Sony Wins Early Rounds In DVD Battle

Sony expects to ship six times as many of its Blu-Ray high-definition DVD players as anticipated, while Toshiba has slashed its U.S. sales estimates.

A jubilant Sony appears to be winning the first battles in the HD DVD/Blu-Ray technology war.   The company has announced that shipments of its Blu-Ray DVDplayers to the U.S. could massively increase this year – from 100,000 to 600,000.   However, it gives credit not to the players themselves, but the movies coming out on the Blu-Ray format.Of the top 20 new films released on DVD, some 14 or 15 have been exclusive to Blu-Ray, driving sales of the players, according to a Sony spokesman.   Sony sold less than 100,000 of its newplayers during 2006, but other factors have helped spur figures. The Sony Playstation 3 console comes equipped with a Blu-Ray player.   However, as Sony has greatly upped its sales estimates,its main competitor in the market, Toshiba, has lowered theirs. Toshiba has lowered expectations of U.S. sales for its HD DVD player from 1.8 million to onemillion units, while also doubtful about global figures.   “Obviously we are going to have to lower our previous global estimate,” said Toshiba’s Yoshihide Fujii.   The battlebetween the incompatible HD DVD/Blu-Ray formats has carried echoes of the VHS v. Betamax duel of the 1980s, and as that proved, there can only be one winner.