Is the End of the Road Near for HD DVD?
According to Ken Lowe of Sigma Designs, a company that develops performance integrated SoC semiconductors and markets them to the DVD industry (among many other industries), HD DVD has only a few months to live. Although the format wars commenced not too long ago, HD DVD is expected to rest in peace by fall of 2007. Just how reliable is this apocalyptic prophecy?
"Sigma Designs' media processors work with both standards and currently power six of the nine Blu-ray players available on the market today including Sharp, Sony, Panasonic, and Pioneer. He's not playing favorites, just telling it like it is."
It seems that even price cuts will not help HD DVD out of this mess. Indeed, Ken declares that HD DVD must do something big and do it fast within the next 2-3 months in order to save its own skin. Furthermore, Ken acknowledges that the PC market has started to become more influential than initial expectations. Apparently the BD format has a competitive advantage over HD DVD, as it features higher storage capacity (25GB versus 15GB on single layer). Ultimately, the winner is expected to be crowned only after holiday season kicks off. But as they say, a tiger is much more dangerous when it is injured. Let's not jump to conclusions just yet.
