blu-ray wins

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research) is planning to give up on its HD DVD format for high definition DVDs, conceding defeat to the competing Blu-Ray technology backed by Sony Corp (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research), a company source said on Saturday.

The move will likely put an end to a battle that has gone on for several years between consortiums led by Toshiba and Sony vying to set the standard for the next-generation DVD and compatible video equipment.

I hope all you Bluray supporters are happy, way to pwn yourself.

for f***s sake spok at least give Blu-ray the capital letter it deserves title nub

i have no time for capitals

woot

it's sony but hmm oh well

trog and whoop will be over the moon

I am very happy, thanks Chub.

suck on that sony haters

You have just enabled terrorists to use the laser(s) found in Blue-ray players for creating weapons of mass destruction. I hope you f***s are happy.

P.S why is Blue-ray crap so expensive compared to the HD crap?

Awesome news. Twas silly having two different formats.

will be even more expensive now i imagine

P.S why is Blue-ray crap so expensive compared to the HD crap?

"It's a SONY!"

because the laser is more pricey and because toshiba heavily discounted their players

still doesn't explain why the Blu-ray disks are more expensive than normal.

Hats off to Toshiba for admitting defeat and not dragging on a pricey war for everyone.

where did I leave my noose....

just looking at ezydvd.com.au and HD DVDs are just as pricey as Blu ray ones. Stop being turds!!

P.S why is Blue-ray crap so expensive compared to the HD crap?

because theyre better :P

I remember years back when there was a proposed alliance between Toshiba and Sony to make a unified disc format. Too bad that fell though, everyone would have been happy.

yeah, great, now there is a monopoly - they can charge what they want!

though, I guess it's good news there is one clear format now.

Sony obviously didn't want to lose this one like they did with Betamax :p

pros: 25 gig instead of 15gig
cons: just about everything else

I know a genuine panafonic when I see one!

pros: 25 gig instead of 15gig

HD-DVD has 30 gigs on duel layers.

and dvd has 9gig on dual layer
no-one uses it tho

HD-DVD has 30 gigs on duel layers.

and bluray has 50gig dual layer

touche.

from a pc users perspective it was more a question of 'what size do we want our blank media in the future.'

and bluray has 50gig dual layer

HD-DVD had 51GB triple layer.

Yay for region encoding.

and dvd has 9gig on dual layer
no-one uses it tho

uh. what. almost every movie uses at least 6 or 7 gig if it has a decent transfer.

Yay for region encoding.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. f***ing yay for Blu-Ray.

HD-DVD had 51GB triple layer.

If we must go into layers then TDK has a 6 layer, 200gig blu-ray disc and Ritek has a 10 layer, 250gig disc as opposed to 150gig for hd-dvd.

i have a US ps3, I don't mind the region coding as you can import Bluray discs at the price of DVDs here, whereas the same BD here will cost you like $50 which is bulls***.

i have a US ps3, I don't mind the region coding as you can import Bluray discs at the price of DVDs here, whereas the same BD here will cost you like $50 which is bulls***.

You are now officially the world's most awesome person.*

*Region B only.

Yay for being f***ed by regionalisation!

Who cares who won the optical disc war; digital distribution of Hi-def media all the way. Keep your DVDs and buy a player with good upscaling.

Region locked material is one of the stronger reasons why we can legally mod our consoles, don't knock it that much ;D

seems to be some serious premature ejaculators on this forum. Can anyone point me to an OFFICIAL statement by Toshiba?

why would you expect to see something on the toshiba site about it already? do you think they'd be rushing to publish it on there already?

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=is+planning+to+give+up+on+its+HD+DVD+format+for+high+definition&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

No ofcourse not, they would leak it to internet news sites first that makes sense. lol

Woot just in time for me to get my new laptop, will chuck a blu-ray drive in it :)

If we must go into layers then TDK has a 6 layer, 200gig blu-ray disc and Ritek has a 10 layer, 250gig disc as opposed to 150gig for hd-dvd.

The difference being that triple-layer HD-DVDs could be played on all existing HD-DVD players, no updates needed.

And while on the topic of updates, it was mandatory for all HD-DVD players to have a built in ethernet port, which could be used for automatic firmware updates and extra online content for movies. The HD-DVD spec for their players was much better thought through than that for Blu-Ray, which is also why the above mentioned triple-layer discs were backwards compatible with all existing players.

