Really not sure what the hate-on Engadget has for Toshiba here, nor why this is portrayed as a bad thing.
Here's the deal. This is good news because it's an enhancement technology for DVD. The write-up done by a journalist independent of Toshiba is portraying it as something it's not - Toshiba's attempt to produce a "Blu-ray rival". This is just a significant advancement in upscaling DVD players.
Toshiba is not doing this to "keep DVD alive" or "destroy Blu-ray". Blu-ray's dead anyway, it's just a minority of techies and the industry itself that can't see that.
Blu-ray is expensive and will be for the next few years. It's lacking in significant advantages over DVD, it has one significant disadvantage (BD+ - a technology that guarantees you will never be able to buy an arbitrary BD disk and be able to assume your player will play it) that thus far Blu-ray's backers refuse to do anything about, and nobody's even producing BD players that aren't going to be obsolete in a year with the exception of one games console that doesn't fit easily into an AV stack.
If BD was the only HD player around for the forseeable future, a significant number of people might have adopted it through desperation, but HD on-demand is already here, Apple and others are doing it, and if Netflix can prove its business model is viable (rentals don't cut it for everyone, they don't me), then, well, which would you have? An over-priced, unreliable, device that can only play disks you've bought, or something that has instant access to every movie ever made, with no charges beyond the broadband connection you're already paying for and a fixed monthly charge for VoD service?
Think about that. I'm not talking about online rentals. I'm talking about paying $20 a month on top of your broadband subscription, and being able to watch any movies you want, as often as you want. Only Pirate Bay users have anything approaching that today, but this'll "just work" and will not require you have the world's biggest hard disk and the patience of a saint. Netflix are already going there, they're just SD at the moment.
Meanwhile everyone Blu-ray player supports DVD and it's improbable that anyone will ever produce a player only capable of playing blue-laser media. From Toshiba's point of view, they get the same royalties on every BD player sold that they get with DVD players, and that's not going to change for at least ten more years.
Toshiba and Sony both screwed up. Sony has produced an HD-video disk technology that will never be market viable. Toshiba failed to promote their technology enough to displace Sony's, and arguably didn't make it advanced enough to be a part of the oncoming VoD revolution, though as a framework it certainly had room to grow in that direction.
What Toshiba's done here is recognize the inevitable. It's not getting involved in Blu-ray, and will not unless Blu-ray actually defies gravity and takes off. In the mean time, it's improving a product line that will sell well for the foreseeable future with a relatively cheap software upgrade.
They're not doing this to some-how prolong the life of DVD, and they're not doing this to "stick it" to Blu-ray. They're doing this to make money. Easy money. What Engadget and the Playstation 3 fanbois who post here want them to do doesn't make any financial sense at all. You're essentially saying the right course for a consumer electronics company is to freeze all development of a best-selling technology, refuse to produce the best product they can, and instead jump into a technology that's expensive and unlikely to be a success.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Really not sure what the hate-on Engadget has for Toshiba here, nor why this is portrayed as a bad thing.
Here's the deal. This is good news because it's an enhancement technology for DVD. The write-up done by a journalist independent of Toshiba is portraying it as something it's not - Toshiba's attempt to produce a "Blu-ray rival". This is just a significant advancement in upscaling DVD players.
Toshiba is not doing this to "keep DVD alive" or "destroy Blu-ray". Blu-ray's dead anyway, it's just a minority of techies and the industry itself that can't see that.
Blu-ray is expensive and will be for the next few years. It's lacking in significant advantages over DVD, it has one significant disadvantage (BD+ - a technology that guarantees you will never be able to buy an arbitrary BD disk and be able to assume your player will play it) that thus far Blu-ray's backers refuse to do anything about, and nobody's even producing BD players that aren't going to be obsolete in a year with the exception of one games console that doesn't fit easily into an AV stack.
If BD was the only HD player around for the forseeable future, a significant number of people might have adopted it through desperation, but HD on-demand is already here, Apple and others are doing it, and if Netflix can prove its business model is viable (rentals don't cut it for everyone, they don't me), then, well, which would you have? An over-priced, unreliable, device that can only play disks you've bought, or something that has instant access to every movie ever made, with no charges beyond the broadband connection you're already paying for and a fixed monthly charge for VoD service?
Think about that. I'm not talking about online rentals. I'm talking about paying $20 a month on top of your broadband subscription, and being able to watch any movies you want, as often as you want. Only Pirate Bay users have anything approaching that today, but this'll "just work" and will not require you have the world's biggest hard disk and the patience of a saint. Netflix are already going there, they're just SD at the moment.
Meanwhile everyone Blu-ray player supports DVD and it's improbable that anyone will ever produce a player only capable of playing blue-laser media. From Toshiba's point of view, they get the same royalties on every BD player sold that they get with DVD players, and that's not going to change for at least ten more years.
Toshiba and Sony both screwed up. Sony has produced an HD-video disk technology that will never be market viable. Toshiba failed to promote their technology enough to displace Sony's, and arguably didn't make it advanced enough to be a part of the oncoming VoD revolution, though as a framework it certainly had room to grow in that direction.
What Toshiba's done here is recognize the inevitable. It's not getting involved in Blu-ray, and will not unless Blu-ray actually defies gravity and takes off. In the mean time, it's improving a product line that will sell well for the foreseeable future with a relatively cheap software upgrade.
They're not doing this to some-how prolong the life of DVD, and they're not doing this to "stick it" to Blu-ray. They're doing this to make money. Easy money. What Engadget and the Playstation 3 fanbois who post here want them to do doesn't make any financial sense at all. You're essentially saying the right course for a consumer electronics company is to freeze all development of a best-selling technology, refuse to produce the best product they can, and instead jump into a technology that's expensive and unlikely to be a success.