The HD-DVD v. Blu-Ray war may go on, but consumers may not have to make a choice between the two as chip vendors, and other third-party companies, develop universal technology. According to published reports, systems capable of playing both Blu-ray and HD-DVD disks are expected to appear by the end of 2007.

Broadcom Corp. of Irvine, Calif., has developed a complete system-on-a-chip (SoC) that combines both Blu-ray and HD-DVD optical disc formats into a single-chip design and a software stack compliant with both technologies. It integrates a multiple-core MIPS architecture, a multi-stream HD video decoder, dedicated graphics engines, DSP-based audio processors, a security processor, DDR2 interfaces, integrated video and audio outputs and a complete array of system and network connectivity interfaces.

A challenge for designers is that while both HD-DVD and Blu-ray use blue lasers to read the disk, the hardware is incompatible with the other. However, according to published reports, engineers at Warner Brothers are working on ways to create a disk to hold both formats plus standard DVD so that it will play in either player. The engineers are working on ways to solve the problem including having Blu-ray on one side and the same application in HD-DVD on the other.