Switched On: Toshiba and the Blu-ray Trojan Horse
By Ross Rubin 
posted Aug 19th 2009 2:00PM
posted Aug 19th 2009 2:00PM
Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
The Blu-ray Disc Association has positioned Toshiba joining its membership as the epilogue in the company's once pitched battle for high-definition disc domination. It could, however, merely be a new chapter in the broader story of home entertainment as it uses the players not only to fill some product-line gaps but takes advantage of their connectivity to move to a future beyond any disc standard.
Back when it was tending to its fresh format war wounds, Toshiba did not always see this potential. After it exited-- and effectively ended-- the HD DVD market, the March 3, 2008 edition of The Wall Street Journal ran an interview with Toshiba chief executive Atsutoshi Nishida that detailed ambitious plans for avoiding Blu-ray. On the low end, Toshiba would improve DVD playback to seek near-parity with Blu-ray quality at lower cost. That idea was productized in Toshiba's XDE DVD players and televisions. XDE was met with mixed reviews, however, and the plummeting prices of Blu-ray hardware last holiday season cut its viability short.
Flirting with connectivity on the high-end, Nishida noted that it was now possible to bridge PCs and televisions better, and that he wanted to put "even more energy" into video downloading. He may have been considering Toshiba's Qosmio multimedia powerhouse notebooks as an engine for driving high-definition content to the television. However, the long-lingering idea of bridging the PC and television, while indeed becoming easier technologically, still simply isn't worth the effort for most consumers. At CES 2009 as Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, Samsung, LG and Vizio showed off connected televisions, Toshiba didn't announce any broadband content partnerships for its premium Regza line of TVs.
Now that Blu-ray has matured, Toshiba clearly sees short-term benefits to partnering with the Blu-crew. Blu-ray drives have become a natural component upsell option for notebook PCs and players have become a popular item cross-sold for HDTVs. But the spoils of Blu-ray's victory were patent pool payments for the architects of the disc's standard that Toshiba will not share.
Yet, in trying to blow up Blu-ray, Toshiba left a hole that it may be able to crawl through to escape its less favorable high-definition disc economics. HD DVD's mandatory network connectivity and the BD-Live spec were meant to be used for various features intended to extend the utility disc-based content, but connectivity is increasingly being used to compete with Blu-ray discs -- many players now offer access to HD movie streaming from providers such as Amazon, Blockbuster, CinemaNow, Netflix and Vudu.
Today, these services pose a minimal threat to the Blu-ray rental market, which is still small compared to the tremendous business in movie purchases. But streaming and download services are clearly just the first steps in disc players evolving past their legacy of dumb spindles spinning lots of preprocessed bits off a shiny platter. Future applications will favor those those that have a strong technology hand, and Toshiba claims it has an ace up its sleeve with the Cell processor. If it can muster up the required software and user interface design needed to create a next-generation video entertainment experience, Toshiba could very well use Blu-ray to sneak its vision of connected media distribution right into the mass market.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
[Image courtesy of Flickr user Alaskan Dude]
Back when it was tending to its fresh format war wounds, Toshiba did not always see this potential. After it exited-- and effectively ended-- the HD DVD market, the March 3, 2008 edition of The Wall Street Journal ran an interview with Toshiba chief executive Atsutoshi Nishida that detailed ambitious plans for avoiding Blu-ray. On the low end, Toshiba would improve DVD playback to seek near-parity with Blu-ray quality at lower cost. That idea was productized in Toshiba's XDE DVD players and televisions. XDE was met with mixed reviews, however, and the plummeting prices of Blu-ray hardware last holiday season cut its viability short.
Flirting with connectivity on the high-end, Nishida noted that it was now possible to bridge PCs and televisions better, and that he wanted to put "even more energy" into video downloading. He may have been considering Toshiba's Qosmio multimedia powerhouse notebooks as an engine for driving high-definition content to the television. However, the long-lingering idea of bridging the PC and television, while indeed becoming easier technologically, still simply isn't worth the effort for most consumers. At CES 2009 as Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, Samsung, LG and Vizio showed off connected televisions, Toshiba didn't announce any broadband content partnerships for its premium Regza line of TVs.
Now that Blu-ray has matured, Toshiba clearly sees short-term benefits to partnering with the Blu-crew. Blu-ray drives have become a natural component upsell option for notebook PCs and players have become a popular item cross-sold for HDTVs. But the spoils of Blu-ray's victory were patent pool payments for the architects of the disc's standard that Toshiba will not share.
