Twentieth Century Fox has joined the Blu-ray Disc Founders Group. Fox becomes the first major studio to collaborate on the high-definition home-video format outside of Sony Pictures, whose sister company Sony Corp. is one of Blu-Ray’s developers.
Other companies in the Blu-Ray group include Dell, Hitachi, Hewlett Packard, LG, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, TDK and Thomson.
The Blu-ray format is competing with Toshiba/NEC to become the HD format of choice to be endorsed by all of the major studios.
Both HD groups have announced product launches, with Toshiba/NEC hardware expected in the United States by early 2005 and Blu-ray machines anticipated at the end of next year.
Blu-ray says in a statement, “While [Fox] has not committed to publish on the format, it believes that as a founder it can influence the outcome of key issues including successful content protection as well as production costs and logistics, among other issues.”