HD DVD Fallout: Nukes 95pct of Toshiba's Profits Options

[Xbox-Scene]

HD DVD Fallout: Nukes 95pct of Toshiba's Profits Posted by XanTium | April 26 00:44 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From ap.org: [QUOTE] Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. said its profit plummeted 95 percent in the January-March quarter due to costs of its exit from next-generation video HD DVD business. In Japan, Toshiba said its profit fell to 1.25 billion yen ($12 million) in the January-March quarter from 26.17 billion yen a year earlier. Revenue fell 3 percent from a year earlier to 2.09 trillion yen ($20 billion). "Our net profit sharply fell due to the end of (the) HD DVD business," Toshiba spokeswoman Hiroko Mochida said. Most of the decline came from shutting down assembly lines and dealing with inventory, according to Toshiba. [/QUOTE] Full Story: ap.org (via gizmodo.com)

[biseroner]

I would buy some high end players if they came down to 50 bucks each...but stores still have them at $129.

[flashfreak]

That sucks, it was the better format too...

[cyberg4]

That sucks, it was the better format too...

No kidding. Blu-ray only really won based on the PS3, and even with that it took over a year after the PS3 came out for it to win. I only got a player once HD DVD had lost and there were the 360 players for $50 with King Kong and another 5 via mail in rebate, but I must say that I love the HD quality, and the features that HD DVD has. oh well... you can get HD DVD movies for cheap now.

[halcyonx12]

Hopefully this will mean that companies will get together to standardize on a format instead of starting up wars that could take out their own company and that slow adoption overall.

[Ranger72]

That sucks, it was the better format too...

How so?

[viperware]

That sucks, it was the better format too...

Obviously better, with all that lower capacity.

[Ranger72]

Obviously better, with all that lower capacity.

Yes and since Disney or Pixar was never going to be on it that made HD-DVD even better still.

[HotKnife420]

That sucks, it was the better format too...

Keyword: "was".

When HD-DVD was based off DVD technology. It was advanced, but left little room for growth. As it stands, Blu-ray has pretty much caught up in the areas they were lacking. BD has a higher data transfer rate (54Mbps vs HD-DVD's 36.55Mbps). Profile 1.1 (iirc) introduced the PiP feature to BD that HD-D had the edge on. The capacity per layer of BD is 25GB, wheras it's 15GB per layer for HD-D(although HD-D had a triple layer disc with 51GB capacity, according to c-net there's a 100GB quad-layer BD prototype).

That pretty much leaves "region free" as the advantage for HD-DVD, and from what I've heard, none of the current discs are even restricted by region yet, it's just available for them to use if they want (correct me if I'm wrong).

[xxYoDaddyXX]

Says a lot. If Toshiba can still turn any kind of profit (5% sure beats a 0%) after the format flopped it must be a well run company. You must admire it from a business point of view.

[radoman]

It was every bit as good as bluray. A shame for Toshiba really and a shame that Warner stabbed them in the back, oh well.

Nobody really knew about HDDVD though. Im in the UK and I didnt see any HDDVD advertisement, I saw plenty of bluray. Most of the average shmos that I know had never even heard of HDDVD.

I cant see bluray replacing DVD any time soon anyway, too expensive.

[ChrisF]

Nobody really knew about HDDVD though. Im in the UK and I didnt see any HDDVD advertisement, I saw plenty of bluray. Most of the average shmos that I know had never even heard of HDDVD.

That was the problem. New technology and no real effort to market or position itself at retail - just low pricing and some internet sales pushes. I mean really, backward compatibility and what was a no brainer naming scheme. Blu Ray had an uphill battle and fought the marketing war hard - and won. Don't bring a knife to a gun fight and don't bother fighting unless you are actually going to try to win. One of Toshiba's quotes was that they "certainly learned a lot from this." Yeah - that's kind of the problem, you don't go learning on billion dollar stuff, hire someone who is experienced and knows what the hell they are doing to launch, market and sell your product. It's disgraceful.

[HotKnife420]

That was the problem. New technology and no real effort to market or position itself at retail - just low pricing and some internet sales pushes. I mean really, backward compatibility and what was a no brainer naming scheme. Blu Ray had an uphill battle and fought the marketing war hard - and won. Don't bring a knife to a gun fight and don't bother fighting unless you are actually going to try to win. One of Toshiba's quotes was that they "certainly learned a lot from this." Yeah - that's kind of the problem, you don't go learning on billion dollar stuff, hire someone who is experienced and knows what the hell they are doing to launch, market and sell your product. It's disgraceful.

There was plenty going on for HD-DVD, at least in the US. It wasn't until late in the game that HD-D kept getting played to the side. As for BC, every BD device is BC with DVDs, and every forthcoming device should be as well. Naming scheme isn't the best no brainer - sure it can sound logical (oh, I want a high def DVD), but the general public confuses things that are too similar. Look at it like this: if you barley know 2 girls who are sisters, and they look identical (though with a few fundamental differences that you can at least barely tell them apart), and their names are Cindy and Lucinda, you'll easily get confused until you know them better. Just like VHS to DVD; it's different enough that even the simplest people with the smallest vocabulary will know the difference.