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Toshiba To Halt HD-DVD Production
Multiple users have written to tell us that Toshiba is planning to halt production of devices related to HD-DVD. According to Japanese broadcasting network NHK, Toshiba will lose "hundreds of millions of dollars" as the format war finally draws to a close. Regardless, investors are pleased that Toshiba has made the decision to cut its losses. This comes after a last-ditch price cut was unable to prevent Wal-mart from throwing their lot in with Blu-ray, although some sources suggest that Wal-mart was already aware of Toshiba's plans to withdraw from fight.
This is of course great news (that the war is over - nothing to do with who won), but having forked out for a Blu-Ray disc lately (running around $50 over here) I can honestly say that I wish I had not fallen for the blandishments of that sales guy who told me I should buy a smaller, but much higher definition, TV.
If I had my buying decision over I would say after the initial technogasm brought on by seeing every hair on the actor's heads, you very quickly forget about the quality and just wish your screen was bigger. (Apparently this is a common effect.)
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
I, on the other hand, am something of a movie buff, I got into DVD in a fairly big way and own 500+ movies (excluding porn and TV shows). There's no way I'm going to pay to replace these with Blu-Ray or any other HD format. A found a a £150 DVD player with HDMI and on-board scaler to be a much better investment. Maybe it's not quite as good looking as an HD disc would be (but who can really tell? I don't think more than a dozen of my movies are actually available in Blu-Ray or HD-DVD yet), but it certainly revitalised my disc collection.
I'll still turn to Toshiba for relevant hardware needs. The company laptops are Toshiba, and they're solid, reliable machines.
And since Sony stuck that effing rootkit on their CD's, I decided I will never, ever voluntarily have anything to do with that company again for any reason. The last Sony hardware I saw was a kind of "all in one" stereo system some department store sold to my great aunt. All design, all plastic, no performance. For what she paid, it sucks. Too bad...they used to be the gold standard for affordable, reliable electronics.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The real competition is DVD. HD media isn't doing terrible by any means, numbers wise it is doing better than DVD was at this time in its life cycle. However DVD sales are dominating both HD formats. And thanks to this competition prices should continue to be reasonable as HD adoption hasn't taken over yet. Thus this lone single format should be good for HD business, and for consumers.
Insert something witty here...
Except that the Blu-ray specification is such a mess that there is exactly one Blu-ray player on the market that is worth buying as it will be properly compatible - the Playstation 3.
The Playstation 3 has outsold all other high-definition disc players on the market put together by a huge margin. This is the only machine that disc manufactures will make sure is fully compatible.
If this situation continues, and the other manufacturers don't drastically improve their performance, then Blu-ray is set to become almost as proprietary to Sony as the UMD.
It's even worse than that: at least with DVD region-free players were available easily almost from the beginning.
With Blu-ray, almost all Blu-ray players in existence are Playstation 3 consoles. As far as I'm aware, no one has managed a region-free version of this.
>Toshiba will think twice next time when it comes to forcing competing formats on consumers
Quite how ths got marked inightful is a mystery. HD-DVD is (or now, was) the official standard for HD and was sanctioned by the DVD standards body, the DVD Forum. BluRay was the non-standard bully boy. After all the previous wars, the whole point was there is a DVD standards body who decide upon updates and new features in conjunction with the various manufacturers - SOny decided to go off on a tangent (again) but this time won (probably as a result of bundling it in the PS3)
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The reasons HD DVD lost are many but one of the was lack of region encoding. As a consumer region locking sucks big time, but it's important for studios. Just consider a movie like Ratatouille or No Country for Old Men. Both of these appeared on Blu Ray in the US while they were still showing in cinemas in Europe. It suited Disney's model to encode the disks. Other titles might have different distributors in different regions so lack of region coding could cause all sorts of issues. I know as a consumer these concerns seem pretty lame, but clearly some studios think different. One marginal benefit for users is that you get the release as soon as possible in your region rather than it being delayed by its release elsewhere. And some disks are not region encoded at all and there are websites where you can find out which disks are and which aren't.
seriously i don't get this attitude that it's ONLY 720p. only 2 years ago people would cream their pants over 720p, and now it's somehow defunct?
have people even SEEN a 720p movie on a good tv? it's amazing. and to qualify i HAVE a 1080p 70" inch, and i still select 720p movies over 1080p because of speed of the download and the quality difference is at time not noticable.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This makes up for all the times I've been wrong! 2 years ago...
"i think people are a little confused about what Sony are trying to achieve with the PS3. Sure, it's going to be up against the Wii and XB360, but I'm guessing that's a secondary concern to Mr Stringer.
