Topic: Is the war over ?

[Touti]

And another one bites the dust.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- National discount retailer Wal-Mart announced Friday that it had decided to only sell Sony's Blu-ray hi-definition movie discs, and will phase out Toshiba's competing HD-DVD formatted discs over the next several months.

[Achim]

While HD DVD is being dropped left and right, I guess the two big announcements we are waiting for are from Paramount and Universal...

[Touti]

Is the "Is the war over" thread over ?


Reuters, NHK: Toshiba to Pull Plug on HD DVD
Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 06:16 PM ET
Tags: Toshiba (all tags)

There are more indications this weekend that primary HD DVD backer Toshiba is close to conceding defeat to rival high-def format Blu-ray.

Though there was no official comment from Toshiba Saturday, an unnamed company rep told Reuters that an official announcement could come from the company as early as this coming week.

"We have entered the final stage of planning to make our exit from the next generation DVD business," the source told Reuters in a just-published story.

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Toshiba/Reuters,_NHK:_Toshiba_to_Pull_Plug_on_HD_DVD/1473

[Touti]

All Hail, the King is Dead.

TOKYO (AP) -- Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/

[Najemikon]

Now the battle starts to convince the great unwashed! I thought HD-DVD had a head start with a sensible name, so now it's out of the picture (literally!), we're going to be stuck hearing "Why do I want to watch a balloon raid?" from elderly relatives...

[Touti]

Two things strikes me in this whole saga.

1: Once again, the better has lost.  HD-DVD was better when it came out, all specs were finalized and it was complete.  Blu-Ray on the other hand is still incomplete after 3 or 4 years.  HD-DVD was cheaper to produce, Toshiba's technology was somwhat backward compatible with existing production facilities, it was only necessary to make some changes in the production lines to start printing HD-DVD's.  Blu-Ray on the other hand is totally in compatible with the previous technology, which is why they were able to get 3 or 4 extra gigs out of it, and requires that the entire production line is replaced making it much more expensive.

2: Despite the fact that HD-DVD is complete, sounds better and is cheaper, they loose the battle and the less, more expensive format wins......why ?   Probably because of better marketting.  That's what I find the oddest thing in this whole thing, it looks like HD-DVD kind of assumed that they were gonna win because their technology appeared better and cheaper on paper and they just sat and waited while Blu Ray was spending a fortune in "agressive" marketting to give their format more visibility.

 

[Najemikon]

HD-DVD players were cheaper too, weren't they? But I think the real winner was sticking it in the Playstation 3. Just how many gamers bought a decent TV just so they could see high def games without a real consideration for movies, and then thought they might as well watch one of them Blu-Ray thingies?

[MEJHarrison]

2: Despite the fact that HD-DVD is complete, sounds better and is cheaper, they loose the battle and the less, more expensive format wins......why ?

Sounds better?  What does that mean?  I think both formats were capable of producing the same sound quality.

Other than that, I think your post nails my own feelings.  I also believe that Toshiba desperately needed to hire some marketing/PR people.  They didn't do nearly enough and it cost them the whole thing.

[Touti]

HD-DVD players were cheaper too, weren't they? But I think the real winner was sticking it in the Playstation 3. Just how many gamers bought a decent TV just so they could see high def games without a real consideration for movies, and then thought they might as well watch one of them Blu-Ray thingies?

Actually I read something on internet yesterday about that.  It was saying that contrary to what Sony had hoped and expected, the PS3 doesn't have much to do with BR winning the battle because the high dev dvd player in the PS3 didn't make it a big seller and people preferred nintendo's WII.

[Touti]

2: Despite the fact that HD-DVD is complete, sounds better and is cheaper, they loose the battle and the less, more expensive format wins......why ?

Sounds better?  What does that mean?  I think both formats were capable of producing the same sound quality.

Other than that, I think your post nails my own feelings.  I also believe that Toshiba desperately needed to hire some marketing/PR people.  They didn't do nearly enough and it cost them the whole thing.

I wasn't referring to the actual sound quality, I was talking but the whole technology.  I guess I should have wrote "appears better" or "seems better".

[Achim]

Yes, in the overall picture it seems quite interesting that Blu ray won (not that it's surprinsing at this point in time, just in the overall). I always had rooted for HD DVD (indeed, one reason being the name) and noticed how good they did at first, compared to all the bad rap Blu Ray received for bad transfers (Fifth Element comes to mind) and such.

I guess aggressive marketing is one thing (readers of the other borad may have seen the name Ascended_Saiyan before...) and the PS3 another; after all. I know I went that way now; seeing that stand-alone players are still not really final and the upgradability of the PS3 I figured "let's get that one as a player and as a side effect be able to play a game or two as well".
EDIT: (Eric posted while I was typing)
...or maybe not

[Najemikon]

Actually I read something on internet yesterday about that.  It was saying that contrary to what Sony had hoped and expected, the PS3 doesn't have much to do with BR winning the battle because the high dev dvd player in the PS3 didn't make it a big seller and people preferred nintendo's WII.

True. Obviously there weren't enough Ya_Shin's out there! But Sony still have their core PS3 audience who didn't buy it to play movies, yet suddenly they could. From Sony's point of view they didn't sell extra because of BR, but I bet it helped shift a few discs and ironically, probably not to techies and geeks on which new technology normally relies.

Say's him who bought a CDi player... 

[Touti]

Say's him who bought a CDi player... 

  Say's him who doesn't know what a CDi player is  .....and I might as well add a 

[Achim]

Say's him who bought a CDi player... 

  Say's him who doesn't know what a CDi player is  .....and I might as well add a 

IIRC it is basically Interactive CD ROM shown on a TV...

Didn't Philipps invent that, sort of, or was that just a similar product here in Germany...?

[Jimmy]

For these Wikipedia is your friend

"CD-i or Compact Disc Interactive is the name of an interactive multimedia CD player developed and marketed by Royal Philips Electronics N.V. CD-i also refers to the multimedia Compact Disc standard utilized by the CD-i console, also known as Green Book, which was co-developed by Philips and Sony in 1986 (not to be confused with MMCD, the pre-DVD format also co-developed by Philips and Sony). The first Philips CD-i player, released in 1991 and initially priced around USD $700, was capable of playing interactive CD-i discs, Audio CDs, CD+G (CD+Graphics), Karaoke CDs, and Video CDs (VCDs), though the latter required an optional "Digital Video Card" to provide MPEG-1 decoding."

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