NEC among others will introduce several new HD-DVD products, at the up-coming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Among them a ‘Universal DVD drive‘ that plays all current and next generation DVD media (Blu-Ray obviously omitted). In addition a HD-DVD recorder will also be showcased as well as the recently announced standalone HD-DVD unit intended for PC use.

Michael.G

In the ‘zero shock to anyone with a pulse’ department, Toshiba and its HD-DVD partners formed a group Wednesday to promote their HD-DVD format for next-generation DVD’s, in a bid to counter the Blu-Ray camp that is offering a different format. Members include Toshiba (obviously), Memory-Tech Corp, NEC Corp and Sanyo Electric Co, among others.

The group will provide technical information to electronics manufacturers and DVD software producers to facilitate production of HD-DVD players and media.

Michael.G

Samsung announced their BD-R1000 will ship sometime this month (in Japan). This marks the first major rollout of a Blu-ray product, from a company other than Sony. The BD-R1000 includes both ATSC digital and NTSC analog recording and playback. Samsung states a recording time of 2 hours in HDTV quality or 12 hours in SD quality.

One key feature of Samsungs BD-R1000 recorder is the ability to record and playback all BD, DVD and CD formats with a single disc pickup.

Michael.G

Picture this, a Sony executive walks into Toshiba corporate and he says hey, let’s play nice and resolve this whole format war thing. Somewhere between hell and no, he realizes that maybe Sony’s heavy handed tactics have finally backfired and this is going to be a real fist to cuffs.

Yeah, obviously that’s overly dramatic, but it likely holds some truth at the same time. Toshiba and NEC by this point have to be feeling pretty good about the whole “format war”. I mean think about it, Sony came to them, asked to “make nice’ies” and got told where to go. Sony doesn’t usually make it a habit of asking for squat, much less to a rival.

I suppose the other side could argue that Sony was only doing the upstanding thing by trying to save the consumer from being the victim in a messy corporate power struggle. And if you believe that I’ve got some land to sell ya. This is getting good. Maybe it’ll make a Lifetime movie of the week, before it’s all over.

Michael.G

Earlier this week, Disney announced their pick in the DVD format war, well at least for now. In a non-exclusive deal with Blu-ray, Disney said it would start releasing movies on the format as soon as players became available in North America and Japan, which is expected in late 2005, early 2006. Disney also stated it would release content in the rival format HD-DVD if it met the studio’s needs, mainly copyright protection. This announcement may make you think that Blu-ray is ahead of their competitor HD-DVD, but keep in mind that all the support from the movie studios are non-exclusive. It is still a war and it is still going to be a consumer choice. Hopefully, HD-DVD and Blu-ray will make it easy for us but, I wouldn’t count on it.

Disney includes Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Walt Disney Home Entertainment, Hollywood Pictures Home Video, Touchstone Home Entertainment, Miramax Home Entertainment, Dimension Home Video and Disney DVD.

R.Hollis

To make the transition from current DVDs to next generation DVDs smoother, Toshiba and Memory-Tech announced the development of a read only disc that will house both standard definition and high definition content. According to Masato Otsuka, general manager of Memory-Tech’s engineering department, the disc will be one sided and contain two layers, an upper DVD layer with a capacity of 4.7GB and a lower HD-DVD layer with a 15GB capacity.

This a great way for HD-DVD to market themselves to the consumer because old and new DVD players will be able to read all types of HD-DVD discs, though only the next generation DVD player can take advantage of the HD-DVD layer. Memory-Tech will produce the new discs and they should hit the market around October or November of 2005. As for the competition, a spokesman for Sony said that it was possible to produce a disc with both standard DVD and Blu-ray formats, but they have no plans to do so.

R.Hollis

Sony’s Blu-ray technology may not have received any new studio support this week, but that is not stopping them from pressing on. Singulus Technologies, a system integrator of optical disc replication equipment, is joining Sony to develop mass-production equipment to make Blu-ray discs.

Singulus will design and manufacture the BD-ROM replication lines, enabling replicators worldwide to have the ability to manufacture pre-recorded Blu-ray discs. According to Singulus, prototype machines will be available in early 2005 for single-layer and late 2005 for dual-layer.

R.Hollis