Posted on 03/05/2008 3:35:12 PM PST by Las Vegas Dave
Washington, D.C. (March 5, 2008) -- Last week, I took some heat from readers for saying here that Toshiba should offer company discounts to HD DVD owners after announcing it was exiting the business.
I reasoned that it would be good business for Toshiba to send a signal to its customers that it appreciated their commitment to HD DVD.
Now that the format is going out of business, the HD DVD player will be nearly obsolete. So, an offer, let's say, of 20 percent off a Toshiba LCD HDTV would make people feel better about their investment in not only HD DVD, but Toshiba as a company and the CE industry as a whole.
At our TVPredictions.com message board, several readers last week said Toshiba had no responsibility to HD DVD owners at all; that they knew what they were getting into when they bought the high-def player.
Last week, although I disagreed with that argument, I could understand it. But today, I think that Toshiba's responsibility to assist HD DVD owners is even greater because it appears that the company was selling them a product it didn't even fully believe in.
In Monday's Wall Street Journal, Toshiba CEO Atsutoshi Nishida was interviewed about the company's plans following the HD DVD exit. Rather than applauding HD DVD owners for their commitment, Nishida suggested that anyone who purchased a high-def disc player had bought into a suspect technology.
Although Toshiba had said repeatedly over the last year that people needed to buy HD DVD because it would become the next-generation home video player, Nishida now says that the upconverting DVD player is nearly as good. In fact, he adds that future upconverting DVD players will offer images just as good.
"If you watch standard DVDs on our players, the images are of very high quality because they include an 'upconverting' feature," he told WSJ. "And we're going to improve this even more, so that consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images."
In other words, now that Toshiba will no longer sell HD DVD players, it says that people don't need a high-def disc player after all; that an upconverting DVD player will do just as well.
Contrast Nishida's remarks with the language at HD DVD's official web site, thelookandsoundofperfect.com.
"HD DVD improves powerfully upon the technological foundation of DVD, replacing the red laser reader of a standard DVD player with a blue laser. Because blue lasers scan data using shorter wavelengths than red lasers, manufacturers can store three times more data on an HD DVD disc. That's what allows you to experience the eye-popping 1080p high-def picture, window-shattery surround sound and awesome interactivity that you can get only with HD DVD."
In the WSJ article, Nishida now also questions whether the high-def disc industry can even succeed.
"Next-generation DVD players are in a much weaker position than when standard DVD players were first introduced," he said.
Well, folks, it might have been nice if Toshiba had made its feelings known when people were being asked to pay up to hundreds of dollars for its HD DVD players.
If it really believed that the next line of upconverting DVD players would be just as good as the HD DVD player, why did it urge people to get the latter?
The pinged subjects will be those of HDTV technology, satellite/cable HD, OTA (over the air with various roof top and indoor antennas) HD reception. Broadcast specials, Blu-ray/HD-DVD, and any and all subjects relating to HD.
Las Vegas Dave
actually if he KNEW it was going to be abandoned, then there is a consumer fraud issue there.
A class-action lawsuit is imminent........
It’s a bad case of sour grapes. Movie downloads are a decade away from being a generally viable replacement for disk-based storage/transport of movies. Network bandwidth is one issue. Hard disk storage is another. A single high-def movie can easily require 25gb!
The HD DVD owners that learn of this are certain to be quite angry about it.
Anyone that buys new technology that early should know what they were in for. In the internet age there is NO excuse for doing your research and not just listening to the joker down the street or at BestBuy.
I should add, when I play my old DVDs on my upconverting Blue-Ray player, the quality is very good. I disagree with Toshiba’s Nishida in that I do see an even better picture with my 1080p Blue-Ray DVDs. I think the guy is play a shrewd game of sour grapes gotsha with the Blue-Ray providers.
Some titles, shot in 1080P like Planet Earth, for example, will look awesome in HD or Blu. But a lot of movie titles look about the same in HD as they do upconverted. That's why my HD DVD collection will likely top out at around 50. I do not need HD versions of films that do not show a noticeable improvement.
That’s why buying new technology is often called being on “The Bleeding Edge”.
Sometimes you get cut and bleed.
If you keep the content as MPEG-2. If you use H.264 or other MPEG-4 features you can easily get nice 1080p or 720p content in about 8GB. I've also seen decent looking 720p content shot at 2.35:1 aspect ratio fit in 4.2GB of space.
This guy’s argument was stupid last week, and equally as stupid this week.
Anyone who bought into HD-DVD had to have known that two formats were competing, and that one of them was likely to knock off the other. They just bet on the wrong format. You lose. Live with it, instead of somehow insisting that one of the “evil” corporations cover your loss.
What happens if Blu-Ray doesn’t catch on, and consumers decide that their regular old DVDs look fine enough? Do the Blu-Ray guys get a discount, too?
What about all the people who bought CD-Audio? SACD? Hey! When I bought my Sony LCD TV recently, why didn’t Sony give me a coupon for 30% off to compensate me for those useless DAT players I bought back in the ‘90’s?
I have Planet Earth in Blu-ray and a 61" 1080p screen. It is the most astonishingly beautiful work of cinematography I have ever seen.
I love my SACD’s!!
A single high-def movie can easily require 25gb!
When you buy products before a standard has been decided upon, thats the risk you take.
I download movies all the time from Amazon and through my Tivo and watch them on my TV. It’s great. You have a month to watch after downloading it before it disappears and 24 hours to finish watching it once you start to play it. Downloads come through my home net to the Tivo and usually take an hour or less with my cable connection.
Movies, TV programs, $1.99 for a rental and weekend bargains of $.99 with the occasional freebie offered.
I have Planet Earth on order for $29.99. One thing about HD DVD being dead is that I am cleaning up on titles now due to fire sales, and I have a backup player in case mine fails. Other titles that look great in HD are those HDScapes titles, available in both Blu-Ray and HD DVD. The HDScapes site is selling off the HD DVD versions for $6.95 each!
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