While Sony struggles to get their 2-layer Blu-ray discs out the door, Toshiba and Memory-Tech are working on a 3-layer hybrid disc. That’s a DVD / HD DVD hybrid, and you can have it two ways, if you like. You can have one DVD layer and two HD DVD layers. Or, you can have two DVD players and one HD DVD layer. Neat stuff.

Toshiba will be making these new versions compatible with all DVD and HD DVD players, which is amazing if you ask me.

Toshiba and Memory-Tech will be putting these new disc formats to the DVD standards body for approval.

There is already an existing hybrid in use: a single DVD layer smushed with a single HD DVD layer. There are two problems with that format, and the new formats only partially solve one of them.

First off, capacity. There just wasn’t enough room on the hybrid discs. But I don’t think the new “DVD Twin” formats discs completely solve that. HD DVD releases are typically two-layer affairs. Ditto for DVD movies. So studios will have to cut corners somewhere to get a movie to fit on a single layer, whether that be the DVD layer or the HD DVD layer. At least they have the choice.

Second, price. The hybrid discs available up until now have been pretty pricey affairs. Insulating yourself against the future is a very expensive affair. Plus it’s risky. If you’re buying a hybrid disc now to use in your DVD player, I assume you’re looking to get an HD DVD player one day. For that person, the HD DVD player purchase is not an immediate thing. They’re investing in the HD DVD format without getting any immediate benefit. What if HD DVD fails against BD? You’ll have made investments in a failing format, without even getting any benefit from it.

Three-Layer HD DVD/DVD Hybrid Bows