DVD format war: Matsushita says Toshiba needs to give up

So in the great off again, on again war to define the DVD standard(s) that will be ending up in everybody's living room over the next few years, it's starting to be more clear why the head of Toshiba (camp HD-DVD) would have quipped that unifying the standard might prove too difficult: it appears that the heads of the other two heavies, Sony and Matsushita (camp Blu-ray) are insisting that the only way to "compromise" on the standard is for Toshiba to basically give up. Matsushita president Kunio Nakamura essentially said the rumours of a three-way meeting are false — he has no plans to meet with the heads of the other two companies — and instead, Matsushita and Sony "have not changed their stance. We are waiting for Toshiba's decision." So much for compromise. It appears the major sticking point concerns the depth of the memory layer on which data is written: HD-DVD favors a data layer 0.6mm beneath the surface of the disk, the same depth as on the current generation of DVDs. Camp Blu-ray will be using a data layer only 0.1mm from the surface — and they're not willing to budge. It's two against one strategy in full effect, people, and it doesn't look good for our living rooms.