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Laser Shortage to Stall High-Def Disc War?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Aug 29, 2006 05:25 PM
from the supply-and-demand dept.
Media Technology
An anonymous reader writes "DigiTimes reports that several major vendors, including Sony and Matsushita, have suspended shipments of the blue laser diodes that drive both high-def disc formats. The rumored laser shortage could result in shipment delays for new models of Blu-ray and HD DVD players and drives past the upcoming holiday season, cooling the next-gen DVD format war until 2007."
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  • Animal Cruelty (Score:4, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled (634315) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:26PM (#16003267) Homepage Journal
    Won't ANYBODY think of the sharks!

    They are driving themselves insane out at sea, they were all psyched to go into battle with some kick ass frikkin laser beams on their heads now they have to continue practicing with mop-handles tied on.

    Shame on you Sony.
    • Everyone knows they use red lasers for the sharks.
    • Dude...what do you think caused the shortage in the first place???

      Clearly there is an army of sharks (and few dolphins, for good measure) off the coast of California that are being fitted with the entire world's supply of blue lasers. We have to believe an attack is coming any day now. While our government has spent the past few months keeping people from bringing bottled water onto airplanes, they've completely ignored the possibility of an army of trained marine life using the latest advances in weaponr

  • Sharks! (Score:4, Funny)

    by MyLongNickName (822545) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:26PM (#16003272) Journal
    I KNEW we were using too many on those damn sharks.

  • Illegal collusion to fix the market (Score:5, Funny)

    by topham (32406) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:28PM (#16003282) Homepage
    Wouldn't happen to be intended to delay the adoption of the new players until next year would it, by which time maybe they will figure out how to actually sell a usable product...

    • Illegal collusion to fix the market - Wouldn't happen to be intended to delay the adoption of the new players until next year would it, by which time maybe they will figure out how to actually sell a usable product...

      There was no way in heck I was going to get one of these damn things anyway.

      But now, now I feel I must have one! Aaarrrggghhhhh!

    • Delay is a great strategy. Next generation DVD will be the first format to be obsolete before it even launches.

  • Gee, those marketing people (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (209368) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:28PM (#16003286)
    Just get those green laser pointers over Thinkgeek and rename the product "green ray". Really, blue is cute, but green is okay too...

  • meanwhile... (Score:5, Funny)

    by legoburner (702695) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:28PM (#16003289) Homepage Journal
    meanwhile somewhere on the outskirts of Tokyo, the head of Microsoft's XBOX division and the head of Nintendo's Wii division are shaking hands whilst laughing as their lackeys bolt the doors on a warehouse full to the roof with blue laser diodes.

    • Re:meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Amouth (879122) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:45PM (#16003390)
      my thoughts exactly.. MS doesn't have to have the blue lasers.. the 360 doesn't need them.. just the add on hd drive which they havn't released yet.. ps3 needs them and i am sure sony will either not sell to others till they have what they need or run short them selves.

      if they run short they are just putting salt in the wound where they shot them selves in the foot.

      if they are just stopping sale to out side people so that they will have what they need for the ps3 they are going to piss their partners off even more.. because they can't stop selling to hd-dvd people and not blue-ray people... that would be anti competive

      should be intresting to see how the next 6 months role out..

      as for the big N - they have nothing to fear, as always

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by MufasaZX (790614)
        It's a REALLY short article, is it really that hard to read? "Utilizing BD drives in its own PS3 game consoles, Sony suspended shipments of blue laser diodes to other customers, the makers indicated, adding that only Nichia, Sharp and Sanyo continue shipping the diodes."

  • This just gets better all the time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nice2Cats (557310) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:32PM (#16003315)
    First they do the two-format-thing all over again. Then they keep all kinds of crap that pissed people off with DVDs such as the Regional Code. After that, they tell us that there will be draconian DRM. The prices are simply sick. And in the end, the added quality just doesn't change my life. Cool, yes, impressive with computer generated films, of course, but worth the price, the loss of control and the hassle? No way.

