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.

Comments

whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

Blu-Ray is so much easier on the tongue than a mouthful of acronym(s).

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[ledow]

Yeah, they would have been much more accepted if they had pronounced it "Heidi DVD". :-)

I always think the funniest acronym is PXE UNDI - it sounds like fairy knicker to me.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[mrxak]

But HD DVD doesn't sound stupid. It says exactly what it is, and doesn't embarrass itself. Blu-ray, besides being spelled incorrectly, says nothing about what it is. Whatever happened to the glory days of Video Home System, Compact Disc, and Digital Versatile Disc?

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Eivind]

Nobody gives a fuck. Ok ?

90%+ of average consumers don't have any clue whatsoever what "VHS" stands for, and couldn't care less.

For that matter, most consumers couldn't tell you what "HD" stands for either.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Anonymous Coward]

Hot Damn!

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Escogido]

But HD DVD doesn't sound stupid. It says exactly what it is, and doesn't embarrass itself. Blu-ray, besides being spelled incorrectly, says nothing about what it is. Whatever happened to the glory days of Video Home System, Compact Disc, and Digital Versatile Disc? Are these all *that* much better than BR really? I agree that unlike BR they give people a vague idea what they are about, but you honestly don't expect people to instantly understand what either of them implies anyway. Think of it, if you never knew what a Digital Versatile Disc is, what'd you imagine it to be? A disc with digits on it that can be used as a lot of other things? :)

It's more like a product trademark to me: you don't complain that the word Panasonic is 'better' than say Toshiba, just because Panasonic literally means pro-sound and Toshiba is a compound noun where To- means Tokyo, and what -shiba is I forgot. But that doesn't still make Panasonic any 'better'.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[ozamosi]

It's a feature.

Digital Versatile Disc is a backronym - DVD originally meant Digital Video Disc, until they realized how stupid the name actually was ("Yeah, this game is distributed on a video disc. But it's not really a video..."), at which point they just redefined the abbreviation. When I think about it, I realize that HD-DVD's name is just as stupid: you can have just as High Definition audio/video or interactive media on HD discs as you can on "SD discs", just not as much.

By not having a meaning, blu-ray avoids that problem - a blu-ray disc is a disc that uses blue rays.

I do think that CD is a good name - it tells me what it is (a disc that's quite small, compared to LP's), not what they developed it to contain. But CDSDWEMRFDTDVD (Compact Disc-sized Disc With Even More Room For Data Than Digital Versatile Discs) doesn't have such a nice ring to it... Of course, today it's more of a Big Disc, compared to Minidisc or mini-DVD, which again shows that neutral names are better.

To finish off, let me just counter your "glory days" argument by saying "BetaMax" and "Video2000".

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[AvitarX]

Imagine the confusion when Hard Disk camcorders became available.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[ceeam]

You mean "Vertical Helix Scan" and "Digital Video Disc"? (and I like these original "decodings" better)

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[drsquare]

HD-DVD doesn't tell you what it is. From the name, I'd assume it was a normal DVD with HD content on, that could be played by hooking up a normal DVD player to a HDTV. With blu ray you know it's a different format straight off. And five fucking syllables...

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Metorical]

[rant]

This is not insightful, you've just made up facts, so you're forcing me to finally sign up.

I visited Samsung back when DVD technology was still in the labs and their guys were very keen to show it off. They all referred to it as a Digital Versatile Disc. Remember at this point you couldn't buy a DVD in the stores and data DVDs became mainstream a long time after videos.

Also for it to be a backronym then it couldn't have been an acronym beforehand. From dictionary.com:

backronym jargon
(Backward acronym) A word which has been turned into an acronym

or

n. [portmanteau of back + acronym]
A word interpreted as an acronym that was not originally so intended.

[/rant]

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[nmg196]

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.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Jon_S]

I'm still amazed at how many times I hear, *on the radio* that HD-radio stands for "High Def" radio. Ibiquity has a great scam going there.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Tony Hoyle]

Blu-Ray is so much easier on the tongue than a mouthful of acronym(s).

I'm not sure something that can be (and frequently is) pronounced 'Blurry' is a great name for an HD format either...

