Lately, we've been reading a lot of controversial statements on a unified disc format for the upcoming new generation optical storage discs. At the top of these discussions is Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, both trying to get the consumer support as soon as possible.  On April 21, the first rumors about a possible unified format started to circulate on the net. This was just a week after the announcement of Sony being "open for a unified format". Of course Toshiba denied all this,  but the company "recognizes a single format is best for consumers, but that doesn't necessarily mean executives are prepared to agree on a hybrid", spokesman Keisuke Omori said.

On April 30, we related a story that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD were finally one format. Both companies, Sony and Toshiba, were designing the new format with the best features from both of them. This would be the storage capacity of Blu-Ray (up to 200GB with 8 layers) and cost-effectiveness of HD-DVD.

Ten days later, Toshiba releases a press release denying, again, the talks between them and Sony. Once again, Toshiba 'believes a single format for next generation DVD is most beneficial for consumers" and recognizes 'that the key factors for a unified format are large capacity, reasonable cost, and backward compatibility with DVD that maximizes consumer benefit". Surprisingly, they were about to present a new HD DVD-ROM with a larger capacity - could this be the end of the discussion?

The specifications of the new HD DVD-ROM were released to the net, and the storage size revealed: 45GB! HD-DVD was now very close to the 50GB of Blu-Ray, filling the space that many criticised about HD-DVD: storage capacity, especially for the new generation HDTV (High Definition TV) content. Many considered this bad, due to the use of 3 layers of 15GB each, when Blu-Ray starts with 25GB for each layer. The Blu-Ray Association had to show the world what Blu-Ray was capable off, in terms of storage. We started to see a 'falling apart' of discussion with these notices, ultimately leading to a separate road for each company (no unified format).

Just 4 days later, Sony and Toshiba were said to have closed the talks due to technical issues. One of them was disc structure. Toshiba wanted the data layer to be placed at 0.6mm from the surface, while Sony wanted it to be just 0.1mm. While some say 0.6mm is better because of less scratching problems, others say 0.1mm is enough if using TDK Coating. As this is one reason that Blu-ray can offer the highest capacity due to the closeness of the data to the surface of the disc. Toshiba would also benefit from the launch of PlayStation 3, because it co-developed with Sony the semiconductor chips used on the machine.

With this new tension, Toshiba publicly ends the talk with an official reaction: Yoshihide Fujii, Toshiba's top negotiator, told reporters today that "the Sony side failed to provide enough evidence that its format has a clear advantage over ours in terms of cost and range of applications." Fujii also mentioned that further discussions would be a waste of time.

Blu-Ray tries to continue their argument, and the Association wants to give evidence to Toshiba. First, a superior protective coating developed by Degussa: which is in short, more economical and superior to earlier protective films. This technique is said to make the Blu-ray discs very economical to produce, yet we do not know how it compares to HD-DVD manufacturing costs. This technology would be able to provide a workaround for the 0.1mm data structure issue of Blu-Ray. How will we be affected by this?

Consumers will have to pay for this extra protection, if it is used on Blu-Ray discs. Second, and most important, TDK announces a 100GB Blu-Ray Prototype, using 4 layers and with better record performance (36Mbit/s vs. 72Mbit/s). The competition was coming on strong, and Toshiba was left to a "mere" 45GB HD-DVD disc, for now. Last, but not least, Blu-Ray was now ready for cost effective manufacturing. A new  mastering process, easier and much better than the current DVD ones, and the new cover-layer, developed by Degussa - Blu-Ray was getting stronger.

When both sides take separate paths like this, Blu-Ray announcing so many improvements, HD-DVD reaching the 45GB capacity, no one can really believe that Sony and Toshiba will still reach a compromise on the unified format. Then yesterday, May 26, a new report was released, with Toshiba saying that the future will reserve an unique unified format. However, before that agreement is reached, the two concurrent products, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, would already be on stores.

Source: CD Freaks