Toshiba To Stop HD DVD Player Production

[dogtanian]

Will all the record labels get together now and release one new HD audio format now? Will the RIAA be in charge of the releasing of such music?

probably will happen after seeing the studios collude.

This Blu-Ray alliance of all studios into one, is the most corrupt form of collusion since the 1948 Paramount Decree where studios were sued by the US government for manipulating the exhibition market.

This is the same thing but in the home video market now.

You wont see any signs of corruption now, but mark this post when HD-DVD is finally announced (god forbid) that they are done.

Watch Sony and the studios run the greed machine.

Forget trying to be an independent releasing films on Blu-Ray, they will charge an arm and leg just to license the logo now.

Toshiba had an unfair fight , if they were fighting an electronic maker NOT the actual studios, they would beat Blu-Ray hands down.

I know there are electronic makers in the Blu-Ray alliance like TDK, Panasonic, etc.
but
TDK/Panasonic is like the Island of Tongo being named as part of the US Coalition on the War in Iraq.

They are just there to sell the war. Its all US funded.

This is all about THE STUDIOS vs. TOSHIBA. trust me.

The studios are going to collude on prices, on Digital Rights Management and on the ENTIRE market . Regions on a $34.99 Blu Ray disc is the first major sign that they are in it for the money, first, second and third.

While of course, Toshiba/HD-DVD is also in it for the money, Region free coding, HDI interface, the amazing features of its discs, are all pro consumer and most importantly for the technology.

Blu-Ray glitches, loading erros, times to load, obsolete players after 1 year on the market, discs that have DRM up the wazoo, ARE clear sign they don't care about the technology of HD media.

COMPETITION IS GOOD, it thrives the technology forward (see airline industry and the pricing, big screen TV and the advancement of size and price, see hard drives, without competition, Maxtor would still be at 120GB for $300.)

Competition is also good for price points and offers. You wont see Blu-Ray, 2 for 1 deals when HD DVD leaves. it will be back to the days of CDs at $18.99 min.

Lack of educated consumers is the saddest part.

Average Joe didnt care to educate themselves that HD DVD is actually a better "CAR" than the glossy "Sony SUV" which costs more to own and run for doing the same thing.

They got sold on marketing and on the horrific Playstation 3 which still cannot produce 1 great title much less a graphic card that makes objects look real.

Toshiba had an unfair fight.

HD-DVD is the better format for the technology and for the consumer.

I will never support Blu-Ray.

I suggest you keep buying HD DVD media, and download HD movies not on HD DVD via XBOX live or similar.

Do not support Blu-Ray.

Blu-Ray payola to various retailers, companies and such to shut down or support Blu-Ray only is disgusting and goes against the american way.

If the studios were not in any camp, HD-DVD would of been the hands down winner but as always --- everyone has a price.

do you?

Do NOT sell out to Blu-Ray.

I pity you...

 

[Bakey]

They seem to be seriously pushing the idea that optical media is a thing of the past.

What?! Because Apple have produced ONE machine that lacks an optical drive!!

Riiight....

 

[raybo]

iTunes was NOT the reason SACD failed. MP3's and downloading were already big before iTunes. The iTunes Music Store was launched 4 years after the introduction of SACD, and then it was Mac only for a time.

Besides MP3's, SACD failed because most people didn't want to replace CD's and buy new CD players (the quality wasn't that much better to the average joe with an inexpensive system). On top of that, there was a competing format, DVD-Audio. Sound familiar? Kind of like how many people (even folks with HDTV's) don't really care to replace their DVD players, and were confused by two competing HD formats.

In any case, I'm happy that Blu-Ray won. Still a bit expensive for me, but now prices will go down quicker!

Another reason that SACD died is that the early discs were not hybrid, and nobody was going to replace their home, car, and portable equipment. If folks had been able to play the new discs on existing players, and the discs did not cost much more than CDs, I believe we would have seen a natural progression to SACD.

They were too in a hurry to push the players, and blew it.

Ray

 

[3247]

AppleTV '''vs''' BluRay.

I thinks you've spelt "with" incorrectly.

A BluRay drive for the AppleTV USB port would be really nice.

