| The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) today announced that Apple will become a member of the consortium's Board of Directors. The BDA was created to broaden support for Blu-ray Disc -- the next generation optical disc for storing High Definition movies, photos and other digital content. Blu-ray Discs will have five times larger capacity than today's DVDs, with a single-layer Blu-ray Disc holding up to 25GB of data and a double-layer Blu-ray Disc holding up to 50GB of data, while current DVDs hold 4.7B on single-layer discs and 8.5GB on dual-layer discs. In February, the BDA said its membership grew beyond 100 companies. "Apple is pleased to join the Blu-ray Disc Association board as part of our efforts to drive consumer adoption of HD," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Consumers are already creating stunning HD content with Apple's leading video editing applications like iMovie HD and are anxiously awaiting a way to burn their own high def DVDs."
The BDA said that Apple has been a leader in driving consumer adoption of DVD authoring since January 2001, with the introduction of its SuperDrive, the industry's first high-volume CD- and DVD-burning drive, and its revolutionary iDVD and DVD Studio Pro software applications. The release also said that Apple is also helping bring High Definition (HD) to market with a complete line of HD content creation tools for consumers and professionals alike including iMovie HD, Final Cut Express HD and Final Cut Pro HD editing software.
Additionally, the next release of Apple's next generation QuickTime 7 will feature the MPEG developed H.264 Advanced Video Codec (AVC) which has been adopted for high definition DVDs. Apple will release QuickTime 7 in conjunction with the release of Mac OS X version 10.4 "Tiger," the fifth major version of Mac OS X that will ship in the first half of 2005.
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