Hands-on with Toshiba's SRT REGZA HDTVs (and other old crap)

Posts with tag toshiba

Toshiba got official with its new RV / XV REGZA families last week at IFA, but now Tosh is debuting 'em along with a smattering of other lines at CEDIA. The main news here is the US pricing and availability, but if you care to get neck-deep in marketing hoopla, we'd be happy to oblige. The company is trumpeting its Super Resolution Technology (now available in the REGZA RV535 and XV545), which purportedly uses a "proprietary processing system" to "improve image sharpness, brightness and color, [thereby] enhancing standard movies, TV shows, camcorder movies and most video games to near HD quality." For details on how much he AV500, RV525, AV502, RV535 and XV545 sets will cost here in America, head on past the break.

Toshiba almost had to mess up its thirty-seven hundred dollar lynx coat, at the thought of seeing its HD DVD walking in the rain with some alley-cat-coat wearing hush-puppy-shoe-wearin' Taiwanese crumb cake. According to China's Economic Daily News, some Taiwanese manufacturers apparently sought to buy out the company's blue laser patents and use them negotiate a reduction in the cost of Blu-ray licenses. Whatever the master plan was, it's all for naught since Toshiba's not keen on giving up its licenses, which EDN sees as related to the upcoming China Blue High Definition discs still set to roll out based on HD DVD. HD DVD without Toshiba is like corn flakes without the milk, so it's unlikely we'll ever see it with anyone else, Tosh's own XDE dalliances notwithstanding.
Even with all the partnerships and plant expansions, Sony and Toshiba still think they can't meet demand and keep price down for their LCD HDTVs. Word from Japan's Nikkei over the weekend indicates Sony is upping the share of LCD TV production subcontracted out to Taiwan, Mexico and China-based manufacturers from less than 5% last year to 20% in fiscal '08, adding up to 3 million screens. Toshiba's cut a deal with a manufacturer in China to make 20% of its TVs this year, as it and Sony load up to do battle in the 30- to 40-inch size range. Of course, Sharp and Panasonic claim keeping things in-house give them an important tech edge, but the Vizios of the world would beg to differ and it looks like Sony and Toshiba have decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Seems like the picture's getting clearer by the minute for paid mobile TV content, and it's a pretty bleak picture indeed. Over in Germany, DVB-H subscriptions are dying a slow, painful death (despite a healthy push by the European Union) thanks to free DVB-T content and a lineup of compatible phones to match, and now, Toshiba is shuttering its four-year-old Moba Ho satellite-based service thanks to the overwhelming availability and popularity of one-seg tuners, which like DVB-T in Germany, offer programming at no charge. Technical advantages, and to a large degree, entertainment value both tend to get overlooked when you've got a free product competing against a paid product -- it's frequently a disruptive economic force that takes profit right out of the equation, and Toshiba's learning that lesson the hard way. Keep your chins up, though, guys; at least you lost this battle for an entirely different reason than you did HD DVD, right? Guess that's not helping much. Anyway, expect the service to vaporize by March of next year, with Toshiba planning to take a one-time hit of $232 million for the shutdown.
Several Japanese tech giants are teaming together today in a quest to make 40-inch and larger OLED panels for televisions. Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic, Sharp and others will participate under a joint development project initiated by the Japanese government. All of this is of course meant to help the Japanese companies compete with South Korea's chaebols, particularly Samsung and LG, as the industry giants maneuver for an advantage over the next, next-generation flat panel technology to dominate the living room.




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