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[IGnatius T Foobar]

90%+ of average consumers don't have any clue whatsoever what "VHS" stands for, and couldn't care less.

And those who do, probably think it stands for "Video Home System" -- a backronym created by a bunch of marketing types.

An even smaller percentage know that it actually stands for "Vertical Helical Scan," a technical acronym which describes the physical tape format and transport.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Just Some Guy]

And those who do, probably think it stands for "Video Home System" -- a backronym created by a bunch of marketing types.

That's because they're right. VHS has been Video Home System for decades, probably since its consumer launch (and certainly at least soon afterward).

The engineers might have called it "vertical helical scan", but it wasn't ever widely marketed that way.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[The Qube]

Not to burst your bubble, but Sony has won pretty much every format war:
3.5" Floppy Disc - today's format is based on Sony design
Compact Disc - developed by Sony and Philips
DVD - developed by Sony and Philips
Digital Audio Tape - de-facto standard in the music and professional audio industry
Beta - the standard tape format in the video industry for the past 20 years

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[pnewhook]

Frequently? never heard that before - sounds like product bashing from the HD-DVD fanboys.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[The Qube]

Not at all. Surgeon General says that smoking is harmful...

Betacam, Betacam SP, DigiBeta and the newer HD versions are THE standard in the video industry. Even the Betacam SP, now 20 years old at least, is very widly used and still hasn't been fully replaced by the newer digital versions, even in the "Western" video world.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Blkdeath]

And those who do, probably think it stands for "Video Home System" -- a backronym created by a bunch of marketing types.

That's because they're right. VHS has been Video Home System for decades, probably since its consumer launch (and certainly at least soon afterward).

The engineers might have called it "vertical helical scan", but it wasn't ever widely marketed that way.

Erm, that means the acronym actually stands for "vertical helical scan" my friend. Making up a new meaning for an acronym doesn't change its original meaning. Hence the term used by the OP "backronym" - an explanation that won't scare the neophytes who purchase the technology.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[rtechie]

I visited Samsung back when DVD technology was still in the labs and their guys were very keen to show it off. They all referred to it as a Digital Versatile Disc. He's not wrong. The SPEC was originally called "Digital Video Disc" and it was changed to "Digital Versatile Disc" during development. However, the term Digital Video Disc was widely used in promotional materials, particularly by the DVD Forum. So "Digital Video Disc" became semi-official. You can still find new discs labeled Digital Video Disc. I saw this on some DVD-Rs I bought the other day.

Re:whew, fewer syllables

[Just Some Guy]

Making up a new meaning for an acronym doesn't change its original meaning.

It also doesn't make the original meaning "more correct", except for people who want to sound smart at parties.

Hence the term used by the OP "backronym"

That's not really appropriate here. Since VHS was never known as anything other than Video Home System to the world at large, you can't really claim that it's wrong. At the very least, you could say that both are correct.

Better luck next time

[djupedal]

Toshiba will think twice next time when it comes to forcing competing formats on consumers. Maybe other manufs. will also learn something and fight this stuff out in the labs rather than hope for luck by trying to confuse consumers again and again.

Now if we can convince England to use the euro and drive on the right side of the road we can at least pretend to be a modern civilization :)

Re:Better luck next time

[Jafafa Hots]

Exactly. When will huge multinational corporations stop forcing competition down people's throats and realize that what consumers want is monopolies, lack of choice and the resulting high prices!

Re:Better luck next time

[garlicbready]

I've heard they're going to phase it in
Heavy Goods Vehicles / Trucks for the first month on the right side
then cars / bikes later on

Re:Better luck next time

[mrxak]

For those that think we're better off without standards, imagine if there were multiple competing HTTP protocols.

Re:Better luck next time

[terjeber]

Why is it that people conflate competition and competing formats? There was more competition in the Blu-Ray camp than there was in the HD DVD camp. Toshiba was dumping players, but there was still no real competition, Toshiba was the only (real) manufacturer. You can have competition when there is a single standard, no problem. There is, for example, competition in the DVD business, always has been. Are there more than one DVD format? Did the DivX fiasco add value for the consumer?

