About Electronics

BBC: Toshiba is to start making products that can play Blu-ray discs. The decision marks a big change for the electronics firm which was the prime mover of the rival HD-DVD format.

Blu-ray and HD-DVD went head-to-head to see who could dominate the burgeoning market for movies produced in the high definition format.

The format war was effectively won in early 2008 when the Blu-ray camp won the backing of all four of the biggest movie studios. Blu-ray was largely developed by Sony. Its efforts to dominate the HD market were also helped by sales of the PlayStation 3 which has a Blu-ray player built-in.

Toshiba said it would begin production of stand alone Blu-ray players as well as drives for PCs and laptops. Its first products are likely to be ready for the end of 2009. The Japanese firm also said it would join the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) – the industry body which oversees development of the high-definition format.

“In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA,” the Japanese firm said in a statement.

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Home Cinema Choice: The consumer electronics industry and Hollywood must agree a delivery system standard for 3D before the technology has a chance of taking off as a consumer product. That’s the view of UK-based market analysts Futuresource.

Bill Foster, Futuresource’s senior technology consultant, also suggests that one of the key reasons Blu-ray won out against rival HD DVD was because studio executives were already looking down the road at releasing data-heavy titles in a 3D format: ‘Certain studios had their reasons for wanting Blu-ray (in the first place), because they were already thinking about 3D. But there has to be some technology standard.’ he says.

The research firm, more controversially, predicts that 3D technology which doesn’t require special glasses will supplant ‘spectacle-based’ 3D within a decade.

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Punchjump: NPD Group Inc. this week released data that indicates HDTV owners do not plan to purchase a Blu-ray disc player in the next six months.

According to consumers surveyed, six percent plan to purchase a Blu-ray disc player, while nine percent of high-definition TV owners plan to buy the high-definition device.

While purchase intent is low, Blu-ray awareness rose to 45 percent, up from 35 percent in June 2007.

The Blu-ray format declared victory over Toshiba Corp.’s HD DVD format in Feb.

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techradar: Details are sketchy but according to Japanese media reports, Toshiba is set to release a super DVD upscaling player that will play normal DVDs at nearly Blu-ray and HD DVD standard.

No technical information has been released but earlier this year the company, in association with Sharp, had developed a new system that allows increased DVD resolution to 960p.

Current DVD upscalers use a process that mathematically matches the pixel count of the output of the DVD signal to the physical pixel count, which is usually 1280×720 (720p) or 1920x1080p.

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Associated Press: Blu-ray stomped HD DVD to become the standard format for high-definition movie discs, but years may pass before it can claim victory over the good old DVD.

Noemi Velazquez, a 44-year-old warehouse worker, can explain why. She took one look at the $399 price tag of a Blu-ray player at a Best Buy store in Glendale, Calif., and kept going.

“I have to admit, Blu-ray is great,” she said. “(But) I’m going to wait until they go to half-price.”

Analysts, movie studios and the Blu-ray Disc Association, a manufacturing group, all say Blu-ray discs will eventually dominate video sales. The question is when.

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vnunet: Toshiba is working on an extension to the DVD format which will offer video quality comparable to that produced by Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs, according to Japanese media reports.

The company plans to begin selling a DVD player based on the new technology within six months, Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday citing unnamed sources at Toshiba.

The new enhanced DVD players will be sold at lower prices than Blu-ray players, according to the sources.

Toshiba ceded to the rival Blu-ray format in February 2008 after spending years developing its own HD-DVD next-generation video disc standard.

HD-DVD was backed by a consortium of companies including Microsoft and Intel, while Sony is the lead developer of Blu-ray.

The new DVD player will be backwards-compatible with standard DVD discs, according to the sources.

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CNNMoney: Sony Corp. Chief Executive Officer Howard Stringer said Wednesday that the Blu-Ray video format his company champions will “more than hold up” against the growing consumer yen for Internet-based or downloadable videos.

