Observers are now persuaded that a dismal re-run of the Betamax versus VHS battle is shaping up in the digital video disk market following the long-expected announcement by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd that it will back the standard created by Time Warner Inc and Toshiba Corp and backed by Pioneer Electronic Corp, Hitachi Ltd and Thomson Consumer Electronics SA. The Toshiba standard packs 4.8Gb onto two sides of the disk, the rival Sony Corp-Philips Electronics NV standard stores 3.7Gb on one side; both are derived from the now antiquated 4.7 music compact disk standard and use the same basic optical platters, but perhaps crucially, the Philips-Sony system means that manufacturers would not have to retool to make the new disks since they are single-sided like compact disks. Toshiba claims that its higher storage capacity means it does not have to compress images as drastically as the Sony one, so that picture quality is better; Sony says that the technology used to read the compressed images in real time is more important and that its system probably gives better picture quality. Philips chips in with the comment that its joint standard with Sony can increase its capacity to 7.4Gb using multiple layers. Philips told Reuter, We’ve been demonstrating our system for a couple of weeks. We assume Toshiba will do the same and we’ll wait and see how the industry reacts before we make any annoucement on how we’ll adjust our strategy or our products. Toshiba reckons that its products will arrive around the autumn of 1996 with players costing around $500 and discs at $30 each.
