BDA granting 11 China-based manufacturers with Blu-ray licenses?
By Darren Murph 
posted Jun 1st 2008 9:11AM
posted Jun 1st 2008 9:11AM
[Via HDTV Info, thanks gamedude420]
posted Jun 1st 2008 9:11AM
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Toshiba may have "Spurred" the BDA to finally get serious!
Most amusing.
How the best laid plans fall flat on their face and implode.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch!
The PS3/Blu-ray fanclub might not like to admit it but Toshiba et al have done us all a huge favour & gotten Blu-ray finally licenced to the Chinese.
Now all we need is to see them ditch their pointless (and expensive) DRM sh!te on the media and reach an equitable accord with the DVD Forum allowing the use of a Blu-ray version of the Twin Disc and/or combo disc.
Here's looking forward to the day when we finally get the inexpensive all-in-one player we might even feel that we need.
But they better hurry up cos time is running out fast.
Welcome to the fantasy world of Truth Teller. Where nearly a dozen more CE firms requesting licences to manufacturer Blu Ray players is somehow a bad thing for the format. But you are right, Toshiba did a huge favour for Blu Ray by demonstrating there was zero profit to be made in HD DVD. Toshiba even undercut the no-name A3 clone made by their own OEM partner. Alco must have been absolutely delighted to have been stabbed in the back like that. I'm sure the experience made a lasting impression on other OEMs.
Grow up baby your precious format lost.
No spin is required because the "no blu ray for China" is your own stupid straw man.
Oh dear. You are laughably wrong, as per.
Actually it was the BDA that originally said 'no Blu-ray licencing to China'.
It was part of their attempt to use Blu-ray to recover the declining margins DVD once had (which had been wiped out by such things as ultra cheap inexpensive Chinese DVD players).
This is a world away from compoinent manufacture or component assembly.
But I guess that continues to be just a tad too complex for you to grasp.
If truth teller says its true, it must be. I mean, come on, his name is truth teller. With a name like that, who would want proof?
I do recall, months ago, that there was at least a rumor of the BDA specifically excluding Chinese manufacturers.
I do not recall if it was true or not...
Though I do remember that it was a "for now / not-yet" type thing...it's not like the BDA was ever planning to make the ban permanent.
Also, with this article saying the Chinese manufacturers will be on line in 2009 (could be December '09, right?), that doesn't exactly sound like the BDA is giving up any ground very fast...my dream of low low prices is at least 6 months away, and might still be almost 1.5 years away.
TT is right.. the no China Blu-Ray were very real comments from BDA.
Well anyway you look at this, should be positive.
As I said, I'm not against Blu-Ray as a technology as I am against ripping people off and making consumer suck up the costs of adoption.
Obviously the BDA is aware that the initial plan of keeping high prices has failed. With SpursEngine from Toshiba and economic recession it became clear to everyone that licensing to Chinese is not really a bad thing.
But yes, they (BDA) are definitely changing their strategy.
Earth to mods, where are you guys? Why isn't this delusional moron banned yet?
Nfinity:
You're as biased as Truth Teller. Do either of you have a link to an official statement?
I can understand why BluRay wouldn't have the Chinese in on day one. Making a compatible standard is difficult in the early days, the only way to hold it together could be to limit the number of licensees. For examples, look at the problems with the Samsung BD players and the early Panasonic DVD players (that wouldn't play The Matrix).
Once there are reasonable pre-packaged chipsets available, you can let in a lot more licensees with less worry, because you can qualify the chipsets themselves and worry less about all the players.
I find it a ridiculous strawman for the red boys to say that BluRay was somehow never supposed to be adopted by certain manufacturers. The licensors of BluRay obviously stand to make the most profit by having the largest adoption, and that means allowing the Chinese in.
The BDA hasn't made any statement about Chinese manufactures at all. Indeed Chinese manufacturers like Gowell have BDA members for quite a long time and even have OEM designs up on their site.
A few months back some Sony exec did say Chinese models would happen but said not any time soon. Given that 11 license applications have just been granted, he was either not aware of what was going on or, or was making the remarks as part of negotiations. No one here is privy to the negotiations or could say even if they were but you can bet that if 11 applicants were granted at once that China just made some major concession to get it. That may be related to auditing of facilities for crypto keys, or collection of licence fees, or piracy enforcement, or to CH-DVD or a combination of all of these.
It's certainly not bad news for the format at all and is a sign that it is maturing and will be decidedly mainstream when a raft of Chinese players begins to turn up next year.
It is pretty funny seeing the PS3 fanboys element roll in now to appluad this move when they slammed Toshiba for much the same thing.
Hmmmm, cheap Chinese Blu-ray players robbing the Japanese CE corps of margin wasn't it?