The PS2 sold 105million units. Let's say the PS3 is a disaster - how bad could it be? 50million? 25million?
Those are all Blu-ray devices. At least an installed base of 25million Blu-ray players sold in a few years time. Versus how many HD-DVD players? How can HD-DVD compete with that kind of a headstart?
Owning the next-gen DVD format is the prize here. HD-DVD is only 33% ahead of Blu-ray today, before the PS3 even hits the market. I think that's more precious to Sony than losing a bit of ground to Microsoft. Maybe they calculated on losing gaming market share this time round."
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=206006&cid=16798816
I thank you!
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Just as a comment about region encoding, the PS3 isn't region encoded for Blu-Ray films (I've yet to try games). I've got a couple of region 1 Blu-Ray films for my region 2 PS3 and they work perfectly fine.
The PS3 is only region encoded for DVDs and PS2 games.
Except that the Blu-ray specification is such a mess that there is exactly one Blu-ray player on the market that is worth buying as it will be properly compatible - the Playstation 3.
And even that one isn't feature-complete with regards to the audio codecs that BD supports. To the best of my knowledge, there isn't a single BD player out there that supports the full range of options that are in the BD spec.
This guy's the limit!
There is already mass confusion, with some hard disk camcorders being labeled just "HD" rather than "HDD". Thankfully most of them are switching to "HDD" as consumers complain.
The worst thing I've seen as recently as today, is still photo (as opposed to movie) cameras which bear the "Full HD 1080p" logo, even though they CANNOT record video. It's simply stating that it has a digital output which can show still images at 1080 line.
LG has a dual format writer that can be had for as cheap as $327. I couldn't find a burner that only supported HD DVD for any cheaper.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It's ironic... the cheapest crap DVD players from China will play anything vaguely resembling an optical disc with files vaguely resembling a standard published somewhere just fine, but expensive high-end players even choke on discs they're SUPPOSED to be able to play. I had a friend with the exact same problem... the $600+ Denon he had in his living room refused to play anything from a DVD+R, but the $129 no-name player from WalMart in the bedroom worked just fine (this was a few years ago, as you can tell from the prices).
Concerns about 1.1 players aren't completely unfounded thanks to BD+ and its DRM "enhancements". BDA has reserved every right to revise the Blu-Ray standard in a way that would render 1.0 (and possibly 1.1) players unable to play even the main feature. They haven't done it yet... but they could, and consumers (in the US, at least) would have no recourse whatsoever. It says so right on the first or second page of every new player's manual.
anything scientific is carried out in meters
Note that PCB design, to a large extent, is still done in mils - which is 1/1000 of an inch. Converting millimeters to mils is a common occurrence, and woe be the designer that confuses the two.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
It's ironic... the cheapest crap DVD players from China will play anything vaguely resembling an optical disc with files vaguely resembling a standard published somewhere just fine, but expensive high-end players even choke on discs they're SUPPOSED to be able to play. I had a friend with the exact same problem... the $600+ Denon he had in his living room refused to play anything from a DVD+R, but the $129 no-name player from WalMart in the bedroom worked just fine (this was a few years ago, as you can tell from the prices). You are so right on the money. You have no idea how many tortured conversations I've had with idiot clients that went something like this:
Client: The DVD your sent me is worthless! It doesn't work! Send me another one!
Me: Sir, what brand player do you have?
C: It's a Marantz, their top of the line! Your product is crap! I want a new DVD!
Me: Sir, the Marantz players are not compatible with DVD-R/RW or DVD+R/RW media, and they do not properly implement the full DVD specification. It's not our disc, it's your player.
C: [frothing] That's impossible! It's the most expensive player on the planet! I paid $8,000 for that DVD player! It's made of precious metals! It has to be the best because it costs the most! Your product is the problem! I demand a new disc!
Me: Sir, there's nothing we can do to make it play on your Marantz. If you call Marantz they will confirm it will not play burned media. I suggest you go purchase a cheap $99 upscaling DVD player at Wal-Mart. It will play our discs just fine and with a quaility indistinguishable from your Marantz.
C: [completely unhinged] That's insane! How could a $69 player work better than my platinum-encased $8,000 Marantz? It must be your disc at fault!
Eventually I convince the client that reality does indeed exist. They try the cheap player. They see it work. They try the same disc in their gold-plated uber-player and it doesn't work. They feel like complete asses for spending that kind of dough on a DVD player. Next client, please.
Barnum was right.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky