Toshiba Making Funeral Plans for HD DVD

Blue Light Special writes "With HD DVD on life support, Toshiba is reportedly preparing to bow to the inevitable and allow HD DVD to expire quietly. 'While denying that a decision on the fate of HD DVD has been made, a Toshiba marketing exec left the door wide open. "Given the market developments in the past month, 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," Jodi Sally, VP of marketing for Toshiba America Consumer Products, said.'" A few folks have also noted that Wal-mart is joining the Blu-ray train, further lowering the stock of HD DVD.

HD DVD joins Betamax in tech hell!

[molex333]

Betamax,Laser Disc,Minidisc, DIVX rentals, and now HD DVD. When will tech companies learn that everyone wants one standard and that these wars usually end poorly for someone. You would think that by now they would learn to all cooperate and back one product, thus making it cheaper for the consumer and getting thier product into more households.

Ew...

[morari]

Does that mean Sony now rules what will probably become the next main data format? The world just began sucking a lot more.

Oh well, I'm not all that interested until the players (and the televisions) drop to a reasonable price. Oh, and easy-to-do piracy is another must on my list! ;)

Re:HD DVD joins Betamax in tech hell!

[Beau6183]

Without competing standards new innovations and price wars would never happen. Wars like these are only to the benefit of the consumer...

Am I the only one?

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Am I the only one who doesn't give a damn one way or the other?

At least Blu-Ray rolls off the tounge easier. And yes, I'm convinced that's at least part of the reason it won.

Re:So Much For The Zonk Anti-Sony/BluRay FUD Barra

[Pojut]

Michael Bay, is that you?

Re:At least it's over...

[Anonymous Coward]

"A lot of people won't be happy about it, but I've gotta admit I'm impressed with how Sony marketing pulled this off. I definitely didn't see it ending this way."

Are you for real?

Sony marketing 'pulled this off'?

This is the long fought victory of BDA - BluRay Disc Association. A very large and wide ranging group of hardware companies all backing the BluRay standard:

http://www.blu-ray.com/info/ [blu-ray.com]

HD-DVD never had any plausible chance of viability in the market. It would have died much sooner if Microsoft hadn't stepped in and used it in a failed attempt to sabotage HD movie formats in order to try to lead consumers towards their own unsuccessful movie download service.

Re:HD DVD joins Betamax in tech hell!

[molex333]

I don't think my comment is ignorant. Think of all the people who spent thier hard earned money on an HD DVD player that is going to now become an expensive paperweight. Toshiba and sony could have gotten together and developed a standard that probably would have been better than the two available options now. My comment centers around the fact that companies can share information and create standards and still make a substantial amount of money and not have to confuse the general consumer. The prices would be lowered not by a price war but by the competition of multiple companies making the hardware. If all the hardware companies are given one standard the can decrease the manufacturing costs involved. When there are two competing standards, less units of each are made, thus increasing the cost per unit.

Re:Looks like Sony's gamble paid off.

[Kjella]

Then again, I also believe that Sony will only have a few years of profiting from being the next-gen DVD standard - downloadable content should slowly take over within the next few years.

In the market space Blu-Ray is in? I doubt it, those 50GB discs are a broadband killer and I think they just bought themselves more time on top of the DVD, which hasn't been significantly threatened either....

Sony wins, everyone loses

[PriceIke]

In this war I didn't WANT there to be a winner. I was hoping both camps would be forced to accomodate to an ongoing market share tug-of-war, while consumers owned hybrid players and weren't locked into EITHER format, and could choose whichever suited them. Movie studios would release movies on whichever they wanted, or could do double-sided discs (HDDVD on one side, Blu-Ray on the other) and release them in both formats, like music albums were released on cassette as well as CD for many years.

Now that Sony owns the HD movie format, it's a strong disincentive for me to start buying movies in HD, until the DVD format is phased out completely, or until it becomes possible and easy to rip movies from Blu-Ray and reauthor them minus the DRM.

Re:HD DVD joins Betamax in tech hell!