I reckon it's a shame that Blu-Ray was the victor, since I don't see any advantages with Blu-Ray whatsoever. Not to mention that once again, we're stuck with a format that mandates region-coding. The only thing I'm really happy about with this outcome is that I now know what format player to buy in the future, unless digital distribution comes along to save the day.

Goes to show the power of having a cool name.

Yeah, Blu-Ray does sound a s***load better than HD DVD
Also the new acronym of BD will be better than, well HD DVD
CD -> DVD -> BD
I'm looking forward to 25gig backup ability too.

No ofcourse not, they would leak it to internet news sites first that makes sense. lol

it sure does make sense, if you live on earth. cos that's what happens here on earth. entities constantly make statements on the record to the press prior to publishing it on their own public website or literature.

you may never see this as a news item or press release on the toshiba website. are you going to sit there and deny what's going on around you cos of that? it's not particularly hard to check around a bit so you can at least be reasonably sure this is a legit announcement, instead of coming into a thread and making the dopey comment you made

On behald of Toshiba, I would like to announce that we will not be continuing the development or manufacturing of HD DVD players or media.

Thanks for coming. TTYL

Sigh. As much as I like Blu-Ray, it's Sony. For that alone it deserves to fail :(

Seriously, $40 for HD/BD titles? The move to DVD was supposed to lower prices, not raise them, and now we get a next gen format that costs exactly the same to manufacture yet they slap another $10 on each disc?

Talk about greedy.

Yep, it's a shame more people don't know how to download movies.

I think the problem is that downloading a movie @ 1080p is a bit of a hit to the monthly quota.

Yeah, but I'm sure that ISPs could partner with online movie rental companies and offer unmetered content, or so many unmetered movies per month. Even if it were an option on your plan, I'd go for it. I'm all for digital distribution.

Jim you noob, where did i say it had to be on the toshiba website? no where.

oh by the way, fergie from the black eyed peas has been pregnant like 10 times over the last year, man she must have alot of abortions. Wait OR it was rumor, no no it couldnt have been it was in the internet and in mags

region coding is s***.

Still, glad there is a winner, even if it is Bluray.

I wonder how much $$$$ Sony ended up paying to the big production companies to sink hd-dvd...

I'll stick with HDDVD as long as the porn keeps flowing.

Jim you noob, where did i say it had to be on the toshiba website? no where.

the article quoted in the OP, and several of the articles which show up in the google link I gave you are attributed to reuters who are quoting a toshiba spokesperson. you then come along and ask for OFFICIAL statement from toshiba. what else could you mean, other than a press release on their own website?

oh by the way, fergie from the black eyed peas has been pregnant like 10 times over the last year, man she must have alot of abortions. Wait OR it was rumor, no no it couldnt have been it was in the internet and in mags

yeah I'm sure it was published by reuters as being a direct quote from a black eye peas spokesperson each time too, d*******

how large is a bluray movie?
I cant think of many people who could download a 10gb movie quicker than they could drop round to a local video rental store.
And I for one am glad that all my dvd's are actually on dvd, not my hard drive chewing up space that could be better used. Especially since I only have a single layer dvd burner.
Digital distribution is great if the cost is significantly lower, but from what we're seeing from publishers pushing up prices of steam games for aussies, I can't see it being cheaper for long.

Even if you had dual-layer you would not use it :P IMO blue-ray movies will be coming out on torrent sites in much lower quality than they can support. Still, I have put up full quality MPEG dvd rips which are unnecessarily large (6 gig), and there were still plenty of takers on mininova.

For me the great thing about BD is teh storage capacity for backing up work... so I won't even get this technology until burners and blank discs get cheaper.

Have a think abotu this - when DVD players came out - would you be willing to download a full 8 Gig disc back then? Probably not... But we do entire discs (albeit with further compression) these days no sweat.

Jim you noob, where did i say it had to be on the toshiba website? no where.

Reuters isn't exactly news.com.au ...

you can pretty well trust reuters but you can't trust news.com.au

You're all noobs, stop bagging Blu-ray because you think it's entirely Sony. There are many companies backing BD, most of them with sexy-large wallets and even sexier-large marketing.

