“The war over the next-generation DVD standard is playing out full force at a sprawling electronics exhibition opening near Tokyo on Tuesday with Japanese electronics companies on both sides expressing confidence for victory,” Yuri Kageyama reports for The Associated Press. “The CEATEC 2005 exhibition in Chiba, Japan, is opening as the battle escalated a notch after Paramount Pictures, which had previously supported the HD DVD backed by Toshiba, became the first major movie studio to support both rival formats. Matsushita Electric Industrial, which backs Blu-ray Disc, the other technology, is openly gloating. ‘The format war is coming to a close,’ says Matsushita Executive Officer Kazuhiro Tsuga, adding that he is hopeful other Hollywood studios will follow suit. ‘That’s our current scenario.'”
“Until Paramount’s decision, the six major studios had been evenly split between HD DVD and Blu-ray, also backed by Sony… Analysts say it’s way too early to say which side has the advantage in the format wars. ‘There is no decisive lead for either side,’ says Koya Tabata, consumer electronics analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston in Tokyo. Not everyone is going to rush out to buy next-generation DVD products, and the situation is changing every day, although Paramount’s decision seems to be putting Blu-ray slightly ahead, at least for the moment, Tabata says. Complicating the issue is that the consortium backing HD DVD includes chipmaker Intel and software giant Microsoft, but PC makers such as Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard and Dell are backing Blu-ray,” Kageyama reports.
Full article here.
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