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Think of all the people who spent thier hard earned money on an HD DVD player that is going to now become an expensive paperweight.

This is a known risk every early adopter makes, whether they accept it or not.

Re:betamax, minidisc, 8-track

[Applekid]

Well, the 3.5" floppy had a pretty good run.

Re:Looks like Sony's gamble paid off.

[Anonymous Coward]

Downloadable content will not come anywhere near taking over from DVD and Blu-Ray until and unless they get broadband to be significantly faster than it is now. They'll need to lay fatter pipes in urban areas and much better broadband (probably some sort of wireless, actually) in the less populated areas.

Just as well HD-DVD DRM was cracked

[MrSteveSD]

Otherwise all those HD-DVD movies people have bought would be useless and a waste of money. As it is, they can just rip those high def movies to their hard drives.

Re:HD DVD joins Betamax in tech hell!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except those who, you know, bought into the losing format.

Re:That's a Shame

[Dogtanian]

Now there isn't a reason to lower the cost of bluray players.

Yes there is. Though many (but not all) overlooked it in favour of the more interesting Blu-Ray/HD-DVD rivalry, both players were fighting a bigger rival- existing DVD players and public apathy.

DVD became a runaway success because (a) it was cheap, and (b) it gave noticable picture-quality improvements and other advantages that could be enjoyed with existing setups.

Blu-Ray is not only relatively expensive, but it requires an HD set to make it worthwhile. Even those with HD sets could stick with upscaling DVD players. (*) And I suspect there are a significant proportion of people who rushed out and bought HD because it was the latest thing and they could boast about it to their friends, and haven't noticed that the picture from their $30 DVD player connected via the composite cable actually sucks :)

(*) In fact, it's a theory of mine that with improvements in dynamic image-processing technology (more than just upscaling), the picture quality from existing DVDs could be *far* improved. What I have in mind would require some fairly powerful chips doing intelligent analysis over multiple frames, and the cost would probably be horrendous at present- but I could see that changing. Then again, by the time that happens, Blu-Ray or some other HD rival will probably be established anyway. (OTOH, the same techniques could possibly be applied to HD sources to make them better *still*, so it might be worth pursuing anyway).

Re:Congrats to those who bought into that crap :)

[Divebus]

That's one down. Now we just need to decommission the VC-1 codec that snuck in the back door of Blu-ray. Don't need it.

Re:Am I the only one?

[cjb658]

Blu-Ray causes less confusion too. I went to Best Buy with my mother and we were looking at DVDs. She picked up an HD-DVD and I said "that won't work with your DVD player." "Why not?" she said. "I have an HDTV and a DVD player, so I can play HD-DVDs, right?" "You mean I need an HD-DVD player too?" Imagine how hard it will be to tell her she needs an HDCP-compliant TV as well.

Re:That's a Shame

[Dogtanian]

If I was already out buying the movie on DVD, then I figured I may as well plunk down the extra $5 and get it in a combo format [..] Hell I might still get an HD DVD player anyways. I still haven't bought "The 300", and Wal-mart has a player with a bundled copy for $148 right now.

Yes, but if- as appears almost inevitable now- HD-DVD really has lost the war and is killed off, you're still paying quite a lot of money to watch the few HD-DVD-compatible discs that you already have.

If you buy more discs, you're investing in a dead-end system, and when your original machine breaks down, you'll likely have to buy a secondhand player in a few years time if you want to keep watching your collection. Which might not have the benefits of newly-built (and Blu-Ray only) hi-def players- and what if you want to use them in your computer(s)?

And if you end up wanting to watch Blu Ray stuff, you'll end up forking out for that anyway, have two players cluttering up the place and (as above) effectively just be using the HD-DVD player for watching a few discs.

I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong though- *if* they sold HD-DVD discs off cheaply enough, this may not matter if you get your money's worth of enjoyment from the system anyway. Particularly if you hadn't planned on buying Blu-Ray at present.

