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Toshiba CEO talks about life after HD DVD

Toshiba CEO talks about life after HD DVD.
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By Henning Molbaek
 FIRST ONLINE Mar 3, 2008
Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently talked with Toshiba CEO Atsutoshi Nishida about life after HD DVD.

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WSJ: When did you first start thinking about withdrawing from the HD DVD business?

Mr. Nishida: When Warner [Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros.] announced its support for Blu-ray on the 4th of January. We took a little time before reaching a final decision, so we could give people a chance to voice their opinions and we could consider all the ramifications and consequences of pulling out, such as how it would affect consumers and us.

WSJ : Most industry observers had expected the format war to continue for a while longer. Why did you decide to pull out so quickly?

Mr. Nishida: I didn't think we stood a chance after Warner left us because it meant HD DVD would have just 20% to 30% of software market share. One has to take calculated risks in business, but it's also important to switch gears immediately if you think your decision was wrong. We were doing this to win, and if we weren't going to win then we had to pull out, especially since consumers were already asking for a single standard.

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Toshiba will continue to produce standard DVD players. They believe they can still make a difference. "What people don't realize is that Hollywood studios are going to release new titles not just for Blu-ray but for standard DVDs as well, and there are a far greater number of current-generation DVD players out there. If you watch standard DVDs on our players, the images are of very high quality because they include an "upconverting" feature. And we're going to improve this even more, so that consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images. The players would be much cheaper than Blu-ray players too. Next-generation DVD players are in a much weaker position than when standard DVD players were first introduced." Nishida said.

When asked about video downloads he replied "That's what we're hoping. We've been developing technologies in this area already, but now that we don't have the HD DVD business, I want to put even more energy into that."

Source: Wall Street Journal.

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Monday, March 3, 2008
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Member since:
October 2007
Quote:
If you watch standard DVDs on our players, the images are of very high quality because they include an "upconverting" feature. And we're going to improve this even more, so that consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images.


Monday, March 3, 2008
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Member since:
January 2008
Hmmmmmmm...very interesting...
Monday, March 3, 2008
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Member since:
February 2008
This dude must have smoked a rock or 2 before making that comment!
If there ever comes day when SD-DVD upconverted looks as good as HD/BR I will be VERY surprised.
Monday, March 3, 2008
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Member since:
March 2008
The upconversion Nishida's talking about is "Super Upconversion" or Real-Time Super Resolution technique that has been used in astronomy and by intelligence services for decades. CELL's computational power allows real-time super resolution processing of SD video to increase its native resolution to 960p, by fusing 9 frames front and back.

The Super Resolution(aka Super Upconversion) output is truely 960p, and journalists who have seen the demo at trade shows like CEDEC and CES vouched that it really worked. Previously, Super Upconversion was scheduled to appear on Sharp and Toshiba HDTV sets only, but the death of HD-DVD changed all that it is now confirmed that Super Upconversion will come to DVD players as well.



Monday, March 3, 2008
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Member since:
March 2002
Oh, dear. I see an invitation here for another one of Tim's posts.

John
Monday, March 3, 2008
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Member since:
May 2007
Hmmm. Very interesting.....
Monday, March 3, 2008
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Member since:
March 2002
Predicted future of Toshiba's CEO:

[Post edited by Tim Raynor on Mar 3, 2008]
Monday, March 3, 2008
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Member since:
January 2008
I did some reading on "super resolution" on Wikipedia, which sent me to this link:

http://www.psi.toronto.edu/~vincent/videoepitome.html

Interesting stuff, but this is similar to colorizing old movies, as it will likely create images that were not the intent of the filmmaker. It may be an approximation of a true HD picture, but it won't be a true reproduction as there is visual information that is only being logically guessed at. No thanks.

If you don't like previous DVD "breakthroughs" such as edge enhancement and digital noise reduction (good examples of it here: http://www.cinedrome.ch/hometheater/dvd/dnr/text.html), then I'll bet you won't like "super resolution", either.
Monday, March 3, 2008
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Member since:
November 2007
Yeah i don't know how well this superconversion will work....kinda sounds like what we refer to as interpolation in the photography world. The bottom line is you can only only make a picture look so good working from a small file....or in this case working with only 480P.
Monday, March 3, 2008
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Member since:
January 2008
I find it funny that Skyhawk is the first one to laugh. Big Surprise there.

Anyways, this technology is not al that dissimilar to what HDTV already is. Not quite 1080p, but comparable to a native 1080i/720p signal. The scaler onboard the DVD player will bring it up to 1080p. Hindsight 20/20 if the players are affordable, it will sell well. They could possibly still market the product as a High Definition DVD Player. Not a HD DVD player.

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