The market research company expects Blu-ray Disc to win the battle against HD DVD in the consumer market by the end of 2008.
Price cuts by Toshiba on its HD DVD players in the U.S. earlier this month may prove to be "useless resistance" in the battle against the rival Blu-ray Disc optical disc format, according to Gartner.
The market research company expects Blu-ray Disc to win the battle against HD DVD (high definition digital video disc) in the consumer market by the end of 2008, becoming the next generation replacement for DVDs.
Toshiba's price cuts came after a major Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., announced it would shift from producing in both formats to just Blu-ray alone, expanding the disc format's advantage in the number of movies and other content. Five of the seven major Hollywood studios now back Blu-ray Disc exclusively, while the HD DVD camp has just two, Paramount and Universal.
"Gartner believes that Toshiba's price-cutting may prolong HD DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format. Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over, wrote analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.
Toshiba announced price cuts on its HD DVD players in the U.S. Jan. 15, just weeks after losing Warner Bros. The company will cut the price of its HD-A3 player in half, to US$149.99 from $299.99, while its higher end models, the HD-A30 and HD-A35 are now listed for $199.99 and $299.99, respectively.
Toshiba pledged to keep up the fight against Blu-ray Disc during a press conference at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, despite numerous media reports and analyst comments pronouncing Blu-ray Disc the winner of the format battle. The Japanese company still has some powerful allies in HD DVD, including Microsoft, which sells an add-on HD DVD player for the Xbox 360.
Should HD DVD lose the format war, Microsoft will have to start using Blu-ray Disc on the Xbox 360 in order to allow users to play high definition video games. It's not an outcome the U.S. company would likely want to see. Blu-ray Disc was developed by Sony and is an integral part of the PlayStation 3 game console, a rival to the Xbox 360.
The addition of the high definition drives to the two game consoles has given game makers a new way to add content to their digital games, because both formats have far more storage capacity than traditional DVDs.
At the Taipei Game Show 2008 on Friday, Sony showed off a display of games created using Blu-ray optical discs. Over 100 game titles have already been published in Blu-ray Disc, said Sakura Wang, a marketing manager at Sony Computer Entertainment in Taiwan.
An Xbox 360 booth at the game show displayed the HD DVD logo and showed movies and games for the format, but a Microsoft spokesman could not be reached for comment on the total number of games already published in the format.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141869/article.html
The NCBI Map Viewer provides graphical displays of features on the human genome sequence assembly as well as cytogenetic, genetic, physical, and radiation hybrid maps. Extensive documentation is provided to describe the resource features and methods used, tutorials, and statistics.
Map features that can be seen along the sequence include genes, transcripts, NCBI contigs (the 'Contig' map), the BAC tiling path (the 'Component' map), STSs, FISH mapped clones, ESTs and transcripts from several different organisms, Gnomon predicted gene models, and more.
You can find genes or markers of interest by submitting a query against the whole genome, or a chromosome at a time. Use the Advanced Search form for more complex queries. Results are indicated both graphically, as tick marks on the ideogram, and in a tabular format. The results table includes links to a chromosome graphical view where the gene or marker can be seen in the context of additional data. For genes, a particularly useful display includes the Gene, Ab initio (e.g., the Gnomon predicted models), and UniGene sequence maps. You can also browse a chromosome by clicking on a chromosome link in the ideogram above. Use the "Maps & Options" window, available on individual chromosome displays, to configure your display.
Please note that other genomes can also be viewed in the NCBI Map Viewer resource. The Map Viewer Home Page provides a current list. Additional organism-specific web pages are listed on the Genomic Biology site.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mapview/map_search.cgi?taxid=9606
The Cell Migration Knowledgebase (CMKB) is a database of keys facts about proteins, families, and complexes involved in cell migration. This ongoing project provides a large amount of automated and curated data, collected from numerous online resources that are updated monthly. These data include names, synonyms, sequence information, summaries, CMC research data, reagents, structures, as well as protein family and complex details.
View all Protein Families
Our ultimate goal is to create a comprehensive database that will enable the cell migration community to conveniently access significant information about a molecule of interest. This will also serve as a stepping stone to pathway analysis and demonstrate how these molecules coordinate with one another during cell adhesion and movement.
http://cmckb.cellmigration.org/
