After losing its battle to make the HD-DVD the successor to the DVD, Toshiba Corp. is considering making products in the winning format, Blu-ray.
Although Blu-ray is backed by Toshiba competitors such as Sony Corp. and Panasonic Corp., Toshiba has little choice. It no longer makes recorders and players in HD-DVD. The Blu-ray alliance was more successful in wooing Hollywood studios.
The Yomiuri, Japan's biggest newspaper, reported Sunday without identifying sources that Toshiba plans to enter the Blu-ray market. Toshiba spokeswoman Yuko Sugahara would not confirm the report.
"It is true that we are being flexible in looking into such possibilities. But at this point no decision has been made," she said Tuesday.
The move would be reminiscent of Sony's strategy after its Betamax videotape standard lost to Panasonic's VHS in the 1980s. Sony ended up making VHS products.
The Blu-ray market could be too lucrative for Toshiba to pass up. The Japanese electronics maker racked up its biggest loss ever, 344 billion yen ($3.7 billion) in its last fiscal year, which ended in March.
Apart from home entertainment products, Toshiba is also a large maker of PCs, in which Blu-ray drives are slowly supplanting DVD drives. Without Blu-ray drives, Toshiba laptops could lose out to other manufacturers
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If you can't beat 'em, join 'em eh! The more different manufacturers that come out with Blu-ray players the better I reckon. I'm looking forward to the day when the recordable discs are cheap as chips. They need to be priced at 10% of the current price in order for them to be a realistic media on which to backup data.
ReplyDeleteThe whole point here is how sickening it was as a consumer to being asked to take a gamble on a product which might be a lemon, all the people who bought an HD-DVD (snappy name eh) must be pretty pissed off.
ReplyDeleteToshiba, see that massive loss - guess what, thats yours that is.
i can't wait to see what drive M$ puts into the next XBOX personally. i don't for a minute think that they'll go for a digital download only machine for a minute. XBOX!GO -heheh-
ReplyDeleteI think we will see the next XBOX incorporate the Blu-ray drive, despite what they've said in the past. You're right, digital downloads are not a practical option - we're years away from having a decent enough infrastructure (fibre) to support digital downloads of the size needed.
ReplyDeleteThe new XBOX ("The 720" perhaps) will also feature Microsoft's lost-the-plot control system (erm, Project Knackers, I think it's called). The console will really put the "box" into XBOX as its dimensions will be roughly the same as the cardboard box that your PS3 came in when you bought the sucker.
The fans on the XBOX "720" will also be upgraded to cope with the extra heat produced by the in-built blu-ray drive. In fact, it'll produce the equivalent noise of 1.5 Flymo lawnmowers in your front room (20% louder than the current model).
@reakt
ReplyDeleteBut you'll be able to keep your 720 cool by waving your arms at the console as you 'interact' with a spooky digital kid!
"Fan me pablo, fan me!!!"
i've been hunting around and the 'XBOXnext' is due out summer of 2010 priced at around £299 by which time we'll have our nice consumer priced (£199?) Slim on the shelves. Then who's gonna bitch about having the most expensive console -heh-
ReplyDeleteyeah, all this animated arm waving action to play a game! WTF!? whats wrong with dossing on the sofa in a slouch drinking tinnies of cheap larger and only getting animated after we've been pwned by a 12yr old online for the umpteenth time? i read a while back that the non-gaming consumer is scared by all the buttons on a standard joypad, GOOD i say, if they can't figure that out they shouldn't be fucking trying to play games in the first place!
talking of drinking and getting old, anyone seen the new Max Payne?? awesome :P
ReplyDelete