BDA sez Toshiba and Microsoft are "more than welcome" to go Blu

Oh, how the times have changed. Merely months ago we caught Frank Simonis, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, firing off all sorts of vitriol at the red camp, and now that the wheels are falling off of the HD DVD wagon, we're seeing quite the change of heart. According to a recent interview with Tech Radar, Mr. Simonis was quoted as saying that Toshiba and Microsoft, along with any other company, is "more than welcome to join the BDA." He continued by stating that if "Toshiba decides to drop HD DVD, it would extend the hand of friendship to them." Yeah, it's kind of cute to see such lovey-dovey phrases being thrown around, but we've all ideas none of these heartfelt feelings are easing the sting felt by Toshiba right about now.

[TJ @ Feb 18th 2008 4:04PM]

No sh*t?

[JAmerican @ Feb 18th 2008 4:31PM]

(offtopic) You look high or intoxicated in your photo. LOL (/offtopic)

I think M$ went HD-DVD because they knew it would fail and they wanted to make a few bucks off of the suckers that bought the drive from them. In a marketing sense, that's the way to do it. In a caring sense, it don't matter because it's capitalism.

JAmerican

[Ruben @ Feb 18th 2008 4:36PM]

Yea, im sure thats why.

Im sure Toshiba knew HD-DVD stood no chance against blu-ray and the PS3 machine and decided it could make money off of the suckers who are early adopters. Toshiba was even so dedicated to ripping off customers that they lost money so they could have the privelage of selling them paper weights. Microsoft, too, because the profits to be made off of the external drive were very minimal.

Or maybe its because Microsoft, Toshiba and the other backers actually thought HD-DVD stood a chance and put money behind it because Toshiba had a stake in it, and Microsoft being able to sell their VC-1 tools as well as make money off the licensing of it. VC-1 is in blu-ray, but its not even close to the number of titles HD-DVD had encoded with it.

[JAmerican @ Feb 18th 2008 4:40PM]

If M$ really believed in the HD-DVD format, it would be in the Xbox 360. If it was in the Xbox 360, HD-DVD would have had a better chance. I personally own a 360 and don't have the HD-DVD drive. I wanted the Blu-ray format to win because of theoretical storage limit is much larger. I would use these new discs for storage not for watching movies.

JAmerican

[Richard @ Feb 18th 2008 4:43PM]

I was hoping hd-dvd would win. From the start they were cheaper and more advanced than blu-ray. BD is just now getting the PiP and internet connectivity options that hd-dvd has always had, while alienating the early adopters that will never get to utilize these features unless they buy a new player.

I have both formats so I am not phased either way, but HD-dvd should have won.

[Mr. Cantu @ Feb 18th 2008 4:50PM]

JAmerican, did you ever think that if MS included a hd-dvd drive in the 360, it would have come out at least a year later at a much higher price and sold horribly when launching with the PS3/Wii?

[ducky @ Feb 19th 2008 10:36AM]

BDA = British Dental Association?

[Dan @ Feb 18th 2008 7:27PM]

JAmerican, that's the dumbest theory I've ever heard about anything and I even hang out at Gizmodo a little. You should be embarrassed.

Why is Sony always portrayed as the money hungry company who doesn't give a damn about their clientele, while their "other" is declared a company of the people? Haters make me sick.

[Sam Winter @ Feb 18th 2008 7:32PM]

@Richard

You can say HD-DVD had it's extra interactive features/profiles worked out sooner than Blu-ray, but DO NOT say it was more advanced. To the contrary, HD-DVD hardware used budget electronics components and even used an antiquated Pentium 4 Celeron processor as the main processor of the system. In addition to this, the low cost hardware kept HD-DVD's audio/video bandwidth much lower than Blurays (30mbps vs 48mbps) which allows Blu-ray to have a much higher theoretical bitrate for video. Combine this with the more advanced optical unit on Blu-ray which allows for 25GB per layer on the disc
and you end up with the ability for a higher quality picture and more minutes of video. To data, the dual format studios were encoding their films to HD-DVD limitations and using that for both. Now that HD-DVD is dead, we may see higher bitrate encodes that use the true capability of Blu-ray.

[Ronald McD @ Feb 19th 2008 2:21AM]

JAmerican, I sincerely hope that you are, at most, a high school student. If not, then stay far away from marketing and business. Your original post makes absolutely no sense.

[Chris @ Feb 20th 2008 4:51PM]

Blu's higher demonstrated and theoretical capacities were very appealing, but what SEALED the deal for me against HD-DVD was M$. Since when is M$ concerned about anything other then enriching themselves and locking out everyone else, at the expense of consumers and ALL OTHERS. VC-1, WMV HD, ActiveX, NO THANK YOU!!!!

[phanbouy @ Feb 18th 2008 4:05PM]

wow, trying out new heart logos, E-gadg?

[DWells55 @ Feb 18th 2008 4:07PM]

Ah, nothing like a friendly offer that manages to serve as a "lolol we toldz u so" at the same time. Kind of like asking Luke to join the Dark Side.

