Posted on 02/19/2008 9:02:21 AM PST by Vigilanteman
TOKYO--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.
HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.
"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."
(Excerpt) Read more at toshiba.co.jp ...
I, for one, expected this war to last a lot longer.
Blu-Ray has won.
So, can somebody who knows this stuff tell me if the better format won?
Yes.
They were nearly identical in performance, but Blu-Ray has a slight edge IMHO since it has somewhat higher capacity, and the writer technology was more widespread, i.e., it’s easier to get a Blu-Ray recorder than an HD-DVD recorder, in fact I’ve never seen an HD-DVD recorder.
are the players backward compatible?
didn’t some game box ship a few dozen units with HD?
I'm not going to say which one is better, since I couldn't tell, but I can tell you that some of my friends who had HD-DVD switched to Blue Ray (which means then basically burned money) said blue ray was better.
The folks I know who have had both, say blue ray is better, I can't personally see a difference.
Watch for Sony’s stock to skyrocket after this news.
I say no. Reason:
You do not need a HD or Blu-Ray DVD to get a great picture. A typical DVD player with an upconvert 1080i or 1080p and a monitor with the appropriate 1080i or 1080p gets you the same picture as a Blu-Ray or HD DVD.
So we all lose because we get to pay more money for movies when the current DVD’s work just fine.
Not completely correct. A good upconverter CAN get damn close to Blu-Ray quality. If your TV is under 50” you probably won’t see the difference.
Upconverters work surprisingly well, but I’ve seen HD DVD and Blu-ray images on a decent 1080 HD monitor, and it was much better. Not nearly as good as the leap between regular broadcast TV and HDTV, but it was very noticable.
Well, at least I know what to buy now.
I installed a special Ethernet drop from my router to support the online firmware updates for the HD-A30 and the special internet based extensions of HD-DVD. Toshiba never delivered a firmware update beyond the 1.3 version I installed months ago. The extended internet features weren't very interesting or impressive.
The audio from the BluRay device has always been superior to what the HD-A30 produced. My receiver is capable of decoding anything the two players can produce.
I tried to select HD-DVD releases that were "dual format" i.e. standard DVD and HD-DVD on the same disk. A few of my disks are HD-DVD only. Together with the HD-A30, these disks join my other obsolete formats. My Panasonic 8-track recorder still works fine, but I can't buy media for it anymore. The same fate awaits the HD-A30...except that it will play standard DVD. The Sony BDP-S300 will play the standard DVD format of the dual format HD-DVD disks.
My local Fred Meyer store recently reorganized the BluRay and HD-DVD sections. The day after the Toshiba announcement, the HD-DVD section was removed and the BluRay display area was doubled. That's fine by me. BluRay has been the better performer for me.
I installed a special Ethernet drop from my router to support the online firmware updates for the HD-A30 and the special internet based extensions of HD-DVD. Toshiba never delivered a firmware update beyond the 1.3 version I installed months ago. The extended internet features weren't very interesting or impressive.
The audio from the BluRay device has always been superior to what the HD-A30 produced. My receiver is capable of decoding anything the two players can produce.
I tried to select HD-DVD releases that were "dual format" i.e. standard DVD and HD-DVD on the same disk. A few of my disks are HD-DVD only. Together with the HD-A30, these disks join my other obsolete formats. My Panasonic 8-track recorder still works fine, but I can't buy media for it anymore. The same fate awaits the HD-A30...except that it will play standard DVD. The Sony BDP-S300 will play the standard DVD format of the dual format HD-DVD disks.
My local Fred Meyer store recently reorganized the BluRay and HD-DVD sections. The day after the Toshiba announcement, the HD-DVD section was removed and the BluRay display area was doubled. That's fine by me. BluRay has been the better performer for me.
This is one war that will see many people happy for its end.
Blu-Ray has won, whether it is better or not, it will be the champ in this battle until the next technology comes along. a lot of people who had been waiting to upgrade to High Def will now know which format to buy and will contribute to significant sales through the end of the year.
The Japanese won’t do it. They’d rather destroy the remaining inventory than have a fire sale.
To them its a disgrace to deep-discount.
How long until you won’t have a choice but to rent or buy Blu-Ray movies, instead of regular DVD?
Damn shame it won ... mainly because I’ll never forget that Sony ran root kits on CD’s and other media.
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