Well, it seems as though I too took the plunge in believing that Toshiba & Sony were going to make all our dreams come true, in the next-gen DVD format war that is. I should have known that this was all smoke and mirrors when only one paper (but a relatively reliable paper) was the source for all this gossip.

Now Toshiba has come out with a press release simply stating that no hybrid format between HD-DVD & Blu-ray is in the works. They have confirmed the hush hush talks and a higher capacity disc of their own though, which leads me to believe that the Nihon Keizai Shimbun wasn?t completely off with their exclusive story. The paper just jumped to a conclusion that we all accepted without a second look.

The new addition to the HD-DVD family is the 45GB triple layer (that?s right, triple layer) disc which will be presented at the HD-DVD workshop on May 11, at the Media-Tech Expo 2005 in Las Vegas. This slap in the face to Sony will allow you to record about 12 hours worth of HD programming. Toshiba will also be unveiling a double sided, hybrid disc which will incorporate a dual layer HD-DVD ROM side and a dual-layer DVD ROM side. It will be able to store 30GB of HD on one side and 8.5GB of SD on the other.

Toshiba even has an independent disc replicator ready to go with manufacturing on the new HD-DVD 45GB and hybrid. The 45GB HD-DVD ROM may not hold as much as the Blu-ray?s 50GB but Toshiba is looking like they need Sony less and less

R.Hollis

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2005 at 9:18 pm and is filed under HD-DVD news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.