IDG’s Martyn Williams has the latest on planned rollouts of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs.
Both are likely to make summer launches, though the Quixotic quest to DRM movies could hold that off. According to Williams,
Sony will start selling 25GB BD-RE and BD-R discs in April for $20 and $25 respectively and 50GB capacity versions of the same discs later in the year for $48 and $60 respectively.
So at least Blu-Ray discs will launch at about four times the cost per gigabyte of DVD+-R. Since the only direction these prices can go is down, that’s pretty good.
The only likely problem is that the standards disagreement between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD could lower production of media, so prices don’t fall.
In a typical week I might archive 150-200gb of data, so having an alternative to store that on 4-8 Blu-Ray/HD-DVD discs would be a nice change from the 40-50 DVD+Rs I currently go through each week.
Source:
HD-DVD, Blu-ray Disc Drives Coming Soon. Martyn Williams, IDG, March 17, 2006