Toshiba is apparently going to attempt to swamp the market with HD DVD players ahead of the arrival in stores of standalone Blu-ray disc players or PlayStation 3, but is taking a high-risk route in doing so. The HD DVD developer and backer reached an agreement with and licensed their technology to Chinese manufacturers, opening the door to inexpensive players and the kind of price wars that have turned current standard definition DVD players into ubiquitous commodity items.

In taking this route to secure market share Toshiba runs several risks. An obvious one is having Chinese players for sale at prices that undercut those of their own Toshiba-branded HD DVD players, which were stated to carry a price around $999. And I wouldn't be sure that open licensing in China right out of the gate will make HD DVD more attractive to Hollywood studios who are by their nature overly paranoid about piracy, regardless of how robust the format's security is. Also, one has to wonder if there's still enough time for HD DVD to get a big jump on Blu-ray given that PlayStation 3 is scheduled to launch in Spring of '06, now just a few months away.

Read more about Toshiba's risky move at http://www.guidetohometheater.com/news/110305hddvdchina/.