HD DVD players become DVD upscalers in format war fallout

by Thomas Ricker, posted Feb 21st 2008 at 8:02AM

In an attempt to clear their shelves of dead HD DVD weight, retailers are taking the obvious step of slashing prices. Others, like play.com are renaming the players. Thanks to the magic of Google cache, we see that Toshiba's "HD-EP30 HD DVD Player" (as it was known on February 15th) is now listed as the "HD-EP30 HDMI Upscaling Player with HD DVD High Definition Playback." Caveat emptor, as they say.

[Via TechRadar, thanks David]

Read -- Old listing (via Google Cache)
Read -- Current listing

Filed under: Industry, HD DVD, Toshiba

Tags: format war, FormatWar, hd dvd, hd-ep30, HdDvd, toshiba

Subscribe to these comments

Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)

Neutral

anon @ Feb 21st 2008 4:55PM

Wow. Just... wow... And you say he should be banned? I vote you over him after those little profanity laced tirades you just went off on. Doesn't anyone realize that they only keep that crap up because you respond to them? Leave them alone and they'll quit it. You're giving them exactly what they want, and you're all making yourselves look like complete jackasses in the process.

Neutral

Iridium @ Feb 21st 2008 4:55PM

Like I have said before, HD-DVD and BluRay really only matter vs a good upscaled DVD if you have a large enough TV and your viewing distance. You aren't going to notice much on a 23" screen from 6 feet away.

If anyone really wants to see the true difference between a 1080p and upscaled 480p image just download these pictures. The 1080p image is a true 1920x1080 per pixel grab from a 12MP digital image with a low compression save. I then scaled the image using Phtotshop CS3 to 480p and then scaled the image back to 1080p. The upscaling quality you get with Photoshop is a lot better than what you would have in most consumer level video players, so this can serve as the best possible example. I also saved a 480p to 720p image and a 1080p to 720p image to show what you could expect when playing BluRay or HD-DVD vs an upscaled DVD on a 720p set. If upscaling was truly just as good as a 1080p transfer then you shouldn't be able to notice many differences.

http://www.studioadr.com/images/1080p.jpg
http://www.studioadr.com/images/480pTo1080p.jpg

Neutral

anon @ Feb 21st 2008 4:56PM

That was for XDragon. Someone else snuck a comment in while I was typing.

Neutral

Iridium @ Feb 21st 2008 4:57PM

http://www.studioadr.com/images/480pTo720p.jpg
http://www.studioadr.com/images/1080pTo720p.jpg

Neutral

XDragon @ Feb 21st 2008 5:02PM

By all mean, ban me too if me trying to clean up this place offends you.
I've had it with TT's stupidity that it now sets me off and yes prob further than it should. Look at Nfinity, at least when he was arguing, his opinion as unlikely to come to reality as it was, was still possible. This idiot won't give it up and I'd prefer to fight it to get the attention of the moderators so that going forward, there are more intelligent posts to read even it I don't agree with them. I actualy like reading stuff that is different than my opinion because I get to hear the other side and sometimes it can influence my thinking.
This is a waste of everyone's time and at least i'm trying to do something about it instead of pretending its not there because as you can see in every HD post, he simply won't go away even if no one responds to him!

Highest Ranked

Gus @ Feb 21st 2008 8:43PM

So because NF & TT annoy you that gives you the right to be the sheriff, blow a fuse, explode like a lunatic and use unacceptably abusive language?

Highly Ranked

XDragon @ Feb 22nd 2008 6:57AM

That's to get the attention of the mods.

Highly Ranked

XDragon @ Feb 22nd 2008 7:08AM

And I never said to ban Nfinity; try reading my post.

Neutral

Voodoo @ Feb 23rd 2008 1:14PM

I have been following this Blu Ray / HD DVD debate for some time. I agree that one of the reasons the Blu Ray format won was due to its integration with PS3... Toshiba really did not have a comparable sales offset to the integration with PS3. Although Microsoft Xbox 360 did support HD DVD, it never integrated the player as a stand-alone in the 360 system. If it had, Blu Ray fans, let me tell you that we would be looking at a different war.

Let me expand on one of my theories as to why Blu Ray beat out HD DVD and much if it has to do (in my mind) with the protection of intellectual property rights. As we all know, Sony owns MGM and makes much of its revenue from the American production company's revenue. Toshiba does not own any film studios and as such, did not have as much interest in developing a standard that would protect the profit of movie studios. Early on, Toshiba was moving some of its production to China (which has among the worst records in the world of protecting intellectual property). I think the movie studios saw the writing on the wall... Sony will be a staunch protector of intellectual property and Toshiba will just give it the "ol' college try." Listen, I'm not saying this is the only factor, but please tell me why it was not one of the MAJOR factors that lead with most of the large movie studios adopting the Blu Ray standard.

