Philips Semiconductors is gambling that the DVD+RW format will succeed, though the battle of recordable DVD formats remains unsettled on the global market. Chief executive officer Scott McGregor stated his commitment to DVD+RW in a recent interview: "The war isn't over, but we know who is going to win," McGregor said.

Philips Semiconductors decided two and a half years ago to pursue the market for recordable DVD players rather than playback-only systems, Keunen said. The company believes it will solidify the position of DVD+R/DVD+RW by strictly focusing its software development efforts on the format.

The company's reference design consists of a digital board that holds Philips Semiconductors' pnx7100 MPEG-2 audio/video and graphics codec and its VAE8020 optical recorder engine; and an analog board equipped with a power supply, tuner, and other functions. The reference design comes with a complete DVD+RW software stack designed to run on top of the pnx7100. The software stack guarantees a system's compliance to the DVD+R/DVD+RW standard, the company said. Philips Semiconductors will also provide custom software to customers if necessary