Will they reach a compromise?

May 27, 2005 12:58 GMT  ·  By

Yesterday, Toshiba Corporation made a series of statements related to the next generation of optical discs. According to Toshiba Corporation's representatives, there will be a solution to unify Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

Tadashi Okamura, Toshiba's president, has stated that he intends to continue the efforts to reach an agreement with Sony, and with other companies involved, targeting the unifying of the standards for the next generation of video discs.

Last month, Toshiba and Sony had reached the final stages of the negotiations for the unifying of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, the result being a format based on Blu-Ray standards. However, the negotiations were postponed, Toshiba motivating that the superiority of Blu-Ray hasn't been proven yet.

Okamura said the structure of the final format for video discs has to be determined according to the interests of users, and not as a result of the negotiations between the managers of the two companies.

Still, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Sony's main ally, has recently stated they are not giving up on the idea of backing Blu-Ray in the quest of a unified format.

Sony has already chosen Blu-Ray for PlayStation, which means consoles will have an important part to play in this war of formats.