To those of you that are concerned that you will have trouble backing up your Blu Ray discs, I think your concerns are well founded. Remember that Sony was the company caught installing Rootkits in peoples computers when they were trying to play Sony Studio music CDs on their home computer. I have read that sony is looking to use an updateable Blu Ray firmware... and my guess is that the updates have the real possibility of playing Blu Ray back-ups difficult.

Finally, I wanted to comment about the comment(s) stating that the new Chineese standard may prevail in a bottom-up war with Blu Ray. I personally doubt it due to -- as I have stated -- China's absolute disregard for the protection of intellectual rights and the studios' interests in protecting their profits. When the studio have such a staunch ally as Sony in the copy protection war, why aid and abet the Chineese in developing their own standard? If you recall, one of the reasons the Chineese wanted a new standard in the first place is that Chineese DVD manufacturers were not paying royalties to the developers of the DVD format when they were producing their DVD players in China. So, not only were the Chineese not protecting the intellectual rights of movie studios, manufacturers were not receiving royalties on the DVD technology, itself when the Chineese were producing the hardware.

At any rate, I agree with portions of a lot of the comments that I read, but I thought I would ad my own "spin" on Sony's new crown in the HD format war. I personally liked the HD format idea, and think it may have won... but it is clear that the movie studios are the ones steering the "format ship."

Neutral

wewa @ Feb 25th 2008 11:13AM

ok people.

you can waste your typing away on perpetuating the 'format' wars as well as the 'flame' wars if you want.

meanwhile, us reasonable people who know a good deal on a upscaling hd player when we see one, are starting to have fun with it.

two cool hacks, that sorta prove how 'consumer awesome' the hd format was/is is making the rounds:
- burn hd video to sd dvd-r discs method is looking pretty cool. I tried the demo iso download and played it on my A2 and it displays all resolutions from 704 all the way up to 1920 full hd on my 'crappy' vizio 50 plasma (w/ hdmi & faroujda).
- for you foreign film fans, there is a region free hack to make the
hd players pal and region free so you can play all those sdvds you bought online or while on vacation in akihabara!
- finally, there is a hd dvd clearance sale thread so it looks like red folks are busy snatching up great deals like the planet earth set and the hdscape set for $29 each. I just got some awesome pron titles too! :P

Time better spent, than 'wars,' if you ask me.

Who knows, this might make the blu folks turn red! ...in more ways than one! :D

I have been purple for over a year, but Long Live Red!

Neutral

Ria Rhodes @ Mar 31st 2008 10:26PM

Looking for opinions here on a Blu-ray player to buy in the near term that plays regular DVD's beautifully (upconverting) as well as my old Toshiba XA2, and is (of course) a great Blu-Ray player that loads Blu-Ray and regular DVD discs fairly fast. I like being able to use my universal remote (so the proprietary remote included with any Blu-Ray player is mostly unimportant to me), and was a bit irked to read I can't control a PS3 console with my universal remote because there is no IR sensor (oh well, can't have it all). I'm not concerned with the latest audio bells and whistles because I just imput to my high-end 2-channel speakers (yes I'm still using simple stereo!). So, is a PS3 a good choice for me, or a stand alone Blu-Ray player? Is stand alone player which model(s)? Thanks in advance for any helpful replies.

Previous 50 Comments

Discover The Secret of Monkey Island (again) on July 15 LucasArts classics coming to Steam this Wednesday, July 8 Ubisoft opening studio in Toronto, continuing to take over Canada	New threat targets DirectShow component via Internet Explorer Nice Translator add-on for Firefox makes short work of foreign text Rabbit Wants Cake: rabbity, cakey Time Waster
Shoot steady iPhone video with Zgrip iPhone PRO White iPhone discoloration: Not just heat Apple Stores will replace broken iPhone displays	LDK Solar (LDK) down 10% on weak Q2 forecast Are you going to trade California IOUs? Is there a Bernie Madoff in your portfolio?
New Halo Wars Achievements reveal new maps (again) Ben Heck molds Jasper Xbox 360 into new and improved laptop Jump for joy: N+ is XBLM Deal of the Week	BMW celebrates 1.5 million "new" Minis made Fesler Camaro taking shape, smoking tires [w/VIDEO] VIDEO: Top Gear takes on the Mercedes SL 65 AMG Black Series
LucasArts to offer downloadable games via Steam Wednesday Say2Play & Turtle Beach Ear Force HPA2 Grand Prize Winners Announced Correction: Two Worlds II isn't a renamed Two Worlds: The Temptation	Sahel Kazemi Recently Purchased Gun, Police Tell Relative Steve McNair's Tragic End Shouldn't Tarnish His Legacy Vikings' Winfield Frustrated by Contract