Toshiba and Memory-Tech have developed a HD-DVD disc that will play on a conventional DVD player. It"s a dual-layer disc that can store 15GB of high-resolution HD-DVD data on one layer and 4.7GB of standard DVD data on the other, and which doesn"t cost any more to produce.
In theory, movies purchased for your DVD player might soon have a HD-DVD copy on another, essentially hidden, layer. The key to this will obviously be linked to how quickly this product can come to market and whether or not it truly will not affect the media production cost.
This may be of little value to early adopters but late adopters will surely be tempted to purchase HD-DVD players over Blu-Ray players if they already own a compatible library of high-resolution movies. After all, why repurchase what you already own?
This could be a rather large score for the HD-DVD format which already enjoys a significant sales lead over their Blu-Ray rivals. Mind you, that sales lead could evaporate quickly with the release of the PlayStation 3 in Japan and the imminent release of the PlayStation 3 in North America.