Toshiba officially bows out of HD-DVD, Blu-ray wins format war!

[Black_Smoke]

TOKYO - Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video.
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"We concluded that a swift decision would be best," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company's Tokyo offices.

The move would make Blu-ray — backed by Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, and five major Hollywood movie studios — the winner in the battle over high-definition DVD formatting that began several years ago.

Nishida said last month's decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format made the move inevitable.

"That had tremendous impact," he said. "If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win."

Warner joined Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox in that move.

Nishida said his company had confidence in HD DVD as a technology and tried to assure the estimated 1 million people, including some 600,000 people in North America, who already bought HD DVD machines by promising that Toshiba will continue to provide product support for the technology.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, which are more detailed and vivid than existing video technology. They are incompatible with each other, and neither plays on older DVD players. But both formats play on high-definition TVs.

HD DVD was touted as being cheaper because it was more similar to previous video technology, while Blu-ray boasted bigger recording capacity.

Only one video format has been expected to emerge as the victor, much like VHS trumped Sony's Betamax in the video format battle of the 1980s.

Nishida said it was still uncertain what will happen with the Hollywood studios that signed to produce HD DVD movies, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation.

Toshiba's pulling the plug on the technology is expected to reduce the number of new high-definition movies that people will be able to watch on HD DVD machines. Toshiba Corp. said shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers will be reduced and will stop by end of March.

Sales in Blu-ray gadgets are now likely to pick up as consumers had held off in investing in the latest recorders and players because they didn't know which format would emerge dominant.

Despite being a possible blow to Toshiba's pride, the exit will probably lessen the potential damage in losses in HD DVD operations. Goldman Sachs has said pulling out would improve Toshiba's profitability between 40 billion yen and 50 billion yen ($370 million-$460 million) a year.

The reasons behind Blu-ray's triumph over HD DVD are complex, as marketing, management maneuvers and other factors are believed to have played into the shift to Blu-ray's favor that became more decisive during the critical holiday shopping season.

Once the balance starts tilting in favor of one in a format battle, then the domination tends to grow and become final, said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo.

"The trend became decisive I think this year," he said. "When Warner made its decision, it was basically over."

With movie studios increasingly lining up behind Blu-ray, retailers also began to stock more Blu-ray products.

Friday's decision by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. retailer, to sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware appeared to deal a final blow to the Toshiba format. Just five days earlier, Netflix Inc. said it will cease carrying rentals in HD DVD.

Several major American retailers had already made similar decisions, including Target Corp. and Blockbuster Inc.

-Yahoo News

[Black_Smoke]

Blu-Ray Disc Association to Microsoft: 'Join us.'
BDA spokesman Frank Simonis comments on the demise of HD-DVD.

February 19, 2008 - Now that the format war is over, with an official concession from Toshiba delivered earlier this week, the question becomes what comes next for manufacturers formerly amalgamated with HD-DVD? In an interview with TechRadar, Blu-Ray Association spokesman Frank Simonis stated that former HD-DVD rivals should join the Blu-Ray family.

"We have always said that Toshiba and Microsoft, and any other company is more than welcome to join the Blu-Ray Disc Association. We are an open organization, with an open disc standard," said Simonis. He later went on to say that Microsoft and Toshiba would be valuable additions to the Blu-Ray camp. Simonis refused to declare an official victory for Blu-Ray although the demise of HD-DVD was seemingly imminent after Toshiba's withdrawal. However, Simonis did express a level of empathy noting the difficulty Toshiba would face if it were to switch to Blu-Ray as one of HD-DVD's principle backers.

After Warner Bros.' crucial withdrawal of support for the HD-DVD format earlier this year, Microsoft representatives acknowledged a potential swapping of support for Blu-Ray. Simonis went on to comment on the prospect of Blu-Ray support in future Xbox systems.

"Microsoft could easily put Blu-Ray inside the Xbox," said Simonis. "From my understanding Microsoft did an early evaluation and the Xbox has a similar processor to the PS3 so it will be perfectly capable of decoding a Blu-Ray disc." While many believe that Blu-Ray support in both the PS3 and Xbox 360 would create an unsavory juxtaposition for Sony, Simonis maintains that Sony would have little choice in the matter.

