Blu-Ray and HD-DVD out, new format in?
Earlier this year Sony announced that Blu-Ray was to be the disc format that would
play in PS3s, while it seemed likely that rival format HD-DVD would find a home in microsoft’s Xbox 2. Now sister blog Games Digest is reporting that both formats could be replaced
by a single one. According to IGN.com and Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Sony and
Toshiba, the format leaders for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD respectively are expected to
announce later this month, that they are to collaborate on a new
format that would take the best of both discs, effectively ending a potential format
war before it begun. Blu-Ray had a massive capacity advantage, with initial
capacities already set at 50GB, with potentially higher-capacity discs later on
in the format’s life. HD-DVD, while only managing 20GB capacity, is set to use
existing DVD manufacturing processes, and so would be much cheaper. Latest
rumours suggest that microsoft, due to its release this year, is sticking with
plain old DVD for its Xbox 2.
