In the format fight that hardly anyone understands anymore, DVD Forum's steering committee has decided to adopt a proposal from Toshiba and NEC as its draft for so-called HD-DVD format.
A month ago it seemed that DVD Forum had abandoned the idea of larger storage space on DVDs, but the latest decision (although as far as we know, not an ultimate decision yet) to adopt NEC-Toshiba disc, which is often also dubbed as AOD, as the HD-DVD base, overturns this decision again. HD-DVD would be able to store 15-20GB of data per disc side and according to various reports, should be backwards compatible with current DVD format. The backwards compatibility is something that AOD/HD-DVD's main competitor, Blu-Ray, lacks.
Specifications for the HD-DVD are very vague and the rival camp of Blu-Ray supporters is likely to go ahead with their own format -- which is already available in the Japanese markets -- and pressure from China isn't exactly helping things. Lets just hope that industry manages to figure out the direction before widespread adoption of new technologies, so that we can avoid a new "Beta vs VHS war".
Source: TechWeb
Specifications for the HD-DVD are very vague and the rival camp of Blu-Ray supporters is likely to go ahead with their own format -- which is already available in the Japanese markets -- and pressure from China isn't exactly helping things. Lets just hope that industry manages to figure out the direction before widespread adoption of new technologies, so that we can avoid a new "Beta vs VHS war".
Source: TechWeb
