MS and Universal Pictures reach agreement on HD DVD.

[NANOTEC]

Universal has agreed to use iHD, an interactivity feature for DVDs, in its upcoming titles.It will also use VC-1, a compression protocol recently approved as a standard to be included in HD DVD discs. Both technologies were developed in part by researchers at Microsoft. The Redmond software maker is a strong supporter of the next-generation DVD technology..

Currently, every major studio with plans to support HD DVD will use VC-1 in their discs.

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In other news Hitachi/Maxell announced that they'll be releasing recordable HD DVDs in the 2nd and 3rd quarter of this year. The discs will consist of single and dual layer 15GB/20GB/30GB HD DVDs.

Maxell's HD DVD also utilizes blue violet laser technology to produce a 12 cm recordable disc with a 20 GB capacity for the rewritable format. They are ideal for high-definition video recording and massive data archive solutions. The disc is suitable for recording more than two hours of high-definition broadcasting content with a 36 Mbps transfer rate, as well as making it ideal for professional post-production use. HD DVD has the same structure as the current DVD media with two substrates bonded together, allowing for ease of production and usage.

The HD DVD-R (Record Once-Single Layer), 15 GB, will be available at the end of the second quarter of 2006. The HD DVD-RW (Re-Recordable-Single Layer), 15 GB, as well as the HD DVD-R DL (Record Once-Dual Layer) and HD DVD-RW DL (Re-Recordable-Dual Layer), 30 GB, will be available during the third quarter of 2006.