I think that Microsoft has too much money in their coffers, and doesn't know what to spend it on first. On Friday, I posted about their plan to get into monthly TV Guide services for DVD recorders. Now, with Blu Ray and HD discs in a battle to be the next thing in optical storage, Microsoft jumps into the fray. And just when Samsung was announcing a drive to unite the two competing formats.
We might have to agree with the poster here and realise that with Sony, Toshiba and their two blue-laser high definition formats fighting for acceptance, a red laser HD format will only serve to muddy the waters for the average Joe. Ironically, it's this very squabbling that has created the opening for the FVD format. In addition, the process is different enough from current red laser processes, compression and decoding techniques that the general consensus is it is not subject to normal royalty rights for DVD. This would allow the local producers of optical discs and drives to enter the global market (China alone is a huge market) without paying royalty costs to the big international formats.
Just for comparison, the FVD format will be able to produce first-generation discs with a storage capacity of 5.4GB for single-layer discs, and 9.8GB for double-layer discs. The ITRI has more information and a nice table to compare FVD to DVD on this page, if you would like to read the complete specs.
And to make matters one step worse, this FVD standard only has marginally more storage than current DVD's. If we're going to go buy new toys, it should be for more than 0.7 GB more in the single layer ones, and 1 gig for the double layers.
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