Toshiba rumored to quit HD DVD as Wal-Mart pulls support - Page 2

Obsolete? No. Not quite as fully featured? Yes. So you can't download online content. Whoop-de-do. Most of it is just going to be ringtones, wallpapers and other gimmicks, that can simply be put on the disc. The rest is games.

With BD 1.1 you're still going to get the movies with just as many features and just as much quality, which is 99% of what's important. You'll even gt some of the gimmicks like PiP.

BD2.0 just isn't the the killer upgrade that makes other players bow down to the PS3.

That said, if you can get a PS3 cheap or want one for gaming (including BD Live related gaming), then by all means, do so. I'd just rather have a standalone 1.1 BD player as I have no desire for a gaming console and would rather have a traditional component form factor. Bonus if it's $100 cheaper.

So now we will have more money invested in Blu Ray 2.0 technology in which the various Blu Ray manufacturers will try to get the best mix of features that consumers' want at the best price to win the consumers dollars. You think all the manufacturers are going to get together and decide to sell all their Blu Ray players at the same price with all the same features and all that's going to be different is the name on the outside of the player? This is just round 2 of the competition on High Def players.

I see prices declining, via competition, as now manufactures know what definite direction to go in and will invest dollars in that direction.

The only reason I feel better that Blu Ray is winning is because Microsoft backed HD-DVD. That said, if Apple gained the share of the market that Windows has now, I think Apple would worse than Microsoft and I've been a loyal members of the Apple herd since 1987.

Getting flattened in world-wide sales largely due to a high launch price is a great tech decision? Please. And the dual-layer DVDs of the 360 and Wii provide 9 GB of data. Not 4. Very few games would need more. And generally the only ones that will need to are the ones with garbage CGI movies trying to tie a 'plot' together. There are some mighty fine compression technologies out there - you might not know, but Star Wars: Rebel Strike on the GCN, made by Factor 5, contained not only 2 whole games, both with outstanding audio and graphics, but also DVD clips running with no loss in quality from the pure DVD versions. Not bad for 1.5 GB, huh?

Maybe in another year or two you will be damn right. And for next-gen, sure. But having 'plans' for games to use more doesn't mean they should, or even need to.

The reason why Blu Ray won is that it got bundled with every Playstation 3. That was the single clever move by Sony that eventually would tip the scales. And as was said before Sony sold below cost to achieve that.
XBox had HD DVD but only optional. Has anyone actual figures how many PS3 were sold over Christmas vs. XBox + HD DVD? It'll be vastly more PS3 systems.

Has not so much to do with player promotions. If a major game console has Blu Ray players bundled in it is only a matter of time that format reaches critical mass. Unless that game console as a whole falters. But no one really expected Playstation to fail in the long run.

A lot of consumers would get a new Playstation, and once they have it, they will stick to Blu Ray, as this saves them having to buy another player.
Many of my friends got PS3s for gaming and ended up 'hooked' on Blu Ray.

One could argue whether this actually is consumer choice or not. If there would have been a PS3 with either Blu Ray or HD DVD then this would have been 'choice'. But without it you end up choosing between Blu Ray or no Playstation, or Playstation plus extra expense for another HD DVD player. Not such a great choice IMHO.

Toshiba's one big mistake was that they had nothing comparable to offer. If they had handed HD DVD players below cost to Microsoft for bundling with every XBox then perhaps HD DVD would have had a chance.

what pushed the retailers and studios to br was the pressure from downloads, apple tv and netflix they needed to quickly get to a format so consumers don't miss another buying year every delay in the format wars cost the studios and retailers sooooo they want consumers to jump to a format before they jump to downloads. it was apple and netflix that's competing with physical media

for me i l like dvd my kids watch dvd, it's easy rentable, buyable, downloads are coming up fast and will adopt that before i get a br player and the studios/ retailers know this. the future is NOT physical media for movies.

now i like br for a storage format but hd's are sooooo cheap and huge that it's becoming a living dinosaur.

NOFEER, that's exactly what I hear from a lot of my friends as well.

