Remember HD DVD? The video format developed by Toshiba that lost the format war against Blu-ray? Today Toshiba held a pretty interesting annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo during which president Atsutoshi Nishida didn’t say they will revive HD DVD but that his company thinks about producing Blu-ray products.
Blu-ray was declared the winning format last year when HD DVD threw in the towel. This victory came after major studios left the HD DVD camp and joined up with Blu-ray. But just because a victory was celebrated, that doesn’t mean the format is successful. In fact, a recent Harris Interactive poll shows that many purchased an HD DVD player last year and most don’t plan on buying a Blu-ray player anytime soon.
This poll’s results might be shocking to some outside the tech community, but it clearly shows that consumers are ready to move past physical media and onto the digital downloads. In fact, secondary polls were conducted as well and found that an overwhelming number of people are “not at all likely” to purchase a Blu-ray device within the next year and many will buy fewer DVDs within six months.
Well isn’t this a sweet promo from Warner Bros to promote Blu-ray and attempt to eliminate the remaining HD DVD inventory. The trade-in program is a bit weird, though. You don’t actually have to send in the HD DVD disc to get a copy of the same movie on Blu-ray. All WB wants is the original cover sleeve and nothing else. Prices on Blu-ray discs start at $4.95 and go up to $14.95 for the likes of Blade Runner.
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Go grab that Xbox 360 HD DVD drive and give it new life with this mod. What you’re going to do is rip it apart and make a sweet-ass laser pointer/gun sight/cat teaser. It’s not like you’re ever going to use it again. Look at it. It’s just sitting there, mocking your early-adapting ass. Oh, and didja know that this laser will be strong enough to burn paper or light a match? Go get it.
The Format War is done; it has been for a while. Netflix officially stopped buying new HD DVDs back in February ‘08 and starting on December 15th, the company will no longer be shipping ‘em out either marking Blu-ray’s exclusive reign. Any HD DVDs remaining in subscriber’s queues will simply be replaced with standard DVDs. No word on what Netflix is doing with the soon to be defunct high-def discs, but hopefully they will be up for sale sometime down the road. I’m sure a bunch of early adopters would appreciate the gesture and discount on the discs.
The format war may be done and even though Blu-ray won, that doesn’t mean Toshiba is going to leave its early adopters stranded with unsupported devices and so, just released firmware 4.0 for its HD DVD players. It seems the update affects every Toshiba HD DVD player and owners will want to download this update via the built-in Ethernet port for improved disc playback, along with resuming play after being paused for a long time.
Isn’t it refreshing to see a CE company support products even though they aren’t produced or even needed anymore?
Sony BDP-350 owners, I’ve got great news for you this Friday. Your Sony Blu-ray player can now play all the fancy-pants BD Live extras once you update your player’s firmware. The 56 MB firmware update can be downloaded directly via the players Ethernet port or you can download it on your computer and make an update disc. Either way you go, I’m happy for you. The BD Live functionality finally adds the same features HD DVD had years ago.
Sony via DigitalHome
Once upon a time, there was a high definition format called HD DVD. Now, HD DVD was developed by a company called Toshiba, and that company put its heart and soul into this format. Evenutally though, the format died off by the big blu-ray monster. Toshiba was very sad and didn’t want anything to do with the winning format. So do you know what they did? They developed the XDE-E500 upconverting DVD and I spent some time with it today.
There was a time when the CD was the saving grace of the computer and media world. No longer would it take 22 floppy disks to install Windows 95. Oh no, just one magical disk. But as everything digital, things change overtime, and so optical formats are now loathe as the bastard child you wouldn’t dare get rid of, but can’t stand the sight of him nor his loser friends.
Happen to be a HD DVD earlier adopter? Sorry to hear that. Paramount and Dreamworks wants to help switch your library to the winning side and is offering up a $10 rebate. All the studios ask is that when you buy a Blu-ray title of a disk you currently own, mail in a promo certificate along with the proof of purchase from the original disc’s packaging.
That’s not all good reader, this offer applies to standard DVDs too. The promo will began with Transformers on September 2nd and will run through December 31, 2009.
The format war is done. HD DVD lost, Blu-ray own, I was wrong and the world continued on. So where is Blu-ray now? ABI Research sayz not so good, but that was just one groups opinion and you know what they say about opinions…something about everyone’s got ‘em and they are kind of like something else…digressing.
Future Source analyzes this type of stuff, and according to their research, Blu-ray is right where the tech is suppose to be. The consulting firm estimates that us consumers are going to buy close to 45 million Blu-ray disks in the US alone. That works out to be a whopping 400% over last year’s figures. The report goes on to state that right now, Blu-ray claims 5-6% of total sales per title and some big releases might even see double digit numbers come Christmas.
Future Source praises U.S. retailers for their shelve space, something that European retailers have not committed too. This is something that most shoppers can attest to as it’s hard to walk through Best Buy or Circuit City and not notice the Blu-ray display — at least for us.
Then there is the price issue.
““Much of the drive behind this increase is coming from growing consumer awareness and falling hardware prices, coupled with PS3 owners increasingly using their consoles for video playback,” adds Jack Wetherill, who focuses on the hardware business at Futuresource. “I would be amazed if we don’t see a Blu-ray player in the US at or below $250USD by the end of this year, and in order to stimulate consumer traffic in the holiday season who’s to say there won’t be a product at closer to $200USD? In the UK, player prices will fall to around £149GBP and there may be one or two companies trying to better that.”
$200-$250 Blu-ray player for Christmas? We saw that low price last year but that was with a competing format fighting for it’s life. Hopefully we’ll get an encore performance again this year. 45 million discs still seems like a lot to us, but maybe if the prices keep on dropping the U.S. could hit it. We sure do know how to buy things over here.
