Toshiba abandons HD-DVD

[Nazo 10]

the reason being is that Blu-Ray disks can hold less content than HD-DVD Disks (compare the features etc on each) and as a result, blu-ray is cheaper to produce, which is why most companies backed blu-ray, and moved to blu-ray over the last few months.

 

Wrong on both counts, Blu-Ray holds considerably more data but is quite a bit more expensive to produce. The low production cost was one of the few advantages HD-DVD had. It's true that HD-DVD discs often have had more extended features but that's not down to capacity.

 

Anyway, Toshiba have officially announced they are ceasing production now so that's that.

[Guest]

I have owned both in my time and was more impressed with HD-DVD.

 

Any reason? Especially considering studios that produced discs in both formats generally used the same master for both. There was no difference at all.

 

Special features maybe I'd understand.

 

Also Paramount are the only studio who have still not announced switching back to Blu-Ray. Universal have announced their switch.

[jezzyjj 10]

In addition, I read reports last month that someone had developed a quad-layer blu-ray disc which plays in normal players (unlike TDKs ones which need modded players), allowing for 100Gb of data storage! Nice! The there is the currently tested 250Gb 10-layer ones..... Imagine, every season of DS9 on one disc!

Quad layer DVDs were also promised many, many years ago and has Dual layer DVDs for storage even taken off yet? As the media is still way more expensive [relatively] than single layer.

[mr chris 10]

I wonder if this will result in HD DVDs being sold off cheap.

 

If so, SCORE!

[shakermaker 10]

yep...

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-HD-EP30-Player-1080P-Full/dp/B000W4EB22/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1203518715&sr=8-1

 

HD-DVD player for £78

 

The Xbox add-ons are selling in the US for ~£40 & will probably drop in price here too.

 

If the disc prices are slashed, it still might be worthwhile getting a player that plays both formats & buying HD-DVD titles until Bluray comes down in price due to demand.

[Kingmaker2 10]

Even if they won't need replacing, it'll be few that don't get replaced.

Walking up the main street here I can see in nearly every window an LCD or Plasma, I can't tell, but I'd guess that 90% of them are capable of 720P at least.

 

I am not doubting that almost all new televisions are now capable of recieving HD pictures.

What I am doubting is the anticipated HD revolution, now that it seems Blu Ray have won the format war.

As I said, it's going to be a fair while even before a 50% ownership of all TVs are HD compatable.

Even then that doesn't mean that all those that have brought a new TV due to necessity rather than desire (i.e old TV packed up), will want to buy a Blu Ray DVD player.

Which comes back to my main point, there is no burning desire for the TV viewing population as a whole to go out and buy a Blu Ray player.

When DVD format took over the humble VHS VCR, there were many advantantages that the DVD disc had over video tape that were obvious to even the most non plussed viewer.

The advantages that Blu ray has over DVD are less numerous and less obvious to the general population at large.

Better picture quality wasn't really the number one factor as to why people switched from video to DVD.

Blu Ray is also an expensive technology and cost quite a lot to produce the actual discs, so I don't think the actual price of Blu Ray discs will come down dramatically any time soon, even though actual Blu Ray players may come down in price.

The bottom line for the film and disc manufacturers is profit, so just because Blu Ray has won the format war it doesn't necessarily mean that Blu Ray will take over standard DVD if Blu Ray doesn't make them much profit.

As others have mentioned, other forms of viewing may well be the future rather than Blu Ray.

My guess is that Blu Ray won't phase out the standard DVDs, as the demand just isn't there:

Consider this:

 

Last year Happy feet Standard DVD sold 4 million in its first week.

It took Casino Royale Blu Ray over 3 months to sell just 1.5% of what Standard Happy Feet sold in its first week!

So a top selling standard DVD sells multiple millions in weeks.

A top selling Blu ray sells a few thousand in months.

In my view Blu Ray may survive alongside DVD, but it will be a format that essentially will be the smaller cousin of DVD even though it offers a superior viewing experience.

[Cyclone 10]

At this point in the market those figures don't surprise me at all.

I'm sure that when DVD was first launched VHS continued to outsell it for a good long while.

 

Physical media may become less important, I for one don't even have a DVD player these days, unless you count in the PC, but some people like physical media and within 10 years I think DVD will be long gone, within 5 most disks at blockbuster will be on blue ray.

[Kingmaker2 10]

At this point in the market those figures don't surprise me at all.

I'm sure that when DVD was first launched VHS continued to outsell it for a good long while.

 

Physical media may become less important, I for one don't even have a DVD player these days, unless you count in the PC, but some people like physical media and within 10 years I think DVD will be long gone, within 5 most disks at blockbuster will be on blue ray.

