Day 2102: Patent Pending

Thursday:


Good News!

For all lovers of shiny silver discs, the scratch on our laminated surface recently has been the impending WAR TO THE DEATH between the formats for the next generation of viewing delight.

HD or Highly Desirable telly is on its way and the pictures are just TOO GOOD to go on my lovely DVDs: it is time to get a replacement which is able to hold lots, lots more of the little Lego bricks that are used for making the pictures on the telly.

To compare: a DVD can contain 4.7 GB which stands for "gosh, LOTS of Bricks", but the NEW discs will be able to hold up to 30 GB or even 50GB.

No more FIVE discs to show the whole season of DOCTOR WHO when you can fit it all onto just ONE! (Or they could maybe film it in Hi-Def! At 4 GB an hour, you could only fit ONE HD episode onto a old fashioned disc, but you could get ALL THIRTEEN onto a 50 GB disc and still have room for the CHRISTMAS SPECIAL!)

But what’s this "30 GB or even 50GB", I hear you ask.

Ahem: DADDY!

[R: what’s this "30 GB or even 50GB"?]

There is a PROBLEM: better DVDs have been invented by TWO different people!

The Toshiba people have invented HD-DVD which it is pretty obvious what it stands for; the Sony people have invented BDs and that stands for "blu-ray" disks because they use a different coloured LASER BEAM: yes, it is the colour blu!

It is just like the video recorder wars, except that this time Sony have signed up lots more Hollywood Studios so that they do not end up flogging "Son of Betamax"!

HD-DVD as you might guess from the name is more compatible with DVD but Blu-ray has the higher capacity for storing Lego on the discs and may be the more technologically ADVANCED solution.

What IS a fluffy elephant to do?

Pester power can only go so far, and I do not think I can persuade Daddy that he wants to buy me BOTH sorts of machine!

But help is at fluffy foot!

Some clever people in America have realised that DVDs are SEE-THROUGH! And have decided that you can make a special SANDWICH by gluing a Blu-ray disc on top of a HD-DVD disc. Or more plainly, they can make a sort of disc that can be played in EITHER SORT of player!

This lets the studios off the hook: they do not have to annoy half the buying public by not releasing their movies in the right format and they don’t have to waste their time releasing two different editions of the same flick either.

I suspect that the Sony people and the Toshiba people are spitting feathers though since neither of them will achieve WORLD DOMINATION this time around.

To be honest, they should have asked my daddies to sort it out. They own all the DVDs in the world already!