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Toshiba officially scraps HD-DVD News
Xbox 360 PC News by Robert Purchese
Toshiba has finally announced the discontinuation of its HD-DVD format today after several days of intense speculation.
The decision was made in a board meeting in Japan earlier today, with "major changes in the market" - referring to the Hollywood studios and retailers siding with Blu-ray - the reason for its change of heart.
"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, big boss at Toshiba.
"While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."
Its efforts will now be focused on improving things like flash memory, hard disks, CPUs, visual processing and encryption technology.
Shipments of HD-DVD players and recorders will slow to a trickle and stop altogether by the end of March, although Toshiba will continue to offer support and after-sales service for products already sold.
It will also continue relationships with previous partners like Microsoft, and look for new ways to work with them in the future.
So far it's unclear what impact the discontinuation of the format will have on the Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on. Microsoft has previously said it would announce its plans after Toshiba made its mind up.
The move clears the way for Sony and its Blu-ray technology, and is likely to produce strong knock-on effects for PlayStation 3 console sales.
Analysts have suggested the PS3 will nearly double its installed base by the end of the year.
GamesIndustry.biz keeps Captain Planet happy by recycling fiction into fact.
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seasidebaz
19/02/08 @ 09:29
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@darxide: serves them right for picking the cheaper, crapper option :) hehe i kid i kid...
this is good news to me though as a ps3 owner, as it means more blu releases! |
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Mentalist(air)
19/02/08 @ 09:29
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Ah, balls.
Never mind, there's still my Blade Runner to watch. Perhaps Transformers will be sold off cheap now. |
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Fallschirmjaeger
19/02/08 @ 09:30
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I hope that it won't take to long for Universal and Paramount to release their movies on Blu-ray.
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 19/02/08 @ 09:32
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Eighthours
19/02/08 @ 09:31
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and is likely to produce strong knock-on effects for PlayStation 3 console sales.
Er... is it? |
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squarejawhero
19/02/08 @ 09:31
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It should never have gotten this bad in the first place.
@Fallschirmjaeger - I'd imagine it'd be pretty sharpish, don't worry. |
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kangarootoo
19/02/08 @ 09:35
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MS tend to treat customers pretty well when this sort of thing happens. I wouldn't be surprised if some kind of deal might be worked out for people who have bought the HD-DVD add on.
I'm glad its all over too, but I do feel for those who might feel a bit stiffed now. Mocking them is the sort of thing I'm sure many immature fanboy f*ckheads will now take up as their new hobby. Those among us with more than 17 brain cells will recognise such behaviour for exactly what it is and treat the experience as something akin to a day out at the zoo. Edit: Mention of MS bluray add-on previously made. Hmmmm, now if MS granted each HD-DVD add-on purchaser an option to swap it for a bluray add-on come (the now inevitable) release day, THAT would be a PR exercise of great proportion. I shall cross my fingers on your behalf HD-DVD add on owners.
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most recently on 19/02/08 @ 09:37
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barnard666
19/02/08 @ 09:37
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Its a shame, by many accounts the HD was the better format...although I really have no idea what I am talking about...PS3 was always going to shift the tide, I was suprised that the elite didnt have one built in.
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@Eighthours
Yea. A lot of people with HDTV want HD movies to watch on them. The PS3 may currently be a bad bet for games but, it's actually a very good and futureproofed blu-ray player. Even supporting 1080/24. Sadly I think Microsoft screwed the pooch on this one. Going cheap by not including the HD-DVD as standard into the 360 is now going to bite them in the long run. Unless they somehow convince us to download 2 gigs of movie each week. Game development wise the 360 is still the better dev choice but, as content grows and dvd space becomes not just a limiting factor but, a deciding one, that too will change. Ho-hum.....better go shadow our PS3 dev guys and start doing more dev on that side I guess...future proof the old skills as they say. |
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kangarootoo
19/02/08 @ 09:37
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"I was suprised that the elite didnt have one built in"
I guess that it didn't is very much good news now. |
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konstantinos
19/02/08 @ 09:41
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well, this was (almost) a given from day one for me... no Betamax situation this time around...