[xbit @ Feb 18th 2008 4:08PM]

No victory dance?

[Chino B @ Feb 18th 2008 4:20PM]

Thats cute.

[Jonhimslf @ Feb 18th 2008 4:24PM]

I have a hypothetical. Could the BDA prevent Toshiba and Microsoft from producing Bluray drives? Would they need permission to be able to do so? I think it would be pretty funny (but definitely a dick move) if they 'punished' them by shutting them out of the Bluray market.

[Anthony @ Feb 18th 2008 4:25PM]

Not only would it not be funny but it would be an outright terrible business move.

[sholmes @ Feb 18th 2008 4:32PM]

I would think that they can't legally prevent any company from licensing the technology. Basically, once you offer licenses for the technology, you can't pick and choose who you license it to. It's all or none.

[Reader @ Feb 18th 2008 4:38PM]

I just learned from dictionary.com that you can use hypothetical as a noun and not just hypothesis. Learned my new tidbit for today I suppose.

[Jimbo @ Feb 18th 2008 5:52PM]

I don't think it is necessarily illegal, per se. They'd have minimal anti-trust concerns, I guess, but I don't think there is a serious legal risk. For example, if a very shoddy company wanted to make blu-rays, it would be wise to refuse until Q/A came up.

It would be very stupid to exclude Toshiba. Toshiba and Sony work more closely together than many other companies. Those PS3s in stores these days have Toshiba parts inside. Toshiba lost a lot of money, perhaps as much as they made from DVD. It's crazy. This format war was definitely the most expensive.

I hate Toshiba products, but a lot of folkd love 'em. It's time for them to go blu.

[Sam Winter @ Feb 18th 2008 7:37PM]

I think it's so STUPID for these companies to have this war. Now I don't want to start the faboys off, but I have read that Sony initially approached Toshiba and the DVD forum when they started developing Blu-ray and they were turned away. Later, When Toshiba et all wanted to finally create a new HD format, they got the approval of the DVD forum for their format that was created with their IP and basically told Sony to adopt their technology or screw off.. basically killing the idea of a compromise single format. If this indeed was the case, then Toshiba got what was coming to them. Had the stupid bastards just compromised, the competing companies could have shared the royalties and made a single format that would be making a lot of money for EVERYBODY by now. Instead, you end up with this mess.

[zsoltnistro @ Feb 18th 2008 4:32PM]

I like toshiba products

[phanbouy @ Feb 18th 2008 4:45PM]

oh great more romanian spammers. this one's hit 10 posts today already.

[Blaktornado @ Feb 18th 2008 4:52PM]

Pfft. BDA is only doing it for the Sex.

[Kunal Gupta @ Feb 18th 2008 4:54PM]

yea, suck it now red camp.......... suck it.

[andy @ Feb 18th 2008 5:03PM]

Do you have a thing for Asian businessmen or something?

[PS3guy @ Feb 18th 2008 4:57PM]

Anyones want to buy mine HD DVD and Laser Disc Lol

[andy @ Feb 18th 2008 5:02PM]

Well, Toshiba did it to themselves.

Or rather didn't do it to themselves.

I saw exactly two "HDDVD" commercials. One was the bourne Ultimatum and the other was the Harry Potter OOTP. I never did actually see an HDDVD commercial.

There were a million suggestions that they should have taken and didn't. They should have subsidised combo only editions at first. They didn't. They should have bundled two free movies with each player and scrapped the mail in thing. They didn't. They should have had free player promotions with radio stations and retailers. They didn't. They should have put an ad on TV. They didn't (until it was too late, and most people didn't even see that ad).

Sting it may, but they made their bed.


I'm an HDDVD supporter. They did a tremendous job on finishing up the successor to DVD. They can certainly claim what the BDA can't: finished spec, full featured, working players. Then they just stopped and the BDA stomped a hole in their butts. Just showing up won't win the game, you have to actually play the game too.

[Sam Winter @ Feb 18th 2008 7:49PM]

Well you are right that Toshiba was able to finish up the spec of their players better than Blu-ray, but that does not mean there were no problems. Many people, including a friend of mine, ended up having to download new firmware seemingly ever few disc he purchased. Now granted Toshiba did a much better job by requiring all players to have a network connection for future firmware updates. props to that. However, It seems that Blu-ray is now catching up, and most of their profile 1.1 players have network connections so the profile issue is non existent for any of those players. And even the very earliest adopters who have a profile 1.0 player without a network connection can still play all the movies, they just may not have access to some special features. A similar situation arose with early DVD players, but I think everything is now on the right track.

In addition, Blu-ray uses quite a bit of custom designed processors, ASICS and DSPs, and the disc technology itself is much more different than DVD than is HD-DVD. The optical system is also very different than even HD-DVD with much tighter tolerances. I'm willing to bet that much of this work that went into making Blu-ray have more capable hardware and specs (capacity, bandwidth, etc), also meant that there were less resources in the beginning to finalizing the extra feature and profile software/firmware. Toshiba had a much less strenuous engineering challenge in creating HD-DVD, and thus probably had the ability to focus more resources on the software standards and firmware.
Either way, Bluray seems to have it together now, and I look forward to further competition between all the hardware manufacturers to lower prices and get mass adoption moving along!