They say DVD's adequate and since they've waited for so long for a winner in HD - Blu Ray war, they might as well wait a bit longer and go online instead.
Apple TV take2 is a really strong first product. And from what I read their HD movies easily surpass DVD quality - even though it uses higher compression rates.
Still has flaws, not too many movies to choose yet and is not available worldwide, but if done right will eventually push any high definition DVD medium out the window for most uses.

It will still exist but probably only for your top favorite movies to collect. But all others you'd rent online - while before you might have picked them up in physical form from a DVD rental, the sales shelf or bargain bin.

Didn't Bill gates say something similar about not needing more than 640K of RAM ??

Give me a break. This kind of false reasoning has been debunked time and time again. There is competition far beyond HD DVD and far more dangerous. It's called DVD. If they keep the prices high, people simply won't buy players and discs, opting for the DVD players they already own and cheaper SD discs. Also, one format begets higher prices? I guess we should have kept DIVX around, then, since obviously DVD having the market to itself was a bad idea, eh?


Same old blinders-on Toshiba fan. Read the Hollywood Reporter article. Note where it says, "But in the end, sources say, the substantial loss Toshiba is incurring with each HD DVD player sold -- a figure sources say could be as high as several hundred dollars..." You point the finger at Sony but conveniently ignore Toshiba selling at a loss. And are all the other Blu-ray player manufacturers also selling at a loss? Part of the reason companies went with Blu-ray was because they could sell players at a profit. Nobody wanted to make HD DVD because Toshiba was underpricing their own players so much that anybody who wanted to compete would have had to lose money too. Other companies just have no incentive to do that.


"Obsolete." That is total BS. Here's what CNET had to say: "Profile 1.1 players certainly don't make older Profile 1.0 players obsolete. While movie enthusiasts lust over special features and commentary tracks, many people are completely uninterested in investing even more time in a movie. If you already have a Profile 1.0 player, it should be able to play all the new Profile 1.1 discs without a problem--you just won't be access to some of the special features. The same logic applies to Profile 2.0--you don't need to wait unless you want to be able to access the Internet-enabled features on the new discs." Stop trying to spread your FUD around here. Murch tried that for two years and now even he's admitting HD DVD is dead as a doornail.

idiot... PS3 is a miserable failure. It trails far, far, far behind the Wii and even the xBox 360! Yes, the consumers made a choice, and PS3 w/ blu-ray was OBVISOULY not it! Blu-ray bundled with PS3 is a moot point, since PS3 barely even made a ripple in the consumer markets for both consoles and hd media players. Nobody buys blu-ray players, just like nobody buys PS3s. Sony is in such a bad financial state with blunders like the PS3 that its in danger of going bankrupt, possibly. This is not the mighty Sony we once knew, not even a shadow.

The PS3 and Blu-ray to a certain extent are almost complete failures...unless of course, that is, you live in either fantasyland or fanboy world!

also, Blu-ray won't even matter in a few years. By the time it gains any significant ground, if it does, it will be obsolete and bow to iPods, the internet, networking, and streaming.

Except for those special features, there's no reason to want to buy or rent a retail disc.

Why would you say that?

Yeah. Okay. Good luck downloading 50GB movies over Bittorrent. Yo ho ho, and all that.

I love the headlines this morning. Reuters: Wal-Mart picks Blu-ray in HD DVD Disaster. Other reports from NHK say Toshiba will lose hundreds of millions of dollars as it finally lets go of HD DVD and stops production. Toshiba gambled and they lost big.

YES PLEASSEEEEE

I bought Orange Box (Valve) for PC recently and I have been pretty impressed with Steam. I have been ready to do it whole of last year but getting a PS3 is just not adding up right now.

And believe it or not, as long as you do *EVERYTHING* else on a Mac, PC for gaming is quite alright.

Oh no. Not another person who believes America=the world.

Care to compare the popularity of PS3 in America to the popularity of 360 anywhere else? Which one is the real failure?

You're taking him seriously? He's obviously either insane or completely ignorant. Maybe both. "Nobody" buys Blu-ray or PS3. Sony going bankrupt. Yeah, right. Ignore him. Everybody else did.

