At a briefing in Hamburg on the upcoming CeBIT computing show in March, Toshiba repeated its commitment to HD-DVD, which suffered a bad hit earlier this month with the Hollywood studio Warner abandoning it.

Sascha Lange, marketing chief of Toshiba Germany, announced price cuts for HD DVD players in Europe, matching cuts the previous day in the United States. He said the German price of the model in Europe, the HD-EP30 player, would be reduced to just below €200 euros including 19% German sales tax. (The same model would be offered in the United States at 199 dollars plus tax).

He said the company had needed a couple of weeks to analyse its position after the Warner defection to the rival technology, Blu-ray, at the start of the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES). "We are still convinced this is best product at the most reasonable price for the end user," Lange said. Some 200,000 players had been sold so far in Europe.

Toshiba would in future stress a feature of HD DVD which was not available on Blu-ray players, internet connectivity. "It creates huge opportunities," he said. "We can use it to run a video stream from an internet provider."

Lange quoted a survey by the remaining pro-HD-DVD studios, Universal, Paramount Pictures and Dreamworks Animations, suggesting 30 per cent of users had tried this feature. (Source: earthtime.org).

Story filed 20.01.08