While PC-based Blu-ray Disc burners have been available for a number of months, HD-DVD burners are still no where to be found. To find out why, PC World has talked to Maciek Brzeski, vice president of marketing for the Toshiba Storage Device Division.
Blu-ray Disc burners have been shipping for months now--why is HD DVD taking so long to catch up? Chalk it up to a philosophical difference, not a technological one, says Brzeski. Toshiba, he says, views HD DVD more as a technology for delivering prepackaged (Hollywood) high-definition video, not for creating your own disc-based content. "I honestly don't believe in these early days that many people will be using HD DVDs and Blu-rays to back up content. If you look at the cost per GB to back up to disc, it's not cost-effective."
The HD DVD specs of the first drive will be limited to recordable, write-once HD DVD-R media at 1X, to both single-layer 15GB and dual layer 30GB discs; the drive won't support any of the HD DVD flavors of rewritable discs. However, the drive will support writing to standard DVD: 4X DVD±R (2X for double- and dual-layer), 4X DVD±RW, 3X DVD-RAM, and 16X CD-R.
These specs aren't exactly impressive. Hopefully, second generation HD DVD burners will be faster and include support for rewritable HD media. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here.
