Sony says they don't want a format war on next gen discs

April 13, 2005

More news
from the Sony show in France today that indicates Sony is "open" to avoiding a
format war in the next generation of DVD products. This is kind of odd coming
from a company that makes so many proprietary items. It is also quite hard to
imagine one or the other Blu-ray camps would be willing to give up all these
royalties if there was only one standard accepted.

Sony
Corp said on Wednesday it was open to discussions to create a single
standard for the next generation of DVD discs, a move which could head off
the looming threat of a major format war among the world's biggest
technology companies.

"From the point of view to provide the best service to
the consumer one format is better than two. We're open to discussions,"
Yukinori Kawauchi, general manager in charge of the next DVD format at
Sony's Video Group, said in an interview.

But he added that specific proposals had yet to be
tabled.

"There's no visible progress to do that (create a
single standard)," Kawauchi told Reuters at an event organized by Sony.

The electronics industry is facing a battle between
the so-called Blu-ray optical discs and HD DVD discs, two different new
DVD formats which offer higher capacity than current DVDs.

You can read the Reuters report in it's entirety by following this
link.

Source: Reuters