Second Generation Blu-ray Products To Be Rolled Out At Year's End.

Second Generation Blu-ray Products To Be Rolled Out At Year's End

Wednesday,March 16, 2005 / Kang Byeong-jun

Second generation Blu-ray discs and players will likely be launched
toward the end of this year, outpacing the rival HD camp in the world
next-generation optical media market.

According to industry sources, two representative members of the
Blu-ray media alliance, LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics, plan
to roll out second generation Blu-ray players and discs, buoyed by
tentative adoption of standard specifications and formats at the
conference of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) recently held in
Jeju. The association is an international organization for
standardizing the next-generation optical recording media.

Since the adoption of new formats by the BDA will remove such rubs of
its first generation products as inferior features of preventing
illegal copying and reading only function of discs, Blu-ray technology
supporters are expected to take leadership in the next-generation
optical media market visa vis the HD camp led by Toshiba.

LG Electronics plans to launch second generation Blu-ray products
around the end of this year, including a player, discs and an optical
disc drive for PCs. The company, in particular, anticipates that it
will be able to roll out products ahead of rivals given that its
formats of media and illegal copying prevention technologies have been
accepted as international standards in principle.

"The company will dramatically upgrade standard specifications of
Blu-ray discs so that they can basically prevent unlawful copying of
media as demanded by media publishers and they cannot be used in
players or drives," said Kim Jin-yong, executive director at LG
Electronics who is also assuming chairmanship of copy protection group
of the BDA.

Samsung Electronics also intends to launch second generation Blu-ray
products toward the year's end. Samsung Electronics agreed with TSST,
its joint venture with Toshiba, that it would develop players by
itself, while TSST would produce disc drives for PCs and discs. Seeing
that standardization competition between Blu-ray and HD technologies
will be heated for some time, the company is working on development of
products that can support the two formats simultaneously.

"When content distributors begin to supply Blu-ray media based on the
agreement recently made in Jeju, DVD market is predicted to make fast
shift in generation. Our strategy is to unveil Blu-ray players and
drives at the end of this year by abridging the period of
development," said Hwang In-seob, CEO of TSST.

Founded with 15 exclusive members in 2002 to standardize Blu-ray
technologies, the BDA was changed to an open consortium in November
last year. Members of its board of directors include Samsung
Electronics, LG Electronics, Dell, Hitachi and HP. Apple Computer
recently announced its participation in the association.






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Allan