Oh, and remember that the "worth" of a movie is the minimum of either (a) the most you'd be willing to pay for it and (b) the lowest price you can get it for without too many drawbacks. So perhaps it's "worth" $30 based on the RRP, but what's its real worth? Then again, $30 doesn't sound too bad to me, so forget this last paragraph :-)

Poor advertising

[HTH NE1]

HD DVD had pretty ineffective advertising for the format.

While Blu-ray has ads that put the format up front and show you multiple movies you can get for the format, HD DVD ads are mostly ads for a single movie, available on DVD and HD DVD. The only ad you could say was an ad for the HD DVD format itself focused far too much on characters of Shrek, and the characters were actually complaining about the superior quality of the picture, either for Donkey's dragon girlfriend looking too big and scaly or Gingie finding himself looking too delicious and taking bites out of himself, ([crunch] "Ow. Yummy!"). Rather than promoting the format, it felt like it was promoting the Shrek franchise.

I find it interesting too that though Apple backs Blu-ray, DVD Studio Pro supports HD DVD instead. Apple's DVD Player software included with Leopard only plays HD DVDs mastered by DVD Studio Pro, but still is the first OS to ship with native support for an HD media format, and it was HD DVD. Still, the mastering time is ridiculous: 1 week to encode 22 minutes of 1920x1080i video to H.264 on a 4-core Mac Pro with Compressor running 24/7.

Re:That's a Shame

[Christophotron]

I'm still not buying a BD player until they get sub-$200.

Hell, I'm not buying one until they get sub-$50. Hopefully by then the spec will be stabilized and the DRM will be more easily cracked and ignored (like DVD). If I can't burn a backup on my computer and play it in my official Blu-ray player (at FULL QUALITY), then I ain't interested.

Re:That's a Shame

[cens0r]

Apparently you didn't buy DVD when it was new. I paid over $500 for my first DVD player, and I didn't even get a 1st gen player (more like 1.5 gen). And that was in 1997 dollars. If adjusted fro inflation, I would almost guarantee that Blu-Ray is following a similar path to DVD in price. DVD really didn't take off until 3-4 years after it came out, when the players got really cheap.

Re:Myself?

[samkass]

You're misinformed, the GP is correct.

I don't think so. I think you haven't kept up with the latest information over the last year or so.

Blu-tay has a larger capacity, but the 1st several releases suffered from bad transfers and use of old MP2 compression.

Yes, but that was years ago.

Since Blu-ray seems to be prevailing I hope that this is old news and no longer the case.

It is indeed no longer the case, and hasn't been for some time. The Blu-ray discs are now generally regarded as higher quality than HD DVD.

Re:That's a Shame

[Maximum Prophet]

I'm waiting for a sub-$200 profile 2.0 BD player

Given the problems that some people have had with 1.1 players, I think I'll wait for at least X-Ray 10.0

Re:That's a Shame

[badasscat]

Given the problems that some people have had with 1.1 players, I think I'll wait for at least X-Ray 10.0

Or just buy a PS3 and don't worry about it.

I have a 60GB PS3 and there's not a BD or a special feature out there that it won't play. Nor will there ever be.

Re:Sony wins, everyone loses

[PriceIke]

This was true for me too for many years, however two things recently have made me a lot more aware of the DRM on DVDs and thinking of ways to nullify it: 1) a recent acquisition of an iPod Touch, on which I want to watch movies without having to buy them again for the privilege, and 2) my increasing frustration with UOPs, which seem to be getting worse and worse. I am already irritated by the FBI warnings and mandatory THX brag screens (and other such nonsense) on DVDs, but has anyone else received a copy of POTC: At World's End recently? That endless and infuriating Disney "whee-we're-Disney" intro (that you can't skip or FF) was more than enough for me to rip the movie off that disc.

Don't throw it away... Recycle it...

[FellowConspirator]

If it's a commercial failure, then why bury it. Just make the spec, tools, etc. free without license. There's a huge market for a low-cost high-capacity storage and video medium. Toshiba could make HD-DVD free to everyone. Blu-Ray can't beat that. Sure, the MPAA members will only ship Blu-Ray, but if it costs nothings to add to your drive, why wouldn't a vendor throw it on top just because. Home video and amateur cinematographers will have a reasonable format for producing, sharing, and storing footage, there'll be an HD replacement for VHS, and the cost for the blank media will plummet.

