HD DVD standard currently leading in Europe

Sony has taken an early lead in the US market with their next generation storage format Blu-Ray. However, Toshiba’s HD DVD format is leading in the European region.

In fact, European movie studios are favoring HD DVD over Blu-ray due to the cost savings involved in HD DVD duplication.

However, we believe that Sony is trailing in Europe because of the delay in launch of their Playstation 3 console in this market.

The Sony Playstation 3 gaming console comes loaded with a Blu-Ray drive and has become a shining star for Sony in terms of sales when compared with Toshiba’s standard players.

Microsoft is indeed shipping a HD DVD drive attachment for their Xbox 360 gaming console but not many gamers are going for it looking at the lack of content in the market.

French replication company Qol CEO Laurent Villaume was quoted as saying in the media for their reasons to support the HD DVD format: “An HD DVD replication line costs about €800,000 and you can make 40,000 discs a day on it. A Blu-Ray replication line costs €1.7m or €1.8m and you can make 10,000 to 15,000 discs a day.”

DS DVD CEO Alex Ponti added: “The expense is prohibitive. Additional capacity will be needed when we produce additional content but that is years away.”