Sixty-six corporations from around the world have decided that the time of the record able DVD has come, and in a rare show of cooperation have gathered together to work out the best solution for everyone, much like the original DVD specifications five years ago was hammered out. The Recordable DVD Council, formerly the Recordable DVD Meeting, announced that it will launch a worldwide program to promote recordable DVD products complying with recording standards approved by the DVD Forum.

According to the council’s chairman, Bon-Guk Koo, “The main work of the Recordable DVD Council will be to encourage widespread acceptance of the three DVD Forum-specified standards, DVD-RAM, DVD-R and DVD-RW,” This widespread acceptance will apply both to audio-video recorders as well as PC based DVD-ROM drives. In order to meet these goals, the organizations involved must agree on standards and specifications which currently do not exist in the recording arena, leading to confusion and reluctance from consumers.

Of the sixty-six organizations, eight have formed an executive body which includes AMC Co., Hitachi, Hitachi Maxellm, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic), Ritek Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Toshiba Corporation and Victor Company of Japan (JVC). The group hopes to recruit more organizations in the coming months.

This attitude of cooperation is a welcome development in the growing Recordable DVD market. Hopefully this will lead to reliable and affordable DVD recording in the very near future.