"Toshiba said on Thursday competing technology standards for the next-generation optical discs will eventually be unified even thought products based on the two different formats may co-exist for a limited time.
"We may actually have a situation where merchandise from both sides are put on store shelves. But the market would not allow that situation to last very long," Toshiba President Tadashi Okamura said in a gathering of Japanese business leaders. "
The two sides have been in talks in a last ditch effort to forge a common format, but no substantial progress has been made so far.
Both sides believe that reaching a unified format would be ideal to avoid confusion and inconvenience created by a VHS-Beta battle two decades ago.
But the clock is ticking away with Toshiba launching HD DVD-based players by the end of 2005 and Sony introducing its new PlayStation game console in spring 2006 equipped with a Blu-ray disc drive." Source REUTER'S Tokyo
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