Sanyo Electric Co said Thursday that it had developed a signal processing large-scale integrated circuit (LSI) for HD DVDs. Sanyo’s chip allows playback and recording of HD DVDs, current DVDs and CDs. By utilizing the product, it is possible to lower costs and reduce the size of the HD DVD drive and HD DVD player hardware.

SANYO plans to release this chip to the market in the second quarter of 2006. With the expected rapid proliferation of products in the consumer electronics field, HD DVD players and recorders that utilize this LSI will quickly appear in the market, according to the company.

HD DVD is advantageous because of its superior compatibility with current generation DVDs and low cost production for ROM disks. This will prove to be a big edge in popularizing HD DVD ROM contents,” Mr. Yodoshi added.

This news article was written on August 12, 2005, quoting X-Bit Labs.