Toshiba Even More Officially Gives Up The War, Will Launch BD Player

@FedericoDemonice: As an owner of both formats, I too agree that HD DVD was a far better choice right out of the gate. It was a complete product, filled to the brim with next-gen media functions that Sony quite honestly, never would have thought of until they saw them running on HD DVD.

When I look at the constantly emerging blu-ray market, with every new hardware generation adding more and more HD DVD features, I almost feel sorry for the guys who bought blu-ray players for very expensive prices . . . only to watch them become obsolete as newer blu-ray players featuring the latest ideas "borrowed" from HD DVD hits the market.

HD DVD launched at half the price of blu-ray with 10x the next-gen features, and HD audio/video quality, that was every bit blu-ray's equal. If that is not how you define a superior product which should have won over the hearts of every serious videophile and gadget guru with blood in his veins, then I have some premium, beach front property in Arizona I would love to sell to you.

InvaderPhlegm

RIP HD DVD

@FedericoDemonice: I'm right there with you. I just need to find somewhere to pick up more HD-DVD's so my player can stop collecting dust.

@FalconFour: You're suggesting HDDVD failed because of it's logo?

aydiosmio

@Yossarian:
I remember saying that was one of the reasons HDDVD was going to win in consumers hearts. Its because it made sense with a quick glance at the name where blu-ray left a lot to be said.

Unfortunately the studios of the mpaa had other ideas... payoffs...

Bantam

@subsider34:
agreed. also supporting DVD9 720p HDDVD discs was a great feature,

Bantam

@psychiccheese: I disagree. I believe there's quite a bit of information showing that the production costs were lower due to the similarities with DVD production.

anonymousmonk

@-zargon-: You mean a better thing in many cases, given the superior quality of several HD-DVD transfers.

@pnguinms: It'd have to be a dual-laser machine, and that's unlikely to be economical for them (or us).

@OMG! Ginsu!: Superior formats? Plural? You must be forgetting Laserdisc, UMD, Memory Stick, etc...

@FalconFour: Well, considering it was supposed to be the next step for the DVD format, an extension, even, of the format, doesn't it make sense that they'd build on the existing logo instead of inventing a gimmicky name and logo from the ground up ("I know; let's take the color of our laser and leave off the 'e'! That's what all the cool websites are doing these days, right?")?

@FedericoDemonice: Only if they fixed the audio codec. I liked the dual format (on side HD one side SD) but the audio during music and action scenes were too loud compared to just dialogue. I could only watch a
HD-DVD with a remote in my hand. That alone to me was why blu-ray won

Steve Lessard Jr

@FedericoDemonice: Agreed, HD-DVD was, from the start, a much better format. They included all the features of BD-Live upfront. Heck, they even had Combo-disks with HD-DVD on one side and regular DVD on the other side for reverse compatibility.

@FedericoDemonice:

I'm glad Blu-Ray won.. Sony needed it.. and in turn video game fans..

hfm

The truth honestly is that Blu-Ray probably is overkill for an interim format. HD DVD is not as advanced a format, but it would have easily gotten us through physical media to streaming formats. Blu-Ray may be better, but that doesn't mean HD DVD wasn't good enough.

Thangka

@Lukasz Fabis: Just because HD-DVD is dead, doesn't mean the equipment or disc won't work. A lot of people, including myself, picked up a ton of HD-DVDs at highly discount prices. I don't know about you, but I rather pay a fraction of the price for the same exact thing.

-zargon-

@Ogami: The attachment rates for the PS3 really are not that good. Plus, the BDA loved to use the PS3 numbers, which are skewed, to their total numbers to beef them up.

What actually won the war was the deep pockets of Sony and other major players in the BDA to pay for exclusive deals and all the BOGOs.

-zargon-

@Cyborgmatt: Don't forget that HD DVD also has smaller storage capacity, and lower bitrates.
HD DVD was only cheaper because it was losing the war, so they lowered the prices to try to win consumers.

psychiccheese

@FedericoDemonice: I'd be very interested in seeing your argument for this. Blu-ray has faster transfer speeds (overall), higher storage capacity and better sound quality (lossless). The biggest gripe I have with Blu-Ray is the region encoding (HD-DVD was touted as having region-free encoding).

However, I think in spite of this, the better of the two formats was chosen.

thereij

@Đipic: HD DVD came first, it was a finished product (blu-ray 2.0 fiasco), cheaper, region free, combo discs, cheaper licensing fees etc tbh.

@Mike: Rofl at the Xbox in the second pic. Is the owner retarded or something? He's just begging for a red ringed console by putting it in such a cramped space AND putting something on top of it.

@FedericoDemonice: Incorrect.

@North Star: I don't get why everyone always expects history to repeat itself 100% of the time. History DOES repeat itself...but not 100% of the time.

