Print

[Xbox-Scene]

How Toshiba and HD-DVD Could Come Back Posted by XanTium | January 12 00:39 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From itbusinessedge.com: What Toshiba Could Do Next 1. The most attractive and apparently least risky path is to sue for peace. This is where the losing side goes to the winning side and says that for some predetermined consideration it will walk away and give up the fight. Sony and its partners might still be willing to pay a large sum of money and/or give Toshiba significant concessions to simply walk away. 2. Assess what it would take to move Time Warner back into the Toshiba HD-DVD camp and execute against this plan. All of the studios, thanks largely to the writers' strike, are looking at what will likely be a massively bad year when it comes to both revenue and profit (it should easily reach over a billion dollars by mid year). Sony likely already paid it a lot to make this move, but if Sony paid the subsidiary Warner Brothers, there is a chance the parent Time Warner could override. 3. Go after Disney instead. One of the mysteries in this segment is why Disney jumped from the HD-DVD camp to the Blu-Ray camp, and the back story behind that move might identify a negotiating vector that could open up a major opportunity for HD-DVD. 4. Do an end run and move to blended download and/or dual-mode devices. The market is moving to downloads, but it will take some time to get there. Offering a player that could both play HD-DVDs and gain access to the content already being licensed to Microsoft (which includes most of the Blu-Ray camp) could provide a compelling consumer mix of the present and the future. Were the company to subsidize a combination Blu-Ray, HD-DVD player, given that the existing content is split, it could put the consumer in the position to make the choice. 5. An interesting alternative or addition would be to work with Microsoft to create the same thing, but as a significantly improved and price-reduced HD-DVD enhancement to the Xbox 360, which has a market penetration of over four times the Playstation 3. Alone, I don't think this would be strong enough to change the outcome, but coupled with any one of all but their first plan this could ensure an eventual HD-DVD victory. Full Story: itbusinessedge.com

[FCTE]

I don't want them to come back and I wouldn't have cared if HD DVD was the winner either, especially since I'm left ebaying all my HD DVD goods.

I just want ONE format producing good HD movies so it gets accepted, more people buy into it, and more of my favorite movies get made in HD and become cheaper faster.

The sooner the war is over the better for everyone.

[Altima NEO]

We dont want HD DVD to come back. Sure I like it better than BluRay, but its obvious that studios are going to be leaning the BR way, so why bother strengthening the war some more?

[xenocida]

I like the option that doesn't make my $300 player I bought a month ago an outdated piece of junk.

[ZakMcRofl]

QUOTE(xenocida @ Jan 12 2008, 11:08 AM)

I like the option that doesn't make my $300 player I bought a month ago an outdated piece of junk.

You mean the one you bought knowing that format wars were going on? It was obvious that one of the formats had to die, why in the world would you waste so much money for it?

I say kill off HD-DVD completely and give us a BR-addon for 360. Sure, early adopters are screwed but they knew full well that this was a possibility.

[FCTE]

QUOTE(xenocida @ Jan 12 2008, 04:08 AM)

I like the option that doesn't make my $300 player I bought a month ago an outdated piece of junk.

It won't be junk, it will just be a $300 DVD upconverter.



ebay?  

[dokworm]

There is nothing they can do now. No-one is going to jump from the bluray camp now that warner has switched.

It's over people. Sony pictures and affiliates alone had about half of the desirable library of movies, add in Disney and Warner and Paramount and that only leaves Universal really. (as far as the mainstream audience is concerned anyway).

I'm really pissed as I thought that HD-DVD was on the cusp of winning. Inexpensive players, and no region coding, which might not mean much to the US, but to the rest of the world is a real plus. Also the BR players are s-l-o-w and the damn spec isn't even finalised, which means the BR player you buy today, might not play the discs released next year.