I picked up a brand new, unused (still sealed in the internal wrappings but marked as "open box") Toshiba HD-A3 HD DVD player in Best Buy on Wednesday for $89, which included the two free movies inside and the rebate for 5 more HD DVDs when I checked out.

With all the support gone, I expect films in HD DVD format to be plunging in price all over the net and store shelves. I can pick up the discounted films I want in that format, and when competition drives BR disc players down, I can get one of those. And the upconverting improvement on my existing library is dramatic. While there is an obvious clarity in the HD format missing for 480i DVDs, the improvement is so good that I have no qualms about continuing to buy films I want to own and watch in the old DVD format for 1/4 or 1/3 the price of HD. After all, some films don't need high definition to be good.

All said, waiting for one format to die before I bought in was a good choice for me.

Most movie DVDs are effectively encoded at 480p. It's the TV shows that are usually encoded at 480i.

Catalog DVDs are usually a lot cheaper than the HD re-releases, but new releases aren't that much more expensive in HD media vs DVD. That's why the studios are usually focussing on new releases for HD movies, catalog re-releases don't seem to sell as well, I think largely for that reason.

CNET's Quick Guide: HD DVD vd. Blu-ray

A very good review, one that a number of people should read. Explains a lot.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-13817_7-6462511-1.html

Time to update you're opinion:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/15/p...console-sales/
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/04/e...sales-in-2008/

How could either upscale a DVD?

It's about time. I was growing very weary of this "battle."

Yes there is- portability. You can easily take a disc somewhere else and play it provided someone else has a machine as well. ANd many film libraries consist of limited release titles (criterion) that are very hard to find anywhere unless you own them yourself.

Really what does this have to do with Appleinsider- Walmart news? As someone who's name dare not be mentioned on here once said that by the time the public fully embraces blu-ray everyone will be into downloadable HD anyway. Blu-ray is too expensive-don't you think it would have been added to the ATV by now except that it's too expensive?

They should be commended for going up against SONY, the Microsoft of consumer electronics.

Sour grapes. Bitch and whine about Sony all you want. They won. You backed the wrong horse. Good bye.

Latest news: Now even the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Toshiba will be announcing its surrender as soon as the next few days. I'm in the mood for some Monday morning Blus.

Yes, the MS of Consumer Electronics [Sony] vs. Toshiba and, well, Microsoft.

To pretend Blu-Ray is Sony alone or HDDVD is Toshiba is like saying CD or DVD is Philips. It's an oversimplification to make it easier to hold a grudge and burn someone for a win or loss.

Except that they weren't.

Actually, HD DVD is Toshiba. It's their baby, plain and simple. Microsoft came into the game much later. If Sony were to decide to stop making PS3s and Blu-ray players tomorrow, the other manufacturers and members of the BDA would take up the slack and probably be happy that there's less competition. But notice that every source and every article says that when (not if) Toshiba shuts down HD DVD production, it'll be the final curtain for the format. There's nobody else to take up the banner.

Now that this race is over, when will we see HD DVD exclusives on Blu-ray?

If the DVD consortium had done a better job there wouldn't be all the pressure on Toshiba. The format was still designed with the group; to call it Toshiba's baby might be true to some extent, but they didn't go at it alone.

It's not the DVD Forum's job to force companies to build hardware. Nor do they design anything. They just approve or disapprove. Toshiba and NEC were the sole backers of HD DVD in the Forum. Obviously, NEC does not make players. Like it or not, Toshiba was alone. When the nine companies (count 'em, nine) that backed Blu-ray abstained from approving HD DVD, they changed the rules, expanded the Forum and made it so abstentions didn't count. So, yes, it is the Forum's fault. But it's also Toshiba's own fault. When the majority -- not just Sony, but other CE powerhouses like Matsushita, Samsung and Philips -- says don't do it, don't do it! Toshiba managed to line up everybody else against them by cheating and pissing them off. Now they're paying a very high price for that. The Hollywood Reporter says they lost money on every player they ever sold. So they've never showed a profit on HD DVD but they will take hundreds of millions in charges when they finally quit.

