After three years of competition, Sony and Toshiba set at the negotiation table to solve the Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD crisis.

The first company who made the step towards reconciliation was Sony, but Toshiba has also admitted that finding a solution will be beneficial for the users who will not have to choose between two technologies.

The negotiations take place behind closed doors and no one can predict their outcome, but it is estimated that the situation will be settled in the next weeks.

Neither Sony nor Toshiba commented anything about what will be discussed, but the Japanese newspapers have started to speculate about a unified DVD format.

Toshiba sees as a compromise solution a unified format based on the structure of the HD DVD disc, which is closer to the one of current DVDs and Sony's multi-layer data recording technology.

Sony on the other hand, sees the future format as having the structure of the Blu-Ray disc and the software technology of HD-DVD.

Sony and Toshiba should reach a conclusion pretty quickly, because the technological changes and the adopting of a hybrid format could lead to the postponing of products, which would allow the competition represented by the Taiwanese producers to come up with a new technology of optical storage.