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THX: No Chances for Blu-Ray Disc Format.

Category: Multimedia

by Anton Shilov

[ 03/27/2008 | 06:03 PM ]

FOLLOW UP: THX Believes in Blu-Ray, Clarifies Comments by Scientist.

Just when it became pretty clear that Blu-ray dic (BD) format will become dominant high-definition movie format in the coming years, a scientist from THX, a Lucasfilm-owned company that deals with audio quality certification, said that there is no place for Blu-ray on the mass market.

"By the time Blu-ray really finds a mass market, we will have 128GB cards. I would guess that getting studios to supply movies on media cards, or offer downloads, will be a lot easier than getting them to sign up to support a disc format," said Laurie Fincham, director of research and development for the THX division of Lucasfilm, in an interview with Home Cinema Choice Magazine, reports DVDTown web-site.

The Sony and Philips-developed Blu-ray disc format, which has essentually won the war against HD DVD backed by Toshiba, can now become the next-DVD for a decade to stay thanks to the necessity for higher-quality high-definition video. However, not all believe that 50GB on a disc may save the format.

"In the future I want to be able to carry four to five movies around with me in a wallet, or walk into a store and have someone copy me a movie to a USB device. Stores will like that idea, because it's all about having zero inventory. I don't want to take up shelf space with dozens of HD movies," the scientist is reported to have said.

At present several companies like Apple and Microsoft offer to download or rent "high-definition" movies from their web-services. Many sustomers have claimed that Apple's and Microsoft's high-def movies were not high-definition in reality.

A solid-state drive of 128GB costs over $1000 nowadays.