Day four of DVD forum meetings in Tokyo
Topics discussed yesterday at the DVD forum meeting in Tokyo, were finalizing the standard, included features and the initial target cost of a HD-DVD player. One of the more interesting issues discussed was the “spread” or absorption time, for HD-DVD to fully saturate the world market. The committee laid out a 5 year span, from the time HD-DVD is introduced next year, to the end of 2010 at which time they expect full saturation of the medium, and standard definition DVD’s to be a thing of the past.
As to the expected cost of first generation HD-DVD players, Mr. Hiroshi Yamada, of Toshiba stated the initial average price of a HD-DVD player in the United States would be around 1000.00 USD and expected total sales of such devices to be about 10k units. With more than 100k sold, by year’s end 2006. Mr. Yamada also expected around 50 HD-DVD titles to available by the end 2005.
Audio codes and standards were also addressed, among those already confirmed were DTS, Dolby Digital, MLP lossless and Dolby Digital plus. The inclusion of WMV9 as a video codec, was also discussed.
Michael.G