James Delahunty
16 May 2005 16:48
Talks between Sony and Toshiba over a unified next generation standard format have been stalled because Toshiba's top negotiator, Yoshihide Fujii, believes further talks will be useless unless Sony makes an effort to examine Toshiba's proposal for a unified technology. Toshiba Corp. is backing the HD-DVD format while Sony is backing its Blu-ray disc format. However, neither side would like to enter into a format war that could cost them millions of dollars and be a major inconvenience to consumers.
Fujii believes that Sony "failed to provide enough evidence that its format has a clear advantage over ours in terms of cost and range of applications." Both formats have their good and bad points and both have gotten huge support from other tech companies. Up until now, talks have been aimed mainly at what disc structure a possible unified standard would use and reports were that the talks were leaning towards a disc with Blu-Ray disc structure and Toshiba's software for copy protection and data transfer.
Hollywood studios have yet to have their say on their view of a possible unified standard. Several studios have already backed a format. The Blu-ray and HD-DVD groups are really fighting over potentially billions of dollars over the coming years for the use of their technology.
Source:
MacNewsWorld