It was reported Tuesday that Samsung Electronics will release of next-generation Blue-ray DVD player in late June, a month later than originally planned. The announcement follows Sony’s decision to postpone the release of its PlayStation 3. Samsung’s Japanese rival Toshiba already started selling its own next-generation DVD players in Japan in March and will release them in the U.S. this month.

Sony and Samsung Electronics have teamed to compete with Toshiba, which aims to make its own high-definition DVD format the standard in the next-generation DVD player market.

Toshiba has begun selling the world’s first next-generation DVD player in Japan, while earlier this month Sony delayed the release of its PlayStation 3 video-game console until November; the PlayStation will feature Blu-ray DVD capabilities. The company reveald that HD-XA1 is the first player to support the HD DVD format approved by the DVD Forum, the international standards association.

Toshiba is expected to launch versions priced at less than $800 in the US by mid-April, to coincide with Warner Home Video’s launch of HD-DVD software on April 18. The move will give Toshiba a lead of more than three months in the US before rival Sony launches its competing Blu-ray DVD players in July.

Toshiba said it hoped to launch an HD-DVD recorder in Japan before June and its aiming to launch HD-DVD equipped personal computers in the April-June quarter.

According to the news, Japan has become the second Asian power, after South Korea, to launch free-to-air digital TV for mobile phones through terrestrial digital broadcast system, known as “One Seg”.

Digital terrestrial broadcasting provides programs in high definition and handsets equipped with the service have been on the market in Japan for several weeks now, which can also broadcast programs onto laptop computers or high-end video-game machines.
The service will be free for now and also provides data broadcasting that lets viewers obtain further information from the Internet while watching programs, as well as weather bulletins. However, mobile operators risk losing out if subscribers turn to One Seg instead of pay for Internet on their mobile phones.