The Blu-spec CD

Nov 5, 2008 09:06 GMT  ·  By

As you might have read in one of our previous articles, Japanese giant Sony has had a pretty rough year, with its overall income recording a sharp decrease. For this reason (probably), the company's scrambling and struggling to come up with new technologies that will help it regain some of the ground it's lost, but also with several ways of making more money out of its flagship technology, Blu-ray.

Although, because of the relatively faulty translation from Sony's announcement in Japanese, it's not exactly very easy to describe the technology behind the Blu-spec CD, it would seem that we're talking about some serious modifications of the blue laser diode technology used in the case of Blu-ray machines. In this way, the quality of the imprint is higher, and the same goes for the audio.

However, apparently, the new discs will also work equally well on existing CD players, but will deliver a whole different experience when played in Blu-ray based home entertainment systems. But it remains to be seen just how "improved" and "superior" this experience will be when the first products of this type will arrive on the market this December.

Moreover, it would seem that Sony's also actively trying to convince some of the other major players on the (rapidly declining) market of music CDs to adopt this standard in the future, but whether or not this initiative will prove to be successful is still debatable.

The only major issue here is the pricing. Given the rather poor state of the economy around the world (Japan included), it's not very likely that customers will be rushing in to purchase Blu-spec music CDs, especially since the prices for these discs are way above what one would pay for a regular one (they range between 25 and 42 dollars).

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