Wednesday, October 6, 2004

Blu-ray Disc Association Launches

In an echo of the VHS/Betamax battles, the Blu-ray Disc Association announced yesterday that it has expanded its list of members and officially launched the organization, which is developing standards for next generation disc formats for video. The group has added Twentieth Century Fox to its board, which includes Dell, Hitachi, Hewlett Packard, Sharp, Sony, Pioneer, Philips, TDK, and others. The association said that it now has 73 members. The Blu-ray group is going head to head against HD-DVD over whose disc format will be the next generation successor to the DVD. The two rival groups are busy. The competing HD-DVD group includes Toshiba, NEC, and Sanyo. The HD-DVD group argues that its format is easier to manufacture.