Toshiba Execs Declare HD DVD Not Dead Yet 516
Lucas123 writes "HD DVD proponent Toshiba remains defiant that its format will not succumb to the mounting tsunami of support for Blu-ray Discs. Akio Ozaka, head of Toshiba America Consumer Products, said at CES today that he was surprised by Warner's decision." It should also be noted that the HD DVD group has cancelled many of their meetings at CES.
Re:Toshiba Fell Victim To The Xbox Demographic (Score:5, Informative)
How would they demand that? Microsoft simply does not care about HD-DVD enough to risk tanking it's game console like Sony did (by forcing the price up for something that doesn't actually help games).
Re:porn is blue ray is it not? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:blueray hd dvd? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:porn is blue ray is it not? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:blueray hd dvd? (Score:1, Informative)
Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use AACS encryption, which has been cracked. HD-DVD only has this DRM, so the format is compromised from now until the end of it's life. Blu-Ray on the other hand has an additional optional layer of DRM, BD+, which has not been cracked yet.*
The rabid, paranoid executives at BIG MOVIE COMPANY are always going to demand that it be difficult to copy their movies, so it's no surprise they are going to the format that makes it harder to do so.
*note, AnyDVD can circumvent BD+ now, but not completely. The latest version can copy a BD+ enabled disk to a harddrive, where it can only be played back using PowerDVD. Still no copying to recordable discs or transcoding or anything useful, unfortunately.
Re:Toshiba (Score:2, Informative)
Re:blueray hd dvd? (Score:3, Informative)
OK, I'll correct you. It's actually spelled Blu-ray [blu-ray.com] and it's not a fad. Stupid yes, but not a fad.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Toshiba (Score:2, Informative)
You don't say what country you're referring to in regards to broadband adoption, so I'll just assume you're talking about the US. Here in the States, there's a disconnect between urban/suburban and rural areas with respect to broadband, but that gap is slowly closing with DSL technologies working farther and farther away from COs, long-distance wireless, and fiber rollouts (I grew up in a rural area, and even my parents have broadband now thanks to long-distance wireless from the town 5 miles away). That combined with the fact that much of the population is in urban/suburban areas where broadband is available means that most of the market can get movies online if they were available.
On distribution speed, nothing's ever going to beat the convenience of driving to your local Blockbuster (assuming you have a local movie rental place, anyway) and picking up a disk. That said, I can download a ~5GB 720p movie off of Xbox Live in about a day on my 6mpbs cable line, while Netflix takes two days to get me a new movie (even with a local distribution center, it takes a day to get there and a day to get back), so I can definitely see online distribution taking over the Netflix/Blockbuster Online model. Sure, I'm "only" getting a 720p copy off of Xbox Live, but my TV is 720p and most HD disk material is natively 720p as well so it's not like I'm losing anything. That means it's a race between 1080p as a distribution standard and bandwidth increases allowing me to still download movies in about a day.
And finally, I don't think studios are going to be too concerned over their cut, since online movie distribution generally follows a rental pattern. You pay $5, and you can keep the movie for 2 weeks (some work needs to be done on the current licensing, as Xbox Live has a lame "2 weeks or 24 hours after first play" restriction that is too limiting -- bump the "after first play restriction" to 3 days or even drop it entirely and people will be much happier). Maybe I'm atypical, but I'm not a big movie purchaser. Once I've seen a movie once, that's enough for me. I own maybe a dozen DVDs of movies or TV series that I actually cared to keep, but the vast majority is a one-time-only deal. Given the prevalence of movie rentals, I suspect I'm not alone.
I was referring more to the interface and availability rather than raw capacity. As a marketplace, Xbox Live is very appealing because it presents everything to you in a logical way. PSN is more haphazard, acting as a simple web page in the PS3 browser. Unless you're using a mouse and keyboard on your PS3 (which you can, though it's a bit annoying to do so from a couch), the Xbox Live interface is much easier to navigate and
Re:Toshiba Fell Victim To The Xbox Demographic (Score:3, Informative)
More than that... (Score:3, Informative)
HD-DVD is also region-free. There is no option whatsoever for region coding. If you really wanted to, you could release a multi-region, encrypted HD-DVD which adapted based on the default language of the player, or even a GeoIP lookup if they have it plugged in to the Internet.
Blu-ray has mandatory AACS encryption, and the optional BD+, and as far as I know, absolutely no format cheaper than a single-layer Blu-Ray disc (25 gigs). So much for home recording.
Oh, and there are a large number of technical advantages to HD-DVD -- for one, there's a triple-layer disc coming, so it now beats Blu-Ray on capacity. But it's obvious that Warner doesn't care about the technical issues.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Slashdot admins must have all bought BR (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The war might be over, but the battles will go (Score:1, Informative)
The same goes for my ps3, I bought it primarily for games but also use it as my primary movie player now.
