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Toshiba Paid Off To Drop HD-DVD?
TripleP writes "Was Toshiba paid-off to concede the HD battle? There are some signs that may point to this as a direct result of the ended format war. Reuters has reported that Sony has agreed to sell its Cell and RSX fabrication plants in Japan to Toshiba. The WSJ is reporting that is is a joint venture in the form of 60% Toshiba,%20 Sony and %20 Sony Computer Entertainment Inc."
Blu-ray has higher storage and (I think) slightly more DRM, while HD-DVD has no region codes. I'm sure a lot of people won't be affected by region codes, but those of us who get international stuff would have prefered HD-DVD.
This was known or rumored already for weeks and weeks, even prior to the WB announcement IIRC.
Along with the $120M paid to Fox at the last minute to get them to stick with BD, and the reputed $400-500M WB received, I'm not shocked at all.
Sony bought the win in the format war, and that alone would be enough of a reason to not buy into the inflated BD format. (Inflated as in cost)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
A few years back someone demonstrated a 200GB BluRay disc. It had many many layers (after some googling, it looks like it has 8 layers), so just like you I don't know if it was supported by all players, but it existed.
This is why I've always favored BluRay. From my limited understanding of the subject, I can see that it is a little bit more modern of a technology, so it has higher potential.
The problem with the world is we've let the wrong people set the standards. Business should build to standards, not build standards to produce psuedo profits.
What going around these days is crap, and it's come right back at us!
The space is not meaningless. The Transformers HD-DVD ran out of space for a lossless audio track and was released without one.
A few years back someone demonstrated a 200GB BluRay disc.
I recently saw a 1000GB SATA-RAY disc demonstrated. Actually I even saw it for sale. Slightly thicker than the plastic, but I can live with that.
Seriously tho, judging from the development, sale and prices of ordinary multilayer DVDs, I expect the new optical formats to remain permanently impractical and inferior as a storage medium as compared to simply buying more harddisks. They haven't been designed as data storage, they've been designed with the primary purpose of gathering shelf-dust in stores and at home. With the rapid spread and expansion of USB drives and memory sticks I doubt they'll manage to gather as extensive use as backup and transportation medium as the older optical formats.