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HD DVD is officially dead; Toshiba stops production of defunct format

Sunday, February 17, 2008 · 6:32 pm · 95 Comments

“Toshiba Corp is planning to stop production of equipment compatible with the HD DVD format for high-definition video, allowing the competing Blu-Ray camp a free run, public broadcaster NHK reported on Saturday,” Nathan Layne reports for Reuters.

“Toshiba is expected to suffer losses amounting to tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars) to scrap production of HD DVD players and recorders and other steps to exit the business, Japan’s NHK said on its website,” Layne reports.

“Toshiba was dealt a blow on Friday when Wal-Mart Stores Inc said it would abandon the HD DVD format, becoming the latest in a series of top retailers and movie studios to rally behind Blu-ray technology for high definition DVDs,” Layne reports.

Full article here.

Enjoy those Microsoft Xbox HD DVD players now, ya hear?

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Comment Feed

95 Comments

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makemineamac

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 5:42 am · Reply

Options are always good to have.

The Beta format has remained, and still is, a better option than VHS as I’m sure everyone recalls.

I understand the big concerns, about DRM, and Microsoft and this format, but it certainly seemed to me at least, that from a technology standpoint, that HD-DVD had a better potential future than Blu-Ray.

In any case it appears it’s over, all decided in the end by a bunch of greedy content owners, and WalMart of course, and there’s one less option for all of us to choose from. That’s never a good thing…
elmo

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 6:01 am · Reply

KenC: explanation….I think what he was doing was making a HiDef movie on a regular DVD that would play out HD from the HD-DVD player (confusing as heck!!) Then at shows or say the clients house, he would be able to show off the HD footage properly. I suggested, maybe it would be a good idea to buy a bunch of cheap HD DVD players and give them away with the wedding footage on the regular DVD. That way the client gets to see the HD footage and doesn’t have to go out and buy a BR player or something. probably not very clear thinking though. He is just a bit pissed, since his final cut of the weddings would all fit on a Dual Layer DVD and that was a very cost effective option. Now he has to think about BR and it’s extra upfront costs, discs and recorders are not cheap. At least the other route had lots more compatibility.
flappo

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 6:11 am · Reply

another big advantage of br over hd dvd is the special surface they use

i have a copy of casino royale that i scratched and it plays perfectly

try doing that with a dvd or hd dvd
Mac Maniac

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 6:32 am · Reply

@Mac Maniac, Why would a BR backup disk option be preferable to a hard drive, or eventually a flash drive?

Because of the large capacity of BD disks, and their lower costs, one can keep multiple snapshots of their cloned boot drives over time. To restore their boot drives to a previous operating system level state if necessary.

As you know a Time Machine drive isn’t bootable. It’s only a backup method for files really. It doesn’t bring your operating system back to a previous state, in case you find out Apple’s OS update doesn’t work well with your older versions of third party software.

Some third party software is very expensive to upgrade, and there is a wait until it does get updated.

Will a BR disk allow multiple burns, or allow you to change one little file, or make an incremental backup?

BR-RW’s would come just like they did DVD-RW and CD-RW’s I’m sure.

There is also software that will make multiple incremental burns to CD-R and DVD-R, making multiple icons, one per burn, appear on the desktop when only one CD-R or DVD-R is inserted in the drive. So it can be assumed this option also would come to the large capacity BR-R eventually.

If you need to make many small incremental backups with low capacity (under 12GB), a flash drive is in order for that. I recently got a 12GB flash drive for $80. But for storing more than 12GB, A $5 or so 200GB BD-R will be a much cost effective alternative.

Hard drives are dirt cheap and getting cheaper, with Time Capsule, it backs up wirelessly. Why is BR a better option?

Because a external hard drive requires a power supply and won’t work on the road or at some places where the quality of the electricity is a problem. (ie lack of grounded outlets).

A BD drive would be internal and run off a laptop’s battery. A portable external hard drive is fragile because of it’s moving parts. It’s suspectible to heat, cold and shock.

Once one burnt a BD-R disk or two, or three even. It lesses the risk for lost data from hardware failure at a much lower cost than owning multiple external hard drives.

If one buys a large capacity hard drive and then makes multiple partitions on that drive, if that drive fails mechanically…

Plus with a 200GB BR-R disk, one can give it away to another. It’s expendable large storage. Unlike a hard drive or expensive flash drives.
Mac Maniac

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 6:38 am · Reply

So in short I would say hard drives, flash drives and BR-R disks would each have their strengths and weaknesses depending upon one’s needs and budget.

