Toshiba's president underlined the 'upconvertion' feature of HD DVD and DVD players unveiled plans to concentrate on video downloading market, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Toshiba's President Atsutoshi Nishida, the person who recently made the 'surprising' announcement about the fture of the HD DVD format, described the 'upconverting' feature of Toshiba's DVD players as an advantage for consumers since "they won't be able to tell the difference". He added Toshiba will further work to enhance the feature in the company's upcoming DVD players, that will be "much cheaper" than Blu-ray rivals.

"What people don't realize is that Hollywood studios are going to release new titles not just for Blu-ray but for standard DVDs as well, and there are a far greater number of current-generation DVD players out there," he pointed out.

In addition to standard DVD players, Nishida showed willingness to have Toshiba play a bigger role in the market of video-downloading using personal computers.

"Without a next-generation DVD player, PCs become an even more important part of our strategy. We couldn't connect computers and televisions before, but now there is a technology that let us do that...That means that you can use the DVD player in your computer to watch movies on your big-screen television, and you don't need a stand-alone player," he was quoted as saying. "We've been developing technologies in this area, but now that we don't have the HD DVD business, I want to put even more energy into that."

Nishida said he first started thinking about withdrawal from the HD DVD business when Time Warner Inc.'s Waner Bros threw its support behind Blu-ray.

"I didn't think we stood a chance after Warner left us because it meant HD DVD would have just 20 pct to 30 pct of software market share," he explained.