Toshiba Raise Standard-definition DVD, See Market Opportunity

Toshiba on Monday introduced technology that enhances the picture quality of DVDs, Toshiba this year lost the high-definition format war with Sony,

XDE, or extended detail enhancement, will be in Toshiba’s new XD-E500 DVD player, which will ship this month. The player will be priced at $150, about twice as much as regular “up-converting” players.

Toshiba claims the higher price is justified because XDE takes DVD picture quality to a higher level, but not quite as high as Sony’s Blu-ray high-definition format.

Toshiba had tried to rally the industry around the HD DVD format as a better choice than Blu-ray. The latter, however, gained broader support from movie studios, prompting Toshiba to stop making HD DVD players this year. Read more

Heads-up on technology for 2008

As the New Year rolls out one of the questions I frequently get asked is, “what’s going to happen this year in terms of new technology?”

Beats me — but here are a few guesses.

If you’re a Mac user the next two weeks will offer a definitive view of the direction Apple will be taking for 2008. The Macworld Conference and Expo, next week in San Francisco, showcases Mac products and Steve Jobs’ Keynote address gives us the first glimpse of new Apple products.

The rumour mill is buzzing with talk of a new line of super-thin laptops and even a flash-based laptop. A flash-based laptop would be super-fast in booting up and super-slim because it doesn’t require a hard drive. Read more

Privacy Delays Ad Targeting on Phones

Your cell phone is a potential gold mine for marketers: It can reveal where you are, whom you call and even what music you like.

Considering the phone is usually no more than a few feet away, these are powerful clues for figuring out just the right moment to deliver the right coupon for the store just around the corner.

But first marketers will have to wrest the personal profiles from mobile carriers worried that annoyed subscribers might defect to rivals.

“It’s proceed with caution,” said Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of advertising distributor Burst Media Corp. “Are consumers going to be spooked by the idea that suddenly their phone goes beep and it’s a Starbucks offer, and they are standing next to a Starbucks?”
Read more