PDF via DigitalTrends
Those crazy kids over at Engadget got their grubby hands on Toshiba’s new XD-E500 upconverting DVD player. Their take?
Most consumers will see a visible quality improvement when playing their DVDs, particularly in the realm of sharpness. Toshiba’s new filters are “intelligent” enough to spice up the grass while leaving the sky and clouds free of noise, and while the contrast and color filters are less necessary, many consumers will enjoy their effect — even if video purists would scoff at such alterations
Toshiba seems to know that this isn’t a Blu-ray killer. It certainly isn’t HD DVD but whose to say that this $179 DVD player isn’t going to be a hit with the ‘ma and pa’ crowd. They’re too old to upgrade their video collection again anyways.
Oh and yeah, Amazon has these bad boys sitting in their gigantic warehouse right now, just waiting for you to buy one.
Even after HD DVD’s demise, Blu-ray still isn’t catching on, the PS3 excepted. Maybe the real format war was between DVD and Blu-ray all along?
A recent survey, carried out by ABI Research, found that more than half the respondents have no intention of buying a Blu-ray player. About a quarter said they had plans to buy one, but not till next year.
And why are consumers so reluctant to make the Blu-ray jump? Surprise, for many people, plain ol’ DVD is good enough.
Again, DVD is good enough. 1080p and BD Live be damned, apparently.
As it stands, the PS3 is one of the only bright spots in the Blu-ray arena right now, insofar as it’ll help drive down manufacturing costs of Blu-ray players.
Maybe Blu-ray is too beautiful for this world?
Despite Blu-ray’s victory over HD, Toshiba does not seem to be accepting defeat and quietly adopting Blu-ray. The folks over at TG Daily speculate that instead Toshiba is working to enhance the image scaling capabilities of its DVD players and possibly launching an Internet-enabled players. Though no specifics have been nailed down, TG Daily based its report on the Toshiba-chaired DVD Steering Committee meeting, which approved the above DVD Download logo at its June 11 meeting.
An Internet-enabled DVD player could easily transfer videos from the Web and then burn them to a DVD and DRM restrictions could still apply. MaximumPC reported that Internet-enabled DVD players would enable easy transmissions of HD-quality video from the Web.
Due for release on September 2, Transformers on Blu-ray will no doubt entertain those of you who think giant robots fighting other just-as-big robots is “cool.” Paramount has said that the Blu-ray version will feature, in some capacity, BD Live content.
Better still, this version will have Dolby TrueHD 5.1 sounds; the HD DVD version only had Dolby Digital Plus.
And that’s the box art, identical to the HD DVD one.
Blu-ray isn’t dead yet. Sales of Blu-ray players in Japan topped sales of regular DVD players for the first time last month, an indication that consumers are finally warming up to the high-def format. Spun a different way, sales of Blu-ray alone in April were three times the amount of both Blu-ray and HD DVD combined in January.
Reasons for the sudden uptick in sales include people finally coming to terms with the end of the high-def format war to HDTVs no longer being seen as a luxury, but merely the type of TV that one buys now.
Sales are expected to rise even further as manufacturers slash prices in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.
I’ll get by with rips, thanks.
My brother told me that HD DVD died a few months ago because I hadn’t heard or read anything about the format war, but Blu-ray still ain’t doing so hot. And by “doing so hot,” I mean selling any better than it did when it was still entrenched in the utterly pointless war.
From January to February, Blu-ray sales plummeted some 40 percent, only to get a slight bump from February to March to the tune of 2 percent. Hardly the type of news Sony wanted to hear, especially if those rumors that it paid Warner $500 million were true.
The Blu-ray folks blame their inability to meet demand following the spectacular, dare I say “epic,” failure of Toshiba to convince anyone that HD DVD was worth buying. Cynics, myself included, think that, generally, consumers still aren’t too keen on Blu-ray when, you know, regular DVD (which is cheaper; the economy’s not so hot right now) looks “good enough.”
The fallout from the now-over Blu-ray vs. HD DVD war is still coming, with Toshiba suffering a 95% loss in profits this quarter, most of it attributed to the failure of HD DVD as the format of choice for next-gen disc players.
Samsung, meanwhile, is showing a 37% increase in profits, mostly from mobile phones and LCDs.
For Toshiba, it wasn’t just the licensing, but the loss of HD DVD’s manufacturing that cause the loss. Tosh had invested millions in the manufacture of the disks, but then had to shutter its plants.
Wars, even format wars, have casualties. The good news though is that Toshiba’s shares only fell 2% on the news.
In an interview with Game Daily, Shane Kim professes his love for HD DVD, what MS is doing to ensure the next gen Xbox doesn’t have RROD issues, DRM issues and why they’re not in the market to swoop up Take-Two.
While it is unfortunate that HD DVD was discontinued, there is still enjoyment to be had from your Xbox 360 HD DVD Player. You can take this as an opportunity to build out your movie collection! There are around 500 HD DVD movies to choose from and many at great deals, so there is a fair amount of content for HD DVD on the market. It also is a terrific DVD player and it allows you to have game discs and movie discs, whether HD DVD or DVD, within the console at one time. The HD DVD player also adds two additional USB ports to your console.
Those sports at Amazon understand “new technologies don’t always work out as planned.” Or rather, they don’t work out as Toshiba planned. I have a feeling this is how Sony planned it all along. In any case, if you bought one of those bargain HD-DVD players after February 23rd, help yourself to $50 worth of stuff from Amazon. Personally, I’d be buying the Planet Earth box set. Hell yes.
