Toshiba launches world's first HD DVD player in Japan

Hypnosis4U2NV used our news submit to tell us "So much for a delay.."

Here we have a report from Yahoo! that says Toshiba has launched the first salvo of players sporting the angry blue laser. Of course in Japan, they can use these on a greater variety of television sets, as they were able early on to obtain a nifty region code exclusion that ignores the
Image Constraint Token or ICT. ICT gives film studios the ability to
decide to force downrezzing, on non compliant sets, on a disc by disc basis in
order to frustrate scofflaws from making a copy of the high definition
output from a non-compliant port. Therefore, with the ICT flag ignored, even if the studio had this on the disc, if the person has a monitor with enough horsepower, they can see the films on disc at the players top resolution. At least for now.....

Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. on Friday started rolling out its high definition DVD players in Japan, becoming the first company to offer next-generation optical disc players worldwide. Toshiba said its new HD DVD machines, which will compete with rival Sony Corp"s Blu-ray technology, will sell for about 110,000 yen ($940) in Japan. Sony aims to offer Blu-ray-based players in the United States for around $1,000 in July. The new machines are expected to breathe new life into the slowing home video market, but the failure of the competing Toshiba- and Sony-led groups to agree on a unified format has paved the way for a costly battle reminiscent of the VHS-Betamax war of 25 years ago that caused widespread customer confusion. "Why do we need next-generation optical disc players now? Because viewers are increasingly asking for them as high-definition TVs spread rapidly," Toshiba Corporate Senior Vice President Yoshihide Fujii told a news conference.

Toshiba went on to say, that they will also offer two specific players in the US, the HD-XA1 and HD-A1, for $799 and $499, respectively. What we need to keep an eye on, is just how well these things are actually accepted by consumers. Toshiba states they will unload as many as 600,000 to 700,000 around the world by the end of next year! In addition, they plan to unleash HD-DVD PCs around April or June. Will their predictions be accurate? Time will tell!

Source: Yahoo!