what concerns me though, is the pricing... and as it stands now it's pretty steep... I have purchased just one Blu-ray thingie since christmas (Blade Runner: TFC) and I would love to have been able to do better than that, you know? cheers... |
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Well at least Toshiba did the right thing by dropping it earlier rather than later when it would have had an even larger number of pissed off customers. It has been on life support really ever since Warner Bros. defected to BD at the start of the year and all the negativity surrounding the format wasn't doing it any favours.
Assuming you keep your HD-DVD player, you can still continue to watch your movies for many years to come so it's not like you suddenly cannot watch them. And they'll drop in price meaning people can pick up cheap bargains before the format disappears from the shops for good. Of course, if you have any interest in HD movies then you're going to have to consider adopting BD at some point if you haven't already but many people will likely have done so anyway since you cannot buy all movies on one HD format. Regardless of what you think about Toshiba dropping HD-DVD, it's for the best in the long run as now it means you'll soon be able to buy ALL movies on one single HD format and as long as neither had that convenience then there could have been no absolute winner. And Sony own a movie studio so HD-DVD would never have seen the likes of Spider-Man anyway so, on reflection, BD was always the one most likely to "win" the Format Wars really. |
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Sucks for Toshiba. But having studios divided between formats cannot have been good for the customer, or the next-gen formats as the widespread format would continue to be DVD - the only format all the studios would publish on. A winner needed to be found to move it on a little. So it's the more expensive Blu-Ray, meh. I know it ain't coming down in price yet to rival DVD but it's an HD standard so it's a start, a step in the right direction. But time will tell... DVD is cheap, DVD players are dirt-cheap. Blu-Ray has walked out of one fight and into an even tougher one, and if Blu-Ray can't compete or come down and rival the humble DVD, then it's still been a waste of time.
Still. Sony must be thanking whatever Gods exist for this. It's good news for them. |
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kangarootoo
19/02/08 @ 09:44
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"We throw peanuts at them?"
Waste of peanuts. I suggest we just watch them fling their own poo at each other, for about 11 seconds, then go buy some overpriced icecream. |
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@DB2K
I doubt that would inspire people to purchase an upgrade for their DVD players though. Which, really, is the problem with the HD format anyway. It can't be advertised on telly as, well, it can't! So unless you're interested enough to head down to Comet or whatever to see it in action then you won't know what you're missing. Of course, then you have the problem that, for some reason, virtually every HD Ready TV I've seen in a shop is displaying an SD movie/show on a poorly configured TV, so how are people asupposed to know what HD is? I guarantee there's a significant proportion of people with HD sets who think they're watching HD when they're tuned into Freeview or something, and without someone making a committed marketing push to show folks what the deal is then HD could remian an early adopter niche, in the UK at least, for a long while. |
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@konstantinos - Buy online from the likes of DVD.co.uk or import the region-free movies from the US: that way you'll typically pay £18 or less for your BD movies as I do (I bought 2001 A Space Odyssey for £14 for example). That's a fair price given the improved picture and sound quality and it wasn't that long ago that 2-disc DVDs sold at that price in the shops. I bought the 5-disc Blade Runner BD set for just £22 from Movietyme and in time the prices will drop. I also got Ratatouille on BD for £17 whereas Play.com are selling the 2-disc DVD version for £15. So shopping around is the best way to avoid paying £24+ for BDs.
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kangarootoo
19/02/08 @ 09:47
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"On the same day Castro has resigned, its a bad day for the reds"
Microsoft are reds now? Well I've seen everything. |
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LiveForever
19/02/08 @ 09:47
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Has anyone considered the fact that this Hd crap has been released to soon?
