BLU-RAY COMPANIES SAY THEY KNOW OF NO JUSTICE DEPT. PROBE
If the Justice Dept. (DoJ) has opened a preliminary probe into the activities of the Blu-ray Disc Founders (BDF)group, as the Wall St. Journal reported Mon., it’s news to Blu-ray companies Panasonic, Philips, Sony, Thomson and Zenith, their representatives told Consumer Electronics Daily.
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Of Blu-ray members we polled, spokesmen for Panasonic, Philips and Sony said they hadn’t heard of any DoJ investigation into Blu-ray. Thomson, like the others, has had no contact with the DoJ, a spokesman there said, and “as you know, Sony has been the lead company with Blu-ray… but is also involved with other next-generation optical disc proposals.” A Justice spokeswoman said her agency customarily didn’t comment on investigations and declined to say whether a probe had been undertaken.
The Journal said its report was sourced from “a person close to the DVD Forum.” It said the DoJ was looking into whether BDF group members had combined to impede the Forum’s technical progress on the rival NEC-Toshiba HD-DVD proposal. HD-DVD received the backing of the Forum’s steering committee in Nov. (CED Nov 21 p1), but only after a protracted struggle, and it was that struggle that is the crux of any DoJ probe, the Journal quoted its source as speculating.
In June, a steering committee heavily weighted with Blu-ray backers shot down HD-DVD (then called Advanced Optical Disc) through a combination of 3 nay votes and 8 abstentions that denied it the simple majority needed to carry the standard (CED June 16 p1, June 13 Special Report). NEC and Toshiba vowed then to persevere, and owing to the preponderance of first-round abstentions, a 2nd vote was called. Going into that 2nd vote, observers and sources said they didn’t expect the outcome to differ from the first, when those voting to reject AOD were Matsushita, Philips and Sony, all members of the BDF group that also included abstainers Hitachi, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp and Thomson. Besides NEC and Toshiba, those voting in favor of AOD in June were IBM, Intel, Taiwan’s Information Technology Research Consortium (ITRC) and Warner Bros.
After its June defeat, the proposal picked up support from Samsung and Thomson at the steering committee’s Nov. meeting in N.Y.C., where the tally went 8 yeas, 6 nays and 3 abstentions, sources have confirmed to us. The key difference in Nov.’s HD- DVD outcome was a rule change in the DVD Forum that ignored abstentions in determining a simple majority. Previously, a majority of votes (9) had been needed for a measure to pass the 17-member SC.
As for contentions that Blu-ray members in the DVD Forum might have acted in concert to impede the Forum’s technical progress, none associated with the Forum or the BDF had any comment Mon. But in June, after the NEC-Toshiba standardization bid was defeated in the Forum’s steering committee, sources familiar with the vote sounded a note of sour grapes. The sources, who were not affiliated with NEC or Toshiba, told us then they regarded the repudiation as a “disappointment” because it failed to take seriously the studies and opinions of fellow members on the Forum’s technical working groups.
Of Blu-ray representatives we polled Mon., some groused privately that the Journal report was unsubstantiated, as it was sourced from a person familiar with the DVD Forum, not within DoJ. To many, the report smacked of a leak from someone friendly to the HD-DVD camp. They said if that was the case -- no one was willing actually to make the accusation -- they would agree wholeheartedly with one conclusion drawn by the Journal story: The battle to create the next generation of optical discs had grown “increasingly contentious.”