*Rumour* HD-DVD on it's deathbed?

RangeR

Not sure if this is the right place to put it but....

Is HD-DVD on it's last legs?

Linky

Is Toshiba about to fall on its sword and announce the demise of HD DVD? That's certainly what one report citing an unnamed mole within the HD DVD camp is claiming, even though Toshiba itself is having none of it.


The source mentioned by US Home Media Magazine claims that Toshiba could declare HD DVD dead in "a matter of weeks".


The mag also spoke to a senior Toshiba staffer - Jodi Sally, VP of marketing for Toshiba America Consumer Products - who re-iterated the company's belief that HD DVD "is the best format for consumers".


However, she did admit that Toshiba is monitoring the market. "Toshiba will continue to study the market impact and the value proposition for consumers, particularly in light of our recent price reductions on all HD DVD players."


Reading between the lines, that could imply that Toshiba has envisaged the possibility that its favoured format will cease to offer value to buyers, almost certainly because of overwhelming momentum behind the rival format, Blu-ray Disc.


Certainly, Toshiba has been slashing the prices it charges for HD DVD players over the past three or four months in a bid to make the format more attractive that Blu-ray. But because the Sony PlayStation 3 has a built in Blu-ray drive, that format's been able to outstrip its rival's figures in terms of both disc sales and shipments of devices capable of playing them.


HD DVD may well have a higher 'quality' audience - in other words, punters who're buying it because they want a hi-def disc format, as opposed to happening to get it for free with a games console - but that hasn't delivered the numbers. That's the main reason why Warner decided to stop supporting both formats and go Blu-ray only from this coming May.


That's the killer, as it limits HD DVD to movies from Universal and Paramount who together account for roughly a quarter of the home video market in the US. Not being able to buy of the remaining 75 per cent of releases makes HD DVD a tough choice for consumers, and that's been seen in stuttering disc sales since Warner's early January announcement.


Recently, Toshiba began pitching its HD DVD players to DVD owners looking not for hi-def media but a good way to upscale their standard-definition discs for HD TV display. That was seen as something of a last ditch measure, but it's not hard to imagine Toshiba figuring that if it can increase hardware sales then it can counterbalance the pull of the studios.


But as is always the case with this kind of products, content is king. Very few mainstream buyers - there aren't enough 'early adopters' out there to make a difference - will buy hardware without content to play on it. Three-quarters of the home video market isn't going to suddenly shift to the same format as the remaining 25 per cent, but that quarter might well go the other way.


Indeed, it was claimed earlier this year that Paramount's arrangement with the HD DVD camp - which only runs for two years, in any case - could be revoked if Warner went exclusively Blu-ray. Which it did.
As we reported earlier today, here in Europe there are some 3.2m PS3s and 34,000 standalone Blu-ray players in consumers' homes, compared to around 55,000 HD DVD players and Xbox 360 add-on drives. Some 2.4m discs have been bought over here, and the format's outselling its rival 3:1. Sales of standalone BD players have grown by a far greater degrees than sales of HD DVD machines, despite a massive price advantage in HD DVD's favour.

Short of giving players away for free, it's hard to see what Toshiba can do right now to reverse that trend, and even then there's still the problem that so much content will only appear on the other format.
That's why last month UK retailer Woolworths signalled a shift to Blu-ray, and this week both Netflix and Best Buy did the same in the States.
Whether Toshiba's about to throw in the towel or not, the opposing forces are closing in on the bunker...

ongarite

Its all over now.
Toshiba has concedded defeat and has halted production of all players immedialtely.
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSL1627196120080216

branners69

So watch out for some great HD DVD bargains

Doctor DooM

Well, i should be happy I have a blue ray player then.

Still I thought HD was the better format technically, and its a blow for hd owners.

branners69

I have a PS3 which covers my Blu Ray requirements at the moment but sooner stand alone players come down in the price the better!! I hate using consoles for anything other than playing games.

Am looking at the Pioneer BDP-LX70A but at €1500 it will have to wait!

