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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 2:40 pm 
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Toshiba quits HD DVD business

Blu-ray Trumps HD DVD: The Aftermath

With HD DVD Dead, Will Blu-ray Prices Begin to Fall?

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 3:40 pm 
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Location: Farmington, MI USA
This saves me some money, as now I can convince my son that the HD-DVD addon for his Xbox360 won't do him any good! :wink:

Honestly though, with M$ selling them with their game consoles, I would have thought HD-DVD would be the winner (as well as Sony's prior history, can you say "BetaMAX"?)


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 Post subject: stunned
PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 5:39 pm 
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Location: Minneapolis, MN
I really thought HD-DVD would win. The discs were cheaper to make than Blu-Ray, because they could be made on the current dvd making equipment. The players were cheaper than Blu-Ray. Microsoft was behind HD-DVD. A healthy percentage of the movie studios were behind HD-DVD. And, when was the last time Sony won a format war? With all these elements, it was hard to imagine HD-DVD losing.

Then, a friend at work pointed out that Sony isn't the same company that they were back in the days of the VHS vs. Beta battle. Sony now owns movie studios (Sony Pictures, Columbia), and music companies (Sony-BMG, Columbia).

This format war was not as stand-alone as the VHS vs. Beta war. The video game market was associated with it. Sony was also smarter this time - they built a Blu-Ray player into every PlayStation 3, so you got a free Blu-Ray player just for playing their games. XBOX did not have a built-in HD-DVD player, so you had to make the extra effort and spend extra money to have the HD-DVD player. The final trump was Sony bribing the movie studios to drop HD-DVD. Money talks. The studios listened.

:(

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 6:54 pm 
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slowtolearn wrote:
This saves me some money, as now I can convince my son that the HD-DVD addon for his Xbox360 won't do him any good!)


Rumor is they'll be blowing out those HD-DVD add-ons for $50. It was my understanding that they will work on a PC as a USB device... I'll have to try mine out, particularly since I should probably work on ripping the 10 HD-DVDs I own...

Also, I think the Toshiba HD-DVD players are going/will be going for about $99. Think of it as a good upsampling DVD player with 7 free high-definition sample discs!


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 7:29 pm 
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Now the question is how long before ppl in countries besides the US can install a Blu-ray drive in on their Knoppmyth frontend and "backup" Blu-ray discs. Now with just one format easier for the next hero like "DVD Jon" to focus on just BD+. Heck the PS3 runs Linux and can play Blu-ray why not our Linux boxes?


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:55 pm 
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Location: spencerport, ny (USA)
ceenvee703 wrote:
Also, I think the Toshiba HD-DVD players are going/will be going for about $99. Think of it as a good upsampling DVD player with 7 free high-definition sample discs!

Beware - the older A1 model (which I have) is very slow to start up. I think it runs Windows CE, and it's basically a PC. So it has to boot up. From standby, it takes about a minute before it's awake enough to eject a disc.
It IS a great up-converter, and the HD-DVD discs look great. But the slowness has hurt the WAF and even the KAF (Kids hate it too). The consensus is: "Daddy bought the wrong dvd player last Christmas... maybe Santa will bring us a Blu-Ray next Christmas".
The A3 is supposed to be faster and more energy efficient though. Mine's the older A1.


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 5:22 pm 
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I have the A3 and it sucks just as bad at startup. You have to turn it on MINUTES before you want to actually use it.

I think Toshiba knew their format was dying and that's why they dumped the players at such low prices last xmas. They preferred to leave customers holding the bag instead of writing down their unsold inventory.

I'm disgusted enough over this whole thing that I'm boycotting Toshiba products for the next year. I won't buy anything that even contains a Toshiba product, so no Toshiba disk drives for me! (They're popular in laptops.)

Edit -- it also sucks as an upsampling DVD player because it only upsamples to the HDMI output, not the component outputs. WHY?!?!? There is ABSOLUTELY no reason for that limitation, yet they put it there.

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 9:22 pm 
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Liv2Cod wrote:
it only upsamples to the HDMI output, not the component outputs. WHY?!?!? There is ABSOLUTELY no reason for that limitation, yet they put it there.


Not Toshiba's fault... blame (as usual) the studios.

The studios do NOT allow upsampled output via component for ANY upsampling player (well, any licensed player). They ONLY allow it via HDMI (and thus HDCP).

http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/06/20/as ... component/

That's why, in a strange loophole, you can get upsampled DVD playback on a Xbox 360 via VGA output, but NOT component output (it drops back to 480p).


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:17 pm 
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I'll admit that I thought that Sony had a "betamax 2.0" with Blu-ray. Looking back at the history of the battle with HD DVD, picking an early winner is a toss-up.
In the early days of DVD, a friend of mine suggested getting a playstation 2 as a route to get into the DVD media. My wife didn't buy the excuse for getting a game machine, (we're not gamers.) so it didn't happen. Although I never considered getting a playstation 3 as a route to get into Blue-Ray, I would at least consider it "plausible" that this is at least a market advantage over HD DVD.
Some suggest that Wal-Mart's announcement to phase out HD DVD programming as the tipping point in format war. .. probably a stretch.

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PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 3:01 pm 
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BluesBrian wrote:
I'll admit that I thought that Sony had a "betamax 2.0" with Blu-ray.

I think Minidisk was Betamax 2.0.

I was betting on Blu-Ray to fail based on Sony's track record alone. When MS came in on the HD-DVD camp I thought its fate was sealed. BUT... I was still rooting for Blu-Ray based on higher capacity and better record capability.

Still It's fun when the underdog and the better player are the same and emerge victorious!
<flamebait>The Blu-Ray Giants beat the HD-DVD Patriots all over again.</flaimbait>

Now as another poster pointed out, all we need is for some Ubergeek Champion to regain our Fair Use Rights for us.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:23 pm 
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Never underestimate the publics demand for a 'bargain', 'more for your money' and of course 'bigger is better'. Beta and HD both had less capacity.


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:09 am 
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I guess I'll have to file my HD-DVDs along with my laser disc collection. One more thing to add to the outdated gadget museum in my basement. :lol:

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:37 am 
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jmckeown2 wrote:
BluesBrian wrote:
I'll admit that I thought that Sony had a "betamax 2.0" with Blu-ray.

I think Minidisk was Betamax 2.0.

I was betting on Blu-Ray to fail based on Sony's track record alone. When MS came in on the HD-DVD camp I thought its fate was sealed.


I guess that I must have missed out on Minidisk altogether! :lol:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidisk

I saw that Microsoft announced that they were giving up on the HD-DVD option for the Xbox-360. Sometimes the "evil empire" gets it wrong! hahahahaha!

Honestly, I spend no time in comparing the two (HD-DVD vs Blue-Ray), so I really don't know the advantages of one over the other. It just seemed obvious.. "there can only be one" (gratuitous Highlander quote!)


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