James Delahunty
20 Apr 2005 21:04
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