The format war would have made sure we had continued high prices for a long time to come since the war it self slowed down adoption. With slow adoption both consumers and producers will tend to do a lot of fence sitting, and that is not good for anybody since it takes longer to get to the benefits of economics of scale. Everybody but pirates benefits from this war being over.

Re:Better luck next time

[Kris_J]

I don't want more choice, I just want better stuff.

Re:Better luck next time

[Charcharodon]

Left, right it doesn't really matter. I took me all of two weeks to stop feeling weird driving on the left and a month to stop making random right lane errors.

The only thing that I find unfamthomable is the use of some of the colors on the road.

For example they only use white paint for the lines. In the States they use white and yellow. You can tell the difference real quick which lanes are for your direction of traffic (white) and which is the divider line (yellow). I've had more than a few moments of panic where I could not tell for the life of me which lanes were which.

I take that back there are two things about driving in the UK, the second is do you people believe in F'ing street/road signs? Considering that the names of the streets change every 3 blocks and they don't run in a straight line more than 25 yards at a go, it would be simply amazing to have both the street and the cross street names on a sign, you are lucky just to even have a cross street that you can see from the road you are travelling on.

I foresee a GPS in my immediate future.

Re:Better luck next time

[robosmurf]

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.

Re:Better luck next time

[Gerzel]

They mean the same thing to a complex mind when the formats in question are both proprietary and do about the same thing.

In this case there was competition between the formats not only in which format was "better" in terms of storage quality (not to mention archival, access speed and other properties) but also even if one format was clearly superior which was better in terms of price and availability.

I don't think having both formats around was hurting anything as both are still in early adoption phases, most users don't have Blu-Ray or HD DVD yet and a large portion perhaps even a majority don't have the capabilities to use such formats (at least in the new abilities they provide) yet over the older standard.

I still see this as a bad thing and perhaps the "wars" are not over at all as Hard Drives, Flash drives and other storage options are coming down in price and are able to offer similar amounts of storage. The real contender in these "wars" as I see it could be download bandwidth rather than delivery of a physical piece of media.

In the end these media wars are good for the consumer. Take CDs for example, a format that won with relatively little competition. The way things are sold to consumers is that the new format is more expensive at first but as it takes hold and becomes dominant is prices drop to match the old cost with a margin determined by the cost of production. Music CDs are still fairly expensive and have not come down (as I believe) to a price comparable to that of Cassettes even though the older format has been more-or-less out of the market for several years now.

For Formats it is difficult to raise prices on consumers as there is an expectation that the prices will fall over time and consumers will need a reason to pay more with the information on the format primarily being a luxury good. However that expectation works both ways as consumers expect that two items of the same format will cost about the same on average.

Re:Better luck next time

[0xdeadbeef]

Toshiba will think twice next time when it comes to forcing competing formats on consumers.

I bet you post comments on YouTube.

Re:Better luck next time

[clickclickdrone]

>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)

Re:Better luck next time

[gsslay]

Whenever anyone mentions England driving on the right, I think; "Good, won't be affecting the rest of us in the British Isles then."

Although it would make crossing the borders interesting.

Re:Better luck next time

[bmartin]

The problem is that without one, you can't afford the other. There are technologies developed in the 90's that you can't afford yet because of legitimate patents. With even a single other player in the market, the better stuff becomes affordable. With one vendor, your only choice is between buying from that vendor and not having their product, no matter what the cost is.

I'm simply not naive enough to believe that you can have the good products without healthy competition. If your product is "good enough" for consumers and you're the only supplier, where's your motivation to innovate or improve?

Re:Better luck next time

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

Re:Better luck next time

[Tony Hoyle]

PS3 isn't profile 2.0 yet either.

Not that it matters. 1.1 is all 99% of people will ever need... who needs online content on your bluray player? It'll all be advertising anyway.

Maybe in 5-10 years when downloads become popular.. but by then all bluray players will have some kind of 2.0 support and be able to participate in that when it happens.

Re:Better luck next time

[gabebear]

They are coming, but I don't think most people won't care. Profile 2.0's only real feature is Internet connectivity, which is kinda neat...

I'm guessing most Players will be profile 1.1 (or maybe 1.2) except for computers and the PlayStation 3.

