News Burst: Format wars heat up with Panasonic DVD launch

The struggle to establish a de-facto standard for recordable DVD players hotted up this week, with Panasonic announcing that it would launch the world's second player in the US this summer.

Panasonic's DVD-RAM player records onto DVD-RAM discs and is not compatible with Pioneer's DVD-RW machine, announced at the end of last year.

This is likely to hinder development of the market, causing "consumer hesitation if not confusion", according to David Mercer, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics.

I want to visit the DVD Basement