I wonder how that sits with the rest of those corps now; it was bad enough for them that the PS3 rendered all their standalones pointless but now knowing that the floor is set to drop out of the market when they try & go for the mass-market must be very comforting to them.
If certain posters are ignorant of or want to pretnd that they missed the early comments regarding 'no licencing to China' then tough luck, they can do their own leg work.
Anyone else who watched this since the beginning knows it is true.
Well I'm not for it Truthy. Same reason I don't shop at Wal-Mart. Too bad Sam Walton, a great American, had kids who didn't care about pissing all over his legacy.
BD players were never to be excluded from China. They were only being delayed until a more favorable time. Find a BDA release where they they said they would never, or not, manufacture or license to China. Go ahead, I'm waiting...
Since most all of the players are made in China to begin with they were only delaying the China brand badged players. Since brand players are now down to $250. It seems like just after Christmas this year there are going to be discount no name badged players next to discounted Sony and Panasonic players.
It's actually not a big deal at all.
Truth Teller:
This is not at all what Toshiba did.
Toshiba didn't bar Chinese manufacturers. What Toshiba did was subsidize their players so that there could be NO other manufacturers. There was NEVER A SINGLE OTHER HD-DVD drive maker besides Toshiba.
Toshiba was selling their products below cost in order to make up money selling discs. No other manufacturer got a cut of disc sales so they couldn't afford to do this.
With the model HD-DVD followed there was no clamor from the Chinese companies to get in, as there was no profit in it for them.
Chinese manufacturers means sub-$200 2.0 players by next year.
Good news for those looking for inexpensive entry-level BD players.
$200 by next year? That' s not good news. I got the HD DVD for Christmas 07 for $100. Good news would be me getting a $100 BD player for Christmas 08...might go $150 for name like Samsung etc...but haveing to wait another year sucks.... If HD DVD had won we would have had $49 players by Christmas 09. BD is taking too long to lower prices.
As for Alco, perhaps you think they're a charity. That they licenced HD DVD technology, purchased parts, assembled them, tested them, shipped the players off to US & Europe, marketed them and provide aftersales support and then were perfectly happy when Toshiba undercut them. In which case you are a dumbass.
This is good. Cheaper players on the way.
Well that's one way to sidestep the relevant point
(that (1) the Venturer used the HD A3 as it's reference design and was to all intents and purposes identical to the HD A3 except for a case logo and
(2) Toshiba moved completely to the higher-end model production & shifted all entry-level HD A3 production to them)
But do feel free to carry on, it's most amusing seeing your ridiculous reaching.
Yes, it was identical. But Venturer couldn't make money on it because Toshiba was undercutting them by subsidizing their players. Toshiba could subsidize their players because they would get the money back in software (disc) sales. No other maker of HD-DVD equipment could afford to do this.
So Toshiba killed their own standard by making it impossible for there to be more than one manufacturer.
Do you understand this, or is this over your head?
Lets see if I can put it in terms that baby can understand.
1. Alco is an OEM. OEM contracts require them to produce N boxes at a set price (with the usual penalty clauses for delivery, faults etc.). Alco hope these boxes to ensure future orders but its not their money on the line.
2. Alco have their own Venturer brand. It costs Alco money to make, test, ship, market and support this brand which they hope to recoup through sales. They absolutely do care these boxes sell.
3. Toshiba undercut sales of Venturer players with genuine A3 players in their desperation to shift their own players.
4. Alco was left out to dry. Their players are still clogging up warehouses somewhere since Walmart knocked them down to $98 clearance from their online store.
Rationalise all you want but its clear Alco lost a substantial amount of money no thanks in part to Toshiba's botched marketing and two faced dealing with their OEM. It's easy to see why OEMs would prefer Blu Ray where their margins are not going to be undercut.
Let's put this in terms that a certain 'intellectually challenged' couple of posters can understand.
Toshiba gave up production of the HD A3 to Alco.
A few months before the end all 'Toshiba' HD A3s were in fact Alcos.
They didn't 'need' to push the identical & rebadged Venturer model cos Toshiba had left all HD A3 entry-level production to Alco.
You can squalk your own invented garbage about what you imagine 'OEM' means all you like but you have no idea what the agreements & contractual obligations were or what the profit structures were when Toshiba pulled out of HD A3 production and left it all to Alco.
You are funny tho.
Clearly I failed. Baby doesn't understand or refuses to understand. So let's try again. Toshiba pays Alco to make Toshiba branded A3 players. Alco would like the players to sell to ensure future orders but it is not their money on the line if they don't sell. Their money IS on the line for Venturer players that don't sell. Toshiba stabbed their OEM in the back to shift its own dead stock and now it is Venturer players are clogging up warehouses.
