Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd said today it would launch the world’s first DVD-audio players in the United States in October. The company said in a statement it will sell two types of DVD players in the U.S. market, which will then be introduced in Japan in the following months.

One model, priced at 120, 000 yen, will be introduced in Japan in November and the other, priced at 150,000 yen, in December. The players can reproduce video, graphics, text and music on regular televisions.

To many industry insider’s dismay, Sony Corp launched a rival format, Super Audio CD, earlier this year, which could create a format war, just as we had seen in the past between VHS and Beta in the video segment. May the better one prevail…