[Dominic @ Feb 18th 2008 5:10PM]

aw how touching..oh no..wait..are those hearts made with blood!! Hd-DVD blood? Oh no..I knew it was too good to be true Blu-Ray!! :D

[Killer @ Feb 18th 2008 5:28PM]

Yea sure...

BDA: "Oh hey, Toshiba and Microsoft. Look, we want to tell you how sorry we are for your loss. You guys fought hard, and we promises you we have no hard feeling over this whole format war."

Toshiba and Microsoft: "Geeez, Thanks guys!"

BDA: "Now if you would, gladly take your seats way far back there near the Janitor's closet. Right next to Samsung."

*Toshiba and Microsoft sit down*

BDA: "Alright everyone, now that we have this format war over with, any suggestion what to do next?"

*Microsoft and Toshiba raise their hands*

BDA: "Anyone?"

*Samsung raises hand*

BDA: "Yes?"

Microsoft and Toshiba: "Hey, why didn't you call on us?"

BDA: "Because, we don't care what you think. Now go make us mone...I mean Blu-ray players..."

[phanbouy @ Feb 18th 2008 5:35PM]

it looks like you put a lotta work into that

[Jonathan-DBOSS @ Feb 18th 2008 5:42PM]

this deserves a nice lulz... some other time maybe.

[Killer @ Feb 18th 2008 5:49PM]

@phanbouy

You would have thought, but that only took me a minute. It surprised me as well. :P

[Chris72b9 @ Feb 18th 2008 6:11PM]

I'd be more than willing to go Blu as well.

Just give me a standalone player that doesn't suck for a decent price.

[Kspraydad @ Feb 18th 2008 8:19PM]

PS3 $299 at SonyStyle BD 2.0 compliant, web browser, linux capable, media streaming, DivX, HDD and it plays games to boot. Get one for each room in the house (they are in stock) :)

[DIRTYSLOTH @ Feb 18th 2008 6:44PM]

@ andy.. you comment made me think of HDDVD AA.

HDDVD Anonymous club.

"I'm an HDDVD supporter. " "I used to watch 2 sometimes 3 a day.... I used to think about how I would buy more to help the format survive and get better....but it didnt...it JUST DIDNT...!!! *starts crying* "

(no offence, I agree with your post)

[Graham @ Feb 18th 2008 7:05PM]

BDA can't say no to Microsoft. Microsoft has licenced the VC-1 codec to the BD camp. Doesn't that mean Microsoft gets paid for every Blu-ray disc and player sold (and every PS3 for that matter?) Either way Microsoft wins!

[Waruwaru @ Feb 18th 2008 7:08PM]

it's the HD version of "Of course, we can still be friends."

[Robert Everland III @ Feb 18th 2008 7:43PM]

If Toshiba were smart they would figure out a way they can take the existing players and replace the optics with blue ray lasers and update the firmware to make it play blue ray. Since all of HD-DVD had network ports from day one they may be one of the only players that can play the Blue Ray 2.0 spec. Wouldn't it be hilarious if Toshiba became the number 1 seller of Blue Ray players.

[umm....hello??? @ Feb 18th 2008 8:04PM]

....of COURSE they're welcome to join....more $$$ from the licensing fees....

[ark_v2 @ Feb 18th 2008 8:43PM]

Translation? = kiss my a$$

[V @ Feb 18th 2008 11:58PM]

http://tftb.net

Finally going for some peace.

[SPG @ Feb 19th 2008 2:47AM]

One problem with BluRay that a lot of people don't know about is that it sucks for smaller releases. Say an indie filmmaker comes out with a really nice HD surf movie for example. The AACS license fees will cost $3,000 to become a AACS licensee, then $1,700 per master, then 5 cents per BD disc. If you're only going to sell 1,000 BD, that's an upfront of almost $5 per BD before you've even replicated a single disc! It might be a drop in the bucket for a major release from a major label, but it's a killer for smaller producers, and even for smaller projects at the studios.
The AACS copy protection is mandatory for replicated discs which means that only the big studios can afford BD until everyone has a player and the market develops. So who jumped in and forced BD to the top? Oh yeah, the big studios.
Say what you will about HD DVD, and there is a lot to be said, but at least there were no mandated fees to keep out smaller producers.

[xman @ Feb 19th 2008 11:22AM]

I really didn't care who one. But I was hoping this thing would last another 2 years to keep driving the prices down. Now we can forget it! So much for getting a blue ray burner for under $100 lol.
Secondly, it's interesting that this war wasn't decided by consumers, but by the copyright label owners. The same people who can't make a decision or move forward on anything that is pro-consumer. Then of course the retailers followed suit to simplify there costs (Wal-mart, Bestbuy, Target, etc.)