Clearly baby would prefer to think that Venturer manufacturing, shipping, marketing and support was all paid for with magic beans. Grow up baby, your precious format is dead.
Sorry baby, I don't claim to have inside knowledge of Alco's dealings with Toshiba. But I do know what an OEM is and how they make money - something you apparently don't.
I look forward with interest to reading Alco's 2007/2008 annual report in a month or so to see how much they write off. My expectation is their US sales will take a huge dump, largely thanks to Toshiba.
Of course baby can rationalize that Venturer is funded by magic beans or that Alco didnt mind losing probably millions thanks to Toshiba. Neither would be true of course.
TT: "You are as obvious & have all the subtlety of an adolescent boy oggling
the girls whilst openly & plainly fondling himself."
Wait...hmmm...umm...
so that is not acceptable behavior? Dammit, I better rethink my life.
Gooo! :)
Let's go Blu-ray!
I'm hoping this means cheaper (price and hopefully not quality) blu-ray players in the market soon. This way there's a chance for mass adoption. Oh and cheaper discs would be nice too (though Amazon pricing isn't bad, there's still a lot of people who buy from those brick and mortar stores, where disc prices are outrageous).
Also, though I know digital distribution is supposedly the new thing, I don't want to ditch my disc format. At least not yet, since I haven't seen anything thats on par with the HD discs yet.
This is a good thing for Blu so long as the players that come out of China perform on par with existing models. Yes, they'll be cheaper, but what will they cut out to get there? Maybe they'll be sub-par upconverters?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I think most of what they cut out is pay/benefits for the workers. Although, as I understand it, the consumer-electronics assembly line worker pay of $2/day goes quite a long way in China...and is a big step up from farming or whatever other jobs are available...
You'll probably find that most supposedly Japanese players say "Assembled in China" or Taiwan / Malaysia on them anyway. For example my PS3 was assembled in China. What "assembled" means is open to discussion but I expect that they take subcontracted parts and stick them together. The parts could have come from all over the place too.
"healthy": very meaningful, black and white adjective there. ;)
I wonder if they will all be POS profile 1.0 giving the edge back to the jap producers?
Profile 1.1 is mandatory, profile 2.0 is optional. They will have to be at least profile 1.1.
If they are lacking in some way it is likely to be in outputs, especially audio outputs and support for some optional audio formats. If you're plugging these things into an HDMI TV I don't think this is anything to care about. And if you do care... well there are dozens of models from dozens of manufacturers to get the features you want. Competition in other words.
This is wonderful. I personally wasn't going to join the BD club until the price-point was a lot lower (
Imagine being a Japanese BR producer and hearing this news, BR standalone machines are fighting for survival in a tiny niche and now that niche is going to be swamped with Chinese players, it would make you feel all warm and fuzzy after outlaying millions$ in R&D and getting no return, especially after sony promised you the world and delivered an atlas!
Might be bad for individual higher-priced manufacturers...but if the market is swamped with cheap Chinese players, it's good for consumers and good for the BR format as a whole -- more options and cheaper prices means more people will likely buy.
On the other hand, the article says this is set to all happen in 2009...which could mean anywhere from 6-18 months away. With Funai having announced a sub-$300 BR player a few weeks ago, I was already expecting something to be available for around $200 by XMas 2008.
So, if those cheap Chinese players come out after that, they better be in the sub-$150 range to really make any kind of splash. If they come out at the end of '09, they better be under $100, or I'll be pissed.
Boo hoo. If they thought they'd get a free ride, they were only fooling themselves.
What R&D? These companies didn't design BluRay, they just make players that implemented it. Yes, perhaps this was expensive, but they were also first to market. There's no reason they have to continue to have higher cost structures than the Chinese manufacturers. They'll just buy the same readily available chips that the Chinese will. And so that means their next-year models will have to be sold at a lower price, but will have a lower cost, so it's okay.
EQC, I think the Funai will hit $200 for Christmas, or at least $250. You can bet that as the new players hit that Walmart will knock it down some more. I think its only $300 now because Walmart know they have a month or two they can sell it at this price before the market will catch up and force them to drop it lower.
Let's hope that the ad-nauseum rant about the influx of cheap players from china would cause mass adoption over night was more that a fantasy. Just because it didn't happen for HD DVD doesn't mean it can't happen for Blu-Ray, yes?
Blu-Ray players in my area aren't that expensive anymore -- sure, they aren't giving them away wit $100 losses, but they are NOT expensive compared to the other components you will need to assemble a HD/high-def setup.
And Blu-Ray disks I can get at below $10 a pup and up -- granted that Blu IS more expensive that DVD, but not by THAT much any more. it's not like I'm forking out LaserDisk prices or anything.
