Japan's Toshiba Corp. has stated that they are going to have to delay the launch of their HD DVD players in the U.S. market to around February or March. According to this article though, we can still expect a year end release in Japan. Here is what the reps had to say about the US situation to Reuters:
Japan's second-largest electronics conglomerate said it and content holders such as film studios believe it would be best to start sales of HD DVD players in the United States on a wide scale rather than gradually It said it would take several months to build up inventories after starting mass-production in mid-December. |
Toshiba of course has now received support from Microsoft and Intel as we reported already, dealing a severe blow to the competing Blu-ray group. Among the the reasons given was both companies feel the HD-DVD format makes it easier for consumers to copy high-definition movies to computer hard drives. They have also stated that they intend to let end users stream this content around the house. Another advantage mentioned, the HD-DVD discs can hold standard DVD content in addition to the new high definition content, making the HD-DVD disc usable in current red-laser drives.
Source: Reuters
