HD DVD group says outselling Blu-ray in Europe
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HD DVD video players have outsold  rival standard Blu-ray players by a three-to-one margin in  Europe's main markets so far this year, according to a lobby  group.
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Blu-ray DVD titles outsold rival  HD-DVD titles by almost 2-to-1 in the first nine months of the  year, but analysts expect additional HD-DVD support and new hit  releases to "transform" the high-definition DVD battle score in  the fourth quarter.
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Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c51881)  has announced the addition of Video Downloads in Europe - A Slowly  Emerging Market to their offering.
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Toshiba (6502.T) said on Friday it would  introduce its first two High Definition DVD players (HD DVD) in  Europe by November, priced between 599 and 999 euros  ($768-1,280), well above prices in the United States.
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(InfoWorld) - Supporters of the Blu-ray Disc format came to Berlin armed with key announcements to underscore their commitment to the next-generation movie disc. The announcements included a flood of new Blu-ray Disc releases, a decision by Acer and China Huala GroupÂ to join as hardware partners, and the establishment of a Blu-ray Disc authoring center in China. They were made Thursday at a news conference organized by the Blu-ray Disc Association at the IFA consumer electronics show. Among some of the big-name movies to appear in the Blu-ray Disc format in the coming weeks are Spider Man from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 300 from Warner Home Video, and a special edition of Sleeping Beauty from Walt Disney. "We've been involved with Blu-ray Disc from the very beginning," said Stephen Foulser, vice president of marketing and business development for Disney in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region. "We will be launching 30 new titles in the format." More than 300 movie titles are currently available in the Blu-ray Disc format, a number that studios plan to nearly double by the end of the year, according to David Walstra, vice chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association. Eight manufacturers of consumer electronic products are now on board, he said. The number of studios supplying content and manufacturers building players are key to the take-up of any new disc format, according to Danny Kay, executive vice president of research and development at 20th Century Fox. Based on the numbers of both of these groups, "the market for Blu-ray Disc is very compelling" he said. "We believe Blu-ray Disc is really the only way to go." Kay declined to comment on the decision of Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation to throw their support behind rival HD DVD, saying only that both studios had access to the same market data as Fox and the other studios. On the device front, Acer will join Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and LenovoÂ as contributing members to the Blu-ray Disc Association, said Walstra, a Sony executive who is also deputy chairman of the association. Huala, a major manufacturer of consumer electronic products in China and supplier of content, has also agreed to become a contributing member, according to Walstra. In addition, the company will team with the China Film Group to establish a Blu-ray Disc authoring center in China, he said. None of the industry executives associated with the Blu-ray Disc Association were prepared to answer a question on whether the expansion into China could lead to greater concerns about software piracy
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Two days after it lost an important ally in the high-definition format battle, Toshiba put on a defiant face at the Consumer Electronics Show and declared the HD DVD format is a long way from being dead.&quot;We remain firm in the belief that HD DVD is the format best suited to the wants and needs of consumers,&quot; said Akio Ozaka, head of Toshiba America Consumer Products, at a news conference. He said Toshiba was surprised by the announcement, which came on Friday, that&#160;Warner Bros. was dropping HD DVD&#160;and exclusively backing Blu-ray.&#160; &quot;We are especially surprised that this decision was made in spite of the significant momentum that HD DVD has gained in the U.S. market and other regions.&quot;Warner was the only major Hollywood studio releasing movies on both formats and the decision to go with Blu-ray Disc meant Toshiba has only two major studios, Paramount and Universal, backing its technology.The decision also left Toshiba with a potential public relations disaster as it came just days before CES, the annual North American gathering of the consumer electronics industry that kicks off officially here on Monday. In response to the Warner news the HD DVD Promotion Group canceled its news conference, leaving some to conclude that backers of the format were ready to concede defeat.&quot;As you can imagine this is a tough day for me,&quot; said Jodi Sally, vice president of marketing for digital audio and video products at Toshiba America Consumer Products. &quot;It&#39;s difficult for me to read all the pundits declare that HD DVD is dead. Clearly the events of the last few days have led you to that conclusion but we&#39;ve been declared dead before.&quot;But Toshiba might have a hard time convincing the analysts and media that follow the battle closely that HD DVD is still in the race.&quot;It&#39;s interesting the CEO said he was surprised. I think that&#39;s an understatement. Devastated would probably be more accurate,&quot; said Peter King, an analyst at U.K.-based Strategy Analytics, who attended the Toshiba news conference.&quot;They really have an uphill battle,&quot; he said. &quot;They are left with a couple of the smaller studios but there is no doubt the major studios have voted with their feet. It&#39;s hard to see now what they can do. Maybe focus on the PC market as a format, but they have a major struggle and that was very clear today.&quot;King wasn&#39;t willing to call the battle over just yet but he said a lot would depend on comments made during CES by other industry leaders, like&#160;Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is scheduled to speak in Las Vegas Sunday evening.But if the battle is over then what&#39;s bad news for Toshiba will be good news for consumers and the consumer electronics industry, he said. &quot;Everybody in the industry can get behind one format [and] start promoting. The message will be simple and clear, prices will come down and it&#39;s a good thing for the industry.&quot;Toshiba said 1 million HD DVD players are currently in the market in North America.In a statement issued on Saturday the company also expressed surprise over Warner&#39;s move &quot;despite the fact that there are various contracts in place between our companies concerning the support of HD DVD.&quot; On Sunday it didn&#39;t elaborate on those contracts or what its next move may be in the march to make HD DVD the de facto replacement for DVD for high-definition content.
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Hollywood film studios have pledged support for one of the competing formats battling for primacy in the DVD market. The group supporting the HD DVD optical disc format for high-definition video is vying with the rival Blu-ray Disc format .
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Toshiba confirms it will launch HD-DVD players in Europe on 15 November, two days before Blu-ray debut in the PS3.
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U.S. video rental chain Blockbuster Inc. on Monday said more customers prefer Sony Corp.'s Blu-ray DVD format to its rival HD DVD, and it will expand its inventory of the high definition discs to a total of 1,700 stores up from 250.
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Toshiba confirms it will launch HD-DVD players in Europe on 15 November.
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Data from Nielsen indicates that sales of Blu-ray media for the first time has outpaced that of HD DVD; however, as expected, both camps in the high-definition format war have different ways of interpreting the data.
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U.S. video rental chain Blockbuster  Inc. on Monday said more customers prefer Sony Corp.&#39;s Blu-ray  DVD format to its rival HD DVD, and it will expand its  inventory of the high definition discs to a total of 1,700  stores up from 250.
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The backers of Blu-ray discs predict victory in the format wars with HD DVD after Warner Bros backed them.
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November 29, 2004 - After months of momentum for Blu-ray, HD-DVD has shot back with a big gain - studio support. Toshiba Corp., which has been developing the HD-DVD format, announced it has lined up Warner Bros.
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The European Commission said Tuesday it has asked several Hollywood studios to explain why they have chosen either the Blue-ray disc or HD DVD format for movie discs to see if they are breaking EU rules that bar companies from shutting out rivals.
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PlayStation 3 driving demand? Blu-ray Disc is catching up with HD DVD, at least in terms of US pre-recorded media retail sales, the most recently published figures from sell-through video sales tracker Nielsen VideoScan show. In the first two weeks of January, BD media outsold HD DVD.â¦
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IFA 06 Toshiba will bring its first living room HD DVD player to Europe in November, the company announced late last week. It will follow up the mainstream launch with a higher end model early the following month, the company added.â¦