 

Whilst that may be true about VHS and DVD, DVD was rapidly picked up as the format of choice for the numerous advantages that DVD had over VHS, namely:

 

Much smaller physically about 20 times smaller than VHS.

Much more robust, no danger of tape getting stuck or mangled in VCR.

Much more accessability to certain points on DVD, no need to search through whole tape.

No picture drop out or vunerability to magnetic fields

Twice the picture quality of VHS.

 

With Blu Ray really only one major selling point over standard DVD:

 

Up to twice the picture quality of standard DVD.

(Extra space on a Blu Ray DVD will neither be here nor there for the average DVD consumer).

 

Since the release of HighDefinition DVD in 2006 the sales of HD discs have barely made any impact on normal DVDs.

At least standard DVD sales had made a much more sizable market 2 years after its launch.

The Standard DVD launch of Borat Last year sold over 2 million in its first week of release, that figure exceeds all the high definitition (HD DVD and Blue ray) titles that have been sold put together in 2 years.

I somehow doubt that most DVDS in Blockbuster will be blu ray in 5 years time, not unless Blockbuster wanted to purposely go out of business anyway!

 

Blu Ray is stricly small fry, and will continue to be small fry unless prices of both players and media dramatically reduce somewhere near their standard DVD counterparts.

But if that ever happened then the film companies would be making less money than they make out of standard dvd sales, since blu ray production costs are much higher than standard dvd.

[Cyclone 10]

Your comparison is unfair though, DVD never had a competing standard, so two years was two years on it's own. In two years time we can compare how BR is doing against DVD to see whether it's making good inroads or not. At the moment it's simply too early to tell.

[Kingmaker2 10]

Your comparison is unfair though, DVD never had a competing standard, so two years was two years on it's own. In two years time we can compare how BR is doing against DVD to see whether it's making good inroads or not. At the moment it's simply too early to tell.

 

?

 

DVD had VHS video.

 

If your talking about the format war ie. BluRay vs HD DVD, then I accept this didn't help the adoption rate of the High definition format, however I think the expected sales increase due to the format being decided has been vastly exaggerated.

The general public at large aren't going to rush out to buy Blu Ray, now that the format has been decided upon, in fact the majority of the public probably aren't that concerned about High Definition at all.

It will be up to Sony and their marketing team to persude us that we all need High Definition Blu ray players, so far all HD marketing attempts have been woeful.

[Cyclone 10]

The standard it was replacing.

 

BR has DVD, that's the same.

 

BR until last week had HD-DVD, a competing standard that put many people off making any kind of investment in either. There was no competing alternative to DVD, only the technology it was replacing.

[TattyBear 10]

I am not doubting that almost all new televisions are now capable of recieving HD pictures.

What I am doubting is the anticipated HD revolution, now that it seems Blu Ray have won the format war.

As I said, it's going to be a fair while even before a 50% ownership of all TVs are HD compatable.

Even then that doesn't mean that all those that have brought a new TV due to necessity rather than desire (i.e old TV packed up), will want to buy a Blu Ray DVD player.

Which comes back to my main point, there is no burning desire for the TV viewing population as a whole to go out and buy a Blu Ray player.

When DVD format took over the humble VHS VCR, there were many advantantages that the DVD disc had over video tape that were obvious to even the most non plussed viewer.

The advantages that Blu ray has over DVD are less numerous and less obvious to the general population at large.

Better picture quality wasn't really the number one factor as to why people switched from video to DVD.

Blu Ray is also an expensive technology and cost quite a lot to produce the actual discs, so I don't think the actual price of Blu Ray discs will come down dramatically any time soon, even though actual Blu Ray players may come down in price.

The bottom line for the film and dics manufacturers is profit, so just because Blu Ray has won the format war it doesn't necessarily mean that Blu Ray will take over standard DVD if Blu Ray doesn't make them much profit.

As others have mentioned, other forms of viewing may well be the future rather than Blu Ray.

My guess is that Blu Ray won't phase out the standard DVDs, as the demand just isn't there:

Consider this:

 

Last year Happy feet Standard DVD sold 4 million in its first week.

It took Casino Royale Blu Ray over 3 months to sell just 1.5% of what Standard Happy Feet sold in its first week!

So a top selling standard DVD sells multiple millions in weeks.

A top selling Blu ray sells a few thousand in months.

In my view Blu Ray may survive alongside DVD, but it will be a format that essentially will be the smaller cousin of DVD even though it offers a superior viewing experience.

 

 

Maybe casino royale didnt sell aswel cos everyone that bought a ps3 got it for free.