| Toshiba and Sony To Meet Over New HD Disc Format? |
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| Home Theater News Industry-Trade News | |
| Written by Jerry Del Colliano | |
| Thursday, 19 May 2005 | |
 CNN
and Japanese newspapers are reporting that top executives from Toshiba
and Sony are slated to meet this week to try to work on a compromise
that would create one HDTV capable disc for consumers in the near
future. Currently Sony has its Blu-ray technology and Toshiba has its
HD-DVD format. Both have their supporters but critics worry that two
formats could confuse or even anger consumers who all remember the old
battle of VHS versus Beta. More recently and perhaps even more scary
was the format war between high resolution audio formats SACD and
DVD-Audio. That format war unlike the VHS versus Beta battle, left no
winners – just two dead formats.
There is no question HDTV is the biggest thing to hit consumer electronics since the amazingly successful run of the DVD format. With over 1,000,000 consumers buying DTV sets every month and no signs of that number going down any time soon, there is a growing audience of HD content starved consumers who might just be willing to buy their movie collections all over again. If this bet is a winner and consumers start buying HDTV versions of their favorite movies this will be a boom the likes Hollywood and the consumer electronics industry have never seen. Bigger hurdles still stand in the way of any such disc above and beyond Sony and Toshiba coming up with an agreement on an HD Disc format. Hollywood studios have to approve any copy protection scheme that would be on any new disc format and considering the quality of the video on any new HD disc – who can blame the studios for being worried. In the end there will be a few billion reason why Sony and Toshiba will team up and Hollywood will sign on. This format will be a home run with consumers who are dying for HD content. Source: CNN-Money.com Like this article? Bookmark and share with any of the sites below.        |
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