Spec changes to Blu-ray? (Read: Catching up to HD-DVD)

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I always tell people that Blu-ray's use of Java was a poor choice. Programmers can argue that Java is "free" all day long, but the runtimes are horrible and there just isn't any good development tools for it.

For a while now, many companies began moving to Java from Visual Studio (pick your language). The idea was to save money. Well, that involved a ridiculous amount of training and money spent on sub-par development tools, so the benefits perceived were never obtained. The market seems to be returning to Microsoft's world for programming, with the exception of the UNIX/LINUX hardcore command-line compiler users.

I know Java and hate it. While it isn't the worst language I've had to deal with, it was too frustrating to do anything useful with quickly. While the ideas that drive the language are good, it ends up taking twice the work to program various things than in other languages.

So what does HD-DVD use for programming? It's a XML-based language which is also used in web-page "programming". To put it shortly, it would be easier to work with than Java. Shouldn't movie authoring be easy?

Note: If you decide to get specifics on any of this, do know that JAVA and JAVASCRIPT are in no way the same thing. They aren't even close to each other.

Why do you care? You probably don't. This just relates my line of work to a feature of one of our gaming consoles. It's a stretch, but it enabled a career-involving opinion to come out. ;)

Anyway, the abilities that Blu-ray is trying to get standardized are things that HD-DVD has been setup for the whole while. I'd forgotten about these extras. Maybe I need to buy an HD-DVD drive/player so I can do side-by-sides.

If only the Blu-ray and HD-DVD camps could work together. Imagine having the space of Blu-ray but the quality and featureset of HD-DVD. *sigh*.