Toshiba says HD DVD "has not lost" despite Warner move

By Franklin Paul and Mayumi Negishi

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp insisted on Sunday that its HD DVD high-definition video format is far from dead despite being dealt a major setback by Warner Bros studio's decision to exclusively back Sony Corp's rival Blu-ray technology.

Akiyo Ozaka, president of Toshiba America Consumer Products, told a briefing at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that HD DVD "has not lost."

But Ozaka was at a loss to say what Toshiba planned to do next after the decision by Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros, one of the world's largest film studios, to embrace Blu-ray, an optical disk format for storing high-definition video that is backed by Toshiba rival Sony.

Toshiba's defiant remarks were the latest salvo in a long-running battle over which format will dominate the next generation of technology for delivering high-definition movies to consumers.

The winner is expected to inherit a multibillion-dollar industry, although consumers so far have been confused by the standards war. Some analysts say that they have also failed to see the attraction of high-definition.

The rivalry has been compared to the video-cassette-recorder format war of the late 1970s and early 1980s which ultimately Sony's Betamax lost and JVC's VHS won.

Toshiba, the main backer of the HD DVD format, defended the technology on Sunday after the HD DVD consortium, a group of companies of which it is a part, canceled plans to hold its own press conference at the Las Vegas trade show, the industry's largest U.S. gathering.

"We were very disappointed with Warner Brothers' announcement," Ozaka said. "Sales of HD DVD were very good last year, especially in October to December."