Toshiba to back Blu-ray Disc with player launch?
HD DVD all but forgotten
Toshiba may be about to put the past behind it, look to the future and launch a Blu-ray Disc player.
That's what a report by Japanese-language site Yomiuri claims. The machine will be out - in Japan, presumably - by the end of the year.
Toshiba was the leading proponent of Blu-ray's arch-rival, HD DVD. In February 2008, the company scrapped development following Warner Home Video's decision to focus solely on Blu-ray - up to January 2008, the video distributor had supported both HD optical disc formats.
Toshiba later confirmed it had lost $1bn supporting HD DVD.
Almost immediately, pundits wondered if Toshiba would now release a BD player or studiously ignore the format. So far, it has taken the latter approach, pushing upscaling DVD players instead and not even offering BD drives in its laptops.
Not that there seems to be a huge demand for BD-enabled computers: most PC manufacturers who support the format offer Blu-ray as an optional extra only.
Presumably, Toshiba feels enough water has flowed under the bridge and it can adopt BD, especially if it anticipates that mainstream consumer demand for the HD format - beyond early adopter movie buffs and PlayStation 3 fanboys - is rising as we move into the Christmas sales period.
Or it might still believe - as a fair few commenters to this site do - that DVD is more than adequate for casual video viewing until high-speed broadband makes HD video on-demand a more attractive proposition. ®
Obituary HD DVD 2002-2008
COMMENTS
BluRay viewer involvment
The extent to which BluRay makes a difference compared with DVD is very content dependent particularly where sound, music and image are balanced in their importance to the viewer. BluRay is not just about resolution but about colour depth and audio quality as well and when all of these come into play then BluRay becomes superb. This BluRay advantage was also true when comparing BluRay with HD DVD as we rapidly found out when comparing the same material at home side by side on the two formats.
For example Opera on BluRay is astonishingly good and we have a large collection of Opera on DVD that is simply not comparable to BluRay and is being replaced as quickly as possible.
If you don't like Opera, try the new Quincy Jones 75th Birthday Celebration BluRay disk. Outstanding musically, visually and aurally.
If you don't like Quincy Jones try Slumdog Millionaire or Vicky Cristina Barcelona or even Australia which at least comes alive visually and aurally whatever you think of the movie.
@Michelle Knight
Nice to see that a reporter picked the highest price of a BR drive equiped laptop they could find and nice to see that you bought into the crap reporting. You're as bad as all the other 'I'm not buying BR as they are charging nearly £30 for films' rent-a-quoters who find the highest possible price they can to use as an example to back up their argument.
"BluRay isn't betterer enough"
Time was when people said the same thing about DVD. DVD's real killer advantage over tape was the elimination of "my machine ate the tape" and tedious rewind/ffwd.
People - by and large - could have cared less about the quality. But having gotten used to DVD quality, and with large screen LCD/plasma TV's plummeting in price, DVD's start to look a little sick even in comparison to off-air TV (which is now increasingly in 720p or even 1080i HD).
But for me, the biggest advantage BluRay has isn't in the visual department, but in the audio. HD-DTS audio blows even DTS on DVD away, and movies are as much - if not more - about the audio, as they are about the moving pictures. Popin the remastered BladeRunner on BluRay and I defy you not to be awestruck by the soundscape painted by your speakers during the opening.
Even so, I myself wouldn't have dropped the $$'s on a BluRay player. No.
But a kick-ass BluRay player that is also a kick ass media center and a kick ass gaming console for not much more than a bog standard "movies only" BluRay player.... now THAT is hard to argue with. I'm talking about PS3 of course.
Tosh can't put out one of those tho' I'm guessing. ;)
Picture quality.
This may just be a personal opinion, but I had Batman: TDK on dvd and it looked alright. I then got it as part of the deal with my PS3 and the difference is tenfold. The views of all the high rise building etc. The explosion of the hospital looks fantastic aswell.
Good films are available on BluRay
I understand your point, but bad film is bad whether it is 576i or 1080p. Either way I rather watch good 1080p films in the comfort of my sofa than good 576i.
