Toshiba delays launch of HD DVD Players

In an interesting twist to the battle between the two giants Sony and Toshiba over deciding upon the next standard of DVD format, the latter has decided to delay the launch of their HD DVD format players in the retail market. This is being seen as a relatively tactical move on part of the company considering Sony would not be able to launch their Blu-Ray players anytime soon.

Toshiba as a result would have more time to get the marketing done properly for this new generation DVD players. The original plans had them planned launch for the latter part of the current year. With this delay, the HD DVD players are now expected to be launched sometime during the first quarter of the next year. This launch date is much closer to the Sony’s expected launch of their Blu-Ray players.

Sony’s upcoming Playstation 3 is also expected to be out next year spring time which would feature the DVD drive capable of reading Blu-Ray discs. The problem with the sooner launch is that not much content would be available on this format leading to perhaps slow adoption rate. Similar problems hampered the original launch of the DVD drives in the year 1997.

This delay would give the companies supporting the format more time to push more content out in the market on the HD DVD disks so that the demand would be better when it is launched next year. Market expects these players to be available for less than USD 1000 in the market during the launch time. The high price is also expected to dampen the initial sales chart.