Talk of “compromise” or a unified solution regarding the next generation high definition DVD format, has mostly came from Sony during the past few weeks, now Toshiba appears to send signals that hope isn’t lost in sparing the consumer a format war.

According to Reuters “The two groups are in talks to jointly develop a new standard for next-generation DVDs to give the best benefit to consumers” a Sony source said on Thursday, declining to elaborate on the details.

In addition to this bit of optimistic news “Sony and Toshiba have reached a basic agreement that a unified standard would be desirable, and they are now looking to develop a hybrid standard that takes advantage of each standard’s strengths” according to the Japanese business daily Nihon Keizai.

While this type of posturing itself isn’t new, the presence of Toshiba at the bargaining table indicates that real progress might be still be made. The new round of talks also gives evidence the two companies still have an open dialogue, even after Toshiba basically told Sony to take a hike, during the last round of “negations”.

Michael.G

It?s been tough for Sony lately, with the PSP pixel fiasco and the next-gen Hi-Def DVD format war. Sure they are a big corporation that likes to be number one in every aspect of the electronics industry, movie industry, music industry, gaming industry, etc. But that goal can be troublesome to reach when you have specialist companies that want to be the best in only one aspect of an industry, like the best way to store, play, & listen to music; or the only format for recording, playing HD movies & programs.

It should be no surprise to anyone that Apple?s iPod is the best selling MP3 player on the market. This can make it a little difficult for Sony to stay on top with their music player products like the mini disc, walkman, and SACD with great success. And with the HD-DVD, Blu-ray format war going on with Toshiba, it sure does look like they are losing in the conquering of these markets.

According to Ryoji Chubachi, president of Sony Corp, “There’s an illusion that Sony is somehow getting totally defeated, but that’s just one business (MP3 Players) for Sony. It is going to be tough for Sony to beat all the specialists.” He also added that Sony needs to shift to ?growth? areas such as flat TVs, DVD recorders, and mobile gadgets. He didn?t specify which products Sony was going to shift away from though.

One way for Sony to put focus on their SACD & Blu-ray technologies would be to incorporate them into something that already has a niche in the market, the Vaio. Sony announced this week at a three day press event in Bordeaux France, that DSD and Blu-ray will be added to their line of Vaio notebooks and PCs.

DSD, which stands for Direct Stream Digital, will be added for optimal use of audio files. This technology is the core HD audio technology which makes SACD sound so wonderful, but to really notice what makes SACD so superior to CD you need a capable hi-fi system, which you are not going to have on the Sony Vaio. However Sony claims and this is really funny, that home studio and home audio enthusiasts and creators can achieve the same high definition and surround sound on their PC without affecting background CPU performance.

They haven?t announced any other details like how many, how much, & when. It seems like Sony is headed in the right direction in trying to come on top of this format war with HD-DVD but with NEC & Toshiba having the majority of Hollywood on their side and with Sony trying to call a truce a couple of weeks ago, the outlook for Blu-ray becoming the sole next-gen DVD format is not so good.

R.Hollis