Sony Sings the Blues for Next-Generation DVD

Consumer-electronics giant Sony recently unveiled its next-generation optical disk technology, which is based on a blue laser dubbed Blu-ray. Sony's 25GB Blu-ray disks will be capable of storing more than 2 hours of high-definition video, a significant improvement over today's 4.7GB DVD disks, and will ship in quantity by next year. Unfortunately, another group of consumer-electronics companies, including Toshiba and NEC, are backing an incompatible high-definition DVD (HD-DVD) format that sports 15GB of storage. And you thought the Beta versus VHS wars were just a passing fad