JAPAN — With both players and discs already available for both competing ‘nextgen’ DVD formats, corporate backers of each format are set to market burners capable of writing to the two new high-definition media types.Toshiba, a partisan of the HD-DVD camp, announced last week that it will begin selling the RD-A1, a combination HD-DVD burner and one terabyte hard disk which can record and store up to 130 hours of high-definition content, according to a written statement released by the company.
The RD-A1 will be in stores in Japan on July 14th, with a suggested retail price of 398,000 yen (approximately $3470 USD), according to Toshiba.
Toshiba spokeswoman Junko Furuta said the company hasn’t decided when the product will be launched outside of Japan, but Toshiba hopes to sell 10,000 units of the RD-A1 by the end of the year.
Mean, Blu-ray backer BenQ Corp., Taiwan’s top cell phone manufacturer, has announced that it will begin selling a Blu-ray-compatible burner in late August, at price of just over $1,000, according to reports published on Reuters.com.
The projected price of Ben-Q’s burner is around $500 less than the expected price tag for competing Blu-ray burners, including those expected from Blu-ray inventory Sony, and other primary Blu-ray supporters Philips and Pioneer.
Along with news of the nextgen burner releases, a Japanese market research firm reports that Toshiba is selling its HD-DVD players at a significant loss.
According to a report published by iSuppli Japan K.K., iSuppli researchers estimate the price of manufacturing Toshiba’s HD-A1 at $700 or higher, while the player sells in the US for $499.
Some analysts say Toshiba’s decision to take the loss was a calculated risk taken in order to beat Blu-ray, as well as competing HD-DVD players, to the market. Toshiba executive Mark Whittard, however, disputed iSuppli’s claim, saying that the HD-A1 was “priced to make a profit.”
