Toshiba, one of the biggest champions of HD-DVD formats, has finally given in and announced that it will be producing its own Blu-ray Disc Player this year. This announcement comes eighteen months after Toshiba lost the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war to Sony and Panasonic and other electronics giants.

After stopping production of its HD DVD players in February 2008, Toshiba announced that it would look into “a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies.”

While Toshiba has made inroads into its video processing and cell processors, the company has, to date, not managed to replace DVD players for home entertainment through any of the technologies mentioned above, therefore leaving no one surprised that the company has decided to pursue Blu-ray technology instead.

While the decision to announce a Blu-ray player must be a hit on the company’s ego, it is a solid decision as they can either develop a Blu-ray alternative, or in its absence, join the Blu-ray camp themselves. This is even more evident from the fact that the money being made in the Blu-ray sector is extremely good despite the bad economy, with Digital Entertainment Group having announced excellent sales for the first half of 2009.

A market leader in its own right, Toshiba was one of the first companies to pioneer the move to DVD. This was why their decision to stay out of the move disc player market was very surprising for people, and is another reason why this new announcement comes as no surprise.

With Blu-ray players costs falling – it is now easy to find one a good Blu-ray player under $200 – the timing of the Toshiba announcement makes complete sense as the player is now in its mass market phase. They are expected to launch their player by the end of the year, although they have yet to announce the country they will be launching it in. Experts, however, are guessing that due to the large market for Blu-ray players in Japan, it would make sense for Toshiba to launch its newest player there.