The presidents of Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Toshiba Corp. will meet as early as this week to try and hammer out an agreement on a unified format for next-generation DVD technology, a source close to the matter said on Tuesday.
Sony and Toshiba, heading rival groups, have waged a three-year war to have their new technology standards adopted by the industry and gain pole position in the multi-billion-dollar markets for DVD players, PC drives and optical discs reports Reuters.
The high-level talks offer new hope for negotiations that appeared to have reached an impasse in recent days. A senior Toshiba official was quoted on Monday as saying one format based on Sony technology would be "extremely difficult" at this stage.
Both sides still believe one standard is the best scenario, knowing that a prolonged format battle like the one between VHS and Betamax two decades ago would likely discourage consumers from shifting to advanced discs and stifle the industry's growth.
Officials from Toshiba, which backs a new DVD technology called HD-DVD, and Sony and Matsushita, which support a rival standard known as Blu-ray, began meeting earlier this year to try and establish a format incorporating technology from both sides.
The negotiations have been leaning toward unifying the formats based on the Blu-ray disc structure, but Toshiba continues to maintain that adopting the HD DVD structure would be more cost efficient because it is closer to the current DVD.
