The other day I reported that Toshiba is rethinking its launch schedule. Red Herring seems to have a little bit more to add to the discussion.

First of all, while Toshiba will be delaying the HD-DVD launch into next year in North America, it still plans to launch HD-DVD in Japan this year. While that doesn’t help North Americans any, it does mean that HD-DVD will at least get a leg up in Japan. This will help them gain some sales of both players and software.

The article also pointed out that Blu-ray backers expect to start launching their products in March of 2006. This will put HD-DVD head-to-head with the launch of Blu-ray in North America.

IDC analyst Danielle Levitas believes that the studios backing HD-DVD may be getting cold feet. “Maybe the studios are getting cold feet that you can succeed in [acquiring] consumers to move to blue lasers without a standard,” Ms. Levitas said. With so few major players (Warner Bros, Universal, Paramount, Fox, Disney, Sony Pictures), each studio to side with Blu-ray or HD-DVD makes a big difference. With perceptions currently favouring Blu-ray, it only takes one studio to defect to Blu-ray to end the format war. It’s my personal opinion only, but I think that if Universal or Paramount gives in an announces Blu-ray support, then the other one will too. Warner Bros will have to back down and then Blu-ray will have one. If I were Sony, I’d be working really hard on Paramount and Universal right now. Both of those studios support Sony’s proprietary UMD format, so they’ve recently worked with Sony. Switching to Blu-ray at this stage wouldn’t be a big deal, I would think.

Red Herring - U.S. HD-DVD Launch Off Til ’O6