Also, I would have thought that the lack of a rush by Toshiba to quash the rumours about them pulling out of the HD DVD manufacturing game would say a lot more than the lack of an official announcment to that effect on their website.

Toshiba have responded today, however they indicated that there's an upcoming board meeting which will almost certainly seal the format's fate.


A shame. I bought a player when they hit $200, got 9 free discs, bought 2 more and then Warner switched.

I guess I'll just live off them and HDrips of tv shows, etc until Sony+pals get around to finishing their f***ing format spec.

I find it funny that people were aware that one format may become redundant but still went out and purchased it. Funnier still when people jumped at a cheaper model instead of getting cluey about the price drop.

Why the f*** do people still say "Oh Sony own Blu-Ray" so it f***ing evil etc.? A quick search on google on "who owns blu-ray"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association
http://www.emedialive.com/articles/readarticle.aspx?articleid=11425#ixa
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=3665

Yes Region locking sucks but DVD has that too so man the f*** up Jurez monkeys but, to say it's "evil" simply because "Sony" owns it, just shows that you're ignorant and another sheep believing blindly to the FUD.


last edited by Opec at 11:05:03 19/Feb/08

well my mum and dad bought a betamax player in 1982 cos it was the more expensive one, all the TV stations were using it and look what happened to it

i suppose people who bought HD DVD players figured it was that all over again, ie sony, more expensive, fail. except they seem not to have failed.

Yes Region locking sucks but DVD has that too so man the f*** up Jurez monkeys

not liking region locking has nothing to do with warez. it has to do with consumers in small markets getting raped and being forced to buy items at higher prices instead of importing exactly the same product from overseas at half the price.

not liking region locking has nothing to do with warez. it has to do with consumers in small markets getting raped and being forced to buy items at higher prices instead of importing exactly the same product from overseas at half the price.

Not to "you" you mean. How many people would torrent movies instead of paying even "cheaper" overseas (minus all the bulls*** about I don't wanna wait x months to see this super awesome movies, or oh they'll never show it in AU blah blah blah).

For the jurez monkeys, nothing can be cheaper than free. For those of us that actually liked to own the physical media (like myself), then we are in agreement in your reasoning.

Not to "you" you mean. How many people would torrent movies instead of paying even "cheaper" overseas (minus all the bulls*** about I don't wanna wait x months to see this super awesome movies, or oh they'll never show it in AU blah blah blah).

and regions prevent that how?

there are other pains to region locking like if i want to watch a uk dnb dvd that is available for free... i can't coz its the wrong region. so i gotta get a divx'd rip from the internet or go without. my old man was even authoring his own dvd's with movies & pix from his camera & the region locking in his player prevented it from playing.

asif it stuffs up the warez community at all... that's worldwide yo.

I have purchased many things at Myer and Australian stores that won't play on Region 4, or perhaps they do play on Region 4 but only in NTSC format. These DVD companies should be fired.

I've bought 2 or 3 dvd players since dvd's came out, each one has had a code I could enter with the remote to make it region free, and then my wife just buys dvd's off amazon from time to time. Wonder if this'll still be the case with these things.

:D

I've bought 2 or 3 dvd players since dvd's came out, each one has had a code I could enter with the remote to make it region free, and then my wife just buys dvd's off amazon from time to time. Wonder if this'll still be the case with these things.

Sadly, no, because there's only a select group of Blu-ray player manufacturers, and any of them would lose their license to make the things if they were busted putting in a region-free code.

It'll initially be back to the old skool days of DVD, where you paid some suss bloke to solder on a modchip. I remember doing that on my (then) $900 Sony DVD player.


Once Blu-ray gets out to everywhere, and gets cheap and the chingchong ALDI Palsonics out there start making Blu-ray players, those codes will probably be back. But this is still going to be a way off..

Speaking of bluray players.. my PS3 died last night while playing ratchet and clank. f***ing awesome. It just sits there flashing red lights.

So while it might be one of the better options for a bluray player one should note that it is also much more complex and thus much more prone to failure than a normal bluray player.

hmm, well the first dvd player I bought was a philips creepy, and this was when there was 20 (seriously) dvd titles on the australian market. admittedly, I couldn't use the philips remote to do it, I had to use the all-in-one cos it required code that a standard philip remote couldn't do

Even so, multi-regioning Blu-ray won't be happening any time soon. The penalties are harsher.

