HD DVD on life support ...

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HD DVD on life support as Wal-Mart backs Blu-ray


Wal-Mart's announcement comes hot on the heels of similar news this week by Best Buy and U.S. online DVD rental service Netflix. Best Buy said that while it would continue to stock HD DVD, it would "recommend" Blu-ray to customers. Netflix, like Wal-Mart, chose Blu-ray outright.

The announcement also comes a day after the Hollywood Reporter cited industry sources who said that Toshiba Corp., HD DVD's main backer, will soon pull the plug on the format. The company has slashed prices and is taking a loss on every player sold, the report said, and with a lack of movie titles on the horizon, Toshiba will have no choice but to kill HD DVD.
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Cool, I can finally buy an HD DVD player now... Oh wait, guess I still need to wait a year or so for them to become reasonably priced...
 
Um, one that plays Blu-Ray? Of course the prices on the HD-DVD will plummet now, but within a couple years, you'll be scanning yard sales and pawn shops for your movie collection.

Sorry, guess I should have specified, Hi Def DVD. I think that's the thing that has people pissed now. Now its not even two different cartridges, at least the VHS tapes wouldn't fit in the Beta players.
 
OK, so, I have a question...if Blu-Ray wins (which it seems they will)...and I eventually buy a Blu-Ray player...can I play my existing DVDs in said player? And question number two...if HD-DVD had won, would regular DVDs beable to be played in those players? Seriously, I already have a VCR, DVD player, Super Nintendo and Wii (yeah I like the "In with the new" but I'm not so good with the "out with the old")...I don't need anything else under my TV, I would be very ahppy if I could swap out my DVD player for the new fangled movie disc player but still beable to play my current DVDs (of which I have many)...
 
Plays Blu-ray, BD-R, BD-RE and BD-ROM discs; backward compatible with DVD, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, MPEG, H.264, VC-1, CD, CD-R and CD-RW formats
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Plays HD DVD, DVD, DVD-R DL, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD VR, CD, CD-R and CD-RW formats
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Plays BD-ROM, HD DVD-ROM, DVD, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, CD, CD-R/RW, MP3, WMA and JPEG formats
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Yep
 
OK then I don't care who wins...except that if HD DVD had won I could continue saying "DVD" but now I'll have to change to saying "Blu Ray"
 
I believe that Blu-ray players are not required to play DVDs or CDs while HD-DVD players were.

On another note, RIP HD-DVD
Well, that's it. Toshiba appears to be pulling the plug on HD DVD. Toshiba has not commented publicly, but a report on Japan's NHK says Toshiba has made the decision to withdraw from next generation high-definition DVD production.

This news certainly doesn't come as surprise to anyone remotely following HD DVD's format war with rival Blu-ray. HD DVD had suffered a string of defections, with Warner, Netflix, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart all recently pledging their alliance to Blu-ray.

The NHK report says existing HD DVD products will remain in the market for a while, but Toshiba will stop further development of HD DVD. The report also estimates that Toshiba will take a hit to the tune of "hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars" and will close factories in northern Japan.

Elsewhere this weekend, Sony and its Blu-ray buddies are going to make like VHS and party like it's 1989.

Source | Via

UPDATE: Reuters now points to an unnamed company source who says, yep, we're done. An official announcement from Toshiba could come next week.
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Source: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9873848-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
 
Luis G said:
I believe that Blu-ray players are not required to play DVDs or CDs while HD-DVD players were.
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Well, since some Blu-Ray players seem to be capable of playing DVDs and CDs it would be stupid for Blu-Ray players made by other companies to not include that too...people are obviously going to more often than not buy the one that plays the most formats.
 
Nixy said:
Well, since some Blu-Ray players seem to be capable of playing DVDs and CDs it would be stupid for Blu-Ray players made by other companies to not include that too...people are obviously going to more often than not buy the one that plays the most formats.
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It is good business practice to include DVD and CD support in blu-ray players. However, they are not required by spec to do it. I still can't find the source of where I read that (either DVD or CD support isn't mandatory), so I might be wrong.
 
Will Blu-ray be backwards compatible with DVD?


Yes, several leading consumer electronics companies (including Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Pioneer, Sharp and LG) have already demonstrated products that can read/write CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs using a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical head, so you don't have to worry about your existing DVD collection becoming obsolete. In fact, most of the Blu-ray players coming out will support upscaling of DVDs to 1080p/1080i, so your existing DVD collection will look even better than before. While it's up to each manufacturer to decide if they want to make their products backwards compatible with DVD, the format is far too popular to not be supported. The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) expects every Blu-ray Disc device to be backward compatible with DVDs.
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http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_backwards_compatible

I think blu-ray players that doesn't support DVD/CD are going to be scarce, but since it isn't mandatory, it doesn't hurt to ask if the player you're buying can play those.
 
Professur said:
JJR, you still pushing Laserdisc?
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Was I ever pushing it?

As a video format, Laserdisc is inferior to all other disc-based formats. The discs are 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter and give a picture that is noticeably better than VHS and slightly less than standard DVD.

As a collectible format, Laserdisc can often be better than any other format. Laserdiscs were always an elite market, and LD movies were often packaged with nice booklets, fancy boxes, lithographs, soundtrack CDs, scripts, photograph prints, etc. This was far more common for LD than it has ever been for DVD. For every title like the DVD E.T. Ultimate Gift Set, there were probably five or ten similar sets on LD. Now, DVD is starting to do more of this, oddly, as it has long since lost its elite status. I have yet to see any hi-def DVD format collectible package sets.

Regarding available titles, there are many, many more titles available on DVD than there ever was on LD. However, there are still some movies that can be found on LD that have yet to be released on DVD. Obviously, there is always the potential for these titles to be released on DVD.

My Laserdisc player is not connected, and has not been for a couple years. I have not actively searched for any collectible LD titles in several years.
 
It is official, Toshiba quits.

Toshiba Quits HD DVD Business

TOKYO (AP) -- Toshiba's decision to no longer develop, make or market high-definition HD DVD players and recorders will mean consumers can start feeling more confident about buying the victorious rival technology - a Blu-ray disc player.

Analysts say competition is expected to heat up among the manufacturers of Blu-ray players and recorders, which include Japanese makers Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Sharp Corp. as well as Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea.

In making the announcement, Toshiba Corp. President Atsutoshi Nishida said he wanted to avoid confusion among consumers.

The decision was relatively quick, coming just several years after the competing technologies arrived.

In the last video format battle, between VHS, backed by Matsushita, and Sony's Betamax in the 1980s, it took a decade before Sony stopped making new Betamax products.

"We concluded that a swift decision would be best," Nishida said, appearing proud and unapologetic.
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Rest of the story
 
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