Sony Says It Will Move Ahead With Its Rival Videodisc Format

The consumer electronics industry moved a step closer Wednesday to an all-out war over a new digital home video format as Sony Corp. declared that it will push forward with a videodisc technology it proposed in December with Philips Electronics.

A rival digital videodisc technology developed by Toshiba Corp. and Time Warner Inc. and unveiled last month has gained the backing of a number of key players--including Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Pioneer Electronic Corp. and Hitachi Ltd.--and Sony had made conciliatory statements indicating it might agree to drop its system.

“This is beginning to look like a full-scale war between the two camps,” said Chuck Goto, an electronics industry analyst with Smith Barney International in Tokyo. Still, he added, Wednesday’s announcement by Sony could simply be a negotiating tactic to get a better financial settlement in exchange for joining the Toshiba group.

Both videodisc formats are designed to replace the videocassette recorder, offering consumers high-quality movies on discs similar to music CDs. The technology could also be important as a high-capacity storage medium for computers.

The rivalry between the two proposed formats recalls the Betamax-VHS feud of the early 1980s, which pitted Sony against Matsushita in a battle to set an industrywide videocassette standard. Sony lost that fight--and almost everyone agrees that a repeat of that struggle should be avoided.

But Nobuyuki Idei, managing director at Sony, said in a written statement that “after careful evaluation and consideration with Philips, Sony has no plans to support the . . . specifications proposed by an alliance of seven companies (the Toshiba-Time Warner alliance).”

He repeated some of Sony’s arguments in favor of its standard, stressing that both players and discs can be produced at low cost and that only “minor modifications” to existing compact disc production equipment will be needed to manufacture the new discs.

Toshiba spokesman Tetsuo Kadoya responded to Sony’s announcement by expressing hope that Sony might still join the Toshiba-Time Warner group.

“We do not want to fight,” Kadoya said. “If two formats come out, consumers will be at a loss and they won’t welcome the DVD (digital videodisc) age. . . . Our basic standing is our door is always open.”

Goto said he was surprised to hear that talks between the camps had apparently broken down. “There was a fairly strong rumor last week that Sony was going to agree” to the rival standard, he said.

But it’s also possible that Sony is simply positioning itself for the complex royalty negotiations that still must be undertaken by the Toshiba-Time Warner group.

The new video players--from one camp or both--are expected to start appearing in stores later this year. But if there is a standards war, consumers will probably face higher prices than they otherwise would have. And they may find that some movies--from Sony Pictures and Matsushita’s MCA studio--will be available only on one format or the other.

That, in turn, would probably inhibit consumer acceptance of either technology.