Not just Sony! (Score:5, Informative)
From wikipedia:
The current 18 board members (as of December 2007) are:
* Apple Inc.
* Dell
* Hewlett Packard
* Hitachi
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* Sun Microsystems
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group / Buena Vista Home Entertainment
* Warner Home Video Inc. (Exclusively as of January 4 2008)
Re:Toshiba Fell Victim To The Xbox Demographic (Score:3, Informative)
Bluray $337 [amazon.com]
HDDVD $299 [amazon.com]
Or if you're into bundles, Walmart to a PS3 and 15 free disks for $499.
Re:consumers win (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Toshiba (Score:3, Informative)
When exactly did the PS3 start outselling the 360? In Nov for example the 360 sold 770k and the PS3 only sold 466K according to NPD. Here is a decent graph [vgchartz.com] of sales over the last year to show that the PS3 worldwide isn't closing the gap.
Re:It's only MOSTLY dead. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Unlikely (Score:3, Informative)
Much of their success is directly attributable to launching early and getting some early bandwagoners on board.
Re:Toshiba Fell Victim To The Xbox Demographic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Toshiba Fell Victim To The Xbox Demographic (Score:3, Informative)
They should choose their friends well (Score:3, Informative)
Toshiba fell victim to believing HD-DVD was going to ever be supported by anyone beyond that niche demographic. And it cost hundreds of millions in their losing battle against BluRay.
What did they do? All the media industry, using Sony/Apple devices daily saw Windows Vista laptops made by Toshiba supporting HD-DVD. Imagine you are a high end Hollywood technical person using Mac OS X and you don't even have basic data recording capability if you use your Mac. You will choose HD-DVD while you are happily backing up those DV files to BluRay?
For a long time, if you have good money to spare, you can buy a Firewire Blu-Ray recorder from Lacie, install Toast 8 (comes free) and even use BluRay RW on OS X. HD-DVD was basically non existent on anything except Windows.
I really don't get this "Sony hate" anyway. It uses H264, has Java which is totally open now, they sponsored TerraSoft solutions to ship a PS/3 Linux, they use industry standard frameworks like OpenGL on Sony PS3... Just because we hate Sony, we should support MS'es best friend Toshiba and XBox 360 introduced format?
Toshiba should have chosen their friends well. On media industry, you can't dare to mess BOTH Sony and Apple and get successful. You can't get adopted when you are friend of a company which sees everything except Windows doing that "multimedia thing" as a loss. We speak about a company who hated the fact that Linux/FreeBSD/OS X people can happily watch Youtube via Flash technology and decided to kill (!) it with SilverLight.
With current prices, you are shipping $30-$40 , high end 1080P content having audiophile like features, your target demographic is NOT XBox 360 gamers. They will happily download those 720p highly compressed x264 torrents, they will pay $30-$40 for a game they play. Sony made clever choice while they added everything to make PS3 a high end home multimedia/communication central. There are many people who has Ps3 and uses it just like a very high end personal entertainment device rather than gaming. Same for PSP too. I got friends having PSP but only using it as a handheld multimedia device.
Re:It's only MOSTLY dead. (Score:3, Informative)
From a production studio perspective, it has better DRM. HD-DVD DRM was cracked pretty early on, and I bet that caused studio execs to wet their pants. Blu-ray (and BD+) were cracked later, but firsts often matter more.
HD-DVD has... very little to compete with Blu-ray. Independent examinations have shown slight quality differences favoring HD-DVD for films released in both formats, though there's no technical reason that this must be the case. They've also got pricing--HD-DVD players are cheaper than Blu-ray. Generally speaking, though, that's not going to matter much. The studios are going to do what they want, and they want draconian, difficult-to-break DRM.
Re:Toshiba Fell Victim To The Xbox Demographic (Score:3, Informative)
I don't believe that for a second. HD DVD and Blu Ray are so close to each other in terms of their system requirements, their technical specifications and the standards they implement that I doubt there is any significant difference in the cost of either.
If HD DVD appeared cheaper (appeared being the operative word), it is more likely due to Toshiba being the sole provider of HD DVD players while Blu Ray consisting of a consortium of consumer electronics firms. Toshiba can set its prices however it likes including taking a large loss while BDA members are attempting to sell their players for a profit.
I expect that even Sony didn't subsidize its standalone players (though maybe it did with the PS3) for the obvious reason that it doesn't want to hurt BDA members.
Even so, BD players are dropping rapidly. Some are already sub-$300 and chances are they'll be sub $200 before the year is out. Chinese manufacturers will get in on the act to ensure cheap end systems and there are plenty of new models being announced in CES.