Around 20 studios and hardware makers gathered in Tokyo, with Disney, Warner Bros., Fox and Sony announcing plans to release at least 75 titles on the Blu-ray format by year’s end, including recent blockbusters such as “The Da Vinci Code,” “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Chicken Little.”
If the studios stick to the promise, about 80 percent of the hi-def movies available will be Blu-ray, with only around 20 titles scheduled for release on Toshiba’s HD-DVD format in 2006.
However, according to a report in DigiTimes, Sony is having hardware production problems. First, Toshiba beat Sony to the punch by releasing HD-DVD players sooner than Sony’s Blu-ray players.
Now unnamed sources say Sony doesn’t have enough blue lasers to roll out substantial numbers of the players and still meet demand for its PlayStation 3, the latest installment of its bread-and-butter game system. So the company has reportedly halted production of the Blu-ray players.
There also have been unfavorable reviews of Blu-ray systems based on the fact that some models will not play dual-layer discs.
Sony has hyped the dual-layer Blu-ray discs based on their 50GB storage capacity. But the move has backfired as consumers and reviewers have complained that the discs are useless because products such as Samsung’s BD-P1000 Blu-ray player won’t play them.