Praetorian

Glad I didn't commit to a HD format yet

Captain Chaos

branners69 wrote: »

I have a PS3 which covers my Blu Ray requirements at the moment but sooner stand alone players come down in the price the better!! I hate using consoles for anything other than playing games.

Am looking at the Pioneer BDP-LX70A but at €1500 it will have to wait!

Surprisingly the PS3 is a better blu ray player than a lot of the dedicated players currently on the market, I wouldn't be in too much of a rush to run out and get a play if you already have a PS3.

Zonda999

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Surprisingly the PS3 is a better blu ray player than a lot of the dedicated players currently on the market, I wouldn't be in too much of a rush to run out and get a play if you already have a PS3.

I agree, especially with the introduction of blu-ray 2.0.The ps3 gets around this problem however

JackieChan

Its in the Times so its official

Blu-ray leads in DVD format war

Sony's Blu-ray technology is close to winning the latest format war for home movie DVDs after a source at main rival, Toshiba, said it was planning to give up on its HD DVD format.

The new discs promise consumers high-definition movies and up to five times more space than previous DVDs, but the two rival formats had put off shoppers, with players only able to use one or other type of disc.

That changed this year as HD DVD suffered a string of defections to Blu-ray by movie studios, such as Time Warner's Warner Bros, and big retailers.

Sony and Panasonic products maker Matsu****a Electric Industrial Co - consumer electronics giants that fought head-on in the video cassette format battle of the 1980s - are on the same side this time with Blu-ray.
© 2008 ireland.com

RangeR

Pretty much.

Linky

Toshiba's board of directors will this week meet to put and end to the company's production of HD DVD machines, it has been claimed.

Sources cited by Japanese broadcaster NHK this weekend alleged that the consumer electronics giant will stop making HD DVD players and recorders at its Aomori Prefecture province plant.


They also said Toshiba's board has convened an extraordinary meeting to ratify the plan.

Last week, rumours coming out of the US had Toshiba conceding defeat to the Sony-led Blu-ray Disc format within a matter of weeks. While Toshiba itself did not comment on the claims, the language used by its executives indicated the company might be willing to admit that HD DVD had lost the format war.


On Friday, US retail giant Wal-Mart confirmed what a company insider had already revealed: that it would begin offering only Blu-ray Disc products from June.


Even if Toshiba hasn't reached the point where it's ready to call it quits on HD DVD, there's no question the format is losing momentum. Last week, Best Buy and Netflix said they would go exclusively Blu-ray following strong sales of the the format, primarily thanks to Sony's PlayStation 3.

RangeR

Interesting read from EnGadget. I now it's old but hey, a good read.

Tony

http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=10123917

RangeR

Linky

This HD-DVD processing plant isn't waiting for Toshiba to announce. They have already jumped ship.

Blue Ray Technologies multi-format disc pressing plant will drop its HD-DVD lines, founder Erick Hansen says not waiting for Toshiba to throw in towel in format war. Makes statement to Toshiba and High Definition fans: "Not a loss for Toshiba, but a victory for consumers."

Spokane, WA (PRWEB) February 18, 2008 -- The only indie multi-format high definition disc pressing plant, Blue Ray Technologies, will drop its HD-DVD lines without waiting for the widely-reported and anticipated announcement of Toshiba's retreat from HD-DVD.

"This is a victory for the consumers, who can now move in to the stunning high def disc world and build collections with confidence," said industry expert Erick Hansen, a DVD pioneer and chairman of Blue Ray Technologies. "Toshiba can take heart in that there is no shame: it was a battle well-fought and that they have several adaptable technologies and backup plans."


In fact, no orders had come in to the full-service disc manufacturer for HD-DVDs, even partial orders along with Blu-ray clients looking to service both markets, since November. The indie film companies that BRT serves had seen the death of the HD-DVD format long before last week's announcement that Walmart, Blockbuster and Netflix were dropping the format - and even before Warner Bros. announced in January at the CES show they were going Blu-ray only.


"This week we will dismantle our HD-DVD lines and will be adding new equipment to bolster our Blue-ray manufacturing," said Hansen explaining, "Despite our name and preference, we always offered HD-DVDs as a service to our customers. Now we will reconfigure part of that equipment to make DVDs and CDs," said Hansen. "The indie film companies moved quicker than the studios and gradually stopped mixed orders in favor of Blu-ray late last year."


