With the debut of its first Blu-ray optical drives, LG Electronics Inc is joining the effort to promote the next-generation DVD format in Taiwan.
"We expect Blu-ray drives will start to pick up in the market after next year," said Gatti Park, assistant general manager at LG Taiwan.
The company launched its Blu-ray drive, GBW-H10N yesterday. The drive is able to write at 4x speed and burn 25 gigabytes on single-layer discs.
The drive will retail for NT$29,900, while conventional drives sell for NT$1,600.
Admitting the price might seem steep, Park said it is in line with retail prices in other countries and will most likely come down in the second quarter next year.
Due to the current shortage of Blu-ray drives in the US and Europe, LG Taiwan will only sell 20 units from the first batch here, but it hopes to increase that number to 300 units a month later on, he said.
LG Taiwan is the latest firm to push the new DVD format in the local market. Pioneer Corp has already begun to sell Blu-ray drives, while Toshiba Corp is selling HD-DVD players.
The fight for the next standard DVD format is split between two camps, one led by Sony Corp, developer of the Blu-ray standard, and the other led by Toshiba, developer of the rival HD-DVD standard. Whoever wins the fight stands to reap a fortune in royalties.
The battle is similar to the 1980s fight over video cassette recording standards, which saw VHS win out over Sony's Betamax.
These new DVDs have the selling point of offering up to 30 gigabytes of storage capacity -- six times the amount in current DVDs -- to show movies in high definition.
"Prices for Blu-ray drives are similar to those of desktop computers, and it takes a lot of persuasion to get consumers to buy one," said Hsieh Pei-fen (
To enjoy high-definition picture, users also have to have compatible televisions or PCs to support the new drives, she said.
The fight over the mainstream standard as well as the high prices of optical storage will hinder adoption in the market, she said.
According to Japan's Techno Systems Research, Blu-ray and HD-DVD optical storage products will grow at 66 percent each year to account for 26 percent of the world's market in 2010, up from 2 percent this year.
There will be 66 million units of such products by then, up from this year's 0.7 million, it said.
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