As Blu-Ray seems to be leading the high definition format war over rival HD DVD, Sony and Nichia have teamed up to develop a new Blu-Ray player that is smaller and more cost efficient.

The new laser unit is just 3mm think and is compatible with normal DVD’s. Standard Blu-Ray players can not read DVD’s that contain organic dyes in the recording layers - Sony and Nichia’s new player can, this means the company will be able to save money churning out compatible disks from existing DVD lines and hopefully these savings will be passed on to the consumer.

The smaller dimension of the new Blu-ray laser makes the drive very efficient on space. This should also reduce cost of laptops and handheld devices that require time and money spent to map out how all the components will fit into case size deemed “portable.”

There is little news as to which products will be incorporating the new Blu-Ray player however Sony did announce that the new disc drive should make an appearance in their Vaio laptop range later this year, there are also rumors of the PS3 possibly getting this upgrade.

High Definition has already become the next generation format, many products already support the crisp resolutions of HD 1080i but there is still one thing undecided, Blu-ray or HD DVD? Both support high definition with similar technologies but they are not compatible and require different hardware to work.

With the two formats so closely matched in this head to head battle, it is impossible to predict which one will come out on top as the leader of the next-gen’ or if we may be indeed be stuck with the two competing formats.

Both systems use a 405nm wavelength blue-violet laser, but their optics differ in two ways.

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