Hansen explained "They preferred the larger capacity and full 1080p quality of the Blu-ray discs going forward. We saw this but since I have been saying HD-DVD was DOA for four years, we still had to wait for the industry to catch up to the inevitable. HD-DVD is dead, all that is left is the burial."
He said "We are waiting this week for the other shoes to drop from Universal and Paramount/DreamWorks, the last studios to support HD-DVD over Blu-ray -- and word from Microsoft, who used the now-obsolete format as an add-on to their Xbox game console."

More info at www.blueraytechnologies.com.

RangeR

And it finally happened

Linky

Toshiba has abandoned HD DVD "following recent major changes in the market", it announced this morning. The company spun the failure of its favourite format as a move made to strengthen the industry.


The consumer electronics giant said it will "no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders".


It will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players to retail channels, aiming to stop shipping product by the end of March.


Consumers who've bought into HD DVD will continue to be supported, Toshiba said. However, we have to question the long-term availability of software updates since the format arguably now has no real future.
Toshiba also said it will continue to try and work with the companies - Microsoft, HP, Universal and Paramount among them - who helped it promote the HD DVD format.


However, the time had come for a change of strategy, it admitted.
“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.


Where will Toshiba go now? In its statement, it highlighted the other technologies it's driving, including Flash storage, tiny hard drives, wireless and "next-generation CPUs" - the latter a reference to what it's doing with the Cell processor it co-developed with Sony and IBM. Earlier this year, it demoed an HDTV powered by Cell.



Toshiba didn't address ongoing development of HD DVD drives for computers, and it's always possible the format will live on as a data-storage technology. The company had 51GB HD DVD discs in the lab, and these might yet be fully accepted into the HD DVD standard by the DVD Forum, the organisation that oversees both the DVD and HD DVD standards.


But the boost today's news will have given the Blu-ray Disc camp means it's unlikely HD DVD will have much of a future even here.


And it is good news for hi-def. Sony's victory may stoke sales of HD discs after shoppers held back purchases because of uncertainty over which technology would prevail. US retailers plan to stop selling HD DVDs after Warner Home Entertainment, the largest DVD publisher, said last month it would release its films only on Blu-ray.

shayser

The Toshiba Discontinued Products page. Looks kind of sad!

RangeR

So yeah, I'm bored but here is a HD-DVD Obituary by El Reg

Linky

Too long to quote

RangeR

Sony sells $835m PS3 CPU plant to Toshiba. Well, Toshiba did help in the development of the chip.

Linky

Sony today re-iterated its plan to sell its Cell processor chip factory to Toshiba, which will pay ¥90bn ($835m) for the facility.


Toshiba's buying the plant in Western Japan, but it'll be run by a joint-venture co-owned by the two giants. The JV was announced in October 2007, part of Sony's plan to exit the costly chip business.


The JV is due to be incorporated on 1 April, on which date it will use the plant acquired by Toshiba to punch out Cell CPUs and the RSX graphics chips - the GPU developed by Nvidia and, like Cell, used in the PlayStation 3.

Sony's partnership with Toshiba over the Cell chip is in stark contrast to the two firms' opposition over next-gen optical disc formats. Yesterday, Toshiba said it was ending production of HD DVD hardware, allowing the Sony-back Blu-ray Disc to claim victory in the format war.
Toshiba yesterday said it would focus on products like Cell and solid-state storage in the post-HD DVD world.


Toshiba plans to use Cell in future HD TVs. This past January, at the Consumer Electronics Show, it demo'd an LCD TV equipped with Cell for image processing, including decoding multiple HD video streams for picture-in-picture displays.

RangeR

MS axes Xbox 360 HD DVD drive

Not a surprise at all.

Linky

Microsoft is dropping its HD DVD add-on drive from its list of Xbox 360 add-ons, the software giant revealed this past weekend.


