HD Disc Format War Not Over By a Long Shot

[Vinyl Rules!]

Originally Posted by prerich

Downloads will initially get computer geeks like me and the 20 somethin' crowd. Geeks have a way of making things go and so do youngsters (can anyone say Ipod, Iphone? I don't get it, I saw my son watching a movie on his "superphone" and wondered how he could watch a movie on that little screen like that and enjoy it - with inferior sound at that). That's just whats happening. We have several here on this forum that are eagerly awaiting downloads for their convenience factor. I don't rent as many movies from Blockbuster or even Netflix now. I just watch a movie on demand - and determain if its worth buying. It's a good way of auditioning a movie before you buy it.

You and your fellow geek friends are the market that is going to drive downloads and make them the next "big thing." And downloads will finally kill off the silver discs.

Only the dinosaurs here in this forum will keep promoting the virtues of the silver disc, and I suppose they will never give them up. But one day, just like LaserDiscs, Elcassetes, Mini-Disks, and numerous other formats, silver discs will end up in the giant garbage heap of obsolete, discarded, and/or failed consumer electronics formats. [OK, maybe they will shrink down to a very tiny, marginal market like vinyl LP's currently are]

At least you have the foresight here to recognize and accept this inevitable march of technology and progress.

Many here do not and they are the dinosaurs of which I speak. And we all know what happened to the dinosaurs.

[TheMoose]

Originally Posted by PRO-630HD

According to a BetaNews report from CES 2008, BDA representatives on the show floor would not confirm compatibility of older hardware with newer titles:

I think that pretty much sums it up. There are a lot of titles that have not been launched yet.

Do you have a link to that?

[PRO-630HD]

Originally Posted by TheMoose

Do you have a link to that?

Go to post #335.

[DaViD Boulet]

Is everyone at this forum aware that Toshiba has OFFICIALLY folded their HD DVD efforts:

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2008_02/pr1903.htm

TOKYO--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."

Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in 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. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba's commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.

There's also this:


http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/19/l...ence-in-tokyo/

IT'S OVER! The release just hit the wires even before Toshiba started talking. "Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses."

5:00PM - Right on time, Toshiba's president, Nishida-san, takes the podium. He is talking about how great and advanced HD DVD was. WAS. He is also speaking about how Toshiba shared a good partnership with Warner. "There was a difficult decision. Multiple standards have a huge impact on consumers."

5:15 - Now he's just reading from the release, more or less. They're on to bigger and better things: two new NAND factories in Japan, one will be jointly-operated with SanDisk.

5:21 - Q&A time!

Three part Q: what was the cause of HD DVD's failure? What is Toshiba doing with its Aomori HD DVD factory? And what about the timing of the announcement?
A: From an objective, fair point of view, we were clearly in a good place until last December and January. So we were very, very surprised by Warner's announcement. As for the Aomori factory, nothing is final at this moment.

Q: Any plans to adopt Blu-ray?
A: No plans at all, not at this moment.

Industry sources have confirmed that Toshiba had made their internal decision to end HD DVD after the Warner Brother's announcement, but had been waiting to go public until they have determined the best time-table for their exit strategy. I appears that Netflix, Best-Buy, and Walmart were the catalyst for this rapid disclosure.

I hope everyone is now aware which members of this forum have been doing their best to promote truthful accounts of industry events and which content has been pure FUD. I hope that members who have for so long fought to push against a single-format solution will see things in a different light over the coming year as HDM finally has a chance to gain some momentum.

Thank-you Toshiba for a job well done and for helping to improve the quality of HD specs, mastering, and for helping to drive prices down more quickly than we might have seen otherwise.

Let's embrace a single-format HD future and move forward.

[gstarr]

Who knows whether Apple pays more to studios for HD programming or not? Also, Apple generally uses far more server time on HD downloads. It is hard to discern what the extra costs are (or aren't) unless you are privy to the information.

I doubt anyone disagrees with the fact that Blu Ray came half-dressed to the party when launched, particularly in realtion to HD. The competition from, Toshiba HD format no doubt made them feel forced to put out something. I'm not saying that is good--it isn't. But anyone that doesn't read reviews of expensive items before purchasing them is their own worst enemy.

No doubt that the iPOD and MP3 crowd will probably download a lot of lossy video. That isn't the market that Blu Ray is after. They are after the market of people that want the best audio and video and feel that those that buy HDTV's and complain about the quality of video and even audio will be very motivated to get the best of both worlds.

For those that just want to "see and hear" something there is always dvd's and downloads. I guarantee that parents with young children won't go the download route, but will mostly go Blu Ray of their childrens favorites--as kids watch the same thing over and over again. Good biz for Disney (Pixar) and Dreamworks.

I have no doubt that Blu Ray will be successful now and it won't just be because of the "dinosaurs" and the luddites. Blu Ray will be in many new computers too. The computers with HD will probably have to cut prices.

Greg

[AudAdv]

The title of this thread is now awesomeness. It was only about a month ago that it was started, and now ... it is dead along with HD DVD.

All hail the king, long live Blu-Ray ... well at least until downloads ramp up and start delivering the same bit rates and picture quality as discs. ;-)