The Kyodo news reported on June 10 that Matsushita is about to release Blu-ray format DVD drives for personal computers. The company plans to start commercial production of the DVD drives in the fiscal year 2006. Potential customers include PC makers Dell and Hewlett-Packard, which belong to the Blu-ray camp.

 

For some time now talks have been under way between the Blu-ray DVD group, led by Matsushita and Sony, and the HD-DVD group, led by Toshiba, to unify the two DVD formats, but so far an agreement has not been reached. Matsushita's aforementioned release, Sony's intention to use the Blu-ray format in its Playstation 3 game console, and Toshiba's move to introduce a HD-DVD format DVD player at the end of this year will be harmful to these talks, as the two camps are investing more money and research into the development of their own formats.