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Blu-ray's reaction on Toshiba's withdrawal
Posted on 21/02/08 03:37 by Tim Stork
Today the Blu-ray Disc Association openly states its happiness. "We in the Blu-ray Disc Association are very happy that this long format war is officially over," says Frank Simonis of Philips and European chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association.
Toshiba will stop its production of HD DVD players immediately, but they have insisted that warranties will be honoured and updates offered if needed. Blu-ray will still have some work to do. "Now the task ahead for our member companies is to promote the Blu-ray Disc format as the best way to bring premier quality high definition content into consumers' lives."
Some early adaptors, and HD DVD spokesmen, say that it wasn't the consumers choice to see Blu-ray win. Will this be a problem for the winning format, or will it enjoy its monopoly?
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Blu ray hasn't won squat. They only lost their 3rd biggest competitor IMO, the 1st & 2nd being DVD and digital-format.
All it may take is whispers of new formats (Holo media etc..) and people may start 2nd guessing BR's potential to become the next standard.
Now who is Sony gonna blame for the crappy market performance of the BD format?
@CDan
They can of course blame illegal copies for their lousy Blu-Ray sales now. Anyone wants to place his bet against it?This message was edited at: 21-02-2008 10:19
Well even if toshiba is dumping HD-DVD the war is far from over.
Blu-Ray still have to get the format out there and get the sales up. That won't be easy becaus DVDs have a big market and people are not going to leave that anytime soon.
During 2006 statistics stated that about 300 million dvd discs where sold in USA alone.
We will have to wait and see if this war with HD-DVD will help blu-ray ? now that we have so many other channels of distribution.
Perhaps Toshiba is the winner here ? who where smart to pull out of the race that cost them a lot of money and there are no promises that they would be the winner and even now, blu-ray can't be sure it will be a winning format.
It is the conusmer that decides.
If I were the Bluray cheerleaders, I would still have something to worry about. Looking at SACD and DVDA's unsuccessful market penetration, I would worry big time. Why did they fail? Well, for one, they require special equipment to play on and are extremely restrictive. Does that sound familiar? At least when DVD came out, even old TV's were able to play back the video without having to buy new equipment. I wouldn't be surprised if Bluray isn't relegated to the "enthusiasts" only.
Hey, ex-HD-DVD cheerleaders, stop the sour grapes. HD-DVD is dead. The war is over.
Now if Blu-Ray will win mass market acceptance remains to be seen. But I thought that the, so called, "format war" was between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The former is dead, so, Blu-Ray finished it off.
I don't plan to invest a Euro cent on Blu-Ray for the foreseable future but, if you ask me, it may very well be that Blu-Ray can win a fair chunk of market penetration. It's only necessary for the hardware to fall to acceptable price levels. Once that happens and with so many people (at least over here) having HD screens it's only natural that they want higher definition content. And, apart from Blu-Ray, where will it come from? HD downloads? Nah, doesn't cut it, still too much hassle and there are tons of people who simply must have the physical medium, i.e. they like collecting disks.This message was edited at: 21-02-2008 20:10
By
tony (guest),
Thu 21 Feb 2008 22:58
hey , how many people here buy or use dvd dl,s
4.5 gig dvd blanks cost next to nothing .9 gig dl cost what a euro each and i cant get them here anywhere !
i have to buy the from the net. hi,def films fit on a 9 gig dvd . so we wont/dont buy dvd dl cause they cost a euro /dollar each ,,,hell were all going to be lining up for bluray disc for 17 euros for a 25 gig disc right ?
WAR what WAR ? dvd ,4.5 gigs is the winner was and is !
Time will telll if Blu-Ray hardware and media drop down to acceptable and affordable levels..
As long as DVD support is going strong, most people will be content on buying standard DVD's..
Hell, my HD-DVD player may be next to useless now with HD-DVD's, but it makes up as great up-convertor for my regular DVD's..
I personally was sold on DVD only when I was sure I could back up my legally purchased content for less 
, so I bought a ROM, then a burner and finally a good sony player and then a divx philips player which kicked the bucket but sony is still used to play CDs. The 2-4 pack Joe may buy whatever he wishes and fight werever he wants. I'll wait for 1080p x.264 standalone playback before I support "the winner" 
By
not_competitiove (guest),
Sun 24 Feb 2008 12:40
Blue Ray is NOT competitive with hard drives.. 1tb of space costs just over $200... compare that with media which comparably won't last as long and will eventually have to be replaced/backed up AGAIN and AGAIN.. the price per GB is sky-high! Around a whopping $.50 per gb of space vs. $.25 per gb for a hard drive.. guess who wins? Just buy more hard drives.. The drives & media (as I've said before) would have to be around half their current prices for it to be adpoted en-masse for computer data backup!
The format war didn't involve consumers. Consumers played very little part in it. The war was fought and settled by the industry/studios. Personally I think Blu-ray is here to stay (and it had better). Executives need to understand that many people don't care what form the media/movie comes in (ie: dvd, blu-ray, download), they just want to own the media/movie.
I backup HD to hdds. My last drive was $80 for 500GB (WD MyBook external). That's $.16 per gigabyte. 
By
TheHutt (guest),
Tue 26 Feb 2008 00:20
It just beggars belief how a half finished, incomplete and buggy spec can come out on top - or is it the PS3 that artificially skewed the numbers - personally I think this is the cause.
You really think Sony is going to let the prices fall ... they control the licensing of ALL things Blu Ray, you don't produce anything 'Blu Ray' without they approve and get a slice. when Philips moved into the CD world they went for global standards not profit, it worked with others some of whom were competitors, one of whom was Sony, Sony doesn't reciprocate this kind of behaviour unfortunately. If it was forced to be an open format and open to competition with standards handled by people who don't have a commercial interest or patent and licensing intentions then the consumers might win ... as it is they are only going to get rogered over the table.
Oh and for all the smug Blu Ray owners out there ... July (I think it is July) sees the new version release for Blu ray that adds features HD already had ... but you need a hardware upgrade to use them ...
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