Standard dvds on the 360 with hdmi or vga cable or ps3 on an lcd look just as good as hd at more than half the price. xvid - divx video format plays really well on my 360 anyway - who needs blue ray or hd-dvd? seriously.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 19/02/08 @ 09:50
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SentientNr6
19/02/08 @ 09:47
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That happens if the distributor also controls the media. I guess prices wont come down now either.
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kangarootoo
19/02/08 @ 09:49
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@Darren
"I bought the 5-disc Blade Runner BD set for just £22 from Movietyme" Is that the new Final Edit thing (or whatever it is called) or something else? |
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hana_fubuki
19/02/08 @ 09:51
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Toshiba put up a good fight: it took 2 years to reach the outcome that most people had predicted from the beginning.
I'm just sorry for the people who invested in HD-DVD, and I hope Toshiba (a good company IMO) won't suffer too much from the "defeat". Sony apparently sold (not shipped, sold) 10.5 million PS3s. The end of the format war should make it a piece of cake for them to reach their 11-mil-by-March goal. Sony doing well = more good games for us. Colour me happy! ...OK, back to Lost Odyssey now. |
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During a conversation with my cousin i predicted that Blu-Ray would win this war. It seems that I was correct. For once Sony have succeeded in going for a format which unlike their other formats e.g. Betamax, Minidisc, has become a major success. There are a ton of reasons as to why Blu-Ray has won but in my opinion I think it is to do with the fact that BR offers a more capavcity than Blu-Ray. Having the ability to back all your music, video, jpegs and whatever else on to 1 BD disc as opposed to having to lug around 2 or more HD discs, I think has made an impact as to how people perceive Blur-Ray. Anyway the other thing to remember is a lot of PS3's got sold hence increasing the user base for Blu-Ray.
But having said that, this is an example of those people committing to a format which no-one knew if it was going to win or not and only time has told the outcome as to who is the winner. But as Mr T always says "I Pity The Fool!" |
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@Mr_Bison - Now that is a real mature comment... the expression"shit stirring" springs to mind with that one! LOL
PS3 sales may well increase more - they were doing that already - but it'll have little or nothing to do with the games so why bring the Xbox 360 into it? At the moment the £300 PS3 is by far the best value BD player and the most future-proof so it may be an attractive buy even for people not that interested in games. However, it won't always be the case unless Sony plan on dropping the price of the PS3 in line with standalone BD players. Also I'm sure that Microsoft will release a BD drive add-on for the Xbox 360 (rumours say as early as May 2008) so that its owners don't have to buy a PS3 or standalone player to be able to watch BD movies on. |
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@Kangarootoo
1080/24 is 1080p video at 24 frames a second, which is actually what HD movies are supposed to be viewed at. Currently a lot of TV's and HD players will actually display the movie at 1080p 60 frames a second. This causes jerky movement as the same frame is displayed for a prolonged period. All blu-ray and HD-DVD movies are actually 24 frames a second. You will see a very noticable difference in smoothness and quality when watching HD movies at the intended speed and resolution. It's one of those cases where displaying the images faster isn't a good thing. Hope that explains it. |
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Stormflood
19/02/08 @ 09:57
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I always thought that HD-DVD would win just because of the name. Everyone knows DVD. A lot of people understand HD. Bish-bosh.
Anyway, got PS3, nearly got HD-DVD player, am happy. |
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@Kangarootoo - The 5-disc US Blade Runner BD includes the Final Cut and the documentary DVD along with three other discs which contain the three theatrical versions (US, International and Director's Cut) all remastered in 1080p, another DVD with more extras including 45 minutes of deleted scenes and on the last BD, the rare but sadly damaged Workprint version, also in 1080p, which was the first cut shown to selected audiences in the US. All in all it's a far superior package to the UK one and its region-free.
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wewillselfdestruct
19/02/08 @ 10:00
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Let's hope this increases Blu-ray sales sufficiently to drive a cut in the price of them. £25 is more than I'm prepared to pay for a movie I'm afraid.
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