Hardware Guide 9:Next-generation discs

Blu-ray Discs
Let us warmly welcome the arrival of the next-generation discs next year when they will be made available in the markets. One of them will be the blu-ray discs. Sony's PlayStation 3 will be making use of this disc and we may see future movies and music released in this format too, considering the fact that a blu-ray disc has a storage capacity of a whopping 25GB. That is a lot of space compared to today's CD, which can hold 0.7GB of data and DVD, which can hold 7GB of data. A double-sided version of a blu-ray disc can then hold 50GB of data, more than twice of the capacity of today' DVD. Today's DVD is said to have a higher color quality when showing films compared to films stored in a CD. I will bet that the color quality of films stored in blu-ray discs will be even better than the normal DVD. Never mind about all that, because very soon, you will find out when you use the disc yourself next year. Be patient.



HD DVD

Another new format of disc that will be released will be HD DVD. It will be the time when the two electronic companies, Panasonic and Toshiba battle it out for consumers. I have totally no idea why is Toshiba producing HD DVD when the storage capacity is only 15GB (The one you see in the image is a dual-layer one). Yes, and 30GB of data for a double-sided HD DVD. I don't know for sure if movies or music are going to be stored in this disc but don't worry, there will certainly be some. That is because some recorders will solely support blu-ray while some will only solely support HD DVD and companies won't want to lose out customers. Therefore, they will produce movies and music of both formats so everybody can enjoy. Given the lower storage capacity of this disc, it will defintely be cheaper than blu-ray.

Gaming on the new discs
You may ask why I am writing this articles because I only write on hardwares related to gaming. However, I beseech my readers to jump to conclusion. This article is indirectly related to gaming too. Look, next-generation games will be getting larger in the space they need and they too, need new discs with larger storage capacities to store them. So, the next time you buy a game and bring it home, perhaps it won't be on DVD anymore. Maybe games will be stored on these discs too. But let's not exaggerate. You know, games won't need 15GB or 25GB of storage space and so it will be such a waste to put them on these discs as there will be leftover space. I'm talking about games produced in 3 to 6 years time. By then, CDs will be going the way of the dodos!