The Battle Between HD DVD and Blu-ray Still On: A New Format Emerged - AVCHD

As the battle between Toshiba's HD DVD and Sony's Blu-ray formats still continues, another weapon has been developed, one which will be used in Sony and Panasonic devices in order to get content from high-definition camcorders onto DVDs without going to Blu-ray.

If you think that Sony has given up hope on its Blu-ray� you are wrong, as this new format is only meant to diminish the company's risk, in case Blu-ray worldwide project fails.

Yoshikazu Ochiai, a spokesman for Sony in Tokyo, said that the company doesn't intend to give up the Blu-ray project, but it prefers to co-develop another HD DVD format with Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic) because Blu-ray implies a significant size constrains, high cost and increased energy consumption.

As a result, both companies announced, during a press conference, that they have already created a new format - AVCHD. As you might already know, the high definition camcorders on the market record content on Mini-DV tapes which do not present the same simplicity as a DVD, but have greater storing capacities.

Also, HD video contains more than three times the amount of data the standard definition video has.

That's why Sony and Panasonic, two of the main camcorders manufacturers, have developed AVCHD, which uses the MPEG4 AVC/H.264 compression system to "decrease" data's capacity and then store it on a standard DVD disk.

Ochiai added that, by using AVCHD, about 20 minutes of HD video can be stored on a single-sided DVD, compared to 30 minutes of video recorded using a standard definition camcorder and the same disc.