Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial and Sharp Corp. plan to develop a Blu-ray disc eight-centimetres (3.2-inch) in diameter, four centimetres smaller than conventional discs, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

The firms also plan to introduce camcorders that use the smaller discs which are capable of recording more than an hour's worth of high-quality motion pictures, the newspaper said.

The retail price will be about triple the price of traditional camcorders, it said.

Spokesmen at Sony and Matsushita said no decision had been made on whether they would release such a product.

Firms backing Blu-ray are facing off over the next-generation DVD format, with a rival HD DVD system being developed by NEC Corp., Toshiba Corp. and other companies.

All rights reserved. copyright 2018 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.