Toshiba plans on beating Sony to the living room with Cell
Where is Sony landing those PS3s? Kitchens? The rivalry between Sony and Toshiba has been quite the visible one of late in the HD movies space, with Sony backing up Blu-ray and Toshiba firmly ensconced behind its HD DVD format, so it's easy to forget that the two companies recently partnered with IBM to build that much-ballyhooed Cell processor which Sony has powering its new PS3. Neither company has specified exact plans for the chip beyond Sony's obvious gaming push, but both are racing to squeeze Cell into home entertainment products, with the first likely to hit in 2008. When asked recently if Toshiba would have Cell-based consumer products to market first, Toshiba digital media CEO, Yoshihide Fujii, responded with an emphatic "yes," apparently forgetting the fact that Sony has been shipping just such a product for about a month now. According to Sony, "The first priority is the PlayStation and nothing beyond that has been decided yet," so it makes sense that Toshiba will get a jump on them in the non-gaming space, but either way we're excited to see what these two Tokyo-based tech giants will have in store for us in 2008 with that ultra-touted power under the hood.
