TDK is the only recordable media company to be a founding member of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). It's now producing 25GB and 50GB recordable Blu-ray Discs and says it has absolutely no intention of ever producing recordable HD DVDs. TDK says that Blu-ray is a sure-fire winner and that HD DVD will fail.

We spoke to TDK executive Jean-Paul Eekhout about the HD format war.

Tech.co.uk: What was it about Blu-ray which made TDK want to join the BDA and not the HD DVD Group? As an optical media company, would it not be economically viable to support both and release discs on both formats like Verbatim?

Jean-Paul Eekhout: Long before the two HD recordable formats had names, TDK developed core technologies for post-DVD products. TDK Corporation's R&D efforts were in fields of material research, manufacturing technologies and hard coating.

TDK judged the Blu-ray Disc recordable and rewriteable product concepts to be the superior format in terms of capacity, durability and performance. TDK's core technology aligned very well with the BD-R/RE concepts and exclusively supports the BD format. TDK Corporation is one of the founding members of the Blu-ray Disc Association.

Tech.co.uk: How confident are you that BD technology will come out on top of HD DVD? Frank Simonis seems very convinced that Blu-ray will win the 'war'. He has spoken at length in the past regarding capacity being the crucial factor... but now there's talk of a 51GB HD DVD disc. What do you guys think about that?

Jean-Paul Eekhout: In our recording media domain, there isn't much of a war going on. Today HD recording is 100 per cent in the hands of the BD-R/RE products. The format benefits of BD are undisputable indications that BD-R/RE will in fact be the only format that matters for high-definition recording. In our recordable market segment, capacity, data transfer rate and widest format support guarantees the winning position for BD-R/RE.

Tech.co.uk: If some of our readers are looking to buy a next-gen disc recorder, why should they buy a BD recorder with TDK BD-R disc as opposed to other technology?