Toshiba to Launch £400 HD-DVD Drive in November

The BBC reports this morning that Toshiba has confirmed the launch date for its first HD-DVD player in Europe, which releases on November 15, two days before Sony’s Blu-ray enabled PlayStation 3. Toshiba has so far sold 50,000 players in the US and Japan, and is aiming to sell 200,000 worldwide by the end of the year.

As the HD-DVD/Blu-ray battle hots up, Sony is keen to impress upon consumers that whilst HD-DVD discs can contain up to 30GB of data, Blu-ray discs can store up to 50GB. Toshiba meanwhile thinks that 30GB is more than ample for HD-DVD, with Yoshihide Fujii, Toshiba's digital consumer chief, telling Reuters: "The question is: who needs this[50GB]."

SPOnG will continue to bring you the latest news on the high def format battle as it unfolds in the coming months prior to the PS3 launch. One thing’s for sure - whilst the early adopters are already sold on PS3, Sony is going to have some pretty clever marketing tricks up its sleeve to convince the mass market.

SPOnG looks forward to reporting on how the company plans to go about this over the next year, once the initial noise and hype surrounding the November launch has come and gone.