"Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. is set to release new DVD drives for personal computers in compliance with the Blu-ray format, a move that will mark a rupture in negotiations to unify the two competing next-generation DVD formats, informed sources said Friday.

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 Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., they said.

Known for its Panasonic brand of consumer electronics, 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 Corp., leader of the HD-DVD format group, plans to release a DVD player of the format at the end of this year.

Sony Corp., 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. "