Toshiba @ CES - HD DVD

For its 40th anniversary of doing business in the US, Toshiba is pushing hard into HD DVD, with its first HD DVD player to be available in the fourth quarter of 2005, with a MSRP of just under a grand. It will have 720p/1080i support, HDMI, Firewire, Ethernet, Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 decoders. Sounds cool, but we're skeptical of Yoshihide Fujii (President & CEO, Digital Media Network Company, pictured at right) stating that consumers don't need the 50GB that Blu-Ray offers, and that the 30GB of space of HD DVDs offer is more than enough, as we've always thought the more room the better. What really excites us is they are promising a terabyte (1000GB) unit with HD DVD recording in a few years, there's supposed to be a prototype of it on the CES floor.