"Sony has nothing to say on this. The BDA is an open organization and no one company is in charge of it. It's irrelevant whether Sony would be happy about Microsoft joining up, because it wouldn't have a say," said Simonis. Despite the resolution of the format war, some claim that the Blu-Ray format still faces several potential threats; namely digital downloads and streaming.

Simonis debunked these claims, stating that "When it comes to ownership of content, we've seen the research: people like to have a physical disc in their hand. With a real box and real case lining. Downloads don't offer people what they want." Simonis cited the current impracticality and exorbitant download times involved with digital downloads. "Downloading a 4.7GB movie is still an absolute pain for most people," said Simonis. "So what would it be to download a 50GB 1080p movie? It would take an extraordinary amount of time and people are just not ready for such things."

-IGN.com

[Matty]

lol at the comment on people downloading hd movies 'people are just not ready for such things'. 250gb of my hard drive says otherwise. people are ready for 4 gig 720p rips of films...broadband speeds have come a long way...

[Javier]

lol at the comment on people downloading hd movies 'people are just not ready for such things'. 250gb of my hard drive says otherwise. people are ready for 4 gig 720p rips of films...broadband speeds have come a long way...

The majority of people aren't ready for it. 

[Don Jacob]

so if the 360 utilizes blu ray then does that mean newer games will be obsolete? or does it just mean that it will play blu ray movies.

[Matty]

true. not everybody is a computer geek i suppose...is sure handy and cost effective to know about technology though ;]

[MarkCruz]

so if the 360 utilizes blu ray then does that mean newer games will be obsolete? or does it just mean that it will play blu ray movies.

IT WILL PROBABLY BE AN EXTERNAL DRIVE TO WATCH MOVIES ONLY.

MY 1 TERABYTE IS READY

[big mat]

i wish the hd dvd won, it was the better format

[MoreSwaggerThanMickJagger]

i wish the hd dvd won, it was the better format

They are both great.  Quality wise I dont notice much of a difference between HD DVD and Blu-Ray, they are both amazing

On a side note, Im about to get blunted and watch the hd dvd of American Gangster, should be piffy.

[big mat]

the hd dvd is much faster. Same speed as the dvd. The br lecture is slower, that's why the ps3 as to copy the game on the hd. It doesn't affect movies, just data

[MoreSwaggerThanMickJagger]

the hd dvd is much faster. Same speed as the dvd. The br lecture is slower, that's why the ps3 as to copy the game on the hd. It doesn't affect movies, just data

between my blu-ray on ps3 and toshiba hd dvd player,  the blu-ray player has a much quicker loading time.

[big mat]

could be true, but what i say is also true, it must be something like the memory cache i dont know but my bro got the ps3 and he must copy some of the most advanced games on is hd. For example, devil may cry 4 is taking 4-5 gig. My xbox doesn't copy the game on the hd

[MoreSwaggerThanMickJagger]

could be true, but what i say is also true, it must be something like the memory cache i dont know but my bro got the ps3 and he must copy some of the most advanced games on is hd. For example, devil may cry 4 is taking 4-5 gig. My xbox doesn't copy the game on the hd

damn.   interesting

[MIC]

could be true, but what i say is also true, it must be something like the memory cache i dont know but my bro got the ps3 and he must copy some of the most advanced games on is hd. For example, devil may cry 4 is taking 4-5 gig. My xbox doesn't copy the game on the hd

PS3 uses a 2x BD drive, which is 72Mbits/second or 9MB/second transfer. The Xbox 360 uses a 12x DVD, which should give it about 16MB/second.

PS3 use two methods to get shorter loading times:

1. Installing files to hdd
2. "File redundancy" where same files are put in a few places on the disc to shorten access time. That is also the main reason why most of the PS3 games take up more gigabytes on the disc.

The Darkness 360 = 6GB
The Darkness PS3 = 18GB

Enchanted Arms 360 = 6.5GB
Enchanted Arms PS3 = 15GB

Oblivion 360 = 6.5GB
Oblivion PC = 5GB
Oblivion PS3 = 14.5GB

Same method was used in case of PS2.

Theoretically they could start installing faster BD drives when they become available but I doubt they will.
Still, after seeing how Mass Effect struggled with streaming data directly from the DVD on my 360, I believe having a hard disk drive as a standard is better than having a faster optical drive.

[big mat]

mass effect wasn't optimise well, i got nicer games with sharper textures that dont suffer that bug. I could care less though, ME is dope as hell, one of the most addictive game i played in years