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Toshiba Subsidizes $200/Unit on New HD Player
WestTexasWaltz writes "According to a teardown analysis, Toshiba is losing $200 per unit, of its new HD DVD player, in order to gain some marketshare. Interesting that integrated circuits account for more of the cost than the drive itself. Also, this particular analyst concludes that Blu-ray and HD-DVD will "not be a repeat of VHS vs. Beta" and that a stalemate is the likely outcome."
Boy, are you misinformed.
The only difference there is spindle speed, 1.2:1 difference to be exact, DVD+R to DVD-R. The underlying technology and interface are exactly the same beyond that.
Wrong. There are significant differences in tracking, linking, and error management.
HD-DVD uses a standard red laser operating at a much lower wavelength of light
Swing and a miss. Both Bul-ray and HD-DVD use a 405nm blue laser.
Beyond the cost for a blue laser system, you then have to support two dual chip sets for processing HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs because of the completely different DRM standards being used.
Nope. Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD use AACS.
And yes, this is hardware decoded in consumer devices so you're talking about quite a cost if you wanted to build custom ASICs to do both in one chipset, in licensing fees alone!
You clearly don't understand the IC market very well. There are ASICs that handle the vast majority of the needs for a DVD player, including drive servo / spindle control, MPEG2 decoding, multiple different audio formats (MP2/AC3/DTS, often MP3 and WMA as well), video scaling, OSD generation, and, in many cases, even incorporate a microcontroller.
Extreme integration is very common for a market this size.