Toshiba Plans First Blu-ray Player for Holidays

The company's first 1080p disc player will emerge in time for the all-important holiday sales seasons starting in November.

Author:: TVTechnology
Publish date:: Sep 9, 2009
Social count:: 0

Toshiba, the chief proponent behind the HD DVD disc standard that lost out to Blu-ray to become the dominant HD disc standard after a pitched and expensive battle, has not unveiled its first Blu-ray product following more than a year of doing virtually nothing on the Blu-ray front.

Toshiba's first 1080p disc player (model BDX2000) will emerge in time for the all-important holiday sales seasons starting in November, and likely start with a MSRP of about $260. While that's generally in the ballpark of competitors' Blu-ray players, its price points are still noticeably higher than progressive-scan standard DVD players.

But unlike DVD players, Toshiba's first Blu-ray unit includes what it hopes will be seen as added value by consumers — notably BD-Live Profile 2.0 capability for online interactivity, and the option of buying (with an SD card) up to 1GB of storage memory. (BD-Live requires a connection to an in-home broadband system via a built-in Ethernet port.)

Although sales figures vary from month to month, Blu-ray titles generally continue to represent about 15 percent of all video discs sold, according to Rentrak and other data firms,

Samsung Electronics America's first Blu-ray disc players have been shipped to U.S. retailers for availability starting this Sunday, June 25. Samsung's player ( model BD-P1000 ) for the next-gen disc format means that both high-def DVD formats will start to go head-to-head in the marketplace by next week. Sony Pictur

On the surface, the U.S. sales figures from the first several days of this current holiday season are looking way up for HD DVD proponents, who captured slightly more than 60 percent of the next-gen player market against Blu-ray Disc in these early days. But as usual, when the number crunchers put aside those standalone figures and add in the number of PlayStation 3 game consoles sold, Blu-ray comes out the clear leader.

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It will carry an MSRP of around $800, but is expected to be somewhat lower by the holiday sales season next fall.

Sharp said it would introduce a Blu-ray Disc player with recording capabilities that will first be released in Japan next month.

Toshiba, the lead advocate for the HD DVD format, plans to launch its first HD DVD player in Europe by Nov. 15 -- a couple of days before rival Blu-ray disc drives will start to become available as standard equipment in PlayStation 3 from Sony. A second Toshiba HD DVD player model will be released in December, in time

Toshiba, the chief proponent of the now-defunct HD DVD disc format, seems to be showing something of a stubborn streak.

Sony has issued the first firmware upgrade for its Blu-ray Disc player (BDP-S1) in order to, among other things, enhance the unit's BD-Java functionality and to provide added BD-ROM support.

Price, performance, technology slowing growth of Blu-ray Disc players promo image

Steve Wilson, ABI Research principal analyst for the Consumer Video Technologies Research Service, explains his company’s recent market data that doesn’t see Blu-ray Disc players taking off for another year to 18 months.