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The battle for supremacy among new high-definition DVD formats, between Sony's Blu-Ray and Toshiba's HD-DVD, may not be a fight to the death after all, thanks to two innovations to be announced next week.
LG Electronics plans to launch a DVD player that will run both types of discs, while Warner Brothers is expected to reveal that it is working on a single disc that can play films and television programmes in both formats.
The new products are being launched just as market research groups plan to scale back their predictions for hardware and disc sales of both high-definition formats. There is growing evidence that the rivalry between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD has confused consumers, who fear buying into a "modern-day Betamax" - the video recorder that lost out to VHS in a similarly vicious technological battle 30 years ago.
Further complicating the picture for potential buyers, Hollywood studios and television producers have lined up behind one format or the other, meaning that most films are available on only one type of disc. Sony's film studio is releasing high-definition titles only on Blu-Ray, as are 20th Century Fox and Disney, while Universal Studios is issuing titles only on HD-DVD.
LG yesterday described its new dual player as a "technological breakthrough to end the confusion and inconvenience of competing high-definition disc formats for both content producers and consumers".
It will be unveiled at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, and put on sale in the US early this year. Warner Brothers is also expected to use the show to confirm that it has developed a disc that can contain films in both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats, and would therefore play on whichever player the consumer has bought.
Warner believes that retailers - angry at the prospect of having to stock two new versions of films on top of the existing basic DVD standard - will throw their weight behind a combined disc and demand that Hollywood agrees to make content available.
Barry Meyer, chief executive of Warner Brothers, told the New York Times that he believed neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD was going to go the way of Betamax quickly.
Screen Digest, a market research group, had been predicting US sales of stand-alone high-definition DVD players would reach 300,000 last year, but said disappointing Christmas sales might mean the final figure would be well below that - perhaps barely half.
Blu-Ray has also been set back by the delayed and limited launch of Sony's PlayStation 3, which includes a Blu-Ray disc player. The Japanese company believes this could be a "Trojan horse" for the format. HD-DVD, by contrast, is supported by Microsoft, which is selling an add-on HD-DVD drive for its popular Xbox 360 games console.
- INDEPENDENT