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http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19052

JVC signs up to Blu-ray

Another big name

By Nick Farrell: Wednesday 13 October 2004, 08:21


A HARDWARE from the Land of the Rising Sun, JVC, has signed up to the
Blu-ray format and joined the Blu-ray Disc Association.

Although the public commitment to the next generation DVD standard is
new, JVC has apparently been working behind the scenes with the
association for some time. In fact it was one of the first Japanese
companies to show a prototype Blu-ray Disc player in 2002.

Blu-Ray is an optical disc format, which is being positioned as a
successor to current DVD discs for high-definition video content. Its
rival is HD-DVD (High Definition/High Density-DVD) and the battle
between the two is currently being billed as a type of betamax and VHS
war.

It has been a good week for Blu-ray with Twentieth Century Fox Film
also signing up to the standard.

Getting Fox onside was a bit of a coup as it will bring commercial
content to the format and widen the standard's customer base.

There are 13 other companies on the Blu-Ray board: Dell,
Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric
Industrial (Panasonic), Mitsubishi Electric, Philips Electronics,
Pioneer Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony, TDK, and
Thomson Multimedia.

Samsung, eh? Doesn't the Korean chaebol know that in a two horse race
backing both as the winner just makes a bookie's eyes light up?

HD-DVD is backed by NEC, Toshiba, Sanyo Electric, and optical disc
maker Memory-Tech.






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