*sigh* I really hoped HD-DVD would win, but I guess at least this will mean it is over and there will be one format by christmas. then hopefully prices will drop as more manufacturers move in, safe in the knowledge that they aren't wasting their R&D.
Still I'm happy with the HD-DVD library I have, including the matrix, bladerunner, transformers, serenity, the HP movies, fear and loathing and big lebowski, 2001 etc. hopefully will pick up some titles cheap if they have a clear-out. It's not like you can't still watch the movies you have...

but i do think it is bad news for microsoft, f bluray becomes realy popular, the next round of console buyers may wel be swayed by the PS3, sony has a far better track record of making their consoles smaller and cheaper as time goes on. It could end up cheaper or the same price as the 360, and if sony's game library picks up also in the next 12 months, the 360 could start looking a little expensive.

I know I would prefer a system that could play my HD movies as well, (and not the far too heavily download movies). at the moment the PS3 doesn't have the games though.

[Chancer]

How about the guy giving the advice, stick a shit load of his own money to back any one or all of his ideas? Thought not, in which case he is just spouting crap to make himself look astute in business. Does he think Toshiba and MS are Dummies ?

[dokworm]

far too heavily 'compressed' I mean.

the downloaded movies look awful compared to HD-DVD at 1080i or 1080P

[twistedsymphony]

If Toshiba wanted to win the format war they would have subsidized the use of an HD-DVD player as the disc format in the Xbox 360...

Had they done that the early PS3 floundering and strong 360 sales would have convinced quite a few BRD supporters to switch to HD-DVD and the PS3 probably wouldn't be doing as well as it is today considering the number of people that bought it just for a cheap HD movie player.

At this point however... their chances are blown. I think the suggestion from the author about contacting Sony and asking them to pay for Toshiba to just walk away is their best option to at least not lose so much over the whole ideal. They've got nothing to lose because even if Sony says NO they're right where they are now anyway.

[biga55]

Enderle is a microsoft shill apparently, and this article makes him look like a high schooler who has no idea of any of this business really works.

[NoMention]

What Toshiba should have done is release an HD-DVD burner and make it so that the media is cheaper.  Being able to store family photos, home movies, etc would certainly have helped.  I look at a Blu-Ray burner and the drive is around $500-$600 plus media is like $15 a piece retail.  Blu-Ray does have the additional storage which is really nice.  

I wanted the best quality for the cheapest price.  For over a year, all we heard was that how much cheaper it was to produce HD-DVD since it is so similar to the way DVD is produced.  Yet prices in the market did not reflect that.  A HD-DVD movie was still around $20-$25, no real difference compared to Blu-Ray.

Now that Blu-Ray seems to be the winner, we'll see just how pricing works itself out.  My fear is that Sony will keep the prices somewhat high.

Time will tell.  I still think standard DVD is going to make the whole Blu-Ray/HD-DVD thing pointless in the next couple of years.  These new formats are not accepted by the marketplace if you look at it as a whole.   The average consumer has not even embraced HDTV yet.  It will probably take 2-3 more years before mass acceptance takes place and by then, who knows what will be out.  

Great, we have a single winner.  However I fear that same will happen to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD that happened to SACD and DVD-Audio.  To elitists, they will care but the average consumer won't.  They are just happy with regular CD and MP3 over vastly superior SACD and DVD-Audio.  

Like I said, just need to wait and see what happens.  The only way I see Blu-Ray having a success in the actual market place is when regular DVD dies and I don't think that will happen for a long time...  It is too entrenched.

[bucko]

HD-DVD can come back if all this negative news stops, it's currently a fine format with lots of titles on offer, but people wont shut their mouths up and let the format speak for it self!

[SuperStition]

I wish Microsoft had the same price, but with a built in HD-DVD player, thats 17 million HD-DVD's players sold at least, then they would have had that tiny advantage earlier...

[Reaper527]

QUOTE(dokworm @ Jan 12 2008, 07:00 AM)

Also the BR players are s-l-o-w and the damn spec isn't even finalised, which means the BR player you buy today, might not play the discs released next year.

honestly, the ps2 shattered my confidence in sony optical drives. i'd personally be worried about if a BR player will be playing ANY discs a year from now.