It's official: HD-DVD is dead

[Pain_Man]

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/12971.cfm

 

 

Assholes got my money and leave me swinging in the wind. Great.

 

From 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," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation.

 

What's funny is movie's are still being advertised in HD-DVD.

 

I guess the upside is I can look forward to HD-DVD on sale with huge discounts.

 

Of course, now I have to buy a Blu-Ray player.

 

If TimeWarner had made their annoucement before I'm almost certainly would not have spent $278 on my Toshiba A-30 HD-DVD player.

 

At least the up-rezzing on SD-DVDs looks fantastic.

 

Still, assholes!

Edited February 21, 2008 by Pain_Man

[JasonFriday13]

I heard this on the news two nights ago (Tuesday night). I feel sorry for all the people who bought HD DVDs and players, including Pain Man .

[Altercuno]

True, but why buy in early pm, you must have seen it coming?...

 

Looks like Sony bought off everybody...film studios to defect, Toshiba by selling them their chip making plant (as kev pointed out elsewhere).

 

Whats FAT 32, btw?

[Pain_Man]

FAT32 stands for File Allocation Table. Check this article.

 

 

It was up in the air. As someone pointed out here, I forget who, but there was a lot of doubt about the accuracy of the sales figures .

 

Still my reaction is a combination of &

 

And remember TimeWarner--which Toshiba itself says was the "nail in the coffin"--did not make their Blu-Ray only announcement until after Christmas And everyone knows why: . (I keep saying this, it makes me feel smarter .)

 

HD-DVD is, er, was the less restrictive format (no mandatory AACS, or Region Coding); it was also technically sounder, Blu-Ray had some major tech problems (the need for a protective shield, the whole BD+ fiasco; some first generation players can no longer play newer discs, quality problems with the PS3).

 

So there were good reasons for going HD-DVD. Twenty-five years ago a lot of people thought that Betamax would win. We all know it didn't. But it still has it's devotees. In fact, there are small companies still making blank beta tapes.

 

In one sense, I suppose, Sony had this coming. How many format wars have they lost? Betamax and the Mini-disc were both major disasters. Disasters of Sony's own making it's true. Much like Apple with the Mac, Sony refused to license Beta to third-party manufacturers and the Mini-Disc (for which Sony created its own lossy codec, a codec Sony stopped supporting last yr) was a solution for a problem that didn't exist, another attempt to lock consumers into a proprietary format totally controlled by one company , call it the Steve Jobs Business Model (if one's tempted to say it could be called the Microsoft Model, remember that Microsoft's model is succeeding wildly).

 

Interestingly enough, Mini-Disc has found a niche market: radio stations commonly use them.

 

 

True, but why buy in early pm, you must have seen it coming?...

 

Looks like Sony bought off everybody...film studios to defect, Toshiba by selling them their chip making plant (as kev pointed out elsewhere).

 

Whats FAT 32, btw?

[LOCOENG]

I'd like to have one of the HD-DVD drives just for the upscaling ability....'course I'll be waiting on the price to come down well under $100, which I'm sure all the surplus drives will eventually sell for.

[lfcrule1972]

The PS3 blu-ray drive upscales DVDs as well LOCOENG, I am not an AV guru but it seems to do a good job to me

[dontasciime]

most modern lcd tvs upscale as well to some degree although it's a play on words.

 

There are normal dvd players that will upscale

[LOCOENG]

The PS3 blu-ray drive upscales DVDs as well LOCOENG, I am not an AV guru but it seems to do a good job to me

 

I really don't plan on buying movies in either of the two HD formats at this time. At this time I prefer the HD-DVD player with the expectation of it being a nicely discounted product, but as donta pointed out there are alot of standalones that will upscale as well.

[Grain]

I've been buying up HD DVD's off ebay, some silly bastards are dumping them for cents on the dollar. Their loss is my gain . I even got a Toshiba HD-XA2 for dirt cheap!

[dontasciime]

I've been buying up HD DVD's off ebay, some silly bastards are dumping them for cents on the dollar. Their loss is my gain . I even got a Toshiba HD-XA2 for dirt cheap!

 

 

I looked on ebay uk and still pretty dear

[Grain]

You can get brand new players at brick and mortar shops here in Canada for $99 right now, comes with 2 free HD DVD's in the box too.

[Grain]

Just bot a XBox 360 HD DVD drive for $50 off ebay (with remote), going to give it a try on my computer.

[Pain_Man]

I have an A-30 and the upscaling ability kicks ass. I didn't believe it until I saw it but it really does make a difference.

 

It's definitely not the same level of resolution as a true high definition disc, but it's also clearly superior to 480i/p.

 

I'd like to have one of the HD-DVD drives just for the upscaling ability....'course I'll be waiting on the price to come down well under $100, which I'm sure all the surplus drives will eventually sell for.

[Pain_Man]

It was never a question of one format being superior to the other in terms of clarity. Maybe it one has 20-10 or 20-05 vision (or even the 20-15 I was born with but which has faded with time and decades of computer use), one could tell. But for 20-20, there's no difference.

 

Don't know about the PS3's upscaling but there's no reason to think it would be inferior (unless Sony--surprise!--used inferior parts) to Toshiba's or one of the SD-DVD stand-alone up-rezzers.

 

If Time-Warner had made their announcement (going all Blu-Ray) two weeks before Xmas instead of after it, I'd almost certainly have a PS3 sitting beside my HDTV, along with a stack of BR discs and some PS3/2 games. Bloody bastards.

 

If they, TW that is, didn't own the largest film library in the world (much of it acquired when they bought out Turner, I'd never touch another TW product. But, alas, for cinefiles, that's just not an option. (TW owns 20% of Hollywood's movie library.)

 

The PS3 blu-ray drive upscales DVDs as well LOCOENG, I am not an AV guru but it seems to do a good job to me

[Pain_Man]

It's already happening.

 

I paid $278 for my Toshiba A-30 in early DEC 2007 from Amazon.

 

I've seen them for as low as $149. yeah, I've got a pain alright. Waaay down south.

 

The good news is the that the disc prices are falling. I got the "Ultimate" Matrix set for $49 when it had been going for $80. Many other HD discs have dropped from $5 to $15 dollars depending on the config (the ones with SD-DVDs as well as HDDVDs--the logic behind this is dubious in my opinion).

 

So I'm grabbing them while they are around since Sony says it'll be 2009 before we see sub-$200 BR players. So I won't be going Blu-Ray (barring any unforeseen financial windfalls; not just wishful thinking, it '03 we had $35,000 in extra, unexpected income) until the prices of the players get resonable.

 

Good news is the BR disc prices are coming down. Crusing Amazon, I saw a good number between $15-$20.

 

The PS3 blu-ray drive upscales DVDs as well LOCOENG, I am not an AV guru but it seems to do a good job to me

 

I really don't plan on buying movies in either of the two HD formats at this time. At this time I prefer the HD-DVD player with the expectation of it being a nicely discounted product, but as donta pointed out there are alot of standalones that will upscale as well.

[Pain_Man]

Like the man said, if nothing else, it's a way to get a up-rezzer for your SD-DVDs for a real low-price.

 

According to a quote on the Amazon page for the A-30 (weirdly enough, last week it was at $149; now it's at $354; weird):

T[oshiba] has reduced shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels and expects to be out of the HD DVD business by the end of March 2008*.

 

*That is, Monday.

 

You can get brand new players at brick and mortar shops here in Canada for $99 right now, comes with 2 free HD DVD's in the box too.