Despite their great disputes, and the marginal likelihood of the two integrating in the near future, the two primary Blu Ray DVD groups–the BRD headed by Sony and HD-DVD backed by Toshiba–have both speeded up plans to bring new products to the market.

In order to popularize BRD technology, the Blu-ray-Disc Founders group has decided to rename itself as the Blu-ray-Disc Association in October this year and attract more film, PC and peripheral equipment manufacturers to join them.

The HD-DVD group, however, does not appear to be intimidated by this aggressive move–Toshiba has gained approval from the DVD forum directors for its HD-DVD 1.1 version and encoding method and has also announced with NEC that their new products will be launched in the first half year of 2005.

At present, China's three disk groups are trapped in a dogfight, making it difficult grow the high-clarity disk player market. But local experts are still adamant that, no matter which party wins eventually, the Chinese disk player industry should keep its own style and not follow others.