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HD DVD Player Delays in Japan

Posted by Zonk on from the waiting-for-the-shiniest-discs dept.

TheSync writes "EE Times is reporting that Toshiba is delaying introduction of HD DVD players in Japan because of the unavailability of Advanced Access Content System (AACS) DRM system licensing. The Register reports that Toshiba is still planning a late Q1 launch of HD DVD in the US." From the EET article: "Toshiba hoped to introduce HD DVD players by the end of 2005, ahead of Blu-ray Disc players, but decided in September to postpone the U.S. introduction until 2006. In July, IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Sony Corp., Toshiba, Walt Disney Company and Warner Bro. Studio formed the AACS Licensing Administrator (AACS LA) to develop license AACS technology. AACS LA has completed its version 0.9 of the technology."

4 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Improve Sales? by Ruff_ilb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wait, I thought DRM was supposed to improve sales and market share by avioding those pesky pirates... If we're releasing whole lines of products much later because they don't support DRM, doesn't that defeat the purpose?

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    http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
  2. Ridiculous mistake by timster · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wow, this is a stupid error. They are blowing (or at least, reducing the impact of) one of their biggest advantages over Blu-Ray: that they were ready to go to market. All for one of the most useless features in the spec.

    Come on, is there anybody who believes that DRM of DVDs was successful? What evidence is there that sales were increased due to DRM?

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    I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
    1. Re:Ridiculous mistake by Zed2K · · Score: 4, Insightful

      DRM is not about increasing sales, its about getting studios to sign on and release movies in your format. This has nothing to do with the consumer and everything to do with making the studios happy. No studios no movies, no movies no sales.

  3. see? by akhomerun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    see what DRM is doing? it's beginning to delay technology!

    without DRM we'd probably have the next gen DVD formats by now since a huge chunk of development time toshiba and sony are just trying to get their DRM/encryption as perfect as possible so that it takes 3 weeks to crack it instead of 2.