 

[RichardI]

It's too bad really. Sony charges waaayyy too much for everything they manufacture. Always have. Look at the old Beta Max format as proof. Sony insisted on getting a premium for it over VHS, and it disappeared. The HD-DVD was every bit as expensive to manufacture as the Blu-Ray was, and yet the Blu-Ray players were MUCH more money to buy. Why??? Those of you who buy Blu-Ray, enjoy - Sony is.

Rich

 

[Breckenridge]

Now that the war is over, we need at least a blue-ray player option in a mac. Price of BD recorders is near $2000, maybe apple is waiting for the prices to drop down a little.

 

[jfanning]

Heh! The typical price of the HD DVDs I have been buying from Amazon are US$20 in other words £10. Less than the price of the DVD in most cases. Even new releases in the rather unfortunate combo DVD/HD DVD format cost about US$27 or £13.50. Best of all, I could buy brand new releases without worrying about the region. Sure, there are a number of region free BDs but all the new stuff is region locked so if you don't have a region A player you are stuck paying UK prices. £17.99 is US$35 at current exchange rates and that is a cheap BD.

Rubbish, not all the new stuff is region locked, you can, and I still purchased a lot of Blu-rays from the US. And all of the ones I have purchased have been $20 or less, well except Resident Evil that was $48 for three movies.

Want to hear something even sicker? The most expensive BDs in NZ are NZ$50 which is £20. Most are NZ$42 or £17 and that is in the shops. Of course, I can buy HD DVDs in the shops here for NZ$32 which is £13 so it is still a little cheaper to get them from the US as long as I buy several to save on the postage.

But the NZ prices include GST, I doubt you are paying GST on overseas purchases (since all imported purchases over NZ$200 you have to pay GST on). I can still remember paying NZ$70 for MiB when it was first released.

UK prices are a serious rip off for media. Players are less of an issue, in NZ the players are crazy expensive. We were still stuck paying NZ$1200 for the PS3 60GB version while you guys were getting the same machine for £350 (NZ$870) and we don't even get the 60GB version any more. The 40GB machine is NZ$799 or £322 or US$632. I believe that same machine can be had in the US for US$399. Think about that for a moment. I find it quite cheeky for people in the US to complain about the price of discs and players.

And prices in the UK are cheaper than other part of europe. But then again I could produce a huge list of products in NZ that are cheaper then in Uk/Europe, heck petrol is one...

The only people really happy about BD winning are those who live in Region A. Still, they can stick their region coding, I'll just buy a US player and be done with it.

Or maybe it is also the people that wanted to purchase movies from the BD supporting studios that are happy, region coding would have been added to HD DVD if Disney or Fox had sided with them.

 

[jfanning]

It's too bad really. Sony charges waaayyy too much for everything they manufacture. Always have. Look at the old Beta Max format as proof. Sony insisted on getting a premium for it over VHS, and it disappeared. The HD-DVD was every bit as expensive to manufacture as the Blu-Ray was, and yet the Blu-Ray players were MUCH more money to buy. Why??? Those of you who buy Blu-Ray, enjoy - Sony is.

What, and Apple doesn't charge too much for their stuff?

The reason HD DVD players were cheaper was Toshiba was losing more money they people were on the BD players

 

[mixel]

Aha! Great news, and as others have said already.. Good to see the better format win.

And yeah, I would like to be able to backup to BD, especially once the "100GB BD firmware-update" happens. its a v good option for all sorts of work. Can backup my entire documents folder (full of PSDs mostly) routinely. Very nice.

Can also burn all the EyeTV recordings to a disk with DivX/Xvid and play them on the PS3, saving huge amounts of Hard disk space and clutter.

As for the region code FUD, if you do research, a number of studios don't use regions on their BDs, so it's not as bad as all that. Once the drives are in more machines someone will likely come up with region hacks anyway. And the prices will drop in places like here in the UK once DVD is on the way out. What's the big rush?

 

[Stella]

Why are region codes so bad? Prices always drop so price is never really an issue. More capacity is everything for me at this point.

Another reason: If you were to move to a different part of the world, you'd have to repurchase all your movies in order to watch them ( unless you also bought your existing player with you - hoping its compatible with the local voltage. ).

 

[franz1999]

backup on blu rays?

Until we have easy, insanely cheap flash drives for backup that are basically disposable (like DVDs), we need the discs. We can always stream video, back up to time capsule, but in the end we still need media for a true backup.

