Too little too late? Toshiba "still seeking" Blu-ray and HD DVD unity
by Richard Lawler 
posted Jun 27th 2006 at 2:44AM
We're not sure how to take this. Just as Blu-ray launches, with its own HD DVD players having already been on store shelves for some time, now Toshiba wants to hold out the olive branch again. Even as Blu-ray struggles with underwhelming launch titles and delays, they still hold the trump card of higher capacity, possibly higher burning speed, and more movie studio support. Maybe Toshiba sees this as the best time to cut a deal, maybe not. We already have reports that they are spending a lot of money to make sure HD DVD gains acceptance, but what is the long term strategy?One thought is that Toshiba is just floating this in an attempt to slow possible Blu-ray early adopters, who might be slower to spend $1000+ if they're unsure a compromise could be coming soon, but that would probably hurt the sales of Toshiba's HD-A1 just as much, if not more. The statement was made by company president Atsutoshi Nishida at an annual shareholder meeting, interestingly timed just after Sony CEO Howard Stringer remarked on his companies "high-risk" strategy for PS3 & Blu-ray victory. Stringer kept up the company line, referring to their competitor as a transitional product, and Blu-ray the future-proof standard for years to come.
Whatever the case may be, from here it certainly seems like Toshiba is looking for a ship that has sailed. This close to their Playstation 3 launch Sony would be giving up their primary advantage by unifying, or risk further delaying the system to add compatibility. While HDTV owners can certainly see that a format war is stupid, will slow growth and adoption of both, and cost everyone more money, if the two sides couldn't figure things out when they were negotiating last year there is little reason to believe they will now.
Latest Blu-ray vs. HD DVD news:
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
GhostDoggy @ Jun 27th 2006 7:00AM
F-them! Until I can get a universal player, HD-DVD and Toshiba can KMA. Introducing a 1080i-limited player was an insult, but went a long way to illustrate how their efforts were behind the competition because they wanted to be first out of the gate.
Jason @ Jun 27th 2006 8:49AM
GhostDoggy... All the reviews of the HD-DVD movies have been MUCH better than those of the Blu-Ray movies... even ones in 1080p!!! Toshiba has done right by the consumer here... they have made a product using many of todays standards that fills the need for HD Movies and done so VERY well... in the reviews 1080i looks just as good to the eye as 1080p... its not about being future proof its about putting something out that people want at a price they can and will afford. Why Sony has to charge twice as much for the basically the same technology makes no sense to me... they see some new technology out there and try to apply it to something... look at the cell and the PS3... just because they think the cell is a cool new technology they are going to try to build a game system around it...
Toshiba set out to see if they could make a new format that wasn't cost prohibative that fulfilled the need... Sony saw and expensive new techonology and said... "hey... how can we make people buy this... I know lets make it play HD movies" and so far it is proving to be the inferior of the two regardless of storage capacity.
BRYAN @ Jun 27th 2006 9:13AM
I would love to watch my movies in HD, but until there is a single format, I will not waste my time/money. I am not alone in this mentality, and as you pointed out in the podcast, the baby boomers need to get on board too.
I doubt that Toshiba is offering an olive branch; I think they are making an escape plan if HD-DVD starts to fail. They can offer to end the war sooner by joining the BluRay camp themselves, and collect a small royalty as opposed to losing everything.
John @ Jun 27th 2006 9:50AM
Jason... I agree with your comments, except add to that the fact that Sony is really greedy and they want the royalties that the next generation DVD format is going to provide. Sony always takes someone elses technology and then make a more expensive proprietary format, slap the label Sony on it, and charge more for it and all at the same time making it harder and more expensive for the consumer all because there name is Sony. Now I will give them credit for some of their more expensive items like their HDTVs, but why would they do the same thing with memory cards. What is the purpose of putting out yet another memory card format other than to make more money. I would really love to see Sony fail with Blu-Ray and the PS3 just because I feel they are too dam greedy, and arrogant as well.
Jim @ Jun 27th 2006 10:32AM
I agree with Jason that Toshiba tried to come out with a evolutionary (not revolutionary like Blu-Ray) HD format that was relatively inexpensive, but achieved great results. I don't fault them for 1080i in their first-gen players, as very few people have 1080p and Toshiba was probably waiting for HDMI 1.3 spec anyway.
There has be some sort of unity, whether it comes from universal hybrid players, or one of the formats dying off. Both formats will go the way of SACD/DVD-Audio if they continue down this road. With all the VOD-type technologies just starting to come into their own, cable and satellite increasing their bandwidth someone will capitalize big on this. Consumers want no part of this war. And for most of them, upscaled SD DVD looks great on their new HDTV and they can choose all the movie titles they want without restriction.
My hat is off to Toshiba for trying to set some kind of unification between the 2. Sony is pretty thick (mini-disc, SACD), so I doubt it will happen.
Jason @ Jun 27th 2006 10:40AM
John... Exactly... we need "next-gen" DVD technology... not TOTALLY NEW DVD technology... HD-DVD is just the next-gen of DVD... Blu-Ray is not... if Blu-Ray does ever get the capacity up to 200GB like they claim possible then the format has a place in the PC market for data storage and backup... but WHY in the world would we ever need that kind of space for HD movies? My DirecTV HD Tivo box has a 250 GB Hard Drive and it can store 20 hours of HD content... we need an optical format that can hold 4-5 hours at the MOST after you include extras... HD-DVD can easily do that and it is cheaper all around... Blu-Ray just doesn't make sense for single HD movies.
Dave @ Jun 27th 2006 5:21PM
One interesting point is that current Blu-Ray titles are single-layer only. This means they are only 15GB discs. Also, Blu-Ray currently uses an inferior compression algorithm. So, it's not really a surprise that the quality for current Blu-Ray titles is surpassed by the 30GB HD-DVD titles.
I assume that all current Blu-Ray titles will be re-released once they get the dual-layer problem solved. I wonder if they'll up the price?
Dave @ Jun 27th 2006 7:49PM
I meant 25GB.
Johan DeSilva @ Jun 28th 2006 4:55AM
Movies in HD will not make much deference because the image is cleaned up anyway. The real difference will be un-cleaned images like sports, news and wild life programmes.
GhostDoggy @ Jun 28th 2006 7:36AM
Guys, I am not anti-Toshiba or anti-HD-DVD. I have no love for Sony, either. The point being the article is that Toshiba beat its competition to the market with a player incapable of 1080P output, which surprised a lot of early-adopting consumers.
Toshiba chose not to unify the new format, but now this article suggests that something is wrong with their business model, or that something more is wrong with the competition's model to warranty another stab at it?
Sorry, consumers don't like buying a incomplete player only to see its developer seeking a 'change' by making unification attempts. And its not easy or cheap deinterlacing 1080i in order to recover the 1080P content mastered on the disks.
BTW, how much can you relate to video quality when on one hand you onlky have a single product on the street per format, and questionable transfer qualities (which say nothing for the playback chain), let alone titles available on both formats known to be of high transfer quality? Even then its a 1080i vs 1080P comparison unless you introduce something in the viedo chain.
grey eminence @ Jun 28th 2006 10:47AM
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are just flashes in the pan.
Better nanotechnology will be out in a few years.
http://www.colossalstorage.net
What do you say to 10 terabytes to 10 petabytes and upward.
Dave @ Jun 28th 2006 12:16PM
Well, I'm waiting for an affordable 1080p player myself--in either format; but, for now, the fact that Blu-Ray movies are only single-layer is a bigger deal to me. They're already poorly compressed as it is--and, as things currently stand, they've only got 25GB to work with.