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nuttall_chris
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 832
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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kal
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses
19 February, 2008
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Company Remains Focused on Championing Consumer Access to High Definition Content
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.
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kal
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:08 pm Post subject: |
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An interesting side note: Because of this, the previous contracts that Paramount and Universal had to be HD-DVD exclusive are now null and void. They may do as they please without any penalties.
Paramount will likely start releasing Blu-ray titles that it had recently shelved immediately, but Universal needs a while to ramp up its process as it has not previously produced on Blu-ray.
2 years of bull****. Not sure of the outcome, but glad it's finally over and we can focus on better image quality with HD on disc.
Kal
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Last edited by kal on Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:59 pm; edited 1 time in total
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MikeEby
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 5237
Location: Osceola, Indiana
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:21 pm Post subject: |
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| kal wrote: | focus on better image quality with HD on disc.
Kal |
Nice PUN! 
Mike
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MYoung
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 369
Location: Madison, WI
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:27 pm Post subject: |
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| kal wrote: |
2 years of bull****. Not sure of the outcome, but glad it's finally over and we acn focus on better image quality with HD on disc.
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HD image quality -- something HD DVD got correct from the beginning.
Hopefully they will also focus on finalizing Blu-ray and making affordable, future-proof players -- again, something HD DVD got correct from the beginning.
I'd also like to see Blu-ray become more friendly to consumer-made and independent home video. 3x DVD was a great format that had lots of potential as a bridge to affordable writable HD DVD media. I'd like to see Blu-ray's version of HD DVD's 3x DVD, BD9, developed into a viable means of affordable HDM storage and independent production distribution on single and dual/double layer DVD. It would also be nice if all Blu-ray players could play BD9, just as all HD DVD players could play 3x DVD. AVCHD on DVD without navigation capability and non-uniform standalone player support is unacceptable.
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emdawgz1
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 7949
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:44 pm Post subject: |
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WAR is OVER......If You want it!!
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Person99
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 4899
Location: Flower Mound, TX
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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| kal wrote: |
Paramount will likely start releasing Blu-ray titles that it had recently shelved immediately, but Universal needs a while to ramp up its process as it has not previously produced on Blu-ray. |
I'm wondering about Universal. They were starting to take advantage of HDi. BD-J is crap compared to HDi so I'm wondering if they will wait until BD-J actually gets fixed to release alot. We have already seen this with Warner. Even though they went exclusive, there is still no Matrix on BD because BD suck sooooooooo incredibly bad.
| kal wrote: | | 2 years of bull****. Not sure of the outcome, but glad it's finally over and we acn focus on better image quality with HD on disc. |
Outcome: good for Sony, bad for consumers and people wanting more available content.
I hope even the BD supporters realize that although Toshiba lost alot of money in this war, they helped us as consumers quite a bit. The main two things come to mind are:
1) If Sony had its way, all high def discs would be cheaply and poorly mastered and look as crappy as the original Fifth Element. On Average HD DVDs still look better than BDs, we can only hope that HD DVD set customer expectations of what the discs should look like so that we will get better BDs.
2) BD-J sucks and would likely suck forever, but HDi also showed what features the players could have. Again, hopefully this has set expectations so consumers will demand more out of BD-J.
I'm quite sure adoption will be much slower than if HD DVD had won. $150 players and one format would have made adoption widespread. $350+ players are not going to make adoption quick. We won't really see widespread adoption until players are less than $200. Since adoption rates drive disc availability, we likely won't see a flood of BD discs for awhile.
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kal
Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006
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Location: Ottawa, Canada
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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Outcome was good for Toshiba too. Their stock jumped 5% in a day. Their investors don't want them making HD-DVD.
I have to agree with you Dave, the fact that there even was a war may have helped the quality go up and prices go down faster than if there was only 1 format. We had to wait 2 years however and the startup was slow.
I'm not up on BD-J vs HDi. Anyone have a good table comparing the two? Nothing in wikipedia.
Kal
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Curt Palme
CRT Tech
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 24396
Location: Langley, BC
TV/Projector: All of them!
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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Since I just watched this:
Toshiba: C'mon, fight me!
Sony: I can't fight you, you've got no arms and legs
Toshiba: Come here, I'll bite you
Sony: walks away
Toshiba: Where you going then? Chicken? Chicken! COME BACK AND FIGHT!
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emdawgz1
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 7949
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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I disagree w/ Dave. 
