PCs are emerging as a battleground in the budding war between two technologies vying to be the standard for high capacity DVDs - and take the lucrative mantle of next benchmark in optical storage.
The stakes are huge for one group led by Sony Corp, developer of the standard known as Blu-ray, and another led by Toshiba Corp, developer of the rival HD-DVD standard, with each party standing to reap a fortune in royalties if its candidate becomes the next industry standard.
Many liken the war to the 1980s battle over video cassette recording standards, which ultimately saw the VHS standard emerge the victor over Sony's Betamax.
Most attention to date has focused on a new generation of video players that can take advantage of up to 30 gigabytes of storage capacity - six times the amount in current DVDs - to show movies in high definition.
But PC makers will also be vital in deciding which standard ultimately wins, said Howard Locker, director of new technology at China's Lenovo Group Ltd, the world's third biggest computer maker. "The three major suppliers of the players of these new next generation discs will be the PC industry, consumer electronics and gaming machines," Locker said. "If you look at the volumes, PCs are now more than 50 percent of that total space, so we'll have a big say on who wins."
So far, however, most PC makers are refusing to take sides.
Lenovo itself is taking a wait-and-see approach, keeping its feet in both camps but committing to neither just yet.
Among other industry giants, Dell Inc, the world's biggest PC maker, has said it is committed to Blu-ray, while Hewlett-Packard Co, the number two player, has said it will support both standards.
Taiwan's Acer Inc was showing four notebook models with HD-DVD drives this week in Taiwan at Computex, the world's second biggest computer show. But a spokeswoman said the company also plans to support Blu-ray when drives become available.
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