Re: Why Toshiba will release a Blu-ray player this year

I don't agree with the article. First of all as for "HD gaming", if the article is referring to games in large capacity optical medium, Blu-ray disk might go out within the next 2 years. Two companies (Mempile from Israel and Optware from Japan) are already working in 1TB optical disks and as for Mempile is already to come out with 600Gig disks and the 1TB by 2010. So as for gaming, Blu-ray might not last too long.

As for movie format, SD-DVD still holds what?... over 70%-80% of households in the US alone? and since most of the other companies already "signed off" on BD, this is a great opportunity for Toshiba to capitalize by itself on an already vast and existing market. If Toshiba improves the upconversion of SD-DVD's then why bother buying $35 BD movies when you can buy $9.95 SD-DVD movies. Remember that most of the average consumer cannot tell the difference between an HD-DVD/BD movie and an SD-DVD movie viewed on the same HD/BD player in the same TV.

I think in part, this is the reason why WB is still releasing movies in HD-DVD, because they'll be after today (March 4th), the only studio still releasing HD-DVD's so they'll have over 1 million HD-DVD customers all to themselves.

I'm with wii-lite on this one - Toshiba likely has more money at stake by protecting SDVD than by selling Blu-ray players. It's probably a smart business move by Toshiba, even if I still have my serious doubts about the actual results of the technology. If this strategy fails, thenToshiba can jump into the Blu-ray player market and still has strong rep for quality.

The $10 vs. $35 comparison is a bit extreme, though - I randomly picked a few titles off Amazon: Michael Clayton was $17 vs. $25, Enchanted was $17 vs. $24, Road Warrior was $11 vs. $20, and Harry Potter 1 was $10 vs. 21.

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Remember that most of the average consumer cannot tell the difference between an HD-DVD/BD movie and an SD-DVD movie viewed on the same HD/BD player in the same TV.

Funny, I don't remember this. Umm... it's not something that you just pulled out of your ass is it?

Unfortunately Skyhawk, having sold electronics for a while that's pretty true. You wouldn't believe the number of people who have said to me they saw no difference between HD-DVD/Blu-ray and SD-DVD. Even though to me and a lot of people here it's clear as day. There are just too many people that think SD is "good enough". Though I believe there mind might be changed when Blu-Ray software pricing goes down.

Also as far as lossless audio, considering that among early adopters there was a lot of confusion on how to properly extract it from our machines and most of us are more tech savvy then the average consumer. I don't really see it as being a big selling point. Average consumers generally have cheap HTIB systems in their homes which are only capable of DD and DTS. They probably aren't interested in upgrading their system when they'll probably find regular DD to be fine anyway.

I doubt they will. I believe they are focusing on working with their former HD DVD partners, specifically microsoft, to work on video downloads. That seems extremely likely to me.

So many people don't even care about DVD let alone HD. Case in point the only TV my mother has is a 19 inch Sylvania with no cable box even though she has cable she does'nt even want the box. She has tons of VHS tapes that she does not watch and has about 5 DVDs and her DVD player is in her bedroom closet. As long as she can get her basic channels she is fine.

Yeah dude, but old people don't care about technology . . .

Oops, I forgot about this guy:

Honestly, if there is a SD version of a movie for $15 and a blu version of the same movie with the same features for $30, I would think about buying the blu version at all, when my DVD player upconverts the picture nicely and my HTIB does a pretty good job with the audio.

If Toshiba doesn't want to start doing blu is because they still want to protect their product, which still holds the most installed base to date (hi-def coming far, far away). All most people want is a nice, big and cheap TV that has nice bright colors, and sounds good, and maybe, maybe, buy a $100 HTIB, maybe, if it wasn't such a hassle to install it and make sure that the wires don't stand in the way.

Again, Toshiba won't jump to blu when the last HD DVD is released, they'll wait and analyze the market...money, money, money...

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You wouldn't believe the number of people who have said to me they saw no difference between HD-DVD/Blu-ray and SD-DVD.

You're right. I probably wouldn't believe you

I'm sure however that there are many people who either:

1. Don't care about the 6 times greater resolution.
2. Have serious cataracts or are otherwise legally blind.
3. Are very, and I mean VERY high.

But the majority of "normal" folk don't see ANY difference between HD and NTSC? That's such a ridiculous statement, I probably shouldn't have even commented on it

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But the majority of "normal" folk don't see ANY difference between HD and NTSC? That's such a ridiculous statement, I probably shouldn't have even commented on it

I haven't met any one who can't actually see a noticeable difference - it's very obvious on a 50"+ screen. But, many of those same people don't think the improvement is worth the cost, at least right now. As prices converge over the next few years, more and more of these people will likely switch over, though, similar to VHS to DVD (but on a lower scale).

Most of us are into films to the point that we'll spend our entertainment dollars on it right now, but it isn't as important to many others. They're the crazy ones, though!