TOKYO — Clearing the way for a new consumer electronics technology that could eventually supplant the videocassette recorder, two warring industry factions on Friday reached an agreement on a single technical standard for a next-generation compact disc system known as the digital videodisc.
The new technology promises to bring movies into the living room on a shiny silver disc similar to an audio CD, but with video and sound quality far superior to that offered by a VCR. In addition, the new CDs will be used as a computer storage medium offering 10 times the capacity of today's CD-ROM discs.
One industry alliance led by Toshiba Corp. and Time Warner Inc. and another led by Sony Corp. and Philips Electronics have been fighting for nearly a year over technical standards for the new medium, and if both had gone ahead with their own standard, consumers would probably have been slow to buy either. Friday's agreement was hailed by electronics and entertainment industry executives as a major breakthrough that would assure the technology's success.
"It's a victory for the consumer," Toshiba Corp. Executive Vice President Taizo Nishimuro said at a press conference. "Nobody wants to purchase something that can become obsolete after two or three years."
"All the energy that could have been wasted trying to persuade the consumer that this format is better than that format can now be concentrated on telling the consumer that this is a great new product, which will let them see movies at a higher quality and a very good price," said Richard Cohen, president of MGM/UA Home Entertainment. "That's the beauty of a single format."
The unified format--which has yet to be named--incorporates the Toshiba proposal for the basic structure of the disc, which will be made from two thin discs bonded together. The modulation system--which refers to the way the computer in the player reads the signal on the disc--belongs to Sony/Philips.
The discs will initially be able to hold up to 133 minutes of high-quality video and audio in a single layer of data encoded on one side of the disc, and will also have high reliability for use in storing data for computers. It will be possible to increase the playing time with "dual-layer" technology, or by using both sides of the disc.