Re:Better luck next time

[Mordaximus]

SOny decided to go off on a tangent...

• and Samsung
• and Philips
• and Panasonic
• and TDK
• and Sharp
• and LG

and so on, and so on... a little research is in order, before throwing on the Sony Troll hat.

Re:Better luck next time

[Xesdeeni]

We tried in the 70's.

My theory about why it failed is that this was the same time the government decided we needed to slow down on our huge highway system. So 70+ Mph roads were reduced to 55 Mph. About the same time, there was an attempt to introduce the Metric system, requiring cars to have kph on their dials and Speed Limit signs to include it as well. The problem (my theory) is that they chose to equate 55 Mph to 80 Kph. It didn't take a calculator to figure out that 80 Kph is closer to 50 Mph, because it was clearly obvious on your own speedometer! So drivers eschewed the Metric system so they didn't have to slow down even more. If the powers that be had had the greenest of green marketing team, even they would have realized posting 90 Kph (almost 56 Mph) would have garnered more public acceptance.

But as a result of the attempt, we now live in a perpetual limbo. Gas and milk are sold by the gallon. Cola (soda pop, whatever you call it) is sold by the liter. Everyday life is measured in inches, feet, yards, and miles, while anything scientific is carried out in meters. Dry medicine is measured in milligrams, but our weight in pounds. Sigh...

Xesdeeni

Re:Better luck next time

[Miamicanes]

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.

Re:Better luck next time

[SydShamino]

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.

Re:Better luck next time

[prisoner-of-enigma]

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.

Re:Better luck next time

[HTH NE1]

Profile 2.0's only real feature is Internet connectivity, which is kinda neat... I remember when the complaint about DiVX was that it phoned home your viewing practices. I guess this has become more acceptable now that it uses the Internet instead of your phone.

Re:Better luck next time

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Remember how compact discs which broke the spec weren't allowed to be labeled with the philips CD logo? You're going to see Blu-Ray on anything burned to a Blu-Ray disc, whether it will play in anything in particular or not.

And if you'll recall, every time someone has tried anything like this, it's always either been hideously easy to crack or it's been a compatibility nightmare that backfires. Retrofitting a completely different DRM scheme onto an existing format is almost impossible for these two reasons.

So, to use your example, once BD+ is cracked (and it will be, and the crack will become widespread just like DeCSS), Sony can either do minor revisions of BD+ (which will again get cracked) and retain compatibility with the millions of existing player, or Sony could completely revamp BD+ (BD++?) and break all existing players. Obviously the latter is an untenable position.

Now, Blu-ray players do have the "advantage" of allowing firmware upgrades to "support" newer encryption schemes. However, Sony cannot overuse this idea. Consumers are used to their stuff just working. Having to frequently update your player every time somebody cracks Sony's encryption just isn't practical in the long run. Consumers will rebel, or there will be a massive negative PR backlash. If Sony wants to drive customers to downloaded content, this is the surest way to do it, and they know that.

DRM will continue to be an annoyance in the short-term, but nothing more. Real pirates (China-based mass duplicators) will continue to bypass it. P2P will get around it. In the end, it will be no more effective or annoying than DeCSS.

One thing to note: there is a very beneficial side-effect to the end of the format war. The more players that are sold, the more difficult it will be for Sony to make the alterations you're so afraid of. Now that HD-DVD is dead, Blu-ray sales should pick up all that slack, effectively doubling its adoption rate. Regardless of what you think of Sony and its policies, mass adoption of its hardware locks Sony into a format. This is a Good Thing(tm), as we have all the time in the world to crack it.

Re:Better luck next time

[Longhair]

Blu-ray was the first introduced HD format and would have been the DVD forum's choice too, but Toshiba decided to make it a format war because they didn't have the same licensing revenue coming from Blu-ray that they had from DVD. Microsoft backed Toshiba's plan furiously as it's HDi was ditched in favour of Java as the technology for interactive content on Blu-ray discs.

So, Toshiba along with Microsoft were the bully and warmonger in this case, not Sony.

Its peace in our time!

[plierhead]

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.)

Re:Its peace in our time!

