Unified DVD format effort reportedly kaput

[AG!]

TOKYO--Groups headed by Toshiba and Sony offering competing technologies for next-generation DVDs have given up efforts to develop a unified format, the Yomiuri newspaper reported Tuesday.

For three years, the two groups have pushed to have their respective technology standards adopted to gain dominance in the multibillion-dollar markets for DVD players, PC drives and optical discs.

Toshiba, along with NEC and Sanyo, has been promoting HD DVD, while Sony and Matsu****a, the maker of Panasonic brand products, have been developing a technology known as Blu-ray.

The two groups have held negotiations on unifying their formats to persuade consumers to shift to advanced discs and to promote growth in the industry. But negotiations fell through as neither side yielded, and time ran out to develop a format before the launch of new products from both groups, the paper said.

"Late August is the practical time limit (to unify formats)," Yoshihide Fujii, Toshiba's corporate senior vice president, was quoted as saying in the paper.

A Toshiba spokeswoman said Fujii just meant that the company needed to start developing software by late August for its HD DVD-based players, scheduled for release at the end of 2005.

A Sony spokesman said it has become harder to unify formats after failing to reach an agreement in negotiations in May.
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Both officials agreed, however, that a unified format is still a possibility. They said a single format would be the best way, and added they would release their products as scheduled.

Sony plans to put a Blu-ray disc drive in its new PlayStation game console next year.

Sony's Blu-ray technology is also backed by Dell and South Korea's Samsung.

At the core of both formats are blue lasers, which have a shorter wavelength than red lasers used in current DVD equipment, allowing discs to store data at higher densities needed for high-definition movies and television.

Toshiba's then president, Tadashi Okamura, had said in May producers of next-generation optical discs would eventually use one format, although products based on the two competing standards may be around for a limited time.

Story Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Source: www.news.com



End of the year, could this mean the 360 will have a HD-DVD version sooner than we thought?

[Father Campfire]

good this will make things more interesting. Its like going back to the old days of Betamax or vhs, with vhs being the winner but not the best quality. Sony made betamax and was the best quality and the better quality video tape and with vhs being the poor quality version. Shame betamax lost out in the end, the quality was 10x better than vhs for the time. Maybe HD-DVD will win as blu-ray is still seen as expensive, plus you will have to buy all your movies on blu-ray disc eventually as i bet they won't evntually support standard dvd's.