NEC ships dual-mode chip for HD DVD and Blu-ray disc

[pcchen]

NEC has started shipping a DVD driver chip which supports both HD DVD and Blu-ray disc specifications. It's now sampling, and volume production is expected to be started in Q4 2006. By mid-2007, it's expected to produce 30K per month.

This chip, combined with an optics compatible with both HD DVD and Blu-ray, could help making a cheap dual-mode player.

I can only find the press release in Japanese ( http://www.necel.com/news/ja/archive/0610/1001.html ).

[RobertR1]

It's an eventuality. If not, both formats will be relegated to a niche status.

[Bobbler]

From my understanding this is the easy part... there isn't anything stopping anyone from doing it -- non-complex chip fabbing (at least in comparison to something like a CPU/GPU).

An OPU and track (BR/HDDVD require different lens heights) that will work on both BR/HDDVD is going to be the tricky part.

[pcchen]

IIRC Ricoh already demoed an optical component for reading and writing all disk formats (Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD, DVD, and CD) back in July. So it's sort of covered too.

[Bobbler]

IIRC Ricoh already demoed an optical component for reading and writing all disk formats (Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD, DVD, and CD) back in July. So it's sort of covered too.

I imagine it's still going to be the bottleneck by far. Nice to see one demoed though!

Wonder when we'll see the first multiformat players... Mid next year at the earliest?