Technology news and Jobs 
Fuzzy Logic Warner Blu-ray attack makes HD DVD success ‘Highly Doubtful’
Fuzzy Logic Warner Blu-ray attack makes HD DVD success ‘Highly Doubtful’ | Warner Blu-ray attack makes HD DVD success ‘Highly Doubtful’ |
|
|
|
| Written by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Monday, 07 January 2008 | |
|
Page 2 of 2 Although Toshiba claims over 1 million HD DVD players sold in the US in total, this is eclipsed by sales of the PS3 in the US which amounted to 1.2m Blu-ray players in the holiday season alone, not counting sales of Blu-ray players from Sony, Pioneer, Samsung and other companies. To that end, Toshiba must now be rueing the fact the Xbox 360 was not equipped with an HD DVD drive as standard, especially when you look at the figures of over 17.7 million Xbox 360s sold worldwide as revealed during Bill Gates' CES Keynote by Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division. As the HD DVD drive wasn't yet ready when Microsoft wanted to launch the Xbox 360, it's all just a 'what if' scenario now. Toshiba’s HD DVD has suffered ‘heavy damage’ with Warner's defection, and it will take some 'heartaching decisions' and 'heavy duty' work to overcome. All power to Toshiba if they can revive the format and defeat Blu-ray, it is a proud and successful company that deserves success, achieves it in many areas, and routinely releases top quality products. And despite Blu-ray and HD DVD being a battle between Sony and Toshiba, both companies along with IBM very successfully worked together to co-develop the multi-core Cell chip being used in the PS3. Perhaps aggresively launching cheap yet good HD DVD players and recorders, allowing consumers to cheaply record high-def content being broadcast free by free-to-air television networks, Toshiba could massively increase HD DVD's user base in a relatively short time, forcing the issue with studios thanks to the sheer number of HD DVD capable players and recorders out there. Some might say this is pouring good money after bad, but I think it's a great idea - having an inexpensive high-definition recorder in models with and without a hard drive would be very handy to have, giving consumers a simple and easy way to make high-def recordings, and both archive and share them easily if desired. Whatever Toshiba decides to do, much work lies ahead. What a shame both sides couldn't come to an arrangement long ago - we all would have been spared the format war, and while one side may have made more money than the other, both sides would have been making money - rather than one side ending up losing now, whichever side it will be, something that is still uncertain thanks to Toshiba's assertion they are still fully backing, promoting and selling HD DVD to all. With Warner’s announcement, only one thing is certain in 2008 – the ‘happy days’ HD DVD enjoyed, especially in the last months of 2007 – have disappeared, as the global battle to control high-def and high-capacity optical data and video discs now cranks up to a higher dimension than we've ever seen before.
Get stories like this delivered daily - FREE - subscribe now When you subscribe get a 12 months license for LiveProject Valued at $99 USD  Download the FREE iTWire desktop alert widget
  |
Tags
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Subscribe to iTWire's daily e-newsletter now and get a FREE 12 month license to project management software valued at $99 USD. 
