Re: Toshiba CEO talks about life after HD DVD

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if Toshiba's past success of marketing the HD DVD format is any indication, I'd say their chances of confusing the public more than they already are with these silly upconversion claims are less than stellar.

Which is fine by Toshiba. As long as consumers stay with DVD and not go Blu-Ray, Toshiba wins.

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Which is fine by Toshiba. As long as consumers stay with DVD and not go Blu-Ray, Toshiba wins.

Their "Super Upconversion" hype won't influence the market one way or the other.

I think the average consumer will stay with DVD for the next several years regardless of what Toshiba does. I'm sure DVD sill be sitting beside their Blu-ray counterparts for at least the next 10 years. However, once J6P has their HDTV finally, after a couple years he'll start to notice that the Blu-ray titles cost the same to rent at the video store as the standard DVDs. For the higher income demographic that actually buys a disk or two each year, it's a bit of a no-brainer to pay $5.00 more for the Blu-ray version.

Blu-ray (like it or not) is our sole high definition media format, and Sony along with the BDA have the clout and the war chest to market the hell out of this over the coming years, espeically as the adoption of HDTV grows.

It does come off as very disingenuous of Toshiba to first promote their HD-DVD player upconversion as "near-HD quality" once Blu-ray got the upper hand and now basically say that those lovely HD-DVD discs they were once promoting are now basically pointless. Not that every other electronics conglomerate hasn't taken a similar approach themselves at some point...

On the contrary, when the average user that preffers DVD, gets to own a HDTV set will also preffer getting a Super Upconversion player. You have to realize that outside USA, people aren't buying Blu-Ray players and movies, but rather buying upconvert DVD players for US$100 for their new HDTV set. Also the small percentage of DVD users that actually buy movies legally, are prefering DVD movies.

Outside USA, Blu-Ray titles costs US$30-40 each, that's twice than current prices for DVD titles, also Blu-Ray players costs at least US$800, and prices aren't dropping soon as Sony, Pioneer, Samsung, Panasonic, etc. have to deal the high manufacturing costs for quite some time, specially with their profit losses from the past HD war. Recently Sony stated that they won't reduce the prices for their Blu-Ray players, even PS3, and promotions like BOGOs, get X number of movies free with the player are over.

USA is facing recesion, and when USA gets a flu, the rest of the world gets neumonia, if the average USA consumer can't or isn't willing to spend so much money in Blu-Ray players and movies, no doubt in the rest of the world Blu-Ray has no chance of becaming mainstream any time soon, in a world dominated by DVD users, and most of them don't buy movies, but rather download and rent them or get copies almost for free.

Take in consideration that outside USA, things aren't looking good for the rental business, in several countries video rental stores have gone banckrupcy and force to close, mainly because people are downloading or buying copies of the movies for less than US$2, because they're not willing to pay the price for buying or renting them.

The BDA group and the movie studios were the ones telling us that HD-DVD was pointless, and that you should preffer the DRM riddled Blu-Ray format, what Toshiba did was withdraw from HD-DVD since they didn't have enough support from the movie studios, to sustain the format if they couldn't provide enough movies to go along with the player.

In the other hand instead of forcing on us a new HD format, Toshiba has been working for years to provide consumers a high quality picture on their products, to satisfy all user's needs. Before it's demise, they were working on a disc that contained a SD and HD version on a movie, and currently their HD-DVD players provide full specs and one of the best upconverter in the market.

Toshiba also has been working to develop Super Upconversion, and planned to implement it on their HDTV sets, maybe they even planned to implement it on their HD-DVD players also, but now with the demise of HD-DVD, they will implement it on their DVD players as well, so that a wide range of users, will have their needs satisfied for a HD quality picture, since Super Upconversion will not only benefit DVD movies, but also SD and HD TV broadcast, videogames, even downloaded movies.

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What I'm saying is....you can pretty much ONLY buy HDTV's now, and they are selling like hot cakes. Old school crap TV's with poor resolution don't sell anymore, and that's why people will start to buy hi def sources...especially when they figure out that an SD source usually looks like crap on their HDTV.

Ok, I see where you're getting at. Understood & I'm not contesting the HDTV shelves, but what I was saying was: The consumer shock when they find out, after buying a $400 blu-ray player, that THEY STILL NEED TO BUY a HDTV set. Neither a regular dvd player, or upconverter, required a new TV.

Blu ray demands ADDITIONAL EXPENSE for those starting from scratch. DVD's & upconverters don't. Just the DVD/upconverter.

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Ummmmm so if Toshiba had this Super Upconverting technology and it looks THAT good, why did they release HD DVD in the first place?

Maybe to DELAY the blu ray momentum, until they can get this 'juiced up box' in the final stages... Yeah, that's an EXPENSIVE gamble... sure, that conspiracy will hold water.

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[Post edited by xplaytendo on Mar 4, 2008 - CST 6:20 PM]

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Toshiba also has been working to develop Super Upconversion, and planned to implement it on their HDTV sets, maybe they even planned to implement it on their HD-DVD players also

Like those 51GB HD DVDs that were supposed to appear last year without any player incompatibilities I bet

If Toshiba can come up with an upconverter that beats a Silicon Optix Realta HQV based outboard processor for less than $2,000, I'll consider that pretty good because it will have at least put the high-end processing chip set manufacturers and the dozens of companies branding products around them out of business.

Meanwhile, I'll just enjoy my HD

Thats a crock of shit. Now Toshiba wants people to buy into the OVERATED UPCONVERTED DVD players. Man Toshiba let it go, you got DRY GULCHED and all of the HD DVD supporters got burnt. All because you did not want to play the game. So now you want us to buy into a SUPER UPCONVERT LMAO!!!
I tell you what, you put an internal George Forman Grill in the thing and I will buy it. Other than that, I am trying to figure out what I am going to do with all my HD DVD junk I got setting around, thanks to you.

Sorry guy's, this one just really pissess me off.

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Sorry guy's, this one just really pissess me off.

I can understand that. But you should know about the whole "Asian Face" culture that I know of way too deeply. I hate to say it, but most Asian cultures including the Japanese have this thing where appearance and pride mean everything. It's common that people suicide because their family's name gets tarnished over some little thing. It's not about being poor or rich, it's about what your peers think of you. It all sounds superficial I know, but this goes much more deeply than I can explain. English has no words for it.

It isn't a first that Asian corporations, celebrities, and politicians exhibit such behavior... in fact it's a given in this sort of situation. They aren't crapping on HD DVD supporters - just trying to save face the best they can which is a better alternative than having the entire BOD and executive branch of the company hang themselves from shame. I wish I were exaggerating here... but it's a factor I know too well. But like I said, it goes deeper than what you think and I don't believe it's something to be ashamed of. It's been a positive influence on people that have kept marriages together, kids in school, and driven people to excellence. It's a two-sided cultural trait with both negative aspects and positives.

It's never going to get results like a native HD transfer will.

Ok, for slow moving scenes I can picture the algorithm picking out as much information as possible from multiple frames and reconstructing a higher resolution one. BUT for quick moving frames or scene shifts, there's f all the "super resolution" can do.

Toshiba, stop with this BS.