Toshiba announced it will drop out of the HD DVD and Blu Ray War. What do you think?

Question

For a couple of years now, Toshiba's HD DVD. And Sony's Blu Ray have been competing for the next top format. Today Toshiba has announced that it will no longer support it's HD DVD, in a sense letting Sony rule the High Definition DVD market. What is your opinion on this? I was totally expecting HD to be the next leader. But I guess I was wrong.

Answer 1

Im really pissed. I purchased a Toshiba laptop in late january and one of they key features i liked was the HD DVD player. Now it is pretty pointless. The upside that i see right now is that any movie produced in HD DVD already i will be able to get pretty dirt cheap but any new movies coming out will not work and i will be forced to upgrade to a Blu Ray drive on my laptop. Not cheap try around $200 for a Blu Ray disk reader and 400 for a reader & burner.

The solution im looking at currently is finding a website that either streams or provides downloads of all HD movies. Im actually really confused on my theory but ive watched HD movies on both quicktime and windows media player. The point is that if u find streamed or download HD movies from the internet then there is no problem when considering the option of watching them. There is NO blu ray or HD DVD when its on the internet, its just the video and with my Hd screen there will be no problem. This is opposed to actually going and buying the Blu ray dvd from a store when putting it in my drive it wont read, so im gona stick with just downloading for now, while no drives will be necessary.

Also i sent toshiba a pretty angry email in hopes of maybe getting a credit or something for supporting their features. I wouldnt hold my breathe but it is always worth a shot. Youd be suprised what a nasty email will do for you,

But yes im pretty angry that they just dropped they are a mass producer and have alot of money they could have pushed hard and made sony really truly earn their spot.

Answer 2

I feel your pain devilcat... I have Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on player & I own 20 HD-DVD movies. Which that includes, Transformers,300,Jason Bourne Ultimatum,V for Vendetta,Fearless & Eastern Promises. I can't believe Japan entertainment market are 80% Blu-ray supporter & not interest HD-DVD format? HD-DVD comes from Japan! Toshiba they tried & I totally blame Microsoft for not adding HD-DVD drive to the Xbox 360 console instead of the add-on player. I guess we all have problems & I will keep my HD-DVD player & s***w Warner Brothers & Netflix!!!!!

Answer 3

Toshiba didn't have a choice really ... the studios and retailers decided for them.

It's clear having one HD disk format is better for consumers. I have an HD DVD player, think that HD DVD has some advantages over Blu-ray and would have prefered HD DVD to have won ... but Blu-ray has some advantages too ... and only one format could hope to continue.

Blu-ray has played catch up for 18 months, and actually did the seemingly impossible ... it won without ever catching up to HD DVD (in terms of overall hardware maturity and capability).

I'm not a fan of Sony and I have no intention to buy a Blu-ray player anytime soon. Not because of sour grapes, but because on my 720p projector/110" screen I get a picture from DVDs that is only marginally inferior to HD disks. (HD DVD players are some of the best upconverting players around ... better than PS3 or other Blu-ray players).

I have no incentive to pay a premium price for HD disks and see no reason to upgrade my equipment (e.g. 1080p projector) so I will need to buy HD disks!

I can appreciate HD, but if I'm enjoying the content of a movie (which is the point after-all) I don't notice the slightly soft picture quality of a DVD. If I'm noticing the picture quality I'm obviously not immersed in the story.

I could go into the reasons, but the bottom line is Blu-ray is and will remain a premium priced niche format supported by those consumers who are able to benefit and willing to pay the price.

In the meantime, most consumers will continue using DVDs and gradually Video on Demand and download services will become a bigger player for sub-1080p (i.e. HDTV quality) movies.

And in 5- years or so (barring environmental disaster, economic meltdown or war) someone (probably Sony) will come out with Blu-ray 2 (12 bit, xvYCC colour space, possibly 1440p) and we'll see a further shift.

Life goes on.