Blu-ray and HD-DVD Join Forces
Sony and Toshiba to team up on a new, unified next-gen format. Where
does PS3 fit in?
by Matt Casamassina
April 21, 2005 - According to a report by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun,
the next-generation format war may be over before it ever starts. The
Japanese newspaper on Thursday published with news that Sony and
Toshiba are expected to make an announcement later this month that
they have abandoned the Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats respectively and
are working on a new medium that will bring together both standards.
Sony, a leading member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, announced last
year that it would include a Blu-ray drive in its forthcoming
next-generation console, PlayStation 3.More than 100 companies,
including Apple, Panasonic, HP, and Pioneer, support Blu-ray, which
promises up to 50 gigabytes of storage on a single disc side. Toshiba
leads the opposing format, HD-DVD.
While it is commonly accepted that Blu-ray discs offer more storage
space than HD-DVDs, electronics companies and Hollywood studios have
remained divided over the two formats due in large to the
manufacturing processes. In short, the DVD infrastructures already in
place would serve HD-DVD manufacturers. However, costly new facilities
and operations would need to be created in order to support the
Blu-ray format.
Sony and Toshiba have remained in negotiations on the subject for
weeks, with key company executives from each camp dropping hints that
a unified standard would be optimal.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reports that, having reached an agreement
that a new, unified standard would be the best thing for the industry,
Sony and Toshiba are now in the process of designing the new standard,
which seeks to take the strengths from each medium and combine them.
Sony has reportedly suggested using Blu-ray's disc structure and
HD-DVD's software technology while Toshiba has suggested keeping
HD-DVD's disc structure and applying Sony's multi-layer data-recording
technology.
The Japanese paper reports that both companies are eager to reach an
agreement in order to avoid the format wars that initially confused
consumers and hindered both the VHS and DVD eras. The two electronics
giants have already briefed major Hollywood studios including Disney
and AOL Time Warner on the idea of a new, unified standard, according
to the paper.
The big question is, what does this news mean for PlayStation 3, which
is scheduled to release sometime next year? The very probable answer
is that the next-generation machine will drop Sony's announced Blu-ray
drive in favor of hardware that instead plays this new,
still-announced format compromise.
http://cube.ign.com/articles/606/606538p1.html
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