Is There Life After Hddvd For Toshiba?

[Guest David Tran]

Toshiba refused to go away peacefully after hddvd failure. Apparently Toshiba is trying to disrupts Sony's Bluray by offering 720p on SD-DVD. Is this a hype or is this real? Would be nice to get 720p on sddvd.

Comments

David

[Guest Torylane]

Toshiba refused to go away peacefully after hddvd failure. Apparently Toshiba is trying to disrupts Sony's Bluray by offering 720p on SD-DVD. Is this a hype or is this real? Would be nice to get 720p on sddvd.

Comments

David

You would hope hype, think about it, 720p on DVD will still require a new player, what would be the point, HD DVD had $99 US players and 1080p and still lost, what would be the compleing point of 720p and what studio would support it ?

stuipid stupid stupid

[XxDeadlyxX]

If you ask me, they should just move on and release Blu-ray players like everyone else.

[cwt]

The question is how many 4.7gb discs are required for a 2 hour mpeg2 movie ? As said any better compression codec would need new players. They sure look like sore loosers

edit ; read the dvd player thread and it looks like some sort of deinterlacing/scaling LSIC chip only .

Edited June 3, 2008 by cwt

[Tweet]

The truth is ....Toshiba still needs Studio support regardless of what technology they implement, it was that failing that brought down HD DVD.

Blu-ray is likely to be the last of the optical disc formats for HD movie sales, even Toshiba eluded to the fact that in future years 'delivery systems' will be oriented towards downloads, portable and fixed installation.

Somehow, I think Toshiba now deeply regrets having thrown in the towel so early, considering the slowness of the uptake of Blu-ray, and as such would dearly love to have another shot at it......Sadly it's all too late.

C.M

Edit : typo correction

Edited June 27, 2008 by Tweet

[SDL]

I'm not sure they regret having thrown in the towel, they would have done no better, and perhaps worse than Blu-Ray and would have suffered greater losses. I think right now they are spending time confusing the market while they try to work out a new type of delivery system for movies.

[bbar]

I'm not sure they regret having thrown in the towel, they would have done no better, and perhaps worse than Blu-Ray and would have suffered greater losses. I think right now they are spending time confusing the market while they try to work out a new type of delivery system for movies.

You could be right; however although Blu was ahead of HD DVD, Toshiba player sales seemed to do well when compared to other CE Blu ray sales if one excledes PS3 and Xbox. There sales wre not equal to all BLU CE sales combined but I believe they exceeded any single BLU CE supplier. Again, one needs to exclude PS3.

Having said this, the writing was probably on the wall once they were down to 2 studios and probably got out at the right time. If their new upscaling technology provides comparable viewing to Blu ray at 720p then they can probably milk the DVD market for a few years until the majority of displays are greater than 720p. This of course assumes they position the product properly (i.e. below Blu ray prices and above standard DVD prices). I suspect that means the $300 - $550 range given they have entry and high end players. I suspect they would need to be better the Oppo products and be priced comparably.

The issue to Full HD comsumers is that it may further delay adoption of Blu ray by the masses thus keeping Blu a higher priced niche solution.

Bryan

Edited June 4, 2008 by bbar

[SDL]

I think in the wash up, WB not siding with them was the death knell. Unlike Consoles you can't sell these players at a loss for too long as you have no way of recouping funds as the software is studio owned and licensing can't be increased too much before studios won't get involved.

The problem I see with another 'standard', an in between type system as this is suggesting, is that it still can't be sold to the General Public easily as most will either stick with SD and adopt a wait and see approach. Not many people will buy the second best to replace something that works well. they will either go the whole hog or wait and let the market settle down. As I said I think this approach is a short term confusion approach and will probably be connected to some download system going forward.

[jayweb]

The truth is ....Toshiba still needs Studio support regardless of what technology they implement, it was that failing that brought down HD DVD.

Blu-ray is likely to be the last of the optical disc formats for HD movie sales, even Toshiba alluded to the fact that in future years 'delivery systems' will be oriented towards downloads, portable and fixed installation.

Somehow, I think Toshiba now deeply regrets having thrown in the towel so early, considering the slowness of the uptake of Blu-ray, and as such would dearly love to have another shot at it......Sadly it's all too late.

C.M

CM is right and I still believe that Micro$oft played spoiler in this matter. They knew that the next big thing will be high def downloads, they have been spruking about it for ages. I think that they did not want to see a hi def optical format take a stranglehold from the start and hence threw some money at Toshiba to keep the war going and only annoy the early adopters...like us!!!!

Shame, I bought a HD DVD (actually 3 if you count the add on for the 360)......

[The_Preacher1973]

You could be right; however although Blu was ahead of HD DVD, Toshiba player sales seemed to do well when compared to other CE Blu ray sales if one excledes PS3 and Xbox. There sales wre not equal to all BLU CE sales combined but I believe they exceeded any single BLU CE supplier. Again, one needs to exclude PS3.

Bryan

Actually, no.

Towards the end of 2007 Toshiba put up a slide showing that they had the largest slice of the hidef stand alone player of any market but it was less than 50%. If you added up all the BD CE sales they exceeded HD-DVD players.

BD standalones were outselling HD-DVD standalones for the entire second half of last year that by the end of the year HD-DVD had lost its lead.

[bbar]

Actually, no.

Towards the end of 2007 Toshiba put up a slide showing that they had the largest slice of the hidef stand alone player of any market but it was less than 50%. If you added up all the BD CE sales they exceeded HD-DVD players.

BD standalones were outselling HD-DVD standalones for the entire second half of last year that by the end of the year HD-DVD had lost its lead.

Not sure we are in disagreement and if so why? My point is that Toshiba sold more HD stand-alone players than any other CE manufacturer, not that it sold more than all the others combined. AS you state - "Towards the end of 2007 Toshiba put up a slide showing that they had the largest slice of the hidef stand alone player of any market but it was less than 50%" Sony was number one if you count the PS3 (33%) and somewhere in the pack if you do not. Toshiba had 31% of market if the PS3 was counted and close to 50% if it was not counted.

Also as you state " BD standalones were outselling HD-DVD standalones for the entire second half of last year that by the end of the year HD-DVD had lost its lead."

Not arguing- just saying that no Blu CE manufacturer can say they had/have almost 50% of the stand-alone HD market last year or this year. So Toshiba was doing ok from a CE market share point of view but they were on a road to nowhere unless they could get 1 or 2 studios back in their camp. I suspect they decided the cost was to great to attempt that so decided to call it quits.

Also not saying they made a killing on HD DVD. I suspect they lost overall and upped the cost of HD to the Blu CE manufacturers which no doubt we as consumers will have to bear.

Bryan

[biot]

3x DVD under a different guise...