    This is turning out to be all stuff and nonsense, and I think I'll just skip HD-DVD and Blu-ray one and wait for the next next generation, when maybe somebody with half a brain is involved. DVD is perfectly good enough for me, thank you very much.

    • But, can it play these old DivX DVDs I got at a discount at Circuit City? -true backward compatabilty!

    • Re:This just gets better all the time (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JanneM (7445) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:55PM (#16003449) Homepage
      This is turning out to be all stuff and nonsense, and I think I'll just skip HD-DVD and Blu-ray one and wait for the next next generation, when maybe somebody with half a brain is involved. DVD is perfectly good enough for me, thank you very much.

      Agree with the sentiment.

      It is quite unlikely for there to ever be a next generation, though. The lead time is, oh, ten years or so, and by that time it seems more than likely that using a physical carrier for video is not going to be a mainstream technology anymore. There's going to be physical data carriers, of course, but not aimed at selling video.

      What might happen, though, is that these two formats both end up stillborn - laser discs of the 21st century - and pushes the major manufacturers to quickly (as in within a year or two) replace them with a common format that avoids the most egregious mistakes of these two. But that would be replacement, not a generation shift.

      • carrier for video is not going to be a mainstream technology anymore.

        I'm not so sure about that. There is a lot to be said for the "impulse" buy and all the fancy packaging. While my entire music collection is on my computer/iPod I'm certainly in a minority and I've had to fight tooth and nail to get my fiance to follow suit. Perhaps we will instead of little ram drives that contain the movie which is downloaded to our players? I'm also not sure that a subscription service will really work for movies as I

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by calethix (537786)
          taken from howstuffworks [howstuffworks.com]:

          But three important differences allow them to hold quite a bit more information than DVDs:
          * They use 405 nanometer blue-violet lasers rather than 650 nanometer red lasers.
          * The pits are smaller and the tracks are closer together.
          * They use more efficient compression to cut down the size of the files they store.
      • Laserdiscs of the 21st century?

        You do know Laserdiscs had a successful 20 year run in the videophile market, only usurped by DVDs less than ten years ago?

        A 20 year run for a technology is pretty good, even if joe six pack doesn't use it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have 3 HD TVs, (1 Projection gotten early 2001, 1 LCD and 1 Plasma - both this year) and I can attest that I won't be moving from DVD soon. The leap of VCR->DVD style improvements (CD like control) just isn't there. The DVD was backwards in some respects like regional encoding (please don't tell me that lack of regional coding on VHS tapes made it easier for pirates) and forcing you to watch the FBI warning and promos and the extra resolution isn't worth it if it gets worse than this.

      And you are righ
    • Some of us are perfectly happy with VCD.. or even vhs ( prefer beta over vhs tho and vinyl over cd )
    • How bout something like this [inphase-technologies.com] instead.

    • Re:This just gets better all the time (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tlhIngan (30335) <slashdotNO@SPAMworf.net> on Tuesday August 29 2006, @10:53PM (#16004826)
      First they do the two-format-thing all over again. Then they keep all kinds of crap that pissed people off with DVDs such as the Regional Code. After that, they tell us that there will be draconian DRM. The prices are simply sick. And in the end, the added quality just doesn't change my life. Cool, yes, impressive with computer generated films, of course, but worth the price, the loss of control and the hassle? No way.


      Actually, Blu-Ray sucks worse in the protection department than HD-DVD. I believe HD-DVD has eliminated the region coding as everyone disliked it and it never worked that well anyhow. HD-DVD players still have a region, but that's for DVDs. I believe the box of the HD-DVD player I saw said "DVD only region" with the region mark, and I don't recall any mark on the HD-DVD discs themselves. Even the HD-DVD/DVD combo discs have a region code marked with "DVD Only". So it looks like HD-DVD has no region coding at all.

      At the very least, the DVD Forum learned something for their next-gen format. Too bad Sony didn't, and not only kept region coding, but added additional protections over what HD-DVD has (they both have ICT and AACS, and Blu-Ray adds to that, too).

      • Re:This just gets better all the time (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Night Goat (18437) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @06:55PM (#16003747) Homepage Journal
        I'll be honest, I forgot what the changeover from VHS to DVD was like. Were people eager to get DVDs?

