
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|So for what I could backup my 400G HD, I could buy another HD altogether? Not yet, baby.
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|Go go go! :)))
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|about a dollar a GB, just like hard drives :)
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|Wake up, 500GB hd is ~$250. Do the math.
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|In Aus we're paying as little as 50c/GB. US should be 40c/GB, or less. Dollar per GB? Time to change retailers. :P
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|Not to mention the hard drives are just a *touch* faster...
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|whats the point in shipping them yet. theres nothing to play them with. so whos going to buy a disc that cant be played on anything. sony seem to have there a** in backwards.
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|Well, I suppose you could just admire their shinyness. You're right I don't see the point when there are not Players or Burners over here.
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|Sony is going to release some computers that can write on them in the summer, and they are probably going to release some writers for them in June also.
But I don't know, because I haven't seen anything that says it, not even www.bluraydisc.com, Blu-Ray Disc Association's website, has a list of BD player and recorder dates.
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|50 GB FTW \o/
:P
10 of them to back my disk so i can be safe :P
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|Well, in a couple more months the 100GB ones are going to come out, and in maybe a year or 9 months, or something, the 200GB ones are going to come out, so you could use 2 200GB ones, and 1 100 GB one.
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