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Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Warner Home Video, Paramount Home Entertainment, HP, Intel, Microsoft and Toshiba today announced the formation of a new trade organization, the North American HD DVD Promotional Group, Inc., at the Video Software Dealers Association 2006 conference. The non-profit group will promote the companies' common interests in the success of HD DVD and to educate consumers on the quality and value of HD DVD.With the Playstation 3 launching in November, the HD DVD Promotional Group has their work cut out for them. More information can be found here. Add a comment
A new advertising and marketing campaign, also unveiled today, showcases HD DVD as "The Look and Sound of Perfect(TM)". The campaign will be the cornerstone of efforts to be undertaken by the group. The group and its member companies plan to back the campaign with an anticipated $150M in trade and consumer marketing, advertising and promotion through the 2006 Holiday season and into 2007. The campaign will promote the format across all major consumer media outlets -- television, print, online, and outdoor -- co-marketing HD DVD hardware with hundreds of HD DVD titles expected on store shelves by year-end 2006.
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Advertising The on-again, off-again story of advanced optical-disc recording will keep consumers on tenterhooks yet again this autumn, with manufacturers in the Blu-ray camp still not ready to introduce their movie-players to the huge European market.The article mentions that the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show would most likely "lay the ground" for Pioneer's European launch. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here. Add a comment
Pioneer, one of the stalwarts of the Blu-ray camp, admitted this week it would not be ready to launch the players by the time of the Sept. 1 to Sept. 6 trade fair IFA in Berlin, the principal European consumer electronics show.
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The new 1.3 spec HDMI standard will be incorporated in the PlayStation 3. Ken Kutaragi, president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, applauded the 1.3 spec finalization, saying "PlayStation3 will be the most advanced computer platform for enjoying a wide range of entertainment content, including the latest games and HD movies, in the home. By introducing the next-generation HDMI 1.3 technology, with its high speed and deep color capabilities, PS3 will push the boundaries of audiovisual quality to the next level of more natural and smoother expression on the latest large flat panel displays."If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here. Add a comment
Assuming game developers choose to take advantage of 36- and 48-Bit color, the ability to output such a broader color spectrum could give the PS3 a solid technologic advantage over the Xbox 360, which will not be able to transmit such signals over component cables. If the promised, but still not officially announced, Xbox 360 DVI wire comes out, it too will not have the bandwidth to carry the high-Bit color that HDMI 1.3 supports.
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I-O DATA DEVICE USA, INC., (I-O DATA) today announced the retail availability of the number one selling High Definition DVD player in Japan. The AVeL LinkPLayer2 is a networked digital media player and DVD player with support for High Definition (HD) file formats such as Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 (WMV9) HD, MPEG2-TS, and DivX HD. Starting August 1, the award-winning AVeL Linkplayer2 will be sold at CompUSA stores nationwide with a suggested retail price of US$249.00. CompUSA customers will also receive a mail-in coupon for one HDNet video title (WMV9/780p) with qualifying purchase of the AVeL LinkPlayer2.The AVeL LinkPlayer2 will be available on August 1st for a suggested retail price of $249. More information can be found here. Add a comment
Designed for home theaters and digital media networks, the AVeL LinkPlayer2 features 1080i/780p HD video playback capability (1920x1080 resolution), with support for nearly every digital media file format, including MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG2-TS, MPEG4, DivX, XviD, and WMV9 for video; MP3, AAC, WMA, PCM, and Ogg Vorbis for audio; and JPEG, BMP, GIF, and PNG for photos. The AVeL LinkPlayer2 reads media from a wide variety of data sources, including CD/DVD dics, USB memory sticks and hard disk drives, digital cameras, memory card readers, iPods and MP3 players, and Windows, Macintosh, and Linux PCs.
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Toshiba Corp. (6502.T) said on Tuesday it would still like to develop a unified format for advanced optical DVD discs, but two competing -- and incompatible -- products are likely to hit the market at first.This late in the game, we're not going to see a unified format. Both sides have already invested a lot of time and money developing and promoting Blu-ray and HD DVD. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here. Add a comment
Toshiba is a leading proponent of next-generation HD DVD optical disc technology, which competes with the Blu-ray standard promoted by Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). (6758.T) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (6752.T), a maker of Panasonic brand electronics.
"We have not given up on a unified format. We would like to seek ways for unifying the standards if opportunities arise," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told an annual shareholders' meeting.
