Audio Video News

A Japanese newspaper has reported that Toshiba will in fact market a Blu-ray player, though further details are scanty. It's not known whether it will emerge in the North American, European, Japanese, or world markets.

But it does mark a hell-froze-over moment for the inventor and licensor of the equally good but vanquished HD DVD format. In the wake of HD DVD's demise, Toshiba has busied itself building advanced standard-definition video processing into its TVs and DVD players. Apparently that was a transitional strategy.

If Toshiba really wants to steal a march on other manufacturers, it could do so by introducing the first component Blu-ray recorder in North America. Currently the only way we can record Blu-ray is with a PC drive. In Japan, recorders dominate Blu-ray with 70 percent of the market.

Toshiba first hinted at its move into Blu-ray last month when its CEO commented: "It makes no sense to decide not to enter the Blu-Ray market simply because we lost the DVD-format [sic] war."

See PC World.