<P> On August 22, 2005, the Blu - ray Disc Association and DVD Forum announced that the negotiations to unify their standards had failed . Rumors surfaced that talks had stalled; publicly, the same reasons of physical format incompatibility were cited . At the end of September, Microsoft and Intel jointly announced their support for HD DVD . </P> <P> Hewlett Packard (HP) proposed an ultimatum for the Blu - ray Disc Association: adopt Microsoft's proprietary HDi (instead of the Java - based system) and a mandatory managed copy feature, or HP would support HD DVD instead . In a research report, Gartner analysts Van Baker, Laura Behrens and Mike McGuire wrote that if HP's proposal were accepted, Blu - ray would become the winner of the format war . Though the Blu - ray Disc group did add mandatory managed copy to Blu - ray, they did not add HDi . </P> <P> HD DVD players and movies were released in the United States on April 18, 2006 . The first Blu - ray Disc titles were released on June 20, 2006 and the first movies using dual layer Blu - ray discs (50 GB) were introduced in October 2006 . </P> <P> The Blu - ray Disc Foundation was formed by Hitachi, LG, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson on May 20, 2002 . Other early supporters included Dell, HP, Mitsubishi and TDK . The Blu - ray Disc Association was inaugurated on October 4, 2004 by 14 companies of Board of Directors which added 20th Century Fox to the 13 above - mentioned companies, Contributors of 22 companies, General members of 37 companies, and a total of 73 companies . </P>

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