Toshiba launching Blu-ray player by year's end

Need a little something to get you over the Saturday lull? Gnaw on this. Japan's own Yomiuri is reporting today that Toshiba is expected to finally admit defeat and enter the dark, devious world of Blu-ray later this year. For those keeping tabs, we've heard both confirmations and denials about the outfit finally caving and supporting the format it once battled so valiantly, but this seems to solidify it. If machine translation is to be believed, the company's first DVD / Blu-ray deck is slated for release somewhere in the world by the year's end. The article also mentions that Tosh is strongly considering a Blu-ray recorder for the Japanese market, though no further details on that are available. C'mon Toshiba -- get this bad boy to the States before Christmas. We're anxious for a BD price war.

[Thanks, Rata]

[lawyer bird @ Jul 18th 2009 3:55PM]

What, it only took like 2 years? HD DVD is making a comeback though, I can feel it.

[AndrewNoNumbers @ Jul 18th 2009 5:10PM]

Yea I was wondering why a plain old Blu-ray deck would be breaking news, until I realized Toshiba was special.

[DR House @ Jul 18th 2009 6:56PM]

Long live Sony
Even toshiba couldn't bring them down

[Somebody @ Jul 18th 2009 7:54PM]

They stopped making HD dvd. sorry abt the comeback.

[zargon @ Jul 18th 2009 8:01PM]

I am not sure anyone needs to bring down Sony, I think they are doing a good job themselves between mediocre products and not listening to their customers.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Sony fracture into separate companies in the next few years, it may actually be better for them in the long run.

[IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII (BarCODE) @ Jul 18th 2009 10:08PM]

@zargon

You sound like Churchill talking about Hitler.


(Not Verbatim)
"Let's not assassinate Hitler, he's doing a better job of destroying Germany than we are"

[JohnTitor @ Jul 19th 2009 12:26AM]

how exactly did he do that?
except for killing jews, he pretty much caused a Germany to have a boom in technology and engineering, if he wasn't so damn greedy and racist, he would have been a good leader

[Brando @ Jul 19th 2009 1:59AM]

Sony = Hitler? Toshiba = Churchill? Huh?

[SimbaDogg @ Jul 19th 2009 2:49AM]

@ zargon and titor

facepalm...oh gah'd

[SidedPanic @ Jul 19th 2009 6:26PM]

godwin's law again

[Sy @ Jul 18th 2009 3:58PM]

Welcome to 2008 Toshiba.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jul 18th 2009 4:07PM]

BD 18 is just the model name, right? It's not a format like BD5 or BD9?

[Darren @ Jul 18th 2009 4:28PM]

Yeah, model name, not a new format.

[greenlight @ Jul 18th 2009 7:30PM]

Engadget removed the "BD 18" since it was a failure of google translate and they didn't even attempt to take a look at the untranslated source (where the only reference to 18 is as a date).

[Michael Zupcak @ Jul 18th 2009 4:26PM]

My first thought was "what's the big deal?" then I thought to myself "ohhhhh...Toshiiiiiba...shit!"

[Michael @ Jul 18th 2009 4:16PM]

I believe that Toshiba concede long ago when Sony handed Toshiba the chip business for the Playstation.

[sapplelover @ Jul 18th 2009 5:47PM]

well they designed the chip, but i dont think they knew about the blu-ray. anyways they shot themselves in the ass unknowingly.

[Andrea @ Jul 18th 2009 4:22PM]

Complain all you want about Toshiba taking it 2 years, it's taking consumers even longer, a hell lot longer.

[Ian @ Jul 18th 2009 4:22PM]

What is BD 18?

[Dr. Spaceman @ Jul 18th 2009 4:38PM]

A Blu-ray plater that Toshiba is launching by year's end. Didn't you RTFA?

[Aguiluz @ Jul 18th 2009 4:45PM]

You can use your Bluray player as plates? *shot*

[qwack @ Jul 18th 2009 4:48PM]

Wow typo, its platter, not plater.

hehe.

[Fyrewerx @ Jul 18th 2009 4:54PM]

I read the FA, and the weblink (Japanese version, too), and I still don't understand WTF a BD 18 is. I guess this is why downloadable HD to my HTPC is still better than Blue F'g Ray.

[Dr. Spaceman @ Jul 18th 2009 4:57PM]

It's the model number of the player. You really couldn't figure that out? Really?

[jon @ Jul 18th 2009 5:13PM]

Doc, be as snarky as you want."...the company's first DVD / Blu-ray deck will boast a BD 18 label" is just bad writing.

How about: "The model number of the company's first BD deck is BD 18".

[greenlight @ Jul 18th 2009 7:28PM]

Engadget removed the "BD 18" since it was a failure of google translate and they didn't even attempt to take a look at the untranslated source (where the only reference to 18 is as a date).

[Fyrewerx @ Jul 19th 2009 11:19AM]

Exactly ... July "18", 2009, is the date proclaimed to be the "official death" of HD/DVD (even on Google and Wiki).

[Fyrewerx @ Jul 19th 2009 11:23AM]

Dr. Spaceman, now I get it. Just like WD40 spray and Formula 44 cough medicine, Toshiba had "17" blue ray failures before they got one to work ... hence: BD "18". Awesome.

[Decoy @ Jul 18th 2009 4:22PM]

Well, Sony made VHS players. It's not crazy-world time.

[gabe @ Jul 18th 2009 4:33PM]

is $99 not cheap enough?

really they need to compete with torrents.