        Yes, definitely. I was working at Circuit City at the time (1998 or so, I think) and between the obvious picture quality difference, DTS/Dolby Digital sound, and not having to rewind anymore, it was a killer product. The prices on players were still a little too prohibitive for non-enthusiasts so you didn't see grandmas buying DVD, but younger folks were really into it. Another thing that helped the adoption of DVD was that prices of movies on DVD were substantially cheaper than they were on VHS. I remember "The Matrix" pretty much hovered around $9.99 ever since it came out. You used to have to pay $25 or more for a VHS tape, and many VHS titles plain didn't get stocked because they were priced at $99 for video stores. DVDs flattened the price point and made it so video stores bought the same thing regular consumers did. DVDs were definitely a big deal. I don't see anywhere near the same excitement over Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

        • Re:This just gets better all the time (Score:4, Interesting)

          by timeOday (582209) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @08:10PM (#16004072)
          between the obvious picture quality difference, DTS/Dolby Digital sound, and not having to rewind anymore, it was a killer product.
          Add to the list: (1) compatibility with existing (NTSC) TV sets, and (2) don't degrade with repeated viewings (if you don't understand yet, wait until you have kids).
      • Yes.

        There were early adopters who went out and bought the obscenely priced first generation DVD players, but by and large the rest of the world didn't really follow suit until the players dropped below about $200 and Blockbuster started stocking a lot of new releases on DVD. And I wouldn't say that DVDs became ubiquitous until the cheap chinese ($50) "WalMart Special" DVD players came onto the scene.

        Frankly, early on I think the biggest benefit to most people of DVDs versus VHS is that you didn't have to rewind it. I know my parents just thought that was the coolest damn thing; you could talk to them about digital audio until you were blue in the face, but what they liked was the ability to jump instantly to any point in a film, pause it for extended lengths of time without "wearing" the disc, and never having to worry about rewind anything.

        I think whichever HD-disc format wins, it'll end up being like that. Mainstream consumers aren't going to buy it, until there are movies down at Blockbuster that they can rent, and they can buy the player at Walmart for under $200-250. Normal people just don't spend much more than that on what's effectively a fancy videocassette player (even if it's not really a cassette player...in most people's minds, the function is exactly the same, to play movies).

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Chandon Seldon (43083)

        everywhere but the small field dead center in your vision

        Due to the way human vision works, the resolution in the center of the field of vision *is* the resolution of human vision. The only way you could take advantage of the lower edge resolution would be if you could predict, with certanty, exactly where the viewer would be looking all the time.

  • Those who do not learn from their OWN history.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PhakeDC (932887) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:35PM (#16003329)
    ..are doomed to repeat it!

  • That does it! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by creimer (824291) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:37PM (#16003339) Homepage
    DigiTimes reports that several major vendors, including Sony and Matsushita, have suspended shipments of the blue laser diodes that drive both high-def disc formats.

    Bad enough that Sony is shoving an over-priced PS3 down consumers throats. Now they're throttling the market for other players. The Sony monopoly must die!

    Or, at least, cut the damn prices on the PS3.

  • Clearly this is bad news for Sony. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:42PM (#16003366)
    Clearly this is very bad news for Sony.

    Because... you know, everything is, somehow.

  • I think "war" might not be the right word.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ProppaT (557551) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:59PM (#16003469) Homepage
    I don't exactly see anyone chomping at the bit to buy into HD video at this point, especially seeing that the movie selection is low and most DVD afficienado's already have a very large collection of discs at this point. This war is being aimed towards gear heads and gadget collectors. There is no real compelling reason to switch formats, especially if it means paying more for media. I think DVD is good enough for the population now and that people realize that. Especially seeing that the adoption rate for HD is well under where everyone speculated it would be years ago. This "war" is going the same way the surround sound cd war went. No where. No one really felt like investing money rebuying cd's, which sound good enough. On top of that, the music nuts that would normally be into this kinda thing have invested enough money in their "stereo" rig where they don't always want to invest twice again that much money in a surround sound system. It's very rare that you'd get a chance to listen to music in your livingroom (where your surround system is probably set up to begin with) with family around anyway. I guess the point to this rant (and common theme throughout this rant) is the word "enough." I think society as a whole is suffering technology burnout. Things change so quickly that the general population wants to sit on the sideline, see where all these rapid advances eventually take us, and then buy in. Then again, seeing our current political situation, maybe war is the right term for this. A fight that no one wants but big brother insists on.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evilviper (135110)
      and most DVD afficienado's already have a very large collection of discs at this point.

