So, the no-name branded POS comes in at a price at or above the prices known brands were charging last X-mas!?
Way to win over the mass-market, not.
In fact way to avoid troubling anyone with even a moments thought about this garbage.
Blu-ray, still just about as far away as it's possible to get from making any impact whatsoever on the a/v mass-market.
Beyond parody.
(oh, and for all those who keep repeating this ludicrous BS as if they know for a fact what sort of loss Toshiba were making on their HD DVD players?
Toshiba wrote off the entire HD DVD enterprise with a $460 million 1-off total loss payment this year, so it's unlikely in the extreme that these foundation-less claims of huge losses per unit are anything close to the reality.
(but do feel free to produce some proof to back up your rhetoric; the $460 million payment I have mentioned is now a matter of public record)
....which btw stands in stark contrast to the several years of heavy losses Sony alone has posted over Blu-ray. )
Yeah well naturally it was only inevitable that someone would come in & do the simplistic math (1.5 million divided by 460 million = 300 per unit) and come up with a guess (which is all you did).
Dividing everything up by the number of units sold does not in fact give you the answer as to how much was made or lost per unit as it obviously involves costs far beyond the individual unit pricing.
You just don't know. You didn't compile nevermind read the accounts nor have the slightest idea what was or was not included, what was or was not off-set.
There are also other considerations too. Just because they packaged everything up into a 1-off cost does not mean it is all so neat and easy (tho obviously in another sense they thought it was for them to get it all over with all asap).
For instance that certain items (like elements of the R&D or hardware manufacture for example) which may have had other wider applications/uses and which might not normally have been included may well have been because of the tax implications/advantages/benefits.
@ tifosiotaku
You can't begin to imagine how hard I'm laughing at you & your pathetic whining whimpering to stop me saying the things you can't bear to see here. What do you think this is, a standing joke site like blu-ray.com? Pathetic.
.....and you know what I said was 100% on the money, $300 for a POS no-name Blu-ray player is a joke. If Sony & Samsung couldn't get any real significant interest in the mass-market going last X-mas with players below that price how the f*ck do you expect anyone to bother with garbage like this Funai?
TT: So, maybe the $300 loss per player isn't the exact loss relative to manufacturing costs...maybe it includes the R&D, free movies, and other figures that you don't think should be included. So what? Most companies do generally price products to recoup R&D expenses...and not doing so is a loss. So What?
If you know so much about the issue, with all your reports and accounts you've mentioned, why don't you tell us what the exact figure is...until you do, quit bitching about the nice round estimates that the rest of us are satisfied with...you still haven't proved them wrong anyway.
Those round estimates can't be too far off anyway:
They were selling HD DVD players for $100, including, what, 7 free movies? And a couple months earlier those players were $150...$200? At least for those particular sales, we are looking at a couple hundred dollars in loss, especially when $150 worth of free movies is accounted for. That is a loss....and with a $50-$100 loss per player for manufacturing, plus the $150 worth of free movies, we're in the $300 ball park. So what if it was only $200 or $250...it's obviously there.
It doesn't matter how I do the math. Toshiba lost their ass selling players.
They were giving enough money away with each unit that no one else could afford to enter the market with an HD-DVD player.
If Toshiba was willing to give away $100 in order to get an HD-DVD player out there (and make it up in software sales), then who wants to come into that market? You sell your player at best making no money because you have to complete with Toshiba's player's subsidized prices. And by doing this, you do Toshiba a favor, by getting a player out there for them to sell software to and they didn't even have to lose $100 to do it!
HD-DVD was dead from day 1. There was only one hardware maker and only ever would be one. That's not going to lead to low player costs.
Toshiba in its desperation even managed to undercut its own OEM's Venturer A3 clone. It's no wonder CEs ran a mile. There was zero profit to make in HD DVD when Toshiba are selling them below cost.
A fairly unusual once-and-for-all 1-off payment of costs @ $460 million is hardly "losing your ass" for a company like Toshiba. Be serious.
You can dress the math up however you like but no-one would seriously relate total costs down to a unit price in the manner you have suggested.