The blame was placed firmly on "recent decisions made by Toshiba, Hollywood studios, and retailers", but whoever's responsible, MS will "no longer manufacture new HD DVD players for the Xbox 360".


The move comes as no great surprise. After Toshiba's decision to throw in the towel in the format fight and concede victory to Blu-ray Disc, a move that will see it cease manufacture of HD DVD drives, Microsoft would at the very least have to find a new drive supplier.


But with major retailers Wal-Mart and Best Buy dropping HD DVD movies, and both Paramount and Universal Studios now committed to Blu-ray, there's not a lot of point in an Xbox 360 owner investing in the HD DVD drive from now on. The Xbox 360 add-on was intended solely for fim viewing.


MS' decision highlights its wisdom in opting for an external HD DVD drive rather than going the whole hog and building the drive into a new version of the console. Fans of the format will accuse Microsoft of helping the format's failure by failing to support HD DVD the way Sony promoted Blu-ray Disc by building it into the PlayStation 3.


Will MS offer a Blu-ray drive for the 360? All the company said on the matter this time is: "HD DVD is one of the several ways we offer a high definition experience to consumers and we will continue to give consumers the choice to enjoy digital distribution of high definition movies and TV shows directly to their living room, along with playback of the DVD movies they already own."


Looks like it has its eye on a future in which movies are downloaded.

branners69

It also looks like they wont be supporting Blu Ray but I reckon that could change!

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/a89966/microsoft-says-no-to-xbox-blu-ray.html

RangeR

Meh, Microsoft seem to do whatever they want for their own reasons,regardless on how it effects their customers or what others may think.

I think it was about 2 months ago that Microsoft claimed [indirectly] that they weren't too pushed on what happened to HD-DVD as they were working on their own downloadable content platform, probably including iHD.

I reckon MS will go for whatever makes them the most amount of money. Downloadable platform where the files conform to iHD, rather than HD-DVD which contains iHD, will make Microsoft much more money as they get to keep a larger proportion of each sale.

My "Not a surprise at all" comment wasn't only directed at them dropping HD-DVD but also the indirect inference that they are working on downloadable content. They have been looking into this for a while now. Not just since HD-DVD started running into trouble.

RangeR

Linky

OMFG, I might have been wrong,

Sony has confirmed that it's in talks with Microsoft about supporting Blu-ray Disc. Apparently, it has also been chatting to Apple, even though the Mac maker is already a Blu-ray Disc backer.


The Japanese electronics giant’s US president, Stan Glasgow, told the Financial Times this week that Sony is talking to both companies. He didn't explicitly state that the conversation with Microsoft is about offering a Blu-ray add-on for the Xbox 360, but what else could they be discussing?


Until now, Xbox 360 owners could only play HD DVDs, by buying an add-on drive. Following Toshiba's decision to abandon HD DVD production, Microsoft canned that peripheral. It has often said in the past that it will offer a Blu-ray add-on if the punters want one.


It’s too early to say exactly how Blu-ray will be brought to the Xbox 360, if at all. Most likely, gamers may be offered an external Blu-ray drive. But now there's a clear winner in the format war, Microsoft might well decide to integrate a Blu-ray drive into a future version of the console.


Glasgow told the FT that Sony is also talking to with Apple, presumably in the hope the Mac maker, which has been a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association since March 2005, to start offering computers with integrated BD drives.


Unlike Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Glasgow believes Blu-ray isn’t being threatened by online downloads and streaming because that medium's popularity will take years to grow. Instead, he expects Blu-ray Discs to succeed thanks to falling player prices that he claims could see a standalone Blu-ray player cost just $300 (£150/€200) by December and $200 by the end of 2009.

Mountjoy Mugger

At €200, I'd be tempted.

Zonda999

http://www.pixmania.com/ie/uk/598966/art/sony/bdp-s300-blu-ray-dvd-play.html

This one's a sony and only 320e delivered

http://www.allianceelectric.ie/products/bluray/dmpbd30.htm

This one is prob a bit higher quality but at under 50000 for a pana, it deserves a look

I can see them under 250euro by next christmas

RangeR

Linky

Microsoft's Xbox division and Sony aren’t chatting about incorporating Blu-ray into the Microsoft console, despite a Sony executive stating that the two companies are discussing the HD technology.


