Total HD: The Warner Bros Solution To Format War

As the war of next-generation optical format rages on, Warner Bros decided to come up with its own solution. According to media reports, Warner Bros plans to unveil at the Consumer Electronics Show a DVD disc, called Total Hi-Def (Total HD) that would make it possible to play a movie in either a HD DVD player or Blue Ray player.

"The Total High-Definition Disc allows consumers to fully embrace high-definition viewing," Ron Sanders, President of Warner Home Video said in a statement Thursday. "Warner Bros. was a force in creating the current market dominance of the standard DVD, and we hope that THD will make it easier for the average consumer to enjoy this next level of technology."

Warner Bros didn’t release any details about their Total HD solution and also is still unclear if the company would license the technology to rival studios.

Also, Warner Bros has filled a patent for another invention could actually mean the premature ending of the HD DVD vs. Blu Ray war, which Sony and Toshiba have been fighting for quite some time

Movies on a DVD are stored at different depths depending on the technology. Blu-ray discs store information only 0.1 millimeter from the surface while HD-DVD discs store it at 0.6 millimeters.

But three Warner Bros. employees have come up with a new idea. By using reflective films, the inventors say their disc would enable the lasers to read the top layer and "see through" to the lower one if necessary. Additional information also could be stored on the other side of the disc.

The three men, two of whom are engineers, have filed a patent for a disk called "multilayer dual optical disk", which would have one layer of data in the standard CD or DVD format, a second layer able to play one high-capacity format and a third layer for the competing high-capacity format.

"A data disc consists of several layers, including at least one layer conforming to a first format, and a second layer conforming to a second format," the patent stated. "The formats can include CD, DVD, HD and BD formats and the layers may be physical, logic or application layers."

Also, LG is preparing to take CES by surprise and has announced it will present a player that is capable of playing both formats. But it remains to be seen if the end of format war will mean dual players or dual discs or another solution.