Posted Thu Sep 20, 2007 at 10:39 AM PDT by
In an apparent effort to emphasize HD DVD's interactive capabilities, the HDi logo will soon be featured on a series of players and discs.
Beginning in the fourth quarter of this year, the logo will appear on all Toshiba players, and on the packaging of HD DVD titles released by HD DVD-exclusive studios Universal and Paramount.
Microsoft says it recently trademarked the name, which powers interactivity on HD DVD discs.
The HD DVD camp appears to be positioning HDi (and the advanced interactive features it enables) as one of the format's key selling points over Blu-ray.
Committing to target "the MySpace generation," Universal announced this summer that it would include HDi-powered web-enabled features in all of its new releases on HD DVD, with VP Ken Graffeo pointing out that Blu-ray players "don’t have the consistency in their machines to be able to handle this."
Likewise, in a recent interview, Paramount CTO Alan Bell attributed the ease and flexibity of publishing titles with HDi as one of the factors in his company's decision to back HD DVD exclusively, describing Blu-ray's rival interactive technology, BD-Java, as more complicated and less reliable.
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