      Plain and simple FUD. HD-DVD and Blu-ray players will play all your current DVDs just fine. Implying that you have to go rebuy your collection is unbelivably stupid.

      I think society as a whole is suffering technology burnout.

      And the whole basis for this belief of yours is...?

  • just in time (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 (568564) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @06:03PM (#16003491) Homepage
    The rumored laser shortage could result in shipment delays for new models of Blu-ray and HD DVD players and drives past the upcoming holiday season, cooling the next-gen DVD format war until 2007.

    Great! That's just in time for me to NOT BUY ONE.
  • Pioneer has suspended shipments of Sony-compatible pixels for its high-definition displays.
  • Sharks? Losers. How about:

    Does this mean I can no longer buy all their playsets and toys?!

    -Peter

  • Sony's strategy (Score:5, Funny)

    by monopole (44023) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @06:19PM (#16003583)
    1. Increase PS3 and Blu-Ray drive costs.
    2. Declare ultimate hardware DRM system (no lasers) ensuring that drives cannot read or write any discs.
    3. Openly fret that prices are too low.
    4. ???
    5. Profit!
  • One Format to rule them all, One Format to find them, One Format to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

  • hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by p!ssa (660270) *
    I wonder how much of this is a shortage of lasers vs. sonys desire to keep HD-DVD products off the shelf util they can get a price matching (or as near as they can get) competing products to market. Maybe I need a tin foil hat but I've seen similar tactics used in the businesses I've worked for.

  • Buy and Torrent (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Paul Slocum (598127) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @07:23PM (#16003882) Homepage Journal
    I'm thinking if there's anything on HD that I really want to see, I'll just buy it and then download it. Then I'm supporting the movie or show I like, I don't have to buy either player, and I have it in the format I prefer -- MPEG4 on my hard drive.

  • 30% yield? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kclittle (625128) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @08:53PM (#16004279)
    Nichia, which currently holds 80% of the global blue laser diode supply, reported that its yield rate for blue laser diodes reached 30%

    Could some knowledgable person briefly explain why a 30% yield for blue laser diodes is something to crow about? What, exactly, keeps yields so low for such a "fundamental" device? They fab chips with millions of elements and get better yields...

    -k

    • Re:30% yield? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Gemini_25_RB (997440) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @09:51PM (#16004563)
      I think the article is saying that the yield has so far improved to 30% from the x% it was during R&D. But 30% yield does not create enough to meet the expected demand, so the companies aren't willing to release such a small # of HD drives.

    • Re:PS3? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by travisco_nabisco (817002) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @05:42PM (#16003367)
      It will do nothing to the PS3, the article said that Sony has suspended shipments of Blue Laser Diodes to other manufacturers, aka they are keeping them for their own products.

    • Re:Won't anyone think of the poor PS3? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DragonWriter (970822) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @07:05PM (#16003793)
      Um, Sony's stopped shipping the lasers to other people because they are using them in the PS3.

      Plus, the artificial shortage they are creating will likely increase the prices for whatever lasers they do decide to sell to others, while the shortage of lasers means less competition for Sony players.

      How is Sony losing, here?

    • Re:There is *NO SHORTAGE* (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Grishnakh (216268) on Tuesday August 29 2006, @07:17PM (#16003849)
      Don't worry, there's still a sizeable number of die-hard SONY fans out there who will buy Sony's latest crap, no matter how bad it is or how overpriced it is. They'll even take out a second mortgage on their house just to buy the latest Sony dud.

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