James Delahunty
5 Oct 2005 9:16
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. announced yesterday plans to ship Blu-Ray drives for PCs to manufacturers in March 2006. Negotiations have already began with several manufacturers including Dell and Hewlett-Packard; both company's strongly support the Blu-Ray disc format over Toshiba's HD-DVD format. The announcement comes after Toshiba's unveiled plan to sell PCs with HD-DVD early in 2006.
The two sides in the "format war" have so far failed to reach an agreement on a possible unified standard, but Toshiba President Yoshihide Fujii told the Japan Times that a unified standard is still possible and that Toshiba is "flexible" and willing to compromise. He blamed the Blu-Ray group's failure to convince Toshiba of the reliability of Blu-Ray's disc structure for the break down of talks back in June.
Now both sides are already making plans for product launches for each of the formats. Matsushita displayed a Blu-ray DVD drive at a combined exhibition of advanced technologies on Tuesday. The company demonstrated technology to halve production costs at the exhibition called CEATEC Japan 2005, demonstrating what it believes to prove Blu-Ray's superiority.
NEC Electronics Corp., a semiconductor subsidiary of NEC Corp, supports the HD-DVD format but has also joined Blu-ray promotion group, the company officials said. Since both Sony and Toshiba are key NEC customers, the manufacturer has indicated its readiness to adopt both formats.
Source:
Yahoo Asia