Lowering the initial price point for the player might be exactly what is needed to speed up the format adoption rate in a slowing economy. Over here, the economy is doing very well right now, and Bly-Ray sales are doing just as weel as they did during x-mas season. This past X-mas, both HD DVD and Blu-Ray sold more than half of their volume for the year during those short weeks. But HD DVD where still less than 10% of Blu-Ray sales. Now Blu-Ray sells x-mas volumes each months, in spite of us having the warmest spring in 100 years.
Forget the ignorant waffle.
It's all about no R&D costs.
They buy a 'reference design' & just make it (also benefitting from their cheap employees etc etc......but as you rightfully said that also applies to component manufacture & assembly work).
The big deal is no R&D costs, someone else had to bear those.
Of course the stuff you buy now (look inside your PS3s etc etc) is either assembled or has components manufactured in China but that is nothing like the same, although obviously it too does have cost-saving implications.
That was to WebDev511, blast this flipping reply function!
They ought to kiss & make up with Toshiba, a super unconversion chipset would be a hell of an additional feature.
They also buy cheaper components for simple things like resistors and capacitors.
D'oh! Again, the BD forum seem to be utterly clueless about getting the technology adopted.
This means "cheap" players in about two years (remember the new licensees will not even be allowed to make anything for a year and a half.)
There's also no evidence they're going to drop BD+ any time soon. Which means that in two years, the market is going to be flooded with BD players of which a significant proportion will have problems viewing many major discs - the publishers are still going to churn out BD+ encumbered discs, and while the number of different BD player models remains fairly low, the problems will be mostly manageable. Once the number of player models is in the hundreds with tens of separate manufacturers, BD+ will lose any resemblance of manageability it ever had.
So, in two years, after two years of various competitors getting a chance to bite at Blu-ray's ankles, cheap players with significant problems will flood the market.
Oh well. I've said before I think Blu-ray is dead. HD media died with HD DVD, it wasn't perfect but it had a fighting chance. Blu-ray doesn't. At the very least, a consumer should be able to walk into a store and ask a salesman "Will this disk play on my Blu-ray player?" and get an affirmative response, not a "Well. That depends. Do you have a Playstation 3? No? Ok, well, is your player Profile 2.0 or Profile 1.1? Some features of this disk are only available with the former. Oh, hold on, this disc is also controlled by BD+. Could you let me know your player's model number, and I'll quickly check in our database that your player can play this particular disk."
Roll on all-you-can-eat HD downloads. I mean, for those of us who want to do it legally and pay a subscription or something.
wow your a plug man never on any disc had bd+ caused any problems for silver serfurer anf day after tomorrow bd-j is was caused the problem and up untill recently there has been very little training in the feild of bd-j but know there simple basses of code that companies have made the compatiability issuse will be gone by the time these plers comes out
also sigma already 5 months ago has refrence desing for oem for cheap and essy to make players
sorry for my bad english
You have to laugh at the bitterness of the disapointed ex-HD DVD fanboys.
China was the last beacon of hope, or like TT said a few months aggo "You will see ! HD DVD will come back via CH DVD !!"
LMAO. Keep it up boys, now all you have is your bitterness and the hope that Blu Ray will fail.
and guys these player arnt good for the format and japaness manufactrues shoudlent worrie
omg the market is flooded with 70$ cheaper peacie of shit players that barley play the discs with low quality
* quote
Mr. Glasgow expressed hope that price levels wouldn’t collapse the way they did for DVD players. To protect against this, he said the Blu-ray Association, the group that controls the Blu-ray standard, has not licensed it to any manufacturers in China. (Cheap players from China were a large part of the collapse of the DVD player market.)
“Will there be Chinese players? Yes,” he said. “We don’t need to drive that and hand the technology over” any time soon, he said.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/a-299-sony-blu-ray-player-but-no-cheap-chinese-models/index.html?ref=technology
=====================================================
LMAO.....yeah, of course the apologies will be full & frank. Yeah right.
(and note this is just a recent comment too)
The tactics some of you use are hilarious.
The latest of being forced to rely on a ridiculously childish twist & an inappropriate 'absolute'?
No-one ever said the BDA said they would never ever ever ever (!)
licence to China.
But look at their actions (for years) and said & what they did do.
They did avoid it for a very long time.
Even this latest report is not official & concrete (note the '?')........... and if it is 100% correct & true it's still years off producing any actual
product.
I see there are several here who simply don't understand the
difference between component manufacture and component assembly
(which they all do and have done since the start of this)
and the licenced production of a 'reference
design'.
How sad, too bad.
Some of you guys are so pathetically obvious & clueless; the sort of oafs who would fall into a barrel full of t!ts and come out sucking your own thumbs.
Fail.