Toshiba delays HD-DVD recorder-not enough to go around!

July 13, 2006

Over at C|Net today, we can read that Toshiba has decided to hold off on
their HD-DVD recorder launch until they are comfortable that they can properly
meet the demand. It sure will be nice when we get a chance to see what the true
demand is in the marketplace. These recorders are not cheap, so it's anyones
guess who will be buying and how many. Apparently, Toshiba expects them to be
quite popular, even with a price tag of well over three thousand dollars!

Toshiba said on Thursday it is delaying the launch of
the world's first high-definition optical disc recorder based on the HD
DVD format until the end of the month as it hasn't built up enough
prelaunch inventory.

Slower procurement of some recorder components than expected has led to
inadequate inventory, but Toshiba has encountered no long-lasting problems
such as a bug in software or a glitch in production processes, a company
spokesman said.

Toshiba, Japan's second-largest electronics conglomerate after Hitachi,
said last month it would launch the first HD DVD recorder on July 14 in
Japan. It now plans to release the product on July 27. Toshiba has no
plans at the moment to ship the new machine, RD-A1, overseas.

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The new recorder will come equipped with a nice sized
hard disc drive of one terabyte and will probably retail for around 3500 dollars
US. According to the article, it will also be able to record terrestrial
broadcasts. With the large hard drive this would equal about 130 hours of
program storage.

Source: Toshiba