Doug Carson & Associates (DCA), makers of DVD mastering software, announced today that the first 3X DVD-ROM disc was officially mastered over the weekend, a move that some think will allow HD DVD to become more popular and possibly even win the ongoing 'format war' with Blu-ray. The disc is a standard dual-layer, red laser DVD with the same 9.4GB capacity as existing discs, but it has support for the same UDF 2.5 file system, AACS copy protection, and high definition content as HD DVD. The disc will still require an HD DVD player to play, and content will have to be sampled down to 720p in VC-1 or AV-C formats. 3X DVD could become a cheaper alternative to HD DVD.

Whether or not 720p movies will take off in HD DVD form will depend highly on the pickiness of HD DVD's early adopters, but I don't think that anyone will be cheering on 3X DVD anytime soon.

Well, we already have something like 3X-DVD but without all the useless AACS copy protection. It's a regular DVD with an AVI video using H.264. Whether or not it's HD depends on your bit-torrent source :-D