The U.S. Department of Justice has started a preliminary inquiry into activities by the Blu-ray Disc Founders (BDF), a coalition of electronics vendors led Sony, Matsushita, Philips and seven other major electronics companies. The investigation is looking to determine whether the group's members potentially acted in concert to impede the technical progress of the DVD Forum, which has a competing high definition DVD format called HD-DVD.
The Forum approved HD-DVD over Blu-ray as the next-generation format to succeed the DVD format. The DVD Forum is a consortium of consumer electronics firms that was created to help facilitate the DVD specification, and all of the participants in the Blu-ray effort are Forum members. HD-DVD was developed by Toshiba and NEC and was originally known as AOD, or advanced optical disc.
Not much is known about the investigation and all of the parties involved are being awfully quiet. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment to WSJ. A U.S. spokeswoman for Japan's Sony said the company wasn't aware of any inquiry by the Justice Department. A Matsushita spokesman in Japan also said he wasn't aware of such an inquiry. A representative for Philips didn't return calls.
Story source:
ign.com.
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