Sony US' President, Stan Glasgow, confirmed last week that talks between the two companies had taken place, though he didn’t say that the negotiations centred on the Xbox 360.


Yesterday, Microsoft's group product manager for Xbox 360, Aaron Greenberg, went on record to say that the two were not discussing bringing Blu-ray to the Xbox 360.


The Xbox team "is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Disc Association about integrating Blu-ray into the Xbox experience", he told Reuters.


Microsoft’s denial doesn’t rule out the possibility of a Blu-ray enabled Xbox 360 in the future, only that two pair aren't chatting about it at the moment. In the past, company executives have said it will consider such a move if its customers demand it.


The software giant last month canned production of its HD DVD add-on drive, following Toshiba’s recent decision to dump the failed format.


Greenberg added that, in Microsoft’s opinion, the Xbox 360 is still better value than Sony’s PS3. No surprise there. However, retail prices for both consoles have dropped significantly since their initial launches, with Microsoft last week slashing the cost of each Xbox 360 model by around £40 (€55/$80).


If Microsoft shuns Blu-ray then what else could be in store for the Xbox 360? The company may opt to invest more heavily in online content downloads for the Xbox Live service, which already offers films.

sicruise

SDooM wrote: »

Well, i should be happy I have a blue ray player then.

Still I thought HD was the better format technically, and its a blow for hd owners.

What?? Where did you get this idea from?

RangeR

sicruise wrote: »

What?? Where did you get this idea from?

I would tend to agree with your question. I would not see HD-DVD as technically superior to Bluray. Not saying that Bluray is technically superior either [although that is my personal belief].

A lot of the marketing for both of these projects concentrated on Movie quality and movie extras. I VERY rarely heard anything about the other uses of the disks. Bluray has a far bigger potential capacity than HD-DVD could ever dream of.

I've heard a lot of people say that HD-DVD is superior because there is no region coding etc. This is an un-educational view of it. Of course there is region coding. The distributers just decided not to enforce it yet.

I think the main sole reason that HD-DVD died in the way it did, was down to the HD-DVD drive not being integrated with the XBox [a console that I don't particularly like]. This allowed Bluray adoption to rocket ahead with the release of the PS3. The PS3 was always going to do well, regardless of what anyone said. It was a no brainer. Yes, the price was high on first release, but everyone knew that it would come down in time. Now the PS3 is going from strength to strength. I'm not a PS3 fanboy but I do like the brand. I do like what the Playstation has become.

I have a PS3 mainly for the Blueray drive but also because :

• It can be my jukebox on party nights.
• It can play my films [mp4, divx, avi, dvd, bluray] whenever I want.
• It can stream more video content from my server up stairs.
• Hell, it can stream movies to my PSP from anywhere in the world.
• I can surf the internet on my TV, if I so require.
• I can even video / text or voice chat with my friends, if I had any
• When data gets too big to be quickly transferred over wifi, it has a 1000Mb LAN port in the back.
• If I feel the need, dammit, I can also play a game or two on the damn thing.

The PS3 saves me the mess of having multiple devices under my telly. At the moment, I only have my PS3 and Chorus STB. I don't need anything else down there at the moment. Nice and neat.

And I don't need to have loads of wires trailing across the room because it has wifi built in and the bluetooth controler.

Bottom line:
Bluray won because it got to the mass market first and by bucket loads. If Microsoft had have gone the full monty and incorporated the HD-DVD drive into the XBox, it would have stood a fighting chance. Microsoft's reasons for going at it half heartedly is a story for a another thread.

mrplop

sicruise wrote: »

What?? Where did you get this idea from?

Actually Blu-Ray is superior to HD-DVD in every respect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_high_definition_optical_disc_formats

The intial argument used against Blu-Ray was the fact the early discs used older MPEG2 encoding but thereafter the majority of BD releases were encoded using VC1 and AVC h.264 codecs.

The newer BD profiles address Java related playback which the HD-DVD camp used to use as one of their main selling points.

All moot now obviously...