[sqrt(2)]

Depends what your needs are. I wouldn't have use for a TV above 32 inches or so on the high end, it wouldn't be practical for the space I have. If you have a much larger room with a big space in between then you'll want a 42 inch or even larger because you're simply sitting farther away. So with a small space to get a better picture you want a higher resolution, with a big room you want a big picture (and high res too but that's probably secondary in terms of viewing experience).

I'm happy I decided to wait before jumping into HD, because I was tempted to buy an HD-DVD player for my 360. Good thing I waited.

Re:Its peace in our time!

[DirkGently]

You're making the very large assumption that the TV is the center of attention for the room. If the room is dedicated to media and home theater, then sure. Go massive. But if the room has other purposes, sizing the screen to SMPTE or THX projection recommendations (which is what you linked) is absurd. You've got to live with the thing. If you also use the space for chatting with people and entertaining, a screen like that really dominates the space in an uncomfortable way. I thought this issue would go away as we transitioned from CRT RPTVs to nice flat panel jobs, but it really hasn't had as much an effect as I was hoping.

Also, a massive screen sitting plainly in your living room makes you look like a tool the way owning a European sports car does.

Rest In Peace, HD-DVD

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

May there be a niche market of stupid rich guys waiting for you up in heaven.

Sony won a format war...

[beset]

And in other news, satan is ice skating to work today.

Re:Sony won a format war...

[91degrees]

If Bluray is a Sony format, so is DVD and CD. Sony backed it strongly and presumably did a lot ofthe original development but it's not a Sony format in the same way that minidisc and Betamax were. Sony got other companies on board as part of the standards consortium.

This might explain why it didn't fail. Companies prefer it when the standards body isn't the same organisation as their rival. There's always a risk that the standard might change specifically to favour one manufacturer.

Re:Sony won a format war...

[macrom]

Actually, he skates for a living.

http://www.nhl.com/players/8459534.html

Re:now if they'll only

[bri2000]

I think you may well be right. I know of more than a few people, like my mother and many of her friends, who have bought HDTVs because they're slim and look nice but have no idea what high definition means or what, apart from the the size and integrated Freeview tuner, makes the new TV different from their old CRT set. These people will not be buying an HD disc player.

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.

OK, so they lost this round

[hyades1]

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.

Better post next time

[Anonymous Coward]

"On topic: Sony obviously haven't learned that, since they had BetaMax"

Which enjoyed better success in professional settings.

Mini-disc became Mini-HD

Memory stick is still being used.

Re:Better post next time

[RespekMyAthorati]

On topic: Sony obviously haven't learned that, since they had BetaMax" Which enjoyed better success in professional settings.

Not true.

BetaCam is the dominant professional video format, but is completely different from BetaMax. Sony just likes to put "Beta" in front of its video equipment, since the path of the tape through the machine looks like the Greek letter Beta.

So...

[VirexEye]

Did Sony *finally* win a format war...?!

Re:So...

[draxredd]

yeah. floppies, CDs and Hi8 were such miserable failures, after all.

The real competition wasn't HD DVD...

[Schmiggy_JK]

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.

10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

I was kind of hoping HD DVD would win this one, now we'll be stuck with region locked movies for another decade till the next thing comes along.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[robosmurf]

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.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[DrXym]

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.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[FireFury03]

Both of these appeared on Blu Ray in the US while they were still showing in cinemas in Europe.

The solution here is to set sane release dates for stuff (both in cinema and on disc) instead of locking out your customers (also, there are a lot of suggestions that region coding is an illegal restriction on free trade... shame no one's sued the studios yet).

Honestly, if you release stuff in one country before another, you really can't complain when people take it upon themselves to import it (through legal or illegal means).

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[Golden Samurai]

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.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[iainl]

"at some point", possibly. For now, however, there are still enough bugs in the players that you _need_ to keep updating firmware, and that firmware is going to keep checking for region-lock mods.

Re:10 More Years of Region Locked Movies

[tenton]

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.

Seeing as Region 1 and Region 2 aren't the Blu-ray regions, I'll have to ask where the discs and PS3 are from?

