Having Sony and Toshiba fighting over Blu-ray and HD-DVD is resulting in consumers not buying any format; it’s simply too risky to invest a lot of money in a potential Betamax. Time Warner and it’s movie making subsidiary Warner Bros. know this, so they’ll announce a third disc on Thursday, called “Total HD disc”, which supports both Blu-ray and HD-DVD standards on a single disc. Warner executive Barry M. Meyer, said in an interview,

“The next best thing is to recognize that there will be two formats and to make that not a negative for the consumer. We felt that the most significant constituency for us to satisfy was the consumer first, and the retailer second. The retailer wants to sell hardware and doesn’t want to be forced into stocking two formats for everything. This is ideal for them.”

In theory, the idea sounds just great, finally someone who considers the consumers, but how will Sony and Toshiba respond to this? Ultimately the new Total HD discs would be easier and far less expensive for consumers than dual-format players, like the one LG recently announced. Not much we can do but to keep our money, wait and see what happens.

Read (News.com)