Blu-ray set to be DVD standard after Toshiba white flag

Parts and components, now blu-ray disk look set to win the epic HD battle

TOKYO, Feb 18, 2008 (AFP) - Sony's Blu-ray looks set to become the standard for high-definition DVDs after Toshiba signalled Monday that it may give up in a long-running format battle, to the relief of investors.

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Toshiba Corp. is reviewing its HD DVD business and "a complete withdrawal is one of the options it is considering," an industry source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Blu-ray and HD DVD -- which are incompatible -- can provide cinematic-quality images and multimedia features but the players come at a much steeper price than current-generation DVDs.

The demise of HD DVD could spur sales of next-generation DVD players among consumers, who have been reluctant to gamble on one of the formats, analysts said, although Blu-ray was already far ahead in sales, particularly in Japan.

Blu-ray can store more data than HD DVD but was initially seen as more expensive to make.

Nonetheless, a growing number of Hollywood studios and retailers have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray. US giant Wal-Mart gave a decisive boost to Blu-ray last week when it said it would stop selling HD DVDs.

Weekend news reports said losses for Toshiba could reach tens of billions of yen (several hundred million dollars) if it decides on the pullout.

But investors responded positively to the news on the belief that Toshiba, which has enjoyed healthy profits in recent years, was acting quickly to stem losses.

Toshiba shares shot up 45 yen or 5.74 percent to 829 despite a flat performance on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Shares in Sony Corp. rose 50 yen or 1.03 percent to 4,900.

"Because the more HD DVDs it sells the bigger the loss becomes, it is much better if it (Toshiba's withdrawal) happens at an earlier stage," said Tokai Tokyo Research Institute analyst Haruo Sato.

A victory for Blu-ray would be sweet revenge for Sony, whose Betamax lost out in a similar duel in the early 1980s to Panasonic's VHS to set the standard for video cassettes.

The camp supporting HD DVD includes computer behemoths Microsoft and Intel as well as Universal Home Studios, and Paramount Home Entertainment.

The death of HD DVD has been heralded since January, when Warner Brothers studio -- Hollywood's largest distributor of DVDs -- pulled out of an alliance with Toshiba and switched to Blu-ray.

Toshiba said Monday it has not reached a final conclusion on HD DVD.

"We are cautiously assessing market movements as it is true that Warner Brother's decision to sell titles exclusively on Blu-ray affected our sales in January," a Toshiba spokeswoman said.

Industry analysts and electronics makers maintain the format war has stifled sales of high-definition DVD players because consumers are waiting for a victor before putting down money for the expensive new technology.

"The availability of software titles decided the battle this time, just like in the VHS-Betamax war," said Yuichi Ishida, an analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities.

"Movie distributors have a decisive say as DVD machines would only be an empty box without software," he said.

As it focuses more on growth areas, Toshiba and its US partner SanDisk Corp. will spend up to 1.8 trillion yen (16.7 billion dollars) on two new flash memory plants in Japan by March 2009, the Nikkei business daily reported without naming its sources.

Toshiba said nothing had been decided on the reported plants. The company has been diversifying its business interests and in 2006 bought US nuclear power plant maker Westinghouse.

Blu-ray also received a boost from its inclusion in Sony's PlayStation 3 video-game machine. Microsoft opted to offer an HD DVD player for its rival Xbox 360.

A study last month showed that Blu-ray, even excluding PlayStation, enjoyed a crushing 90 percent of next-generation DVD recorder sales in Japan in the last three months to 2007, although HD DVD fared somewhat better in the US.

At last a decision has been made, we are now safe to buy blu-ray without risk !!

 

Well, i hope that Blu-ray will become cheap otherwise we will be stuck with DVD.

Let it be the price of about 5 DVDs PLSSSSSSSSSSS. That way I can buy it

 

I'll stick with regular DVD for now. It's still good and I don't really need HD.

 

Right. Compare and contrast street prices for DVD vs Blu-ray discs and then ask yourself: how much more will I enjoy this film just because it's in HD?

The ironic thing is, I'd have expected the studios to _really_ want Blu-ray to supercede DVD quickly, if nothing else because of the stronger copy protection it has. Yet what do they do? Charge £20+ for a disc. Bonkers.

 

When films are made they are shown in high quality in the cinema, but they are downscaled alot to get it on to your dvd, so part of the film making process is wasted by standard dvd's. hd disks will partially eliminate this, but i dont know what the cinema film quality is in comparison to 1080p hd play at the moment!

would be interesting to know the difference in quality, and how blu-ray is decreasing the gap in the cinema film to home cinema play, it probably wont be long until we get we digital pictures in the cinema, save all of that film dust on the tape all the time, so annoying especially at the start if the film !

blu-ray copy protection is not very good anyway

I would kill for portable blu-ray!

Don’t forget that as blu-ray becomes the main producer of hd them we may see price’s fall as people start buying the official HD format!

 

Well, we may see prices fall, but right now they're laughably, gobsmackingly silly - and there's no way that's at all related to the cost of production.

There are digital projectors used in cinemas today - I saw a fully digital screening last year and it was bright, clean, sharp and defect-free.

Has Blu-ray been properly cracked then? I can't say I'm at all surprised, history has shown that every commercially successful format has been freely copyable, and those which aren't have been a flop. There's a positive correlation there that the industry seems afraid to admit - just look at CD and DVD, then compare and contrast with DVD-A and SACD...

 

I much prefer HD to regular dvd, it's like comparing dvd to vhs. Once you own it and you see the difference it is hard to go back. As for the street prices, I am willing to pay the higher cost for better quality (both audio and visual). I don't buy anything on dvd and I try not to watch anything in SD, it's too painful now.

 

True, True, it is still very expensive, but so is everything when there are first issued, think of new plasmas and lcd's a couple of years ago, the prices were through the roof, now you can pick them up relatively cheaply, same with the ps3 was expensive now cheaper, will be the same for blu-ray just wait a while, don't be tempted, as you could save a bundle by sticking out the first time buyers, who just have to buy, because everyone wonts the latest thing!! + i got the free software with this thing i got over the internet, i guess somebody doesn’t like blu-ray!

I’ve been saying this for a while now and some people on here are just happy with their crappy dvd's with poor quality sound and video , they can’t see the advantages of moving to hi def, well I will say, once you try HD you will never go back