Even though Holiday sales season is near and it is highly likely that without ongoing format war the survived Blu-ray disc format is likely to enjoy relative success, Toshiba Corp., which used to back competing HD DVD format, has no plans to offer Bu-ray disc (BD) player despite of the fact that it has all the technologies at hand.

“We have no intention of adopting Blu-ray for our DVD players and recorders,” corporate senior vice president Yoshihide Fujii said at a press conference to in Tokyo, Japan, last week, reports TradingMarkets.com web-site.

The refusal to adopt Blu-ray technology is understandable: Toshiba does not want to support its rival Sony Corp. with the promotion of the high-definition video format. In addition, if Toshiba comes out with a BD player, it will also have to support its own HD DVD format with this device so that to show loyalty to its customers. Unfortunately, universal BD/HD DVD/DVD drives are pretty expensive, hence, the player may not get competitive price-tag.

But the decision of Toshiba is pretty much regrettable. Apart from the optical disc drive itself as well as firmware difference, virtually all Toshiba’s HD DVD players are truly similar to Blu-ray profile 2.0 players. All HD DVD players feature two video decoders to enable picture-in-picture (PiP) capability, Internet connectivity as well as up to 1GB local storage, which can be expanded easily. In addition, recently released SpursEngine SE1000 processor could enable superior DVD playback with the help of Toshiba’s eXtended detail enhancement (XDE) technology.

$30 per player fee that Sony-led Blu-ray disc Association asks from manufacturers of BD-compatible devices is something that plays a significant role in slow adoption of Blu-ray in general due to high prices. As a consequence, the market remains pretty small and Toshiba may simply not be interested in helping its further development.

Tags: Toshiba, Blu-ray, HD DVD, Sony