So we treat them as martyrs for their poor business? I really don't see what we're celebrating here. Toshiba was not as alone as you make it sound, but even if they were and we're supposed to celebrate them for going into business against the 'majority' in an effort to control the media for the next decade (alone)? That doesn't sound like something worth celebrating.

(I know you weren't the one initially calling for celebration, but that's what I'm arguing against)

Actually if you read the Best Buy promotion correctly it stated that if you buy a HDTV $999 and up and purchase either a BLU Ray, HD-DVD, or PS3 it would qualify for the $100-$300 package price...

Take a look at the HD DVD promotional group website. On their list of partners, you'll find exactly one other player manufacturer, Venturer. Venturer was not one of the voting members in the DVD Forum during the big fight. They just starting making players late last year. And, boy, they must be regretting that decision now. Microsoft and Intel only jumped in in 2006. HP originally supported Blu-ray. In fact, none of those companies listed are part of the DVD Forum steering committee, other than Toshiba. Sounds pretty alone to me. Where are the HD DVD burners? Only in Toshiba laptops because nobody else makes any. Not Pioneer, not HD DVD "partner" Acer, not LG, nobody. Why? Probably because HD DVD sucks as a PC storage medium. Same price blanks as Blu-ray at 40% lower capacity. Lower write and read speeds. Problems with blue laser dispersion through the thick polycarbonate disc.

You make it sound like they undertook a noble venture. Toshiba started a format war that never should have happened. They didn't care about the consumer or any confusion they may be causing. They just wanted to stretch out their DVD technology a little further and a little longer, customers be damned. That's why they deserved to fail and that's why people are happy they did.

As fitting an entire movie on a five hour Beta tape was never a problem, it wasn't the cause of Beta's downfall. There were other, some not sensible, reasons for that.

Wrong, actually. You might as well say that both Nintendo and MS forced a format on consumers. Both prevented any hi def from any usability on their machines. MS, at least, forced HD-DVD down your throat if you wanted some form of HD. So, Sony forced BD. Why is that any worse? At least it was the smart thing to do, as we can see.

Besides, several games companies have stated very strongly that the bigger space is important to them. Several games, though I don't remember which right now, as I'm not a game player, are already using much of that space, though not all of it yet.

Sony would have sold at a loss no matter what. They weren't competing with HD-DVD for the PS3, they were. and are, competing for console sales. Don't forget that MS was, and perhaps still selling the 360 for a loss, though Sony's manufacturing price for the PS3 has now dipped just below the $400 mark., and the games division has reported several hundred million in profit.

There isn't any less competition now than there was before. If anything, there is more.

Before, because of the uncertainty, few consumers bought into either format. Now, with the war over, there will be increasing sales. That means a much bigger market, and more competition.

Do you think that there is only one manufacturer of BD players? Do you think that every other standard is competitonless because of the standard?

Do you think that CD player manufacturers had no competition?

How about for DVD?

Do you think that prices would have come down any faster, or sales gone up any quicker, if there were competing standards for both?

I don't think so, and neither will anyone else who understands how this works. If you put some thought into it, neither will you.

Perhaps you didn't notice, but HD-DVD promotions also gave five movies with machines. There was no difference there. In fact, people in forums were themselves promoting the fact that with the five movies you were getting with HD-DVD players, it was an even better buy than BD and it's five movies.

Still, most didn't care.

[QUOTE=JeffDM;1216004]It's not that clear-cut on Beta/VHS. The movies produced at the time didn't necessarily show the benefit of Beta. A format that played 90 to 120 min was more desirable for movies than one that played 60 minutes a tape. Early on, you couldn't record a movie from TV using Beta. By the time that changed, the momentum was lost.

Jeff, only the short lived first generation Beta recorded one hour. It did play twop hours, though. The second generation recorded 2 hours, and played three. VHS was ahead, but not by much. It was the third generation products from both camps that had that final recording, and playback times.

Of course, the highest record and playback times for VHS, and the in intial reason why many people bought it, 8 hours, was essentially useless, and after looking at the results once, or after giving up after the tapes broke, people never used it again.

The effective difference for most of the time both formats were out there, therefor, was 5 hours for Beta, and 6 hours for VHS.