Toshiba introducing SD-friendly players for flash card movies that no one buys

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Spiza @ Jan 3rd 2009 4:04AM

I don't understand why they would make you need an SD card. SD cards would be really expensive to hold more than a few movies.

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squiggleslash @ Jan 3rd 2009 8:08AM

They're getting cheaper. They seem to double in capacity for the same price every four to six months or so. This time last year my wife bought a "cheap" 8Gb card for about $70-80. Right now an 8Gb costs $15, and a 16Gb (twice the capacity) card costs around $25 (about a third of the price of that year old 8Gb card.)

What Toshiba is banking on is that long term SD will be cheap enough that you'll be able to buy, say, a 128Gb card for around $10, and then just load it up with movies either at a kiosk or using some kind of Hollywood approved secure software at home. SD has DRM mechanisms (CPRM) built in, and it's somewhat more robust (to put it mildly) than optical media, and you could add a reader to most modern HDTVs for around $1 - and wouldn't increase the dimensions of the TV.

So if it wasn't for the high cost of the cards it would make a lot of sense to distribute movies on the format. That's pretty much the only aspect of the technology that's stopping it from being popular, and it does appear that time will fix that.

Murph should stop being an ass. This is potentially a very exciting technology that could do a great deal to bring HD to the masses in a way that satisfies everyone. While the media may be expensive, the hardware isn't, this kind of thing can be used to bring about sub-$50 portable movie players. It means future TVs can (and will) have players built in alleviating the need for a separate player. It means small laptops will be able to play movies (removing the optical drive from smaller laptops, even premium laptops, is fairly common these days), and do so with amazing energy efficiency.

There is no downside, except that in 2009 the media is just a little bit pricy.

Neutral

Spiza @ Jan 3rd 2009 12:29PM

I would still rather have either a much cheaper disc or download directly to an internal flash/hdd drive.

TVs have been built with VCRs/DVDs/Blu-ray players for a while now. You also can't just throw a reader on a TV and expect it to play HD videos. There still has to be processing.

Highest Ranked

squiggleslash @ Jan 3rd 2009 8:54PM

Spiza - why would you prefer a disc? And why would you prefer it to be downloaded into an internal, non-removable, disk that cannot be transfered to a portable player?

Most TVs do NOT include built-in DVD or Blu-ray drives, and it's unlikely the majority ever will as it adds a significant amount to the cost of them. TVs already have MPEG2 HD decoders, and in all likelihood the cheap, commodity, chipsets used in TVs will ultimately support VC-1 and H.264 anyway. Which means that adding the functionality of "playing a movie from an SD card" to a normal TV design involves making a $1 change to the hardware (adding the slot), and a small change to the firmware (to read from the slot, decode the DRM, follow the menus and send the results to the existing decoder.) It's quite easy to see a situation where virtually every TV, from the cheapest $100 15" ATSC 480i CRT to a premium $5,000 1080p120 plasma, will support an SD card, built-in.

Can you really say the same about DVD or Blu-ray?

And here's the other point. The other day, EHD (Murph, actually, in a rare post filled with common sense) posted comments on the difficulty getting Blu-ray to go mainstream. Why is Blu-ray having trouble? Because it's not a seismic shift from DVD, unlike the shift from VHS to DVD. It adds nothing in terms of convenience, indeed the need for constant firmware updates means it actually subtracts from the movie buying experience.

Movies - CONTENT - on SD cards however could be a seismic shift.

Which makes Murph's attack on Toshiba all the more saddening. The real underlying reason why EHD is so Blu-ray positive is not because it's a good format - it isn't. That's why it has so many detractors. It's expensive, it's locked out to all but the big publishers, it's still a mix of differing standards making it impossible to know that every feature of a BD disc will be supported by your system, and it's full of gotchas like BD+.

EHD is Blu-ray positive because it's the only format left. And therefore they feel obliged to support the stupid ----ing piece of cr-p because if Blu-ray fails, HD in the home - at least in terms of people being able to buy movies - fails, or at least, that's how they see it. So we get Darren Murph's constant attacks on Toshiba for not bankrupting itself by spending billions on a format it knows to be a likely failure, which ultimately is what this is.

And EHD is so blinkered in its support for Blu-ray, it will attack all newcomers and potential competitors.

This is a technology that has the potential to actually work. It could actually persuade people to switch from DVD without going 100% to online, transitory, types of technology. Download the movie to an SD card, keep the card, watch it anywhere. Fill a single 128Gb SD card with five to ten HD movies, with full DTS sound and 1080p24 Blu-ray/HD DVD quality video. Download some of them via official Internet services. Copy some to the SD card from your video store. Maybe even record some from the TV. And watch it on every TV from the cheapest to the most expensive. Watch it using the SD card slot on your cellphone. Watch it using the slot on your 60" Plasma TV.

Not going to happen with DVD or Blu-ray.

Could happen with SD, if the media becomes cheap enough.

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Original post: click here

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Spiza @ Jan 3rd 2009 4:04AM

squiggleslash @ Jan 3rd 2009 8:08AM

Spiza @ Jan 3rd 2009 12:29PM

squiggleslash @ Jan 3rd 2009 8:54PM

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