Sony and Toshiba at loggerheads as talks on unified DVD format unsuccessful |
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Wed, 24 Aug 2005 15:35
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With electronic bigwigs Sony and Toshiba failing to reach a consensus in their endeavour to jointly manufacture one DVD format, a corporate war between the two giant companies seems unavoidable.
The parties concerned are still hopeful of a last minute resolution (August end was the self-imposed deadline by the two groups) but analysts believe this is a near impossible task.
Toshiba, in association with NEC and Sanyo put forward its HD-DVD format, while the rival camp Sony (along with Matsushita- producer of Panasonic branded products) is backing the Blu-ray technology.
Both formats incorporate blue lasers having a smaller wavelength in comparison to the red lasers and also higher-capacity disks than the present day DVD’s. While Sony's Blu-ray disks have the capablility to play back 25 GB of data as opposed toHD-DVD's 15, the downside is that it is more costly to produce which means it might be priced very highly. Thankfully for the customers, the current DVDs can also be played on the above mentioned formats.
While Toshiba asserts that the HD-DVD format will be economical and its launch will take place earlier, Sony claims that Blu-ray will be speedy coupled with excellent capacity, thus increasing its life span to a great extent.
What the deadlock means is movie studios will have to stand by only one of the formats or else they will have to end up producing films in both the technologies, a highly improbable consideration.
And so we have Paramount, Universal and Warner Brothers backing Toshiba’s HD DVD format while Sony Pictures, MGM and Walt Disney merge with Sony.
Junko Furuta, Toshiba spokesman, while clarifying that the combined deal looks highly unlikely at this stage, pointed out that the competitor’s Blu-ray disks cannot be a feasible option in laptop computers and car-navigation systems.
According to P.J. McNealy, American Technology Research analyst, due to the fundamental disparities between the technologies, combining both to come with out a single standard format would require both camps to spend a lot of time and energy. And eventually neither party was ready to go through the toil.
Meanwhile, work has begun in righe earnest in both camps. Toshiba wants to launch its HD-DVD format in the Christmas season whereas the Blu-ray disks are likely to be integrated in Sony’s game console PlayStation 3, which will hit the market in the spring of 2006.
This standoff between Sony and Toshiba has parallels with the clash between Sony's Betamax and JVC's VHS format back in the early 1980s.
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