Then let's see who wins in the long run. Toshiba can still ship HD-DVD recorders, media, etc. Being fully open, the platform will reach every corner that Blu-Ray doesn't, by design. Blu-Ray is a very consumer-hostile format as-is; it's designed to limit the medium. Toshiba should give up not by burying it, but by becoming the antithesis of its competitor.

Re:That's a Shame

[king-manic]

Hd-Dvd might still find a niche , if the price of a hd dvd burner and disks reaches a reasonable price point many people may invest in the technology for backups.

Given that none of the major (APPLE/DEll/Sony) PC producers except Toshiba are in the HD DVD I find this idea difficult. As well the economies of scale will force BD down to tolerable back up levels long before a niche product like HD DVD. Also if you need back up, there are currently cheaper HDD and SDD options.

Re:That's a Shame

[Gizzmonic]

I'm glad you put "nice" in quotes. BluRay is a moving target of a platform. Newer profiles don't add much (who the fuck wants to watch picture in picture through an entire movie?) except complexity and consumer confusion. Consumers don't want to have to check the fine print every time to see if their movie will play, especially since Blu Ray costs more and does not offer anything over DVD except a high resolution.

Re:Blu-Ray != Sony

[elrous0]

Sony is rumored to be the one bankrolling most of the big money expenditures (including the recent advertising campaign and some of the studio payoffs). They also get a significantly larger chunk of the blu-ray licensing fees than the other BDA members, since they developed much of the actual technology behind the spec.

Re:That's a Shame

[Abcd1234]

Umm... frankly... I know of only *one* person who got a PS2 for the DVD capabilities, and surprise, surprise, he was a young, single guy. Sorry, but your average blue collar worker or housewife doesn't want to use a joypad to control their DVD player. The idea that PS2 was somehow the magic that caused the DVD to take off is a Sony fanboi wet dream, and nothing more.

Re:That's a Shame

[cens0r]

I think people can easily tell the difference between high quality video and low quality video but struggle to hear the difference between high and low quality audio.

If you had the same movie, one on a DVD with a decent up converter, and the other on blu-ray shown on the same TV with the same settings side by side, I guarantee most people would pick the blu-ray one as looking better.

The same test with audio just doesn't work. Most people can't tell the difference between MP3 and CD much less CD and SACD. About the only advantage SACD and DVD-A had are surround sound. The problem with that is that it requires decisions to be made when the music is recorded. Most bands just aren't going to up and start recording in surround sound. Plus you can't just easily convert old music into surround sound. Plus the majority of people listen to music in their cars or on headphones. Surround sound doesn't help much there.

Blu-Ray isn't going to be expensive much longer. I'm pretty sure it's price is dropping at least as fast as DVD did. Now that the format war is over, the cheap Chinese products will come out and push the cost even lower. You will probably see players in the $100-$150 range by Christmas. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if you find it very hard to buy a DVD player that does not also play blu-ray 2 years from now.

Re:Re-brand to "High Density"...?

[RoboRay]

Well, since writable Blu Ray is already available as a PC storage format (has been for years, especially in Japan), and capacity is the only thing that really matters in a storage format, and Blu Ray has 60% more capacity than HD-DVD, I'd say positioning HD-DVD exclusively as a storage format probably won't happen.

Re:It's Over, But Blu-Ray Isn't Ready

[noidentity]

I had bought a Toshiba HD-A3 HD DVD player for $159. Feature complete. Booted to drawer open in under 30 seconds. Loaded all movies in under 30 seconds.

Why are you not outraged that it takes half a minute just to open the drawer?!? What the hell is wrong with these things taking more than a second to open the tray, and less than 5 to start playing the feature? I just don't get it.

Re:At least it's over...

[rastoboy29]

heh, it wasn't their marketing, but the fact that the DRM is stronger.   That's what won the studios over, period.