It seems like HD DVD has had an uphill battle ever since day 1 doesn’t it? Even though HD DVD came out first onto the market, it never saw any fanfare simply because the majority of the Hollywood studios back the Blu-ray format. And of course – since the super cheap Sony PlayStation 3 has Blu-ray integrated right in, that gives the Blu-ray format even more legs. Of course this isn’t to say that HD DVD hasn’t pulled it’s own share of punches. Consider – yes the format was out first which gave it a few months of lead time. HD DVD players are also cheaper than Blu-ray players – despite the fact that Sony and others have lowered Blu-ray player prices. HD DVD is still cheaper. Oh yes – you can get an HD DVD add on for the Xbox 360 for a reasonable $199 (though yes, you do need to buy the Xbox 360 if you don’t have one). Finally, the content released on HD DVD have been arguably of better quality than Blu-ray (although Blu-ray has many more titles out of course).

Yet despite all of this, we find an uphill battle for HD DVD – simply because of Hollywood studio support. Sad isn’t it? Well, Toshiba has one more marketing trick up it’s sleeve. Similar to how Sony has integrated an expensive Blu-ray drive into every PS3, Toshiba will begin bundling HD DVD drives into every Toshiba laptop starting in 2008. Doesn’t sound like a big deal? Consider how many laptops Toshiba sells in a given year. According to this Inquirer article, IDC finds that over 9.2 million Toshiba laptops were sold in 2006. Um. that’s a lot of laptops. Sure one might wonder if that will do the trick – especially since most people don’t use their laptops with their big screen TVs.. (although they should huh?). It’s a good point and no one really knows for sure.. but at the very least, HD DVD will be a formidable media format within the PC arena – at least until companies such as Sony begin bundling Blu-ray drives into every PC that they sell too.

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