Question for all blu-ray supporters

[Chad Varnadore]

Sony said at CES that they're beginning work on a 100GB disc for studios that have asked for them. I imagine they'll be flippers, but some site reported that they thought it would still be single sided, which means odds are nothing currently will play it without firmware or physical modification. I don't know if we'll ever see 150 or 200 GB discs outside of datastorage though. If HD DVD folds before they get 100 GBs working, we may not even see those. As I sort of got the impression that the 100GB announcement may have been in response to HD DVDs 51GB press release-which apparently they haven't made any headway on since CES either.

Early DVD players didn't support some advancements with DVD either. Some even had trouble playing DVD18s. None supported DTS. It's the price we pay for being early adopters. There's no guarantee that the hardware will remain current. None of the current generation of players may support a some of the things they do with java down the road. I believe the PS3 is the only one that might support PIP.

BD is achieving now its potential or very close to in picture and sound and doing better than HD DVD in that regard. By that I mean BD is doing much higher video bitrates and supporting lossless audio far more frequently - most of the exclusives are offering nothing but lossless. The best PQ I've seen from BD is better than the best I've seen on HD DVD. And probably the top 30-40 or so audio experiences I've had have all been from PCM. Weinstein's release of Pulse offers the wickedest low frequency experience I've ever had. But that was just one scene. The rest of the soundtrack was only so, so despite being TrueHD.

The primary area for growth in the BD format lies with extras. Already BD is doing more extras with good quality HD video on average. But, it's still waiting on java to catch up in interactivity. Even when BDs java support catches up with HD DVDs HDi, it'll still continue to grow possibly for years as developers come up with new things to do with enhanced interactivity. So theoretically the format may never fully mature, as long as creative minds are involved.

Training Day isn't an example of the very best BD can do - even though most in the HD DVD camp seem to think high def doesn't get much better. Both the BD and HD DVD look virtually identical btw. But, Training Day certainly should surpass the DVD in picture and sound. It just may not appear as dramatic the smaller the display.

House... on the other hand is a problem with the source made available to Sony. It does look much more comparable to their DVD than it should. The sound is on a whole other level though.