As an engineer, I appreciate a design that is done on time, is sufficient to the task, and has avoided overly ambitious features that add unnecessarily to the cost.
HD DVD did all these things very well, in a way that blu-ray did not.
However, Toshiba's MARKETING sucked. Where Sony was inventive and "with it", Toshiba was dull and clueless. They spent fortunes on bribing studios and then RAISED PRICES during their final Xmas season. Yes, ending a discount is raising prices to most buyers. If they had spent those millions in discounting their players to $99 all season, rather than saving it up to bribe Fox and Warner, they would have had to bribe Warner and Fox. Two million players (instead of some 600K) would ahve turned the tide.
So, the engineering department has nothing to be ashamed of. But management and marketing ought to resign out of shame.
As a fellow engineer, I can agree. But I also thought Blu-ray was perfectly fine technically as well. You have to remember that they didn't want to release in 06, but their hand was forced by competition. I don't think Blu-ray "over did it". You have to remember that HD DVD sold at a substantial loss for most of its life.
My only 2 gripes would have been to get the 51GB discs out faster and to have required the hard disc coating. I have no fear right now of buying used blu-rays, but I would never buy used DVDs/HD DVDs (includes games).
As a non engineer, I can say that the general public reall doesnt give a f***. Stop saying Sony because Sony doesnt own blu ray disc, its the BDA. HDDVD's proprietary format would have been obsolete in a shorter time then blu ray, and i do believe that.
I think the last gen of HD DVD players was well engineered but I also recognize kitchen syndrome of wanting every last feature in version 1.0. It rarely works. Toshiba more or less managed it (but not without firmware updates for online content and bug fixes) but hybrids had a worse time of it and some didn't even implement HDi at all.
The problems for Blu Ray were amplified because it's not one implementation but dozens of implementations. Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Philips, Panasonic and everyone else has to implement the same spec. Complexity breeds bugs and the more implementations, the more bugs. Simplifying the spec by moving out superfluous features and focussing on core functionality is pragmatic. New features can be added in subsequent revisions, as indeed they have.
I also think that the use of BD-J instead of HDi is both smart and daunting. BD-J is far more powerful than HDi by a mile. Think of all the games / apps that run on phones written in Java. Conversely content authoring is probably easier on HDi. I don't believe it's a long term concern but I can see why some early disks used the simpler HDMV rather than going to BD-J. This appears to be changing so maybe the tools are already improved enough. I even see it possible for MS / Toshiba to salvage HDi and pitch it as a runtime layer running over BD-J for authors that want to use it.
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As an engineer, I appreciate a design that is done on time, is sufficient to the task, and has avoided overly ambitious features that add unnecessarily to the cost.
HD DVD did all these things very well, in a way that blu-ray did not.
However, Toshiba's MARKETING sucked. Where Sony was inventive and "with it", Toshiba was dull and clueless. They spent fortunes on bribing studios and then RAISED PRICES during their final Xmas season. Yes, ending a discount is raising prices to most buyers. If they had spent those millions in discounting their players to $99 all season, rather than saving it up to bribe Fox and Warner, they would have had to bribe Warner and Fox. Two million players (instead of some 600K) would ahve turned the tide.
So, the engineering department has nothing to be ashamed of. But management and marketing ought to resign out of shame.
ummm "...wouldN'T have had to bribe..."
As a fellow engineer, I can agree. But I also thought Blu-ray was perfectly fine technically as well. You have to remember that they didn't want to release in 06, but their hand was forced by competition. I don't think Blu-ray "over did it". You have to remember that HD DVD sold at a substantial loss for most of its life.
My only 2 gripes would have been to get the 51GB discs out faster and to have required the hard disc coating. I have no fear right now of buying used blu-rays, but I would never buy used DVDs/HD DVDs (includes games).
As a non engineer, I can say that the general public reall doesnt give a f***. Stop saying Sony because Sony doesnt own blu ray disc, its the BDA. HDDVD's proprietary format would have been obsolete in a shorter time then blu ray, and i do believe that.
I think the last gen of HD DVD players was well engineered but I also recognize kitchen syndrome of wanting every last feature in version 1.0. It rarely works. Toshiba more or less managed it (but not without firmware updates for online content and bug fixes) but hybrids had a worse time of it and some didn't even implement HDi at all.
The problems for Blu Ray were amplified because it's not one implementation but dozens of implementations. Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Philips, Panasonic and everyone else has to implement the same spec. Complexity breeds bugs and the more implementations, the more bugs. Simplifying the spec by moving out superfluous features and focussing on core functionality is pragmatic. New features can be added in subsequent revisions, as indeed they have.
I also think that the use of BD-J instead of HDi is both smart and daunting. BD-J is far more powerful than HDi by a mile. Think of all the games / apps that run on phones written in Java. Conversely content authoring is probably easier on HDi. I don't believe it's a long term concern but I can see why some early disks used the simpler HDMV rather than going to BD-J. This appears to be changing so maybe the tools are already improved enough. I even see it possible for MS / Toshiba to salvage HDi and pitch it as a runtime layer running over BD-J for authors that want to use it.