Small discs for camcorders get the blue light

The Blu-ray Disc Association announced last week that the smaller Blu-ray Discs will have an 8-centimeter diameter, as opposed to the more familiar 12-centimeter discs, and will have capacities of 15GB per layer. That will give the 8-centimeter discs about the same storage capacity as 12-centimeter HD DVD discs.

HD DVD is a competing format that companies such as Toshiba and NEC are promoting as a replacement for today's DVD technology. Blu-ray and HD DVD use blue lasers as opposed to the red lasers in current DVD technology, but they are incompatible. Like small DVDs that fit into camcorders, the smaller discs would eventually serve as recording or playback media for portable electronics.

"There are a number of potential applications. Camcorder is certainly one," a Sony representative said. The company declined to say when the specification, or the first products incorporating the smaller disc, will emerge. However, Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, citing unnamed sources, said the camcorders could come out next year.

Some manufacturers have started to market flash memory video cameras. Flash memory cards, however, currently can hold only a few gigabytes of data and can cost over a hundred pounds at those densities. Dual-sided Blu-ray discs will be capable of holding up to 50GB of data, compared with 4.7GB on current DVDs. Sony and Panasonic have already started to sell Blu-ray disc players in Japan. Wider worldwide proliferation is expected to occur next year. Sony will also use the technology in the next version of the PlayStation. A number of other manufacturers, such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have joined the Blu-ray Association.

Intel, which is a member of the consortium promoting the rival HD DVD format, has also expressed interest in Blu-ray. Speaking at Ceatec last week, Kevin Corbett, an Intel executive who is handling many of the chipmaker's content and security negotiations with Hollywood, praised the Blu-ray organisation for working to adopt industry copyright-protection standards.

However, he stopped short from saying Intel would join the group, which Japan's JVC did this week.

In other camcorder news, Sony is set to release a high-definition Handycam on 15 October.