With Tuesday's launch of two HD DVD players from Toshiba, the public gets its chance to decide whether that format or its rival, Blu-ray, is the rightful heir to the DVD.
In the public relations battle between the warring technologies, HD DVD scored a victory by getting to market first. Toshiba's HD-A1 ($500) and higher-end HD-XA1 ($800) players hit store shelves this week, two months before the first Blu-ray player is scheduled to go on sale.
This is a high-stakes game, and not just for the movie studios, electronics manufacturers or software companies with a piece of the $24 billion home video market. Consumers could lose big by betting on the wrong technology.
|