@Lokno: Well to be fair, there will come a time when blank blu-ray disks are more affordable. BD-R's will be the next DVD-R.

@shorty6049: Blu-Ray was superior, technically. Which is why I'm extremely happy it won. I'm sick of the inferior product always winning in these various tech wars.

PS3 won the format war for Sony.

Ogami

@Đipic:

Because HD DVD has consonance, which freaking rocks. And Blu-Ray is spelled wrong

@FalconFour: That was just so they could keep the title balanced out. options: stretch the cd, or just copy the left edge twice. haha

shorty6049

@FedericoDemonice:
yeah, i'm curious too, they're both like the same thing, were there ANY differences?

shorty6049

@FedericoDemonice: Your reason being...?

I've got both, and HD DVD should have won.

FedericoDemonice

You can at least _try_ to look at the untranslated source - there's no "BD-18", the only reference to 18 is as a date.

kalleboo

Seriously. How far did they think they'd get with a logo that consisted of "HD" and a few "waves" attached to the old DVD logo? Cheap gimmicky crap at its finest (?).

At least, fer fuck's sake, Sony finally won a format war. They've been pushing superior formats for years, and always take the loss. Speaking of '79, who remembers Beta?

Toshiba? 'Bout time they came around and realized they were losing money by sulking.

So, do they sneak the ability to play HD-DVDs into their first machine? That'd be a nice tip of the hat to people who picked them to win the war, and then had to pick up a BD player after the dust settled.

pnguinms

Whatever Toshiba does it better be one amazing Blu-ray player similar to the new Oppo BR or one better.. I sure hope it's not just another cheap BR player...

Finally, this is what I've been waiting for. When it comes to DVD palyers, go Toshiba.

GeneralGozz

And then everyone starts downloading content instead of buying it on physical media. Toshiba just can't win.

i still have my hd dvd player.....
*sigh* i wish it won the war :(

mackid

Just think: they could have teamed up and been working on bluray all along,side-stepping the whole format war, but can thank microsoft for trying to butt their DRM in there. They were close to agreeing to move to BD, but Msoft just needed a piece of the action.

anonymousmonk

Yup, game over. Not quite the Betamax-VHS war that I was expecting.

North Star

....And got me a nice blu-ray player i might add.

Let's give a moment to remember a former High-Definition format.

let it die dude. i got me an xbox 360 and i had the HD DVD drive and i hated it that it lost the format war but shit i just let it go and got on with the times.

@alexmg2420: Too late.

@alexmg2420:
It's over. HD-DVD is dead. Give it up and move on with your life.

Lukasz Fabis

I still have my Toshiba HD-A2 and my Xbox 360 HD DVD drive. I SHALL NEVER LET THIS FORMAT DIE!

@anonymousmonk: HD DVD might have been produced cheaper, you're probably right, but it wasn't until they started losing the format war that there was any significant price difference to the consumer.

psychiccheese

The amount of sour HD-DVD supporters in this thread is disturbing. Blu-Ray won, I knew it would win the day Sony included Blu-Ray in the PS3, get over it.

dalejrfanfreak

@-zargon-:

Deep Pockets?! Remember the $150,00,000.00 the hd-dvd camp gave to Paramount for exclusivity for 18 months? The PS3 destroyed hd-dvd, and when more consumers were buying blu ray the other movie studios jumped the sinking hd-dvd ship. Looks like Toshiba has finally gotten some brains and wants a piece of the $406,000,000 spent on blu ray movies the first 6 months of 2009.

dalejrfanfreak

@-zargon-:
A decade from now, when the next optical media format war errupts (assuming optical media or similar technology will still be going strong enough for that to happen), what are you going to do with your HD DVDs? Hope your decaying video equipment won't break? Buy adapters should video protocols change? Maybe rip all your movies and hope you won't lose that data?

I'll bet you my left testicle that when the next big format establishes itself, Blu-Ray will be supported and HD DVD won't.

But that's all well beside the point of my initial comment here. I was trying to make HD DVD sound like a dead person without using anthropic pronouns.

Lukasz Fabis

@Cyborgmatt:
+ those deals you se for 100$ blu-ray players are 1.1 profile, so I'm still can't buy a player and know that it will be compatible with all features.
I did get one of those LG BD+HDDVD drives about a year ago, and I can definatly say HD-DVD was better than BD on all counts.

EShy

as a format, HD-DVD was feature-complete long before BRD. it wasn't until 2.0 that BRD matched HD-DVD in abilities. the only advantage that BRD had technically was that it had huge storage capacity.
but that's the past. hd-dvd died. but it doesn't matter. so soon willl Blu-Ray die. people think upconverted DVDs look good enough. and when finally they want HD quality, the huge ramp up in internet speeds in the next few years, everything will be streamed anyway.

onlysublime

Haha. HD-DVD was superior in a few ways, but not a one of them were technically based. Blu-ray blows it away in technical specs, HD-DVD's advantages were always economic (and those minor advantages evaporated quickly without studio support).

