February 17, 2008
HD DVD about to go belly up
Aren't you glad you waited to upgrade from DVD to one of the new high-def formats? Engadget has the detail on when the loser is expected to flat-line.
We know it looks like HD DVD's death is a foregone conclusion at this point, but it isn't official until Toshiba says it is, and Ars is reporting that a number of their sources have pegged the impending announcement for within the next few days -- not weeks. Apparently HD DVD's future was in serious jeopardy even before Netflix dropped 'em, and the holdup on Toshiba's part now comes from the company's need to formulate its plans to shut down production -- which is no small task given the volume of hardware and media they were geared up to move.
Of course, out Tokyo way the party line's all the same. Our Japanese bureau checked in with Toshiba HQ, which was obviously on PR red alert since they responded to our query in nine minutes, and well well before business hours. The boilerplate response is about what you'd expect, though: "We are considering our future business policies and plans, and studying the market response [to recent developments]." Let's just get this thing over with already, okay Toshiba?
Sometime in mid-2007, I noticed that Costco started adding HD DVD and Blu-Ray DVDs to the movie display, each format wearing a distinctive colored cap on the end of the case -- red for HD DVD, and blue (what else?) for Blu-Ray.
I did my due diligence and found that videophiles preferred Sony's Blu-Ray for its higher storage capacity and better use of the interactivity made possible by the format, but HD DVD seemed like the eventual winner in the format wars, quickly signing up movie studios and getting its lower-priced players to market before the Blu-Ray folks.
It seemed like we were in for a repeat of the VHS vs. Beta wars, when Sony's superior design lost out to the cheaper and more widely licensed competition. An engineer once told me that if you had set out to create the worlds most complicated, Rube Goldberg-like mechanism to play a videotape, it would probably be less slap-dash than a VHS machine.
And then it all turned around, the HD DVD movies disappearing without fanfare from the Costco table sometime around Christmas.
I've seen a Blu-Ray movie at a friend's house, and it does look spectacular, but regular DVDs look pretty good on our 37" LCD when upconverted by the chip in our DVD player, and it would take a new front projector to realize the improvements in resolution Blu-Ray would make readily apparent on our 6-foot screen -- a cost we're not quite ready for just yet.
At least when we do decide to upgrade, the risk of picking an obsolete format will be gone. Too bad I didn't have such luck when I bought Mom a Betamax VCR back in the '80s.
Posted by Mike Lief at February 17, 2008 10:15 PM
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Comments
Time to buy a PS3, the current top of the line blue ray player on the market.
Posted by: Bill H at February 17, 2008 11:44 PM
Being a techno-dinosaur has its advantages sometimes. I am not even digital TV yet, so ALL the choices have yet to be made.
And now you understand one of the reasons I like revolvers.
Posted by: The Little Coach at February 19, 2008 05:44 PM