Personally I have had multiple bad experiences (and so my closest friends) with optical media backup in the past. After less than 12 months optical media were not readable or some of the data was somehow corrupted.
I would NEVER think of saving 40+ GB of data on a single blu-ray disc and consider that data "safely backed-up".
Just my 2 cents,

FG

 

[garty]

Because I believe the issue is more nuanced than you appear to think it is (was?).

BluRay was better for capacity.
HD-DVD was better for consumers. Less Sony, less DRM, no region codes, and cheaper prices.

And that (region codes) is why I'll stick with an up converting dvd player and download the rest of the HD content I want to watch. Blu-ray No-way.

 

[Emulsion]

I was hesitant to tell a family yesterday not to buy their HD-DVD player, but I don't think they would have listened to me...

 

[Sandfleaz]

Anybody want to buy a nice HD DVD and Betamax?
.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Personally I have had multiple bad experiences (and so my closest friends) with optical media backup in the past. After less than 12 months optical media were not readable or some of the data was somehow corrupted.
I would NEVER think of saving 40+ GB of data on a single blu-ray disc and consider that data "safely backed-up".
Just my 2 cents,

FG

My thoughts exactly. I recently had to junk whole stacks of optical disks that I'd backed up to a few years ago, they had faded 'rings' in them and several were flaking off the silvery bits. They were all kept in a cool, dark place. I'm not saying that hard drives live forever, however, if you buy yourself a Time Capsule ever two years then you should be ok.

 

[AidenShaw]

They format to 4.7 GB, your Apple lies to you

A dollar.

Hell, most of the time you can find 25 packs of decent media (Sony, TDK, Memorex) for 7-8 bucks a pack.

So around 35 cents a disc. You get 110GB of storage in that 25 pack spindle.

(DVDs format out to 4.38 GB)

4.38 GiB = 4.7 GB

(4.38 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024) = 4,702,989,189.12

Storage hardware is measured in true GB, but many OS displays wrongly show GiB labeled as GB.

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

 

[johnnyjibbs]

It sounds like Toshiba is admitting defeat. Ending the HD format war is one thing, but it will still be a steep uphill battle for BlueRay due to the success of DVD and the little extra that HD discs have to offer. I don't expect this format [whoever the winner is - probably BlueRay] to be ever as successful as DVD, nor will I be buying a player for some years (unless it gets included with a Mac).

I applaud Apple for not jumping onto a bandwagon and having to potentially make an embarrasing u-turn. However, I rather suspect that, even with the end of the format war, Steve Jobs is rather lukewarm to "next-gen" disc solutions. Particularly as the Air is a message spelling out the end of the optical disc.

 

[franz1999]

Why are region codes so bad? Prices always drop so price is never really an issue. More capacity is everything for me at this point.

I live in the US, but my family is European and my fiance's family is in Japan. Regions are really bad for us. We like to watch original japanese and italian DVDs and being in the US this is not possible.
Luckily there is such a thing as region-free DVD!

 

[Digital Skunk]

It is likely that Apple's hesitation about releasing any Blu-ray products has been at least partially due to the ongoing format war.

I doubt that. HD-DVD wasn't as pervasive as BluRay to begin with, and BR just isn't that abundant either way. I doubt Apple's lack of BR hardware was due to the "war" it's more likely that Apple sees BR as many others, a new format that will be available, but not as abundant as DVD was. Now that people can download movies, rent movies, and order movies online, and always borrow them from their friends, I don't see BR being as big as DVD or VHS was in their time.

Apple will offer BR hardware, but only as BTO, not standard, and even that may be for some more years to come.

 

[MarsUltor]

No games use that much, no PS3 games even use that much space. A DVD or two is more than enough space and a teeny fraction of the price of a bluray disk and it will remain that way for a long time.

No game yet... I remember a day when a game could fit on a 5 1/2 inch floppy disc, what was that capacity? No more than 512 K? Am I showing my age by bringing this up? As games get more and more advanced they will require more and more space... years ago I got Wing Commander 3, that was on 6 different CD's... now that there is DVD's, it could be put to one disc, and as blu-ray becomes more accepted, people will adopt it and utilize the space to create bigger games... why would you ever doubt this fact? If you haven't noticed, everything costs more space than it did in previous years, for example M$ word on a mac 15 years ago may have been about 1.5 mb, now it is a little more than 60 mb (Word 2008)...

