The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) announced that Apple will become a member of the consortium's Board of Directors. The next release of Apple's QuickTime software, 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 version of Mac OS X that will ship in the first half of 2005.

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 25 gigabytes of data and a double-layer Blu-ray Disc holding up to 50 gigabytes of data.

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