For example, if by Region 1, you mean USA and by Region 2, you mean Japan, be aware that those two areas are now in the same region, for Blu-ray (Region A). The region coding can be found at Wiki. Believe me, it wouldn't fly for the PS3 to not enforce region coding on Blu-ray.

The other thing to keep in mind that not all studios are using region coding.

It ain't over till the fat lady sings

[reybrujo]

Gaming sites report that Toshiba hasn't given up yet. I guess they want to deplete their HD-DVD hardware before killing the format.

Re:Refund?

[Hanners1979]

Well, they now can't spend loads of money rebuying all their favourite movies on HD-DVD... Sounds like a relief to me.

For Sale

[PinkyDead]

1 HD-DVD Player, never used. Best offer accepted.

(Please...)

Who says they have won anything yet?

[LingNoi]

They might have beaten HD DVD but they haven't beaten the biggest contender.. DVD.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[grumbel]

The Xbox360 doesn't have a HD-DVD drive it has a normal old DVD drive. The HD-DVD is an extra thing that you have to buy and place next to your XBox360, Microsoft will simply release a BluRay extension drive. For games it doesn't matter, since neither is used in games.

Err.

[Xenex]

Yes.

Re:Can the XBox360 get a BluRay drive now?

[timmarhy]

"only 720p"

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.

BD-R Prices

[TrevorB]

The only thing I care about is the cost of BD-R (Blue Ray Writable). We've been waiting a very long time for a replacement for DVD-Rs, and DVD-R9 at decent write speeds are only now becoming both affordable and practical (compared to DVD-R5).

I figure my BD-R threshold is about $5 per disk. Presently they seem to be going for $15-$22 per disk. I'll be willing to buy a BD-R reader/burner when 25GB single layer BD-R's are at $5, which interestingly is the price of CD-Rs when I finally decided to make the switch from floppies in 1996. That was a 450 fold increase in media size. CD-R to DVD-R was a 6 fold increase. I'll be content with another 6 fold increase.

Hopefully BD/BD-R support for MythTV will be available by then.

Blu-ray Disc Association is slightly bigger

[The13thSin]

The current 18 board members (as of January 2008) are:

• Apple Inc.
• Dell Inc.
• Hewlett-Packard Company
• Hitachi, Ltd.
• LG Electronics
• Mitsubishi Electric
• Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
• Pioneer Corporation
• Royal Philips Electronics
• Samsung Electronics
• Sharp Corporation
• Sony Corporation
• Sun Microsystems
• TDK Corporation
• Thomson SA
• Twentieth Century Fox
• Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group / Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
• Warner Home Video Inc.

Like the PS2 was one of the biggest DVD players in the beginning, the PS3 will be the biggest Blu-ray player... that is untill in 1 1/2 year a $100 Samsung / LG profile 2.0 Blu-ray comes on the market.

Re:Blu-ray Disc Association is slightly bigger

[Miamicanes]

> I know Sony's not much better than Microsoft

Microsoft shows us daily that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Sony, by contrast, is just plain evil. ;-)

Fail...

[sgant]

So there should be two formats or even more out in the world to give a choice for consumers? A choice to not buy either until one format wins so they don't get left with obsolete hardware where nothing new is going to be released on?

How about this, every studio comes up with their own format! That way, there's tons of choices for the consumer! Want to watch a Univeral or Paramount movie? You have to buy a special player to play their formats. Think of the possibilities! Think of the competition! Think of the illegal downloads because no one would want to put up with that bullshit!

I think your analogy needs work.

PCMCIA

[smittyoneeach]

People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.

Re:PCMCIA

[Anonymous Coward]

T.echnology W.ithout A.n I.nteresting N.ame

W.e w.ould h.ave g.otten i.t e.ven w.ithout t.he a.nnoying p.eriods.

Re:PS3 Success?

[MosesJones]

Its an interesting definition of disastrous to say that the biggest selling HD console has been a disaster, and as for the idea that bundling Blu-Ray into the box wasn't a smart move this has been cited from the beginning as a major issue with XBox 360 in that while MS backed the HD-DVD standard they didn't integrate it into the box because of the desire to get the console to market quicker. This led to a market in which one "HD" console has HD level movie content (and similarly large available storage on its gaming disks) and the other has an after point of sale device with no gaming advantage.

