June 26th 2005

New Toshiba President Pushes To Unify Formats

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Hope springs eternal, and the new Toshiba president, Atsutoshi Nishida who only took office on Friday, has vowed to unify the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats.

Seemingly dismissive of reports in the press last week that both Toshiba and Sony were abandoning talks, Nishida said in an interview with Kyodo News, "we will continue efforts....for the sake of users."

Nishida stated that the problem of having two next-generation DVD formats should not be ignored because of the near-sighted policies of both sides and offered an olive branch to Sony by saying that the companies "should deepen technological studies so as to realise a unification as the best format".

However, in amongst all the conciliatory words was an attack on Sony, who Nishida obviously blames for the failure of talks. He claimed that Sony's refusal to accept a compromise format based on anything other than Blu-Ray technology "leaves no room for negotiations".

For the moment then, both sides will push to market with their respective products. The fact that a new president at Toshiba has left the door open for a unified format is probably nothing more than a sign that Toshiba is worried that HD-DVD will not be the eventual winner.