MS and Intel choose the wrong side

[erdega79]

Microsoft, Intel Back Toshiba's HD DVD, Shuns Blu-Ray

Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software company, and Intel Corp., the world's biggest chipmaker, have thrown their support behind Toshiba Corp.'s HD DVD format, marking a setback for Sony Corp.'s Blu-ray standard.

The HD DVD format, also backed by NEC Corp., Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. and Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, offers cheaper hardware and easier connections to other devices, the companies said in an e-mail statement.

Toshiba and its HD DVD partners aim to make the dominant format for the next generation of DVDs in a rivalry with Blu-ray, which is supported by Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Apple Computer Inc. and Dell Inc. Talks between Toshiba and Sony to unify the standards broke down in May.

``We will build the HD DVD infrastructure for the next update of Windows and participate in promotion activities because we want to support the format that matches our criteria the most,'' Adam Anderson, a spokesman for Redmond Washington-based Microsoft, said in a telephone interview today.

Both technologies offer better picture and sound quality, greater recording capacity and improved copyright protection over existing DVDs. A dual-layered Blu-ray disc's capacity is 50 gigabytes, equal to about 10 conventional single-layered DVDs or about 70 music CDs, according to the Blu-ray Web site. That compares with 30 gigabytes for double-layered HD DVD.

Toshiba said today it will begin sales of laptop PCs with an HD DVD drive in Japan by the beginning of 2006. Samsung Electronics Co., the world's second-largest semiconductor maker, will sell a DVD recorder with a Blu-ray drive, the company said yesterday in a release.

Did anyone expect anything different?