Visually all the B/R discs i own look Very good. Some look Great. (Blade Runner, Night at the museum, Casino Royale, Oceans 13)
So this crap that HD-DVD is Soooo much better... 
At this point its like saying that Babe Ruth is Better than A-Rod.
It might have been true, but Babe is Dead and Alex is not 
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Curt Palme
CRT Tech
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:07 pm Post subject: |
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BTW, Kal's article was front and center in the business section of today's paper as well.
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garyfritz
Joined: 08 Apr 2006
Posts: 12088
Location: Fort Collins, CO
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Person99 wrote: | | 1) If Sony had its way, all high def discs would be cheaply and poorly mastered and look as crappy as the original Fifth Element. |
Sony may be evil but they're not *stupid*. I don't think the garbage 5E transfer was a corporate policy, just a badly-run project. I think the people on the 5E project just picked some bad master sources, compressed them too much, and it got through quality control. I suspect they really didn't realize the videophile-cult-appeal of the movie and figured nobody would mind schlocky quality for what is, after all, a fairly schlocky film.
Were there any other Sony BR movies out then with such bad mastering? If they were all that bad, then I might believe your "Sony wanted to inflict bad quality on consumers" argument. But I think this was an isolated incident, just like there were some poor SD DVD releases.
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Person99
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 4899
Location: Flower Mound, TX
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:56 pm Post subject: |
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| emdawgz1 wrote: |
Visually all the B/R discs i own look Very good. Some look Great. (Blade Runner, Night at the museum, Casino Royale, Oceans 13) |
I agree that they got better. But look at the initial discs. This is how bad they may have all looked if there was no HD DVD. There was NEVER a disc that looked like the original Fifth Element and some of the other early discs--yet Sony they those discs were ready for prime time.
| emdawgz1 wrote: | | So this crap that HD-DVD is Soooo much better... |
As far as movie quality is concerned, they are both capable of storing the exact same movie. There is no difference in quality at all. My point was Sony was mastering all the discs and they decided to do them cheaply and with low quality. When the HD DVD mastering was done well, sony had to step up to the plate. They would not have on their own as their history shows. So without HD DVD we likely would have had poor quality discs.
The only real discussions on the merits of BD vs. HD DVD are:
1) manufacturing costs
2) BD-J vs. HDi
Everything think else is pretty much irrelevant. On these two fronts, HD DVD was much better than BD. It is pretty hard to argue that a $500 player that displays a movie is no better than a $150 player is better for consumers! It is also hard to argue functional, complete, and simple interactivity programming is not better--just look at the fact that Warner cannot yet achieve the interactivity features it wants to release the Matrix.
So, I'm not sure how you can "disagree" with something so simple and straightforward. Show me the HD DVD that looks as bad as The Fifth Element, and yes, I'll admit that there was one studio who was willing to put out the same level of low quality crap as Sony.
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Dave
A train station is where the train stops. A bus station is where the bus stops. On my desk, I have a work station....
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emdawgz1
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 7949
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:57 pm Post subject: |
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| garyfritz wrote: | | Person99 wrote: | | 1) If Sony had its way, all high def discs would be cheaply and poorly mastered and look as crappy as the original Fifth Element. |
. But I think this was an isolated incident, just like there were some poor SD DVD releases. |
Has anyone ever seen the original DVD release of Air Force One?
Its barely watchable. Theres a lot of bad dvd releases.
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Person99
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
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Location: Flower Mound, TX
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:59 pm Post subject: |
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| garyfritz wrote: | | Person99 wrote: | | 1) If Sony had its way, all high def discs would be cheaply and poorly mastered and look as crappy as the original Fifth Element. |
Sony may be evil but they're not *stupid*. I don't think the garbage 5E transfer was a corporate policy, just a badly-run project. I think the people on the 5E project just picked some bad master sources, compressed them too much, and it got through quality control. I suspect they really didn't realize the videophile-cult-appeal of the movie and figured nobody would mind schlocky quality for what is, after all, a fairly schlocky film.
Were there any other Sony BR movies out then with such bad mastering? If they were all that bad, then I might believe your "Sony wanted to inflict bad quality on consumers" argument. But I think this was an isolated incident, just like there were some poor SD DVD releases. |
It was not an isolated incident. None of the early discs were this bad but many were not great. After the first batch of discs, many thought all BD would be crap.
