Sharp has made quite an amazing announcement, and one that has slipped almost completely under the radar.
Sharp has just announced the release of a new optical disc player that will allegedly be the smallest player ever produced. In and of itself, this is mildly interesting. But more interesting is that it is capable of playing CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray and HD DVD. That's right a dual format player, that could potentially eliminate the need to worry about formats. Thre press is very vague on the availability of this on a consumer level. But the player, be it a consumer item, or component is expected to cost less that $100 and begin shipping next month. If this is indeed a cross platform player, the news will certainly appear here soon.
The $99 dollars is for the 405 nm laser diode. You'll need a glass lens for the Blu-ray portion (That's about $43 these days), a plastic lens for HD-DVD and at least one other lens for DVDs and CDs plus a red and infrared diodes. Then there's the power supply, the decoding chips, and tons of royalties to all the greedy camps who started the format war in the first place. Don't get too excited yet unless you like making players from kits.
That would be excellent.
The only time I would buy Blu-ray or HD-DVD movies, is if you have a player that can play both formats, plus play the dual layered formats.
Half my favourite movies and tv shows are on Blu-ray the other half are on HD-DVD.