It’s too early to rule out burning disks yet.

According to what I hear, Blu-Ray drives won’t be able to read/write cd audio disks.
Mac Man's Pal

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 9:29 am · Reply

@ @Mac Man By Choice

Well, marketing is important these days and if M.S. and Toshiba had any idea how to develop and market technology maybe Blu-Ray would have gone away. But either way I suspect that you are just a pathetic Win-Troll maybe your just pi$$ed because your Xbox HD-DVD wasted your money. So take your sad, unintelligent commentary and go away…..just like HD-DVD.
I M the Eggman

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 9:38 am · Reply

Relax, MDN, your Xbox is already covered:

“Blu-ray Xbox 360 Planned By Microsoft”
http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Gaming/Console/J7L7H2R4?page=1

And remember INTEL was/is a supporter of HD DVD.
Tip: Intel makes the processors for Apple computers.
ron

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 9:47 am · Reply

@MacManiac,
Google: Carbon Copy Cloner Fast, free and still the best.

CCC is very good, but the BEST is Super Duper. Not free, but THE BEST.
macromancer

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 10:09 am · Reply

“Discs are dead, anyway. It doesn’t matter.”

Not everyone is going to run out and stampede for digital high def downloads. Not everyone has the equipment or the broadband for it.

The people trumpeting the death of physical media are always the ones on the bleeding edge, and they represent a fraction of the total market.
Ampar

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 10:19 am · Reply

Now is Pioneer’s window of opportunity to squeeze the laserdisc back into the market.
Buster

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 10:29 am · Reply

@rolleyes

…an adult gamer? Isn’t that an oxymoron?
shiva105

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 10:39 am · Reply

Until storage becomes much less expensive and much more reliable, physical media isn’t dead. For anyone who has a large collection of video or audio, storing it all on hard drives and depending on an OS to access it isn’t an option. My wife and I have over 700 DVD’s and over 1100 CD’s. That would be almost 4 TB of data to store some where, and another 4 TB to back it up in case of data loss. Hard drives fail, but I have yet to hear of physical media like DVD’s or CD’s failing unless they’ve been treated poorly.

Now what I would *love* to see is solid state media. Takes up less space, allows for smaller players, more easily transported, but still not writable, so no worries about it failing.
ron

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 10:39 am · Reply

@Ampar. Now is Pioneer’s window of opportunity to squeeze the laserdisc back into the market.

My Laserdisc is old but working to specifications, just like me. I’m really old but everything works — must have been all that soccer refereeing for 40 years.
The Rev.

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 10:49 am · Reply

And lo, the second Format Wars had come to an end, and on the field Blu-Ray had smote it’s foe, and the people rejoiced saying “At last, my home theatre can be completed with out fear of being obsolete in two weeks” but others said unto them “All disc formats are going to obsolete anyway once the Internet Providers catch up”. And then a thunderous voice from above spoke and shook those with no faith in circular media to their very core saying “You can’t put a network harddrive in you pocket to watch at a friends house, so until you come up with a quicker, cheaper and more reliable way of taking things from one place to an other, you’re stuck with disks, so good luck with that”

Technologians 16:9
Mr. Peabody

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 10:51 am · Reply

Make no mistake – Saying goodbye to HDDVD is saying goodbye to yet another MS attempt at techno-totalitarianism – period. And if you think otherwise you better go do your homework before you even try to start an argument. (Gee – that sounds threatening…), but really, do your homework and you’ll find there’s nothing to argue about. One of the primary codecs incorporated into HDDVD [VC-1] was invented by MS and eventually turned over to the “industry” [read "industry" as MS exclusive partners] to be hacked into various components and variants. This was a very coy move on the part of MS – to virtually and subliminally get their product entrenched into the consumer market place without it looking like it was MS. And for the record, HDDVD is not cheaper than BR per GB.

Bye bye MS, HDDVD. Thanks for playing. Maybe someday we’ll be saying that about Windows – we can only hope.
forgiveness

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 1:57 pm · Reply

I’m still curious, does Final Cut also support Blu-ray?
mm hmm

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 3:04 pm · Reply

you do realize that blu-ray uses vc1 as well… don’t you.. Mr. Peapants?
And yes, it was cheaper, for plants to manufacture HDDVD as opposed to Blu-ray… And there is no quality difference between the 2 only how much you can fit on the discs.
But still, I would rather Sony be the victor, even though it isnt necessarily the better format.
KenC

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 3:39 pm · Reply

@elmo , thanks for the answer.