And as for the cost you mention, i remember when CD-R first came out, individual blank discs cost $10 or more, now we can buy a spindel of DVD's at a CVS or Walgreens for about $0.10 a disc (give or take)... the cost will drop rather quickly, and as people buy more and more into bluray, companies are going to be more willing to push their technology to utilize this hugh external capacity...

 

[darthraige]

Blu-ray is such a cooler name than HD-DVD. It's was too plain. Thank God it's over now.

 

[Curtis72]

Optical Media dying?

Not so fast...

Ultra high end broadband is not available to the vast majority of consumers yet. Although it only took a few minutes to download "The Core" in HD from iTunes the other day, it is still not the same as watching a Blu-ray movie.

Where is also the extra features? I'm not saying that everybody is interested in extra features. But for me, I do want to watch them for certain movies.

And that is the thing... For some movies, I want to own. If I going to own it then I want it in the highest quality possible.

 

[Linkjeniero]

Maybe I can finally convince the wife to let me get a PS3...

OR, you could grow a pair and just go get one...

 

[snarton]

still holding a grudge

I'm glad that Blu-ray won but for a pretty obscure reason. Back in 1987 Toshiba Machine illegally sold technology to the USSR that helped them build quieter nuclear submarines that could avoid detection by the U.S. military. This was important during the cold war. Maybe 21 years is a bit long to hold a grudge, but I'm glad I'll be able to avoid supporting Toshiba when I upgrade my DVD player.

 

[Evangelion]

This Blu-Ray alliance of all studios into one, is the most corrupt form of collusion since the 1948 Paramount Decree where studios were sued by the US government for manipulating the exhibition market.

You mean like they "colluded" to push DVD down our throats?

Toshiba had an unfair fight , if they were fighting an electronic maker NOT the actual studios, they would beat Blu-Ray hands down.

There were numerous studios backing HD-DVD.

This is all about THE STUDIOS vs. TOSHIBA. trust me.

Why is it then that there are STILL studios backing HD-DVD?

The studios are going to collude on prices, on Digital Rights Management and on the ENTIRE market

And that's different from regular DVD's how?

Regions on a $34.99 Blu Ray disc is the first major sign that they are in it for the money, first, second and third.

So companies do what they do for money? Well thank you Captain Obvious! And yes, Blu-Ray is expensive at the moment. So would HD-DVD if you disregard the price-dumbing. And guess what? DVD's were expensive as well in the beginning!

Blu-Ray glitches, loading erros, times to load, obsolete players after 1 year on the market, discs that have DRM up the wazoo, ARE clear sign they don't care about the technology of HD media.

IIRC, there hasn't been that much glitches anymore. n the beginning, yes, but not anymore. DRM... Blu-Ray has a bit more DRM than HD-DVD does, and they BOTH are a lot worse in this area than regular DVD's are! So I fail to see how you can call HD-DVD somekind of "champion of the consumer" or something!

COMPETITION IS GOOD, it thrives the technology forward (see airline industry and the pricing, big screen TV and the advancement of size and price, see hard drives, without competition, Maxtor would still be at 120GB for $300.)

This format-war hurt both parties AND the consumers. Elimination of that market-confusion HELPS the consumers! And we still have competition: we have several companies making players, several studios releasing content and several retailers selling both. Having the market split in to two incompatible halves is NOT a good thing! It forces the consumer to buy both technologies and it reduces the economies of scale.

Competition is also good for price points and offers. You wont see Blu-Ray, 2 for 1 deals when HD DVD leaves.

Yes you will. We have those with DVD's, and DVD has had no competition.

They got sold on marketing and on the horrific Playstation 3 which still cannot produce 1 great title much less a graphic card that makes objects look real.

PS3 is a fine system, there's nothing wrong with it.

I will never support Blu-Ray.

Your "never" will last two years, tops.

Blu-Ray payola to various retailers, companies and such to shut down or support Blu-Ray only is disgusting and goes against the american way.

There has been widespread rumours that backers of HD-DVD paid hundreds of millions to studios for their support for HD-DVD. What do you think of that? And what companies have been forced to "shut down" due to them not backing Blu-Ray?

If the studios were not in any camp, HD-DVD would of been the hands down winner but as always --- everyone has a price.

But studios NEED to be in some camp. They need to release their content on some format.

Do NOT sell out to Blu-Ray.

But selling out to HD-DVD would be A-OK, right?