No High-Def DVD for You!

The news just isn't getting any better for high-definition DVD. What's the problem this time? Manufacturers of blue laser diodes, the central component of both Blu-ray and HD-DVD players, can't get their acts together.

More specifically, the manufacturers have been "unable to improve yield rates," which means that too many of the diodes that they're churning out don't work. This is the same way the computer chips are produced: Intel, AMD, and company crank out thousands of chips at a time. Then they test them. The best ones (the ones which will run faster without breaking down) get sold for more as, say, a 2GHz CPU. The ones that don't work as well go for less and are clocked at 1.6GHz or so. The ones that don't work at all are thrown away. The portion that actually work is called the "yield."

There's no way of knowing how well a chip is going to work when it's produced, and when new chips are released manufacturers often have a rough time getting yield rates up, which leads to long periods of scarcity and high prices. It seems the same is true of laser diodes: Unlike red lasers on CD and DVD drives, blue lasers operate at smaller wavelength and require a more precise beam. Naturally, it will take a little trial and error to get the kinks out of the production system, but the reported 30% yield rate is awfully low. And considering that Blu-ray and HD-DVD have been in the works for years, you'd expect those kinks to have long been ironed out.

To make matters worse, Sony is no longer reselling diodes as it's decided to use all its own production for PlayStation 3 consoles. When might you actually see more blue-laser drives on the market? Wait until 2007. Maybe people will actually want these things by then.