Despite the recent launch of Blu-ray players, media and pre-recorded discs in the US, the format has been delayed in the European market. Pioneer, which was due to launch their player in Europe from September at the time of the trade fair IFA in Berlin has postponed its launch until next year, with a potential announcement of a launch date at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It is unclear at this time if Samsung has plans to launch a Blu-ray player on the European market this year.
HD DVD on the other hand will likely get a couple of months lead like in the US with Toshiba insisting that they will be ready to launch in Europe at the time of the Berlin trade show opening. So far, Toshiba has not mentioned what features their player will have or what its price will be. Thomson may also be ready to launch their HD DVD player model also later this year.
So far on the global market for high definition DVD players, the HD DVD market is still a fair bit ahead of the Blu-ray market with a ratio of 70% HD DVD to 30% Blu-ray. However, this could easily change once the PlayStation 3 launches in November. Thanks to D4rk0n3 for letting us know about this news:
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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. Toshiba, leader of the camp that makes the rival standard, the HD-DVD, insists it will be ready to roll in Europe when the Berlin show opens. Both camps have had a rocky beginning in Japan and the US. Some further info can be read here and on X-bit labs. |
When it comes to high definition televisions, unlike the US, Europe is a fair bit behind when it comes to penetration of HDTV sets, especially due to the lack of HDTV content. For example, the US has had HDTV programming available over satellite and terrestrial for over a year now, where as only a couple of European countries have just launched a handful of HDTV channels. This means that the initial launch of both formats will likely be slow selling. On the other hand, by the time Blu-ray does finally launch in Europe, consumers may get an idea of which side to go for should one format take a significant lead over the other.
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Source: Taipei Times