The so-called compromise is that there's only three global regions now - A, B, C.

Yeah, we are lumped in with Europe, instead of Asia/America because we use PAL not NTSC.

does PAL and NTSC even come into play anymore with HD content?

It does, sort of. Same frame size, and all Aussie players can handle the 120Hz output for 24p playback, which is an improvement from the past where 24p DVD titles were simply converted to PAL 50i (which results in a 4% speedup of the video/audio)

But if your source was 50i/50p (e.g. a High-def NRL/AFL match) then you'd have some issues playing that Blu-ray dics with a player built and sold in the US. (region coding aside)

In HD, we still have to suffer the legacy of NTSC/PAL frame rates.

bumma re: regions

Speaking of bluray players.. my PS3 died last night while playing ratchet and clank. f***ing awesome. It just sits there flashing red lights.

I'm getting worried too because I've heard a lot about stuffed up Bluray drives in PS3s on the AVforums. I'm mainly worried because I'm too lazy to go through the whole warranty process and if mine breaks I won't do anything about it for ages :s (plus I play games/watch movies on it heaps)

Microsoft is discontinuing the HD addon for Xbox http://gizmodo.com/360054/microsoft-xbox-360-hd-dvd-player-officially-discontinued/

It'll initially be back to the old skool days of DVD, where you paid some suss bloke to solder on a modchip. I remember doing that on my (then) $900 Sony DVD player.

Isn't region unlocking legal in Australia? Sure it will likely nail your warranty but the action of doing it isn't against any laws?

Yeah pretty sure some legal sort of person said quite a while ago that according to ACCC regulations, technically region coding was illegal in Australia 'cause it was anti-competitive or something.

it's rather ironic that they havent learnt their lessons from the DVD region code arsef***ery.

All region coding does is piss ppl off who in turn give a big 'f***-you' to the DVD manufacturers buy downloading illegally or waiting to buy the 'chingchong Aldi Palsonic, me luv ru rong time, sweatshop, el cheapo region-free DVD players.

Which is exactly what I'll be doing.

when I eventually buy a PS3, I'm just gonna buy a PS3 from the US and buy blu-ray movies from amazon. Not only do you often get access to movies earlier, but you get them way cheaper, its all win.

P.S why is Blue-ray crap so expensive compared to the HD crap?

Blu-ray (COKE)
HD (PEPSI,HOME BRAND)

it's rather ironic that they havent learnt their lessons from the DVD region code arsef***ery.

What's ironic about that?

I am getting sick of all the jerks that feel that blu ray is better ! It is NOT! I have a Playstation 3 as well as a Toshiba HD XE1.... in all honesty the HD Looks so much better that the blue ray stuff i run through the PS3.... f*** Blu Ray !! I used to have all Sony Equipment !!! But now i am going to get rid of my PS3 and all the games.... in fact i might just run it over with my 4 wheel drive. I AM SICK OF SONY thinking they are GREAT AND WONDERFUL! HD DVD in my home rules and makes blue ray look like SD DVD compared to what i see when watching blue ray..... and will make a comeback via being produced in China a lot cheaper that anywhere else....

I hope blue ray burns in hell !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

stfu noob.

falcon... What an epic (fail?) first post.

The epic fail occurred when its parents f***ed up the abortion plans.

is falcon hunter?

Someone ban falcon.

can we see pics of the 4wd running over the ps3

LOL blu"e" ray.

gimpsland more like it

sony titsed up in the first place by misspelling "blue"

its not blueray its, 405nm Electromagnetic Photon Disc

But now i am going to get rid of my PS3 and all the games

Why would you do that? Didn't you know that the latest firmware update from sony allows you to play HDDVD?

why would you get rid of a blu ray player when blu ray will eventually be the industry standard?

His full of s***. Probably just venting because he actually bought the hd-dvd player.

last edited by Resonate at 10:09:48 11/Apr/08

he's probably got it connected via RCA
duh, hdmi or bust

I put forth the motion that Falcon is gay.

I second.

the motion is carried, thread closed (again)