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Ken Kutaragi, Sony Computer Entertainment president, has spoken out about the issue of a unified next generation disc standard. He said that they have chosen to use Blu-ray for the PlayStation 3 because he feels the chances of a unified format are very slim. He said that “There’s very little chance that the negotiations will go through,” and went on to say that “product planning” for the PlayStation 3 was the reason behind the decision.
It looks like we may see a format war between Toshiba’s HD-DVD and Sony’s Blu-ray. Toshiba claim that the HD-DVD format should be the format of choice because of its more standard disc manufacturing methods, similar to that of normal DVDs. Sony claims that Blu-ray should be the disc to choose because of its superior storage of 50GB, compared to HD-DVD’s 30GB. With each company seeing their format as the best, analysts think the chances of a unified format are very slim.
In an interview with Mainichi Interactive, Sony Blu-ray management director Kiyoshi Nishitani showed little optimism about a future agreement. “There’s too much difference between our beliefs,” he said. “The Blu-ray can record 50GB, but the HD-DVD can only record 30GB. Without 50GB of capacity, we can’t answer the demands of long hours of high-definition video recording and high-quality extras. The HD-DVD camp is saying that we don’t need that much capacity, but it will be required in the future.”
Similar doubts were also expressed by Toshiba managing director, Yoshihide Fujii. “Toshiba has no plans to agree with Sony,” he said. “Most movie studios have said that the HD-DVD’s 30GB capacity is enough. Normal households use HDs for long hours of recordings, and they record whatever they want to save long-term onto DVDs. So there’s really no need for a recording media with an extreme capacity. The consumers are most concerned about inexpensive media. Therefore, the HD is better than the Blu-ray, since it can be manufactured by current DVD production machines and costs less to create.”
Only a few days ago it was announced that 15GB once writable HD-DVD’s would be available in early 2006 together with PC compatible drives.
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