Toshiba May Delay HD-DVD Launch to 2006

Mictian writes "According to Reuters Toshiba may be delaying the launch of it's HD-DVD players that was originally slated for the end of this year. One of the reasons cited was that talks with Hollywood and major studios about the timing are still ongoing. It now seems that the players may not be shipped to retailers before 2006, at least not in the US. The Japanese might still get their hands on 'em by christmas. In any case it looks like a setback for the HD-DVD camp (Toshiba, NEC & Sanyo) if one of their few advantages over the Blu-ray camp (Sony & Matsushita), an earlier product launch, is essentially eliminated. Sony has been rumoured to consider a Q1 2006 launch for Blu-ray in the form of the PlayStation 3 console. There was an earlier Slashdot story about the rivals giving up on a unified format."

Comments

Some background on the formats

[Saiyine]

Blu-ray (BD): backed by Sony and Philips, 22Gbytes capacity, expensive, 54 Mbit/s read speed. [ Wikipedia article ]

HD-DVD: Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo and Microsoft, 15Gbytes, cheaper. [ Wikipedia article ]
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Re:R.I.P. HD-DVD

[KDR_11k]

There's a DVD/BRD hybrid as well.

People here prefer Bluray because it has 10GB more per layer (25GB vs. 15GB) and a much higher upper layer limit (8).