And yes, Sony is not stupid. If they didn't have to spend any more money on transfers, why would they. If there was no HD DVD, they would have kept the cost of transfers down and done the all cheaply because it would have made them more money. After all, those discs were better than SD DVD--so why do better than that if they didn't have to?
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Dave
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kal
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Person99
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
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Location: Flower Mound, TX
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:26 pm Post subject: |
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| kal wrote: |
I'm not up on BD-J vs HDi. Anyone have a good table comparing the two? Nothing in wikipedia.
Kal |
I don't know a good quickie site. But here is a quick summary:
BD-J:
1) Plagued with problems getting all the features to work.
2) More complex to program interactivity features.
3) Requires significantly more "horsepower" to run than HDi.
4) Considerably more extensible than HDi
HDi:
1) Fully functional and working correctly from day 1.
2) Considerably simpler to program than BD-J.
3) Efficient runtime.
4) Can only use functionality that is part of the API.
Basically, HDi is way more efficient and allows you to describe what you want to do. BD-J is basically just programming Java. In web terms, it is much like comparing programming Flash to programming Java Applets. The applet will require a machine with more horsepower, is harder to program, but can pretty much do anything you want it to, even if you don't need that functionality.
So, the biggest downsides for consumers to BD-J as I see it (assuming that some day they get it right) is:
1) Studios will all need to develop their own frameworks to make any real features cost effective. This framework development will take time and also means that different studios will have different types of interactive functionality, so less consistency between interactivity from different studios (likely the different frameworks will expose different levels of functionality and be inconsistent between studios).
2) It requires significantly more horsepower to run the BD-J code, thus, machines have to be more expensive because they require more expensive faster processors.
In the end, the extra cost of the BD optics as wells as the processor required to run BD-J will keep BD players above the $200 mark for awhile which is why I think adoption will be slow.
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Person99
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 4899
Location: Flower Mound, TX
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:30 pm Post subject: |
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| kal wrote: | | I dunno, I've read at least one report from online reviewers that have stated that "on average", Blu-ray ends up scoring higher in the video quality department. |
That may be true now. My point is Sony was forced into this. Look at the average quality of the first 20 HD DVDs vs. the first 20 BDs--before Sony was forced to improve. My contention is Sony would not improve the quality if they didn't have to.
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Dave
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kal
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Person99 wrote: | | In the end, the extra cost of the BD optics as wells as the processor required to run BD-J will keep BD players above the $200 mark for awhile which is why I think adoption will be slow. |
True. But if they can keep up the pace of BD adoption long enough, we should start to see some truly new and creative things with BD-J - things that could never be done with HDi, and things that would be true differentiators from regular DVD. At this point the people still using DVD may be enticed to jump. We need a huge monumental jump for the next HD disc format to truly replace DVD. From what you say, it sounds like BD-J could do that while HDi was limited. This would be a good 5+ years down the road though. There's lot of work to do.
But it's a dangerous game like you mentioned Dave: By allowing BDi to do just about anything and having such high end lofty goals, you run the risk of a false start and fizzling out.
I don't know the politics of profile 1.0 vs 1.1 vs 2.0, but if I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd even think that Sony held back 1.1 and 2.0 such that the first players didn't have to be as powerful and pricey.
Industry reports have always shown that it's the extra features that do it for the average consumer. They don't really care about sound/picture quality much (they're all happy with DVD). The studios want to sell the movie once in the theater, and then sell it again at home by adding a bunch of extra stuff you don't get when you first saw it in the theaters. And I don't mean a 'directors cut' with an extra 10 minutes of useless fluff: The audience seems to like the extra feature stuff a lot. BD-J could give them all sorts of stuff like completely interactive games, online delivery of content, etc. Sky's the limit from what I understand. I most likely won't use any of it myself, but if it helps the average person buy into HD on disc so that prices come down, I'm all for the extra crap.
Kal
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Person99
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
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Location: Flower Mound, TX
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:24 pm Post subject: |
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| kal wrote: | | From what you say, it sounds like BD-J could do that while HDi was limited. |
True, but if there was something that the studios wanted, HDi could be versioned and add that to the API. So, HDi is extensible, just not really by the content developers.
| kal wrote: | | I don't know the politics of profile 1.0 vs 1.1 vs 2.0, but if I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd even think that Sony held back 1.1 and 2.0 such that the first players didn't have to be as powerful and pricey. |
I don't think they held back. I really think that they just couldn't get it working correctly.
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Dave
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