Imagine if Sony & the rest of the BDA did that. Every PS3 would 'really' cost well over $1000 each (in view of the years of several hundred $ losses Sony alone has announced over Blu-ray).
To try and say that is little more than a totally artificial stunt.
Several insiders were saying (before the plug was pulled) that they reckoned Toshiba was either making a little money or losing only a little money per unit.
Sadly the ignorant fanboy element here just wants to pretend that the Blu-ray drive is pretty much the same as the HD DVD (or for that matter SD DVD drive). It isn't. The have to use a more precise, expensive and higher spec'd mechanism because of the smaller pits they use/read.
Blu-ray is necessarily more expensive than the HD DVD & SD DVD units, even if they did use a very similar blue/violet laser.
It's also worth pointing out that the Blu-ray units were built down to a price and unlike SD DVD & it's close cousin HD DVD we have no idea yet what that means for the longevity of the units
(I guess we'll be starting to hear about that in the coming year or 2). All those kids who used they PS3 for lengthy periods of gaming & movie watching may well come to regret the all-in-one choice.
We already know the blue/violet laser began a substantial part of it's 'life' in production with a very definite and not exactly generous 'life-span'.
Sorry Truth Teller, I have to bow out here. I have a strict policy against arguing with boneheads.
How you can say a BluRay player (1.0!) costs more to make than an HD-DVD player is beyond me. Both have all the same parts, except the HD-DVD player has to have two HD-video decoders instead of one, and audio and video mixing processing plus the RAM to do that in.
HD-DVD players cost at least as much to make as BluRay players at the time, and yet Toshiba was selling them for less. They were subsidizing the hell out of them (hoping to make the money up on the back end), and that made it impossible for any other hardware company to enter the market.
If you suddenly turn reasonable, maybe we can chat again.
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Hate to say I told you but.....
LMAO
So, the no-name branded POS comes in at a price at or above the prices
known brands were charging last X-mas!?
Way to win over the mass-market, not.
In fact way to avoid troubling anyone with even a moments thought
about this garbage.
Blu-ray, still just about as far away as it's possible to get from
making any impact whatsoever on the a/v mass-market.
Beyond parody.
(oh, and for all those who keep repeating this ludicrous BS as if
they know for a fact what sort of loss Toshiba were making on their
HD DVD players?
Toshiba wrote off the entire HD DVD enterprise with a $460 million
1-off total loss payment this year, so it's unlikely in the extreme
that these foundation-less claims of huge losses per unit are
anything close to the reality.
(but do feel free to produce some proof to back up your rhetoric;
the $460 million payment I have mentioned is now a matter of public
record)
....which btw stands in stark contrast to the several years of heavy
losses Sony alone has posted over Blu-ray. )
The $460M write-off is net. It includes any money recovered by selling discs to people who bought subsidized players.
Anyway, something like 1.5M HD-DVD players (including 360 add-ons) were sold, meaning they lost net $300 per unit sold. NET.
That means if you bought a 360 add-on at $250, the amount net lost was more even than the amount of revenue they took in.
There's usually a rousing business selling $100 bills for $10, Toshiba isn't the first to discover this business model.
Yeah well naturally it was only inevitable that someone would come in & do the simplistic math (1.5 million divided by 460 million = 300 per unit) and come up with a guess
(which is all you did).
Dividing everything up by the number of units sold does not in fact give you the answer as to how much was made or lost per unit as it obviously involves costs far beyond the individual unit pricing.
You just don't know.
You didn't compile nevermind read the accounts nor have the slightest idea what was or was not included, what was or was not off-set.
There are also other considerations too.
Just because they packaged everything up into a 1-off cost does not mean it is all so neat and easy
(tho obviously in another sense they thought it was for them to get it all over with all asap).
For instance that certain items (like elements of the R&D or hardware manufacture for example) which may have had other wider applications/uses and which might not normally have been included may well have been because of the tax implications/advantages/benefits.
@ tifosiotaku
You can't begin to imagine how hard I'm laughing at you & your pathetic whining whimpering to stop me saying the things you can't bear to see here.
What do you think this is, a standing joke site like blu-ray.com?
