Sony's blue-laser video recorder goes on sale in Japan next month:

The BDZ-S77 will go on sale in Japan next month. It is based on the Blu-ray optical disc format announced just over a year ago. The nine consumer electronics companies behind it are promoting it as a system for recording high-definition television broadcasts.

The companies came up with the format because DVDs cannot hold enough data to be suitable for high-definition video.

Betting on Blue

Blu-ray uses a blue laser to record data on discs, while CD and DVD systems use red lasers. Blue lasers have a shorter wavelength--405 nanometers compared to around 650 nanometers on DVD systems--and that means the laser beam can be focused onto a smaller area of the disc surface. In turn, this means less area is needed to store one bit of data and so more data can be stored on a disc.

The format is backed by Sony, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Philips Electronics, Pioneer Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, and Thomson Multimedia. [IDG News]

To support the new machine, Sony also announced its first generation Blu-ray media. Discs with a 23GB capacity will go on sale from April 10 priced at $30. There are three disc sizes specified in the initial Blu-ray format, and 23GB is the lowest-capacity and easiest to make of the three. The other capacities are 25GB and 27GB.