Stringer’s comments at The All Things D conference help frame the battle Sony faces as more consumers download videos from the Internet.

Blu-Ray players, which Sony champions, recently emerged victorious in a format war with a high definition version of DVDs known as HD-DVD, which was backed primarily by Toshiba Corp.

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BroadcastEngineering: Don’t expect the resolution of the format war for the future of high-def disc players to propel consumers to buy a Blu-ray disc player anytime soon.

According to the results of a Harris Poll of 2529 U.S. adults released last week, even though 23 percent of respondents said they had been waiting for the rivalry between HD DVD and Blu-ray to playout before buying, as of April — when the poll was taken — they had not acted.

The Harris Poll found just 9 percent of non-Blu-ray owners say they are likely to buy a Blu-ray Disc player within the next year, despite being aware that it’s considered to be the definitive technology for high-definition DVD players going forward.

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HiddenWires: The Blu-ray Disc victory in its recent format war with HD-DVD will propel this technology into 29.4 million homes worldwide by the end of 2008, according to the latest research published by the Strategy Analytics Connected Home Devices service. According to, “Blu-ray Devices: Forecasting Sales and Ownership ” Sony’s PS3 games console will continue to drive the Blu-ray market until 2009, after which stand-alone Blu-ray players will become the dominant segment. By 2012 more than 132 million homes worldwide will own at least one Blu-ray device.

“HD-DVD’s withdrawal leaves the way open for Blu-ray to become a major revenue earner for technology vendors and content owners alike,” says David Mercer, Principal Analyst. “The 265 million homes that will own an HDTV by 2012, and Hollywood’s need for a new growth engine, represent huge incentives for the industry to coordinate marketing activities and demonstrate unified support for the successor to DVD.”

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The Register: Toshiba may have canned production of HD DVD hardware, but that didn’t stop US consumers buying into the format last month, new market stats reveal.

According to US market watcher Redhill, 81 per cent of the next-generation optical disc players bought by Americans were Blu-ray Disc machines. That means 19 per cent of them used the rival format.

A sign that folk were buying cheap DVD upscalers – an application Toshiba began highlighting towards the end – or taking advantage of the post-termination HD DVD firesale?

Well, during the first three months of 2008, some 4.9m next-gen discs were sold, 3.8m of which – 77.6 per cent – were BDs, the rest HD DVD. That imbalance between the two formats’ hardware and software sales, suggests a fair few folk took advantage of lower prices to build a quick HD DVD collection.

Toshiba announced its decision to abandon HD DVD in February.

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Electronista: The supply of Blu-ray discs may be drastically inadequate for the actual demand this year, say analysts from Screen Digest. The group says that in 2008, it expects companies to want as many as 43 million discs — three times last year’s amount — for purposes such as movies and data storage. It believes, however, that production capacity will only be able to reach 60 to 70 percent of that, at least until later in the year. Sony’s DADC division is spending money on extra capacity, and hopes to produce 38 million discs per month by October.

The surge in demand is being attributed to the premature death of HD DVD, the only major competitor for Blu-ray. With just a single format to consider, electronics companies may now be feeling secure in supporting HD optical technology. Until supply matches demand, however, the public may continue paying high prices for Blu-ray discs.

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Electronista: HD DVD has ceased to exist in every formal capacity, an official announcement explains. The HD DVD Promotion Group, a body put together to represent the various companies which once produced HD DVD movies and players, has announced that as of March 28th, it has put a halt to all operations. Its website has been closed, leaving behind a message redirecting companies to the official bodies for the regular DVD format.

While Toshiba effectively handed victory to Blu-ray by stopping production of HD DVD players on February 19th, the format continued to have some lingering support, mainly as a residual effort to help clear out stock; since then, prices on HD DVD titles and equipment have dropped precipitously. At present, any remaining support for the format is generally dependent on individual manufacturers and retailers.

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