Pathetic.
.....and you know what I said was 100% on the money, $300 for a POS no-name Blu-ray player is a joke.
If Sony & Samsung couldn't get any real significant interest in the mass-market going last X-mas with players below that price how the f*ck do you expect anyone to bother with garbage like this Funai?
Wake up.
TT: So, maybe the $300 loss per player isn't the exact loss relative to manufacturing costs...maybe it includes the R&D, free movies, and other figures that you don't think should be included. So what? Most companies do generally price products to recoup R&D expenses...and not doing so is a loss. So What?
If you know so much about the issue, with all your reports and accounts you've mentioned, why don't you tell us what the exact figure is...until you do, quit bitching about the nice round estimates that the rest of us are satisfied with...you still haven't proved them wrong anyway.
Those round estimates can't be too far off anyway:
They were selling HD DVD players for $100, including, what, 7 free movies? And a couple months earlier those players were $150...$200? At least for those particular sales, we are looking at a couple hundred dollars in loss, especially when $150 worth of free movies is accounted for. That is a loss....and with a $50-$100 loss per player for manufacturing, plus the $150 worth of free movies, we're in the $300 ball park. So what if it was only $200 or $250...it's obviously there.
It doesn't matter how I do the math. Toshiba lost their ass selling players.
They were giving enough money away with each unit that no one else could afford to enter the market with an HD-DVD player.
If Toshiba was willing to give away $100 in order to get an HD-DVD player out there (and make it up in software sales), then who wants to come into that market? You sell your player at best making no money because you have to complete with Toshiba's player's subsidized prices. And by doing this, you do Toshiba a favor, by getting a player out there for them to sell software to and they didn't even have to lose $100 to do it!
HD-DVD was dead from day 1. There was only one hardware maker and only ever would be one. That's not going to lead to low player costs.
Toshiba in its desperation even managed to undercut its own OEM's Venturer A3 clone. It's no wonder CEs ran a mile. There was zero profit to make in HD DVD when Toshiba are selling them below cost.
@ why not the LS2LS7?
A fairly unusual once-and-for-all 1-off payment of costs @ $460 million is hardly
"losing your ass" for a company like Toshiba.
Be serious.
You can dress the math up however you like but no-one would seriously
relate total costs down to a unit price in the manner you have
suggested.
Imagine if Sony & the rest of the BDA did that.
Every PS3 would 'really' cost well over $1000 each
(in view of the years of several hundred $ losses Sony alone has
announced over Blu-ray).
To try and say that is little more than a totally artificial stunt.
Several insiders were saying (before the plug was pulled) that they
reckoned Toshiba was either making a little money or losing only a
little money per unit.
Sadly the ignorant fanboy element here just wants to pretend that the
Blu-ray drive is pretty much the same as the HD DVD (or for that
matter SD DVD drive).
It isn't.
The have to use a more precise, expensive and higher spec'd mechanism
because of the smaller pits they use/read.
Blu-ray is necessarily more expensive than the HD DVD & SD DVD units,
even if they did use a very similar blue/violet laser.
It's also worth pointing out that the Blu-ray units were built down to a price and unlike SD DVD & it's close cousin HD DVD we have no idea yet what that means for the longevity of the units
(I guess we'll be starting to hear about that in the coming year or 2).
All those kids who used they PS3 for lengthy periods of gaming &
movie watching may well come to regret the all-in-one choice.
We already know the blue/violet laser began a substantial part of
it's 'life' in production with a very definite and not exactly
generous 'life-span'.
Sorry Truth Teller, I have to bow out here. I have a strict policy against arguing with boneheads.
How you can say a BluRay player (1.0!) costs more to make than an HD-DVD player is beyond me. Both have all the same parts, except the HD-DVD player has to have two HD-video decoders instead of one, and audio and video mixing processing plus the RAM to do that in.
HD-DVD players cost at least as much to make as BluRay players at the time, and yet Toshiba was selling them for less. They were subsidizing the hell out of them (hoping to make the money up on the back end), and that made it impossible for any other hardware company to enter the market.
If you suddenly turn reasonable, maybe we can chat again.