Furthermore, Blu-ray has not been slowly adopting HD-DVD features. Blu-ray has been capable of every technical feat HD-DVD had from the beginning (plus some unique), and all they've added since then is online functionality for extra features. Please, take a look at Watchmen's picture-in-picture commentary and tell me HD-DVD could deliver that same technical feat. Then tell me it could deliver equal picture and sound quality for the entire presentation, bearing in mind that's two separate 1080p video tracks running for just over 3 hours (plus a bunch of "focus points" that add something like 20 more minutes). Oh, and Watchmen is 20.50 at Amazon right now; how much would a HD-DVD version have cost? And be aware that the DVD release is 3 dollars less and that if HD-DVD were around, they'd be charging a premium on it even if production costs didn't merit it.

ps i totally forgot. HD-DVD was first to market, but it certainly was NOT first. Blu-ray was on its way when Toshiba jumped up and said "I'd rather do it this way" and threw HD-DVD out before Blu-ray. Basically, they had the idea for the technology and were working on putting it together, and Toshiba used the same idea to deliver a lower spec'd, cheaper version of the same idea and get it to market before.

This just in....This just in....

Toshiba is a company that should try to make money.

NurseDave

It was this crap that keeps me out of home HD media for now.

Baby (in this case the industry) gets NOTHING.

Do you think anyone will remember HD-DVD in 20 years the way we remember Beta video tape?

It seems Beta was way more entrenched before its demise so it's established as a legitimate also-ran, but HD-DVD was almost stillborn as we all sat back and waited (no doubt based on memories of the VHS/Beta war).

Jake712

@Lokno: It will be a LONG time before "everyone" downloads content instead of buying it on physical media. Elite technophiles always forget the importance of Joe Six Pack, namely the MAINSTREAM.

@InvaderPhlegm: meh, that's why the competition between the two was good. We all got something better.

Technologically, having 30% more storage and the ability to read and write at the same time with Blue-Ray is why it won I believe.

It was the cheap costs of retro fitting existing DVD plants that gave HD DVD the early lead, it seems.

Also, wasn't HD DVD pushed out by Microsoft to cause customer confusion in physical media. Which would encourage people to go to digital downloads? When's that coming?

Oh yeah it's the destroyer of my childhood memories....http://gizmodo.com/330295/michael-bay-says-hd-dvd-is-a-big-microso...+funded-conspiracy

@FedericoDemonice: Is that why BD has crushed HDdvd? BD is a much more advanced technology, it just didnt have the right developement. all I have to say is a Blu Ray disc can hold 40 gigs, enough said...

andrews1469

@Valnen: I remember you writing the exact same thing before. ;)

Cyberziggy

@Barion: Agreed. I know a lot of "Joe's" that still use a dial-up connection. Download content isn't going to be an option for them.

Cyberziggy

@OMG! Ginsu!: I assume you mean Betamax and not Beta. Beta and BeataSP is/was a professional broadcast format. Still in use by a handfull of production facilities.

Cyberziggy

@met2art: What Sony really learned from the Betamax fiasco was that more storage capacity wins.

Cyberziggy

@strider_mt2k: yes indeedy. now it's time to research which player = best bang 4 bux

the_wiggle

@alexmg2420: same here!! there will always be tons available on web etc. I see HD-DVD everywhere, maybe not new releases etc. but they are a hell of a lot cheaper to pick up a few oldies that made it to HD-DVD

World iS Mi iPhone!!

@FedericoDemonice: ABSOLUTELY! and they probably would have been cheaper too. BD will not find a way into my house at 30.00 or so a pop. No way in hell! Ludicrous I Say! Damn you Blu-Ray, Damn you to hell! ;-)

World iS Mi iPhone!!

@Cyborgmatt: Actually, blu-ray was first, it just had a slower start.

@FalconFour: Sadly, as illogical as your reasoning seems, the majority of consumers are dumb, easily-misled, and too ignorant to do some simple research. A flashy logo, a name that is easier to say, and a little prompting from a store-clerk, (who, in all likelihood, knows virtually nothing about media formats, or video) is all that it takes for the masses to adopt a new standard. People are very dumb and will buy whatever you tell them to.

Add to that the huge piles of cash that Sony promised to studios and hardware partners, and the false-media blitz, and you have your winner. What Sony learned from the Betamax fiasco was that the better product doesn't always win. Sony has had a hard-on for creating proprietary media formats, and has consistently failed to capture the market. This time they decided to buy it instead, and hence, a lower-quality HD optical format won.

@InvaderPhlegm: Toshiba is actually the company that screwed up consumer interest. If they hadn't paid out Paramount and others to halt distribution for blu-ray, we'd have been a year ahead o time right now.

imTheKing