El DVD Forum por fin ha votado a favor de uno de los formatos del futuro para el HD-DVD. Después de una ajustada votación, el elegido ha sido el formato Advanced Optical Disc (AOD) que es la propuesta de Toshiba y NEC y auspiciada desde dentro del propio DVD Forum. El Blu-Ray se seguirá desarrollando independientemente al DVD Forum tal como hasta ahora. Aunque el DVD Forum finalmente se ha definido por un candidato, no está claro cual de ambos formatos (junto con otros como el de Warner o el chino EVD) se acabará imponiendo, así que la guerra de formatos sigue su curso, al menos aparentemente.

La noticia completa es esta:

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Well... we have some news for you today about HD-DVD. As we mentioned a few days ago, the 17-member steering committee of the DVD Forum was expected to vote in New York last week on whether or not to adopt Toshiba and NEC's Advanced Optical Disc (AOD) proposal as the basis for the eventual HD-DVD format. In a previous vote earlier this year, the proposal failed to pass because members of the Blu-ray group, who are also DVD Forum members, either voted "no" or abstained. While AOD was developed within the DVD Forum, Blu-ray is being developed outside it, and is being positioned as a direct competitor for HD-DVD. By voting AOD down, or abstaining, the Blu-ray group members were effectively working to kill momentum for AOD, and thus give an advantage to their own rival product. For last week's vote, however, the DVD Forum changed its rules so that abstaining votes no longer counted as "no" votes. In the resulting ballot, the steering committee voted to adopt AOD as the basis for HD-DVD by an 8-6 majority. That moves HD-DVD a step closer to becoming a reality, and a step closer to eventually replacing existing DVD (although there are still a number of technological issues to be addressed, including the creation of a more robust copy protection scheme, before the high-definition format could be launched).

Meanwhile, the Blu-ray group continues to develop its high-definition disc format, and now China's EVD had entered the fray as well. It's worth noting, however, that EVD is a red laser based format that uses greater digital video compression, while both AOD/HD-DVD and Blu-ray use blue lasers and higher capacity discs.

You can read more about this vote (and EVD) here at Video Business (you'll need to register, but it's free). You can also bet that we'll be talking a LOT more about these next-generation, high-definition disc formats in the months ahead. In the meantime, our best guess is that the first hardware and software could start appearing in the U.S. in late 2005. Keep in mind that everything we've been told by manufacturers and industry reps is that both AOD/HD-DVD and Blu-ray hardware will be backwards compatible with existing DVD software.<hr></blockquote>

Cortesía de thedigitalbits.




<hr /><div style="text-align:center"><span style="color:blue;font-family:century gothic;font-size:xx-small;">Listen, the last man who said that to me was Archie Leach just the week before he cut his throat</span></div><hr /></p>