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From the EE Times:
March 5, 2002

PARIS — The look of the next generation of digital video disks got harder to call when the DVD Forum's Steering Committee voted this week to approve the use of low-bit-rate compression for high-definition DVD.

The DVD Forum's decision, made at a meeting Tuesday (Feb. 26) in Tokyo, to stick with a red-laser-based scheme but switch to low-bit-rate compression, came only a week after nine of the world's biggest electronics companies agreed to promote a blue-laser-based format for next-generation video and computer optical disks. That format, the Blu-ray Disc, was developed outside the forum, but all nine of the initial backers are forum members.

Looking to avoid what they say would be a costly shift to blue-laser technology, steering committee member Warner Bros. and other content-production companies are behind the new DVD Forum proposal, which uses low-bit-rate encoding technology such as MPEG-4 to cram 9 Gbytes of high-definition video content onto a two-layer DVD. Blu-ray uses MPEG-2 compression, as does the current DVD standard. A single-sided 12-cm Blu-ray Disc would store 27 Gbytes of computer data, record 13 hours of broadcast TV or hold two hours' worth of high-definition video.

Of the 17 companies that sit on the DVD Forum steering committee, 11 approved the low-bit-rate encoding approach. The remaining six — including Matsushita, JVC and Philips — reportedly abstained.

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