There is news that Toshiba and Sony are cooperating to combine their next-generation dvd formats: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, respectively. This is great news for technophiles and standard consumers alike, as unified media means unified hardware, which translates to less money you’ll have to spend to enjoy the media you purchase.

In the early 90s, IBM spearheaded the initiative that resulted in a standard format for DVD. Although its adoption has not been as revolutionary as the CD-ROM, which changed the way PCs were used, DVD media has become the de facto standard for delivery of motion picture entertainment. Unforunately for the consumer DVD writing community, since then, the field of DVD standards has diverged to formats such as DVD-R, DVD+R, and DVD-RAM. Ask any pirater you know, and they’ll tell you that the different formats are a bane to their continued existence, because DVD players may support any combination of the formats, and hence may not play a DVD that was privately burned.

These next-generation formats are capable of storing anywhere from 15 GB to 50 GB. That’s 51,200 MB, or roughly 10,240 good quality mp3s. It seems as if every five to ten years, we get new media. Although some consumers dread this as it means purchasing new equipment, the increase in capacity lights the fuse for an explosion of media. If there is one thing that the ubiquity of the Internet and the increased availability of high-speed access has showed, it is that people can’t get enough media. With each year, as we strive to meet Moore’s Law, more and more media will be available to us in newer forms. ‘Do we need more media’ is not the question, and neither is ‘Will it be consumed’. The problem is, ‘Do we have enough time’

References: Reuters Wikipedia – Blu-Ray Disc Wikipedia – HD-DVD Wikipedia – DVD