Matsushita is set to release new DVD drives for personal computers in compliance with the Blu-ray format. Matsushita will begin commercial production of the drives in fiscal 2006 and may supply them to PC makers of the Blu-ray group such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Matsushita has so far produced such drives only for display at trade fairs and other reference purposes as talks have been under way to unify the Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats so as to avoid confusion among users.

But as the two sides have remained wide apart, Toshiba plans to release a DVD player of the format at the end of this year.

Sony, which leads the Blu-ray group along with Matsushita, plans to adopt the DVD technology for its PlayStation 3 game console.

While Matsushita has already released home-use DVD players of the Blu-ray format, it plans to put successor machines on the market in fiscal 2006.