Made you look!

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2008_02/pr1903.htm

“It was not the consumers that chose Blu-ray over HD DVD it was the industry”, comments VanWynendaele before saying that given the chance they wouldn’t do anything different. “We firmly believe that we did it the right way.

Source: Sky News via Pocket-Lint

Before anyone jumps for joy (or panics) the additional layer in the 3-layer HD DVD discs announced today, aren?t for Blu-ray, they’re for DVD. This new 3-layer disc from Toshiba and Memory-Tech can be configured as a 30GB HD DVD plus 4.7GB DVD or as an 8.5GB dual-layer DVD with a 15GB HD DVD layer.

Applications you ask? The first and most welcome use (at least in my book) are single sided HD DVD/DVD combo discs, no more flippers! Another use could be HD video and advanced audio only on the 30GB HD layers while the SD extras round out the 4.7GB DVD layer.

But this does present one other interesting option. As anyone who’s already experimented with authoring their own HD DVD content on a standard DVD knows, the Toshiba players already recognize HD content on a standard DVD. So in theory at least this new disc manufacturing technique could push HD DVD’s (short term) theoretical limit to 34.7 GB.

As interesting as all of this is, it begs the question; how far away are we from seeing the 45GB triple-layer HD DVD disc approved by the DVD Forum and put into the HD DVD specification? Well according to Toshiba’s Jim Armour “probably mid-next year”.

R.Hollis

There’s a bit of cheesecake in this video, so view at your own risk. But it’s damn funny.

I don’t even know what to say. But it sure isn’t viva le Blu-ray.

R.Hollis

Not much in the way of details and no release date is mentioned but Caddyshack is coming to HD DVD!

Gophers!

Note: The Man Room?s “release July 27, 2006″ indicates the date the title was announced. At least that?s what I?m guessing because the title is not available (as of today’s date)

R.Hollis

According to SkeekingAlpha by way of Yahoo Finance news Japan…

“Hitachi will be introducing a 2-3 terabyte hard disk drive HD-DVD recorder in 2007″

If this pans out, it would mark the second confirmed manufacturer of HD DVD player/recorders.

Now in all likelihood even if this story is true, the Hitachi player/recorder is very likely for Japanese consumption only but it would open the door for U.S. HD DVD player/recorders manufactured by Hitachi.

Source: SeekingAlpha Japan:

–update– looks like this one was a goof, the author added “Thanks for your comment pointing out the error in my posting about Hitachi’s forthcoming 2-3 terabyte HDD DVD component (not HDD HD-DVD).”

R.Hollis

Talk of “compromise” or a unified solution regarding the next generation high definition DVD format, has mostly came from Sony during the past few weeks, now Toshiba appears to send signals that hope isn’t lost in sparing the consumer a format war.

According to Reuters “The two groups are in talks to jointly develop a new standard for next-generation DVDs to give the best benefit to consumers” a Sony source said on Thursday, declining to elaborate on the details.

In addition to this bit of optimistic news “Sony and Toshiba have reached a basic agreement that a unified standard would be desirable, and they are now looking to develop a hybrid standard that takes advantage of each standard’s strengths” according to the Japanese business daily Nihon Keizai.

While this type of posturing itself isn’t new, the presence of Toshiba at the bargaining table indicates that real progress might be still be made. The new round of talks also gives evidence the two companies still have an open dialogue, even after Toshiba basically told Sony to take a hike, during the last round of “negations”.

Michael.G

It?s been tough for Sony lately, with the PSP pixel fiasco and the next-gen Hi-Def DVD format war. Sure they are a big corporation that likes to be number one in every aspect of the electronics industry, movie industry, music industry, gaming industry, etc. But that goal can be troublesome to reach when you have specialist companies that want to be the best in only one aspect of an industry, like the best way to store, play, & listen to music; or the only format for recording, playing HD movies & programs.

It should be no surprise to anyone that Apple?s iPod is the best selling MP3 player on the market. This can make it a little difficult for Sony to stay on top with their music player products like the mini disc, walkman, and SACD with great success. And with the HD-DVD, Blu-ray format war going on with Toshiba, it sure does look like they are losing in the conquering of these markets.

According to Ryoji Chubachi, president of Sony Corp, “There’s an illusion that Sony is somehow getting totally defeated, but that’s just one business (MP3 Players) for Sony. It is going to be tough for Sony to beat all the specialists.” He also added that Sony needs to shift to ?growth? areas such as flat TVs, DVD recorders, and mobile gadgets. He didn?t specify which products Sony was going to shift away from though.

One way for Sony to put focus on their SACD & Blu-ray technologies would be to incorporate them into something that already has a niche in the market, the Vaio. Sony announced this week at a three day press event in Bordeaux France, that DSD and Blu-ray will be added to their line of Vaio notebooks and PCs.

DSD, which stands for Direct Stream Digital, will be added for optimal use of audio files. This technology is the core HD audio technology which makes SACD sound so wonderful, but to really notice what makes SACD so superior to CD you need a capable hi-fi system, which you are not going to have on the Sony Vaio. However Sony claims and this is really funny, that home studio and home audio enthusiasts and creators can achieve the same high definition and surround sound on their PC without affecting background CPU performance.

They haven?t announced any other details like how many, how much, & when. It seems like Sony is headed in the right direction in trying to come on top of this format war with HD-DVD but with NEC & Toshiba having the majority of Hollywood on their side and with Sony trying to call a truce a couple of weeks ago, the outlook for Blu-ray becoming the sole next-gen DVD format is not so good.

