{"id":2388,"date":"2006-04-01T07:35:30","date_gmt":"2006-04-01T07:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/2388-toshiba-begins-selling-first-hd-dvd-players.html"},"modified":"2006-04-01T07:35:30","modified_gmt":"2006-04-01T07:35:30","slug":"toshiba-begins-selling-first-hd-dvd-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/2388-toshiba-begins-selling-first-hd-dvd-players.html","title":{"rendered":"Toshiba begins selling first HD-DVD players"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toshiba’s high definition HD-XA1 DVD player went on sale for roughly Y110,000 in most stores, although it was being sold at a discount of about Y10,000 in some stores. Bic Camera, a leading Japanese electronics retailer, said its Yurakucho store in central Tokyo had sold out by 4pm. <\/font><\/p>\n

The company is expected to launch versions priced at $499 and $799 in the US by mid-April, to coincide with Warner Home Video’s launch of HD-DVD software on April 18. <\/font><\/p>\n

The move will give Toshiba a lead of more than three months in the US before rival Sony launches its competing Blu-ray DVD players in July. Sony earlier this month delayed the global release of its PlayStation 3 video-game console – which features Blu-ray DVD capability – until November, giving Toshiba more time to win over customers. <\/font><\/p>\n

Toshiba and its allies, and a rival Sony consortium are racing to set the standard for next-generation film and video game discs. Toshiba and its partners, including Microsoft and Dell, are hoping that the early debut will give HD-DVD a head start against Blu-ray technology, which is also backed by Dell and most Hollywood studios. <\/font><\/p>\n

But analysts said on Friday that the speed with which Toshiba launched its HD-DVD player would not necessarily give it an advantage. "Its success depends on what sort of content is available," said Hiroshi Kamide, analyst at KBC Securities in Tokyo. <\/font><\/p>\n

In Japan, Toshiba’s HD-DVD player will come bundled with two movie discs: Resident Evil, and Moonlight Jellyfish, a Japanese film. Two more movie titles will be available for sale at the end of April – Neverland and Shinobi, a Japanese film. Toshiba said it hoped that between 100 and 150 movie titles would be available in the format in Japan and Europe by December and 150-200 in the US. <\/font><\/p>\n

Toshiba said on Friday it initially planned to manufacture 2,000 HD-DVD players a month. Yoshihide Fujii, head of the company’s consumer electronics business, said the company expects to sell between 600,000 and 700,000 HD-DVD players in the fiscal year starting on Saturday. The company expects its player to debut in Europe in the October to December quarter. <\/font><\/p>\n

Toshiba said it hoped to launch an HD-DVD recorder in Japan before June, the month soccer’s World Cup tournament begins. It is aiming to launch HD-DVD equipped personal computers in the April-June quarter. <\/font><\/p>\n

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Toshiba on Friday began selling the world’s first next-generation DVD player in Japan, stealing a march on rival Sony, which plans to sell a competing optical disc format this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}