Toshiba: HD DVD will triumph
While Blu-ray Disc backers convene this week to refine technical specifications and organize a plant tour of Panasonic’s pilot replication line, a key proponent of Blu-Ray’s rival platform, HD DVD, is taking a post-CES siesta and thinking, “What, me worry?”
Hisashi Yamada, chief technology fellow at Toshiba’s Digital Media Network Co., said in an interview he feels no urgency to convince supporters that HD DVD disks are ready for prime time.
“HD DVD is already here and real,” said Yamada, who also chairs the DVD Forum. “If Blu-ray disk are already being produced on the pilot line, with more than 80-percent yield rates — as the Blu-ray camp claims — why not just distribute their disks? There’s no need to organize a trip to the plant.”
The reason why the HD DVD camp has made no serious overtures to Blu-ray supporters to discuss a compromise to merge the competing formats is simple, at least in Yamada’s view: Blu-ray disks aren’t ready, and HD DVD disks are.
Yamada expressed no regrets over Toshiba’s commitment to HD DVD while speaking with EE Times last week at CES while waiting in a long shuttle bus line at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Yamada has participated twice over the last decade in major optical disk format battles, first with DVD and now with HD DVD.
More: cmpnetasia.com