R.Hollis

My eyes may deceive me, but is Sony is trying to play the nice guy in a format war? What about the other times, Betamax vs. VHS and the still on-going SACD vs. DVD-Audio? Have they finally realized that these wars risk losing the consumers interest, for either format? “Listening to the voice of the consumers, having two rival formats is disappointing, and we haven’t totally given up on the possibility of integration or compromise,” according to the soon to be president (Sony Electronics Business Worldwide), Ryoji Chubachi. Wow, I didn’t know Sony even knew the word “compromise”.

Analyst are trying decide what Chubachi meant by this statement. It is obvious, isn’t it? Sony is trying to act like they do not want a war; they are not keeping the fight alive. They are also giving themselves a “well, we tried” excuse if neither format is a big hit by 2006. Sony is probably thinking that this tactic of “compromise” would have been great when SACD was in the works. Now they can only blame themselves for making a CD format that is just about as universal as the Mini Disc.

Maybe the new president is trying to turn over a new leaf for Sony. Maybe he is genuine in his want for integration of the two formats. Or maybe he is smarter than his successors and realizes that the consumers are going to decide the future of next-gen HD discs. Let’s come back to the real world though.

The release of these next generation discs and players, for the US, are only about 7 months away. How can Blu-ray & HD-DVD possibly come up with integration by that point? How are they going to explain to their supporters, thus far that they have decided to go this other route and by the way, thanks for wasting your money on one format? It’s not going to happen. If it was, Sony would have come out with a plan or better yet they would have discussed this with Toshiba & NEC and both camps would have announced a plan of integration. HD-DVD turned them down once before and they still have no plan of compromise. They (Toshiba/NEC) seem to be okay with that.

A more likely scenario would be a universal player, which plays both formats as they are, but even this wouldn’t be an easy feat, as it would add another 30-40% to the cost of the players. In my opinion this whole talk of “compromise” is too little, too late.

R.Hollis

If this pans out to be true, it changes everything we’ve been told, about the impending Blu-ray, HD-DVD format war, considerably. Heise online a German technology site, appears to report that Samsung intends to “marry” a Blu-ray and HD-DVD drive together (sorry the translation was a bit rough). This fly’s in the face of everything we’ve been told so far, which includes “the rival technologies aren’t similar enough to combine into one device” and “it wouldn’t be feasible to make a high definition universal DVD player”.

I can’t speak to the validity of the report from CeBIT by Heise, but it goes without saying, that if Samsung can pull this off then the whole “Format War” may end before it ever began. This is one story I’ll be following closely.

Michael.G

As of March 10, 2005, Apple has jumped on the Blu-ray gravy train. This should not be a huge shock to anyone as most major computer companies have already joined the BDA right at its conception. Blu-ray is the obvious choice for Apple because, according to Steve Jobs, “Consumers are already creating stunning HD content with Apple’s leading video editing applications like iMovie HD and are anxiously awaiting a way to burn their own high def DVD’s.”

With Blu-ray storage capacity at 50GB, instead of HD-DVD’s mere 25GB, and the up-coming release of Apple’s QuickTime software, QuickTime 7 which has been adopted for some high definition DVDs, not to mention their continuous “efforts to drive consumer adoption of HD,” it seems like Apple should have joined sooner.

Is this another nail in the coffin for HD-DVD? No, of course not. HD-DVD still has it’s share of promising backers such as major movie studios Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal. Many experts are still sighting the movie studios has being the deciding factor in this format war. Although with the computer companies siding with Blu-ray and Hollywood siding with HD-DVD, it is very possible that both will co-exists in the market of next generation optical disc for storing High Definition movies, photos and other digital content. I mean, can’t we all just get along?

R.Hollis

To be honest the sites hiatus was due to nothing more, than lack of things to talk about. But the time passed since my last entry, is a story unto itself in a sense. It has now been nearly two months sense the initial HD-DVD titles were announced from Paramount, Universal and Warner, and still no initial Blu-Ray titles have been announced from Columbia, MGM or Disney.

Now I wouldnt have you read anything into this, but it does strike me as a little odd, we’re now some 6-8 months away from some form of high definition DVD, and only one camps titles have been announced. If I had to speculate, I’d say that the offerings from the HD-DVD side gave Sony pause, and their waiting to get enough titles lined up to make a similarly impressive press release, but this is just pure speculation.

Michael.G

With all of the muss and fuss over Blu-ray and HD-DVD, sometimes the simpler solutions get swept under the rug and written off as ‘unviable’. That’s likely what will happen with The DivX 6 software which can ’shrink’ a full length high definition movie small enough to fit on a standard DVD. There’s only one problem with this however, no studios are interested.

I suppose the fact that the required HD DVD player (AVeL Linkplayer2) sells for only $249.00 doesn’t please the hardware manufacturers very much, as the Linkplayer can be ordered on-line right now and the first HD/Blu players are many months away at the earliest, and are likely to sell for at least 1k. And on the studio side they cant be very happy with a hi-def video format that wasn’t put through every possible DRM solution under the planet. Maybe one day consumers will embrace simpler ‘low-tech’ solutions that offer much of the same benefits of their higher priced more elaborate cousins, but I don’t think it will be this year.

Michael.G