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Sony and Toshiba looking for a common standard for next gen DVDs

20 April 2005 21:04 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 4 comments

Sony and Toshiba have been fighting an unwanted battle over the last couple of years, both backing their technology as the best option to replace current DVDs. Toshiba is heading its camp in support for the HD DVD format and Sony is backing its Blu-Ray format. However, both sides have decided to avoid a war that would resemble the VHS-Beta videocassette war. "The two groups are in talks to jointly develop a new standard for next-generation DVDs to give the best benefit to consumers," a Sony source said on Thursday.

Toshiba also believes a single format would benefit consumers and it would continue to strive for that goal. Japanese business daily Nihon Keizai reported that the groups are stepping up their negotiations and could find a solution as early as this month. The groups basically hope to create something that will have the good points of both technologies. Both technologies offer much higher storage capacity than current DVDs which hold about 10GB of data at most.

"This is good news for the industry as a whole because it will help penetrate DVDs into homes ... it might also help DVDs improve their content," said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research. "Now I'm interested to see how soon the makers can come out with products with standardized technology ... because the move might slow down the launch (of products) and might let rivals such as Taiwanese makers, that came into the market later, advance in the competition."

"Sony's focus is and has always been to provide the best consumer experience. In the area of next-generation optical discs, we continue to be open to discussions with supporters of other formats consistent with this focus." said a U.S.-based spokeswoman for Sony. According to Newspaper reports, the pair has have already begun briefing Walt Disney Co. and AOL Time Warner Inc. and some major Hollywood studios for approval of a unified standard.

Source:
Reuters

Permalink to this article

Survey shows consumers prefer Blu-Ray Disc over HD-DVD (14 July 2005)

The next generation DVD format mess (11 July 2005)

Write-Once HD-DVD discs in 2006 (9 June 2005)

Matsushita president insists Toshiba yield on DVD format (19 May 2005)

Sony unveils new smaller HD camcorder (18 May 2005)

Next generation format talks stalled (16 May 2005)

Next gen format talks leans toward Blu-Ray disc structure (11 May 2005)

Taiwan pushing for HD-DVD format (15 April 2005)

Sony would like to avoid a format war (13 April 2005)

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Discuss this article!
lcarbutt (Senior Member) 21 April 2005 2:56
This is very good news indeed :) [ + quote]
p4_tt (Senior Member) 21 April 2005 4:52
Quote: Toshiba also believes a single format would benefit consumers They would, they would make more money that way if theres less competition. I dont really understand this war there talking about, people like to have diffrent choices. System Info: MSI-Neo2-p, P4 3.0GHZ HT, OCZ 1GBddr400, FX5700LE 256MB, Philips1640 +/- & DL, 160gb & 40gb segates, XpProSP1 Ps2 Info:(PAL) V7, SM3.3,Fliptop,160gb hdd,hdadvance [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 21 April 2005 13:18
Ludikhris (Inactive) 21 April 2005 10:03
This is not about serving customers. If they compete then they will make significantly less profit as opposing sides. This is actually illegal but they are disguising it. They are trying to reduce competition to induce a monopoly on the format. Even DVD had competition before it won, remember Divx? This is a sad sad day in the format war. Customers my ass, its about money. Ludikhris [ + quote]
GrayArea (Member) 21 April 2005 12:09
VHS vs BETAMAX bad for consumers DVD-R vs DVD+R bad for consumers The cassette tape was an industry specified standard (by Philips) and was one of the most successful and popular audio formats ever. Same with the Compact Disc. Same with CD-R & CD-RW. The trick is the format needs to be available for cheap licensing to anyone who wants to manufacture media and/or hardware. That's where the competition comes from. Now I would agree that the "nextgen" DVD standard may be chosen for the wrong reasons (content control and margins vs best technology) but I'd still rather have an agreed upon standard than a repeat of that idiotic DVD-R/DVD+R type crap. That was (and still is) STUPID. BTW, industry standards that insure interoperability are not illegal. It is done all the time. Light bulbs, power plugs and sockets, threaded fastener specifications, etc, etc... [ + quote]