With NEC announcing a new chipset compatible with both Blu-ray and HD DVD, there has been a lot of hope that drives capable of reading and writing both formats would soon be on the way. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll be seeing one any time soon, at least from Taiwan's drive manufacturers.
Following an announcement by NEC of chips supporting both the HD DVD and Blu-ray formats, Taiwan-based optical disc drive (ODD) makers said they are not considering launching dual-standard drive models for the two disc standards..
..Although NEC claims the new dual-standard chips can help reduce costs by 20-30%, Taiwan-based ODD firms said the overall production cost of ODDs using the chip may not be less than that of disc drives using chips that support a single DVD standard since overall costs are determined by other factors, such as the cost of the optical pick-up head (PUH) and yields.
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