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HDTV UK: The Blu-ray Disc Association continues to tell us that the Blu-ray Disc format is doing well in Europe, despite the current economic situation.

Chairman of the BDA European Promotions Committee, Frank Simonis, said that there had been “strong and solid growth” in every national territory.

“What we have learned from this meeting is that market conditions vary country by country in Europe – our markets reflect the nature and character of each country – however Blu-ray is just as appealing to consumers in Scandinavia, as it is in France, UK and Italy,” he said.

Meanwhile, spokesman for Futuresource Consulting, Jim Bottoms, gave an upbeat presentation about the speed of Blu-ray adoption. Though he acknowledged that Europe lags the US by around six months, due in part to the delayed launch of the PS3 here, he said that the continued growth in the high definition TV sector would lead to a natural market for Blu-ray.

Bottoms: “By 2010, almost half the screens shipped in Europe will be 1080p.”

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Tech.co.uk: The original DVD format is Blu-ray’s main rival, not the high definition HD DVD. That’s according to Frank Simonis, the chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association.

He made the comments in a very forthright interview with Tech.co.uk last week. “The main BD competition is with current DVD businesses, not HD DVD,” said Simonis. “[This means] the main hurdle [is] consumer understanding. For example when the consumer does not understand the benefits of or enjoy high definition. Hence, consumer education is key,” he said.

Simonis also said that Blu-ray is closing in on victory in the high definition format war with HD DVD and that a big lead in hardware and software sales is opening up.

“The tipping point will be the overwhelming availability of Blu-ray Disc (BD) hardware and BD movies at retailers.”

At IFA, 14 brands introduced BD CE players which were Philips, Sharp, Sony, Denon, Onkyo, JVC, Panasonic, Samsung, Funai, Pioneer, Hitachi, LG, Loewe, Daewoo, PS3.

HD DVD has just one: Toshiba,” said Simonis. “We believe content is what will drive adoption of an HD format. And with seven of the eight major studios now releasing blu-ray titles in earnest, Blu-ray’s content advantage is apparent.”

Blu-ray has already surpassed HD-DVD in terms of the number of titles available for purchase and the gap is continuing to expand as five studios are publishing content exclusively on Blu-ray.

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PCPro: The Blu-ray Disc Association has announced that following breaches of the security of the high-definition format’s AACS security technology, it has brought forward the planned release date of the BD-Plus (BD+), a more advanced anti-copying system. BD+ is an entirely different encryption system to AACS. Instead of each movie having the same encryption key, BD+ allows each disc to install a small piece of encryption software on a player, so that each disc has its own key.

A method for extracting Blu-ray keys was published in January (the rival HD DVD format, which also uses AACS, had already been cracked). As a result, the AACS licensing body last week released a security update that supplied new encryption keys for the affected discs. However this means that existing discs can no longer be played until the update is applied. BD+ would avoid this scenario, by applying the DRM to individual discs rather than movie titles.

The Blu-ray Disc Association reports that player compatibility testing has ended and that studios have had test discs for the last few months.

Once BD+ is available it will add between seven to 28 days per title to production time. 20th Century Fox is expected to be one of the firsts to implement this new technology, having slowed disc production since the attacks on AACS, and Sony Pictures is planning to be using it by the end of the year.

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EngadgetHD: VideoBusiness is reporting that the Blu-ray Disc Association has mandated all hardware launched after October 31 must support BD-J enabled picture-in-picture video playback, 256MB of persistent memory, and (for players with an internet connection) 1GB of memory for downloads.

Currently these features aren’t required and picture-in-picture support isn’t in the PlayStation 3 or Sony’s lower priced BDP-S300 that will debut this summer, ahead of the deadline.

BD-J support has been sketchy so far, with many players needing upgrades to run titles like The Descent, which was able to do PiP by including two different versions of the movie on one 50GB disc. High profile DVD producer Van Ling (Star Wars, T2: Special Edition) is working on his first (unspecified) BD-J release, but is worried about supporting so many players with different capabilities.

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