Java on your Playstation 3 and DVD
I'm almost always a skeptic when it comes to claims that Java is suited for almost everything, but we all know what happened when the mobile carriers and manufacturers got together and solidified support for Java on small devices in the early part of this century.
Fast forward to 2005, when a similar consortium of players are starting to solidify around a new standard for DVD players called Blu-Ray.
From: Java to appear in next-gen DVD players
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Sun Microsystems' Java technology will be built into Blu-ray DVD players, executives said on Monday, a development that advances the technology in the consumer electronics market for which Sun originally developed the software.
"The Blu-ray Disc Association, the standards body for the format, has decided it will adopt Java for the interactivity standards," said Yasushi Nishimura, director of Panasonic's Research and Development Company of America, speaking at Sun's JavaOne trade show here. "This means that all Blu-ray Disc player devices will be shipped equipped with Java."
Java will be used for control menus, interactive features, network services and games, Nishimura said.
The inclusion of Java in Blu-ray DVD drives will enable DVD updates over the network, Java founder James Gosling said.
"Part of the DVD standard is the players have network ports out of the back," Gosling said. "That gives you the ability to download content. If somebody adds subtitles in Croatian, you don't have to bake those into the disc. You can do that afterwards."
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Here's a detailed read on Blu-Ray and Java's place in it.
From: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Blu-ray Disc (BD) is a next-generation optical disc format meant for storage of high-definition video and high-density data. The Blu-ray standard was jointly developed by a group of consumer electronics and PC companies called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). As compared to the HD DVD format, its main competitor, Blu-ray has more information capacity per layer, 25 instead of 15 gigabytes, but may initially be more expensive to produce.
Blu-ray gets its name from the blue-violet laser it uses to read and write to the disc. A Blu-ray disc will be able to store substantially more data than a DVD, because of the shorter wavelength (405 nm) of the read-laser (DVDs use a 650-nm-wavelength red laser). Blu-ray unveiled their plans for a Spring 2006 launch at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2006. It is expected to be released on May 23, 2006. [1]
At the 2005 JavaOne trade show, it was announced that Sun Microsystems' Java cross-platform software environment would be included in all Blu-ray players as a mandatory part of the standard. Java will be used to implement interactive menus on Blu-ray discs, as opposed to the method used on DVD video discs, which uses pre-rendered MPEG segments and selectable subtitle pictures and is considerably more primitive. Java creator James Gosling, at the conference, suggested that the inclusion of a Java virtual machine as well as network connectivity in BD devices will allow updates to Blu-ray discs via the Internet, adding content such as additional subtitle languages and promotional features that are not included on the disc at pressing time. This Java Version will be called BD-J and will be a subset of the Globally Executable MHP (GEM) standard. GEM is the world-wide version of the Multimedia Home Platform standard.
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At first, there seemed to be an opposition forming in the form of something called HD DVD, which was backed by Microsoft (perennial loser to Java in the small devices market), but as of late last year, it looks like Blu-Ray will be the new standard.
From: Blu-ray Disc considered The New Higher Definition Format
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Mr. Parsons noted, “There’s no format war looming because it’s not Blu-ray vs. HD DVD.”
Apparently, 90 percent of the CE industry and seven movie studios now back Blu-ray Disc. And most of the IT industry (except Microsoft) also supports Blu-ray Disc.
Mr. Parsons said, “It’s simply Blu-ray versus standard definition DVD… Currently, DVD has 50,000 titles presently available, and both formats will co-exist for several years to come with new BD players supporting both formats. BD players make the perfect complement to new HDTVs that are being purchased by consumers.”
Lastly, Mr. Parsons noted that the group has been working with retailers for the past two months to get them prepared for the Spring 2006 launch of Blu-ray Disc.
Blu-ray is now called “future-proof” by the consortium because it has the capability to play back both Blu-ray discs and standard definition DVDs within one player.
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MIcrosoft is sulky about all this and says that Windows Vista (the disappearing OS so far) will only support their format, although third parties can add in Blu-Ray support.
From: Vista to directly support HD DVD; Blu-ray to come from 3rd parties
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We were pretty surprised last week when an unnamed Microsoft spokesperson declared that Windows Vista would include "a great HD DVD and Blu-ray DVD experience." The statement, after all, seemed inconsistent with Microsoft's previous position that the company would directly support only HD DVD. Now it turns out that this is still the case. Microsoft Corporate VP Amir Majidimehr spoke to Chris Lanier, and confirmed that "Microsoft is hard at work in developing native HD DVD playback in Windows Vista ... as we have mentioned time and time again, Microsoft has no plans to provide native Blu-ray playback functionality in Windows Vista. Such functionality will be provided by third parties."
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Since Sony is one of the major backers of Blu-Ray, the company plans on implementing Java ME on the Playstation 3 coming later this year. Granted, Sony did this thing before where they reneged on Java in earlier version of PSP, but it seems they are serious about it this time, especially given Java ME's astounding success in the cellphone arena.
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