DVD Forum, an industry body, ratified a new standard that will allow storage media manufacturers to produce a type of discs that can be played in CD and DVD players. The move will simplify transition to DVD and DVD-Audio standards by allowing record companies to sell one universal “DualDisc” instead of two: DVD and CD.

The new DualDisc standard describes how to combine two types of widely-available types of media: CD and DVD. On one side of the disk it has a typical CD layer sampled at 44.1kHz, on the other side there is DVD layer that can offer digital video, 5.1 audio or DVD-Audio sampled at 192kHz. The disks will be 1.5mm thick, but the metal layers for CD and DVD tracks are expected to be a bit thinner than typical.

Nowadays a lot of record companies tend to provide users more than one type of entertainment, e.g., music CD, but pack DVD videos and other valuable goods with their products. This increases the cost of the package as well as distribution costs. A bit more expensive DualDisc could solve the problem and eventually catalyze end-users to transit their home equipment from CDs to DVDs.

Major music and digital content labels like Sony Music, EMI, Bertelsmann Music Group, Warner Music Group and Universal said they would support the DualDisc. Some of them already produced the DualDisc products before DVD Forum officially backed the standard.