Re: Treat this as Rumor for now... But Micro$oft...

"I'm glad Blu-ray didn't use HDi, or else we'd have those crappy delayed menus on Blu-ray." --JPSofCA

Here you've got me stumped. The pop-up (and pop-out) menus on HD DVDs come on almost instantly on my A1 and A35 players. The pop-up menus on Blu-ray are equally quick coming up on my Panasonic BD30. If anything, after selecting an item from a menu, the HD DVD functions seem a little quicker starting up than the BD functions. So, I don't see your point, unless you're experiencing something very different from what I'm experiencing.

John

Quote:
All those who have argued at how overpriced the Blu-ray players are should take note of this. It's a fair comment to wait for a Profile 2.0 player that will compare to all the existing Toshiba player features, but those saying they demand a $100-$150 Profile 2.0 player soon have just been spoiled by Toshiba's business plan.

Recognize that if Toshiba was losing $200 per player, that means that retail should have been much greater than $200 per player more (add retailer profit, and figure that with normal CE pricing, their upper end players have an even greater profit margin for them and for retailers). From friends in CE manufacturing, I have heard they were losing between $200 and $300 per player, not counting loss of margin (i.e. every box that went out the door, cost $200 - $300 dollars more than they received for it from their channel).

Quote:
Toshiba was losing big cash in order to try to build their HD market position (likely the same as Sony's approach with the PS3), and it had nothing to do with looking out for the well-being of the consumer.

Buying market share rarely works for anything for anything other than video games. There are two big differences. First, no one expects more than one vendor for a games platform, so it means that subsidizing hardware does not prevent others from supporting it (as it did with HD DVD) since they would not have done so anyway. Second, games platform vendors can make $25-$40 a title in royalties from games sold. HD DVD royalties cannot have been anywhere near that (figure at most pennies a disk and maybe tens of dollars a player- were they ever to entice another manufacturer to enter their market).

Quote:
Hey, I picked up a cheap A30 too, but that doesn't mean that I expect to pay the same price for a Blu-ray player, as most of the companies are actually trying to make a profit now.

What Toshiba probably did was entice people would not have been early adopters into buying their players. These people are much more bitter with their loss than people who are normal early adopters (who are much more used to buying gadgets that fail, since they buy so many early ones).

While I discount every part of the original poster's story other than he had the conversation and the rep told him that, Toshiba themselves said they were losing money on the players they sold in their press conference.

/carmi

Quote:
The pop-up (and pop-out) menus on HD DVDs come on almost instantly on my A1 and A35 players.

It's the almost that I'm referring too. It's that way on my A2.

Although I've never had a "problem" with the short delay, I had always found it noticeable. I haven't experienced a delay with BDJava menus.

JPSofCA,

OK, delete the word "almost" from my message. As far as I can tell, there is no difference between the timing of the pop-up menus on HD DVDs and BDs using my players. But I do notice that the HD DVD menus invariably look better. Maybe if you're seeing a slight lag with HD DVD menus, it's because there is more (fancier) information to reproduce on the screen. I dunno. It's not a concern that ever crossed my mind in the two years I've owned HD DVD players.

John

There's only sooo many times you can bash HD DVD...

Especially that he owns a A2. The A2 and A3 are known to be slower, but not that slow. Jason go buy yourself a A35 and see what a HD DVD player can do.