[CraigJ @ Jul 18th 2009 4:40PM]

No, they don't.

We don't live in the "real" world. In the real world the huge majority of people still buy and rent discs. No company is going to base their pricing on the tiny minority. Well... no successful company.

[EdgeOne @ Jul 19th 2009 12:15PM]

People with Blu-ray players that actually buy movies on the format more than once every few months are the tiny minority.

[CraigJ @ Jul 18th 2009 4:38PM]

Toshiba's best revenge against Sony would be to sell these well under cost to force Sony to follow suit.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jul 18th 2009 4:44PM]

If by Sony you mean the Blu-ray licensors, then they make money on each disc sold, so they're glad to see cheap players. In fact, this was Toshiba's entire business model for HD-DVD, which was to lose money on the players and make it back on discs.

As to Sony as a BD player maker, they already said they won't really compete on price, they see themselves as a premium player maker. Good luck with that I say. I'm sure Samsung will be glad to have my money.

[NohOne - The official hater, stalker, and psychopath @ Jul 18th 2009 10:34PM]

@why not...

While Sony says that they are not going to play the low price game, in fact they are. One of the main points behind the PS3 since day one was that it is a low price Blu-ray player when compared to players at the introduction of the PS3. So low it was selling below cost and many people (including myself) bought a PS3 solely for BD use. Here we are nearly 3 years after the introduction of the PS3 it is still selling for a loss, and with the cost of non-PS3 BD players dropping, so has the number of PS3 sales.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jul 18th 2009 11:27PM]

You blame low sales of the PS3 on BD prices, how do you explain low sales of the Wii compared to last year?

Consoles are often sold below cost. Even if they don't have BD drives in them.

I don't disagree that Sony will eventually decide they have to make a cheaper Blu-ray player, but I don't think the PS3 is any indication of this.

[NohOne - The official hater, stalker, and psychopath @ Jul 19th 2009 12:51AM]

There are a number of factors behind lower PS3 sales:
1) People who wanted a BD player and not a game console can get a cheaper player in a different device
2) The price point of the PS3 in comparison to the 360, especially when cross-platform games look the same on the 360 and PS3
3) The price point of the PS3 given the current economic conditions
4) People are waiting for a price drop

2, 3, and 4 may seem like the same, but if you look at them individually they are different factors keeping people from buying. The NDP numbers compared to the same period from last year show around a 50% drop YOY for the PS3 (a few high-profile games were released last year at this time which gave it a boost, so you really can't do a direct comparison), and yes the other factors are contributing to the decrease, but we have seen a steady decline in sales over time as the price of other BD players have dropped. The PS3 is a very good player, I would say the best, but many people who just want to play movies cannot justify spending $400 to get a game machine with BD support when they can buy a player only for less than $200.

As for the Wii, there I think it is because it is reaching a saturation point. A small portion is because the 360 is $50 cheaper, but they cater to vastly different markets so that is a very, very small factor in the Wii sales dropping.

[OMM 0910 @ Jul 18th 2009 7:20PM]

(Nelson laugh)

Hey you what they say.. "If you can't beat em, just join em"...
Suckers!

[Gilmour @ Jul 18th 2009 4:49PM]

thats not the real device is it? i mean the bluray logo is skewed on the drive, gotta be photoshopped or a bad prototype? i bought a tosh laptop a year ago with HDDVD drive in it, lol swapped that drive for a bluray already, but still, cant wait ...

[Darren @ Jul 18th 2009 5:03PM]

Definitely not the real product.

[matt @ Jul 18th 2009 5:19PM]

I can tell by the pixels.

[CraigJ @ Jul 18th 2009 10:41PM]

Yeah, the reflections are all wrong...

[Tom @ Jul 18th 2009 5:16PM]

Hey!! I should get one of those to match my Toshiba HD-DVD Player!!

[gsd @ Jul 18th 2009 5:17PM]

Finally.

[makatoro @ Jul 18th 2009 5:19PM]

18 is just the date of this news - July18th...

[The Avatar @ Jul 18th 2009 6:08PM]

I predict $49 BD players on Black Friday.

[Applegadget @ Jul 19th 2009 2:52AM]

I predict GTFO!

[sweet greggo @ Jul 18th 2009 7:03PM]

Sounds like a big bag of hurt.

[Mike @ Jul 18th 2009 7:51PM]

Toshiba should just bring out a $399 Blu-ray Recorder / DVR unit with a 160GB HDD and H.264 Encoder. Then you can finally have somewhere to archive your HDTV recordings to watch later. :)

Also, 'cause no one else is bringing Blu-ray Recorders to the US yet.

Somehow this process isn't as elegant:
Record on TiVo HD -> Xfer to Mac (takes a few hours) -> open .tivo file (takes 5-10 min for some reason) -> trim down to just the show -> export to Blu-ray -> burn.

It should be:
Record on DVR -> edit start/stop times (don't care about commercial editing) -> burn to Blu-ray 'cause it's already recorded in the proper format to max out quality and space on the BD-R/RE.

[MacBandit @ Jul 19th 2009 4:26PM]

Something's broken in your process. Maybe you have a slow computer or maybe you're using the wrong programs. The TivoHD and Series 3 only have a 100Mbit ethernet port but it still only takes about 30-45minutes to transfer a 1 hour HD show. Then using Toast even on my 2GHz MacBook it only takes about 45secs to open it up to edit.