You said: “explanation….I think what he was doing was making a HiDef movie on a regular DVD that would play out HD from the HD-DVD player (confusing as heck!!) Then at shows or say the clients house, he would be able to show off the HD footage properly. I suggested, maybe it would be a good idea to buy a bunch of cheap HD DVD players and give them away with the wedding footage on the regular DVD. That way the client gets to see the HD footage and doesn’t have to go out and buy a BR player or something. probably not very clear thinking though. He is just a bit pissed, since his final cut of the weddings would all fit on a Dual Layer DVD and that was a very cost effective option. Now he has to think about BR and it’s extra upfront costs, discs and recorders are not cheap. At least the other route had lots more compatibility.”

Okay, stop, right there, HOW? How did he put a HD movie on a regular DVD that played HD on a HD-DVD player? Perhaps, your suggestion doesn’t make sense since you didn’t fully understand what he was doing.

Let’s start from the back and go forward. If he’s playing on a HD-DVD player, then that assumes the clients have a HD-DVD player, right? And, if your friend is giving the clients a regular DL DVD, then he is using the HD-DVD as an upconverter? I mean it’s a regular DL DVD, right? But before you say that he is burning a HiDef movie on a regular DVD. Correct me if I”m wrong, but is that possible? I know you can burn HiDef files to a data DVD, but can you do it to a DVD-video and be confident it will play in the client’s machine?

At shows, he could just setup a 1080p LCD and play a HiDef file from his laptop. And, at clients’ homes he could use a 17″ laptop with a 1080p screen.

Then you go back to your idea of giving away HD-DVD players, but from the start, you said, your friend would play the video out on a HD-DVD player. Doesn’t that mean they already have one? And, if not, then why does your friend care if his clients need to buy a BR player now, instead of a HD-DVD one?

So, is it that he needs to buy a BR recorder that is annoying him? Surely that’s cheaper than your idea of buying a stock of HD-DVD players, right?
KenC

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 3:57 pm · Reply

@Mac Maniac, thanks for your answer.
<<Because of the large capacity of BD disks, and their lower costs, one can keep multiple snapshots of their cloned boot drives over time. To restore their boot drives to a previous operating system level state if necessary.

As you know a Time Machine drive isn’t bootable. It’s only a backup method for files really. It doesn’t bring your operating system back to a previous state, in case you find out Apple’s OS update doesn’t work well with your older versions of third party software.>>
If a BR disk is not rewriteable, is it really lower cost, compared to a hard drive? I know TM is not bootable, but I read an article where someone figured out how to make a bootable drive possible, and nothing stops you from using CCC, when you need a perfect clone.

<<BR-RW’s would come just like they did DVD-RW and CD-RW’s I’m sure.>>
Fair enough, but like DVDRWs and CDRWs, wouldn’t a BRRW be terribly slow compared to a hard drive?

<<If you need to make many small incremental backups with low capacity (under 12GB), a flash drive is in order for that. I recently got a 12GB flash drive for $80. But for storing more than 12GB, A $5 or so 200GB BD-R will be a much cost effective alternative.>>
BDRs will have to get up to 500GBs soon. People hate to insert multiple disks.

<<Because a external hard drive requires a power supply and won’t work on the road or at some places where the quality of the electricity is a problem. (ie lack of grounded outlets).

A BD drive would be internal and run off a laptop’s battery. A portable external hard drive is fragile because of it’s moving parts. It’s suspectible to heat, cold and shock.>>
Perhaps it’s me, but I always make sure my laptop is connected to an outlet if I plan to do a backup. Backing up 200GB at current BR speeds is going to take how long? I don’t know about fragility. I make many more coasters than have write errors with a harddrive. I can’t see a BR laser being any less sensitive than CD or DVD burners.

<<Once one burnt a BD-R disk or two, or three even. It lesses the risk for lost data from hardware failure at a much lower cost than owning multiple external hard drives.>>
Can you do a cost comparison, because I just don’t see it.

<<If one buys a large capacity hard drive and then makes multiple partitions on that drive, if that drive fails mechanically…>>
One can recover data from a mechanically failed drive, and if you are so worried about data, then rotating two backup drives would protect you against a single drive failure, no?
mm hmm

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 4:39 pm · Reply

I easily made regular DVD’s into HD discs that could be played on the early HD-DVD players. I was a cheap and easy way to show clients HD quality.

You could only do it on certain players, and functionality was limited. But hey, it worked, alot cheaper than Blu-ray.