Anyone who thinks this wasn't part of the strategic play for Sony and that having the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market won't help PS3 sales is looking at this from a purely gaming perspective.

Wii remains the family console, Sony is now the HD player and the "pretty" graphics console option.

The biggest question is now where this leaves XBox as it is in a real bind as to how quickly they role out a Blu-Ray player extension to stop people buying the PS3 to get Blu-Ray and whether they release a new XBox 360-HD edition that has Blu-Ray baked in.

Thanks for the misinformation Sony fanboy

[Comboman]

Which enjoyed better success in professional settings.

So what? Macs have better success in desktop publishing than PCs, that doesn't change that fact that 90%+ of all computers are PCs.

Mini-disc became Mini-HD

And no one but Sony uses either of them.

Memory stick is still being used.

by Sony products. Face it, Sony has a poor track record for format introductions. Want some more examples?

DAT (digital audio tape)

"Universal" Media Disc (UMD)

Super Audio CD (SACD)

ATRAC

Re:Thanks for the misinformation Sony fanboy

[metamatic]

How could you forget Elcaset?

Betamax wins!

[Zebra_X]

Back in the day, beta was the superior format - at least from a quality perspective. VHS won out because... we'll I don't really know - I was too young.

I own an HD-DVD player - but the Blue-Ray *disk* format is superior and more extensible than the HD-DVD disk. Blue-ray will increase in capacity with time, as it was designed to do. HD-DVD didn't really have this in mind it was for the most part, easier to implement and designed specifically for carrying HD video content. Blue-ray carries with it an entire execution environment within the player - one of the reasons for the difficulty that vendors have had complying with the specification.

Note that the disk format has nothing at all to do with the content format. Almost all HD-DVD's contain SMPTE VC-1 content, but there is a mix of VC-1 and H.264 within Blue-ray disks. Blue-ray and hd-dvd are capable of playing other stream types.

The "Blue-ray" logo really represents just a particular disk format and a player that has a certain set of capabilities.

Glad to see the non-noob tech prevail.

Re:It's not like VHS vs DVD anymore

[afidel]

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.

Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox?

[SuiteSisterMary]

When you say 'obsolete' drive, are you talking about the built in DVD, which they chose for the data speeds (allowing, for example Devil May Cry 4 to be as fast to load as it is on the PS3, which has a *20+ minute install routine* or are you talking about the external and optional HD-DVD drive?

If HD-DVD truly is no longer being produced, we'll see an external Blu-Ray drive for the 360 before year's end. Knowing Microsoft, it's been ready for mass-production for at least a year.

HD TV Still On The Sidelines

[Hangtime]

I refused to get in the middle of HD DVD vs. BluRay and refuse to catch BluRay now that this supposed war is over. The BluRay format has bounced around like a damn super ball and No I am not buying a Playstation 3 for the purposes of watching movies. I want a machine that will remove my need for my upconverting DVD player and above all else the format and player are solid, finished, and done. Versioned software 1.1, 1.2, 2.0 is good. Versioned hardware is bad. Somebody wake me when Sony is tired of tinkering and actually settles on the final standard. No, having new features become available for new hardware isn't an option all it does is screw the original purchasers (take a look at 1.0 spec players).

Slow down there Sony hater

[RedK]

How about these successful standards :

Compact Disc : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc

3.5" Floppy : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#New_3.0-3.5.22_formats

Betacam : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacam

And Mini-disc is very popular in Asia. Just because it failed in your small part of the world doesn't mean it didn't take off somewhere where there's an actual population bassin.

It's funny how people always bash Sony for even trying to bring new stuff out to market.

Re:and ISDN

[HTH NE1]

It was also intended that SCSI be pronounced "sexy".

Great...

[EmagGeek]

This sucks. I like my HD-DVD player much better than my BluRay player. On the BRD player, it takes anywhere from 5-10 minutes just to power up, open the tray, close the tray with a disc in it, and finally load up and get to the main menu. Then, it's another 5 minutes or so before the movie starts, and that is iff there are no mantatory previews for 3 year old movies on it.

It takes less than 2 minutes to get to the movie from PowerOff on the HD-DVD player.