Player connectivity is increasingly being used to compete with Blu-ray discs -- many players now offer access to HD movie streaming. |
Today, these services pose a minimal threat to the Blu-ray rental market, which is still small compared to the tremendous business in movie purchases. But streaming and download services are clearly just the first steps in disc players evolving past their legacy of dumb spindles spinning lots of preprocessed bits off a shiny platter. Future applications will favor those those that have a strong technology hand, and Toshiba claims it has an ace up its sleeve with the Cell processor. If it can muster up the required software and user interface design needed to create a next-generation video entertainment experience, Toshiba could very well use Blu-ray to sneak its vision of connected media distribution right into the mass market.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
[Image courtesy of Flickr user Alaskan Dude]
I'll admit this: Even though I may not agree with the views posted in these "Switched On" or "Entellisense" articles, these articles are a breath of fresh air from the usual engadget articles.
Good job! :)
"Now that Blu-ray has matured, Toshiba clearly sees short-term benefits to partnering with the Blu-crew."
After swallowing it's pride, Toshiba clearly sees short-term benefits to partnering with the Blu-crew.
It's too late for Blu-Ray, frankly.
Nobody I know is looking to buy into a technology that's already obsolete.
"Nobody I know is looking to buy into a technology that's already obsolete."
To be fair, your parents aren't very interested in HDTV anyway.
When your Android-on-Tegra phone can download HD movies and play them on your HDTV, why would you even look into owning a big clunky box that makes you wait for the mail to arrive?
Actually in response to borland502, MY parents ARE interested in HDTV and I think you're short sighted to think that an older generation isn't. OR to be more honest, my parents are interested in flat screen tv's, which inevitably are HDTV's. Affording it is another thing, but most older couples I've talked to would like to have a tv to hang on the wall. You have to remember that back in the 60's they were promised such a thing as being 'the future' and it is super sexy, even to a 60 year old.
Maybe my dad, the super conservative minister, is more hip than your dad - but after seeing me buy a Blu-ray player last black friday, unbeknownst to me, went back to best buy later that day to get one for himself. Why? Cause it was one sale for $200 bucks.
I also believe that an older generation can much easier deal with playing a bluray disc than downloading a movie. I think you're much more likely to get traction in the seniors on physical media than watching hulu.
ok ... yeah.. that's all I got.
Do profits from blu-ray currently exceed the profits for all streamed/downloaded content?
Serious question is serious.
Internet access on BluRay players is the real Trojan Horse. When people realize the box can magically download and cache their whole movie queue in the background, discs are dead. Ironically the feature may have to be embedded into a disc player for people to get it.
I think we all know that disc media will be history eventually. Once fiber optics spread around the country and becomes common, everyone will be downloading everything.
Now whats not fair is a DVD cost an average of $15.00. Now eliminate the cost of design, copying, production, printing, assembly and distribution of the disc and its case. That is a very large chunk of money that the music, movie and gaming industries gets to keep in their pockets once down-loadable content is main stream.
Now here is what sucks. That movie you can download, will still cost you $15.00. So really, who is getting screwed here?
@alberto - the movie industry is doing a balancing act here, and they are finding themselves rather far in the "it's a lot easier, and cheaper to pirate movies than it is to legally purchase online".
The prices need to come down to reasonable levels, like $3 or so - overnight rental prices - then legal downloads will suddenly take off and leave pirated content in the dust. But as long as movies cost $19.99, lots of people will just pass, while others will look for torrents.
The DVD is completely dead now that a 700M torrent looks nearly as good and is more convenient in so many ways. For BR, there's still some life in it it will take a while until hard disks and internet connections are large enough to download 20GB+ files. I'd say that's at least 5 years away - aeons in the tech world.
I have yet to see a download technology that I'm happy with on 60+ inch screen. the HD clips I get are not as good of quality, take too long to download over cable modem and streaming doesn't have the support to stop, go back and other shuttle features in quite the same way. Since I don't see a great improvement in the next 5 years in broadband connectivity, I really don't see blu-ray going away anytime soon.
While this is true, you must admit that only a small percent of the population owns a 60" or larger TV, not to mention that convenience trumps quality for most people, as long as they're still able to enjoy the movie.
Uhmm, there will be a vast improvement in broadband in the next 5 years, just like the last 5. In 2004 people in Japan had 1gbps, and the year before last a woman in Sweden was using her router to dry her washing - due to the heat from its 40gbps bandwidth...
I hate to bring the 360 into this discussion, but the 1080p on demand video through Zune Marketplace, which will play on the PC, 360 console, and Zune PMP, will supposedly give solace to those holding out for digital distribution. I'd like to see how MS's 8mbit 1080p video can compete with BRD's uncompressed 1080p. I'll wait to see it on my LN40A650 before I judge.
How they'll compete with redbox and netflix is anyone's guess.
The best TV I've got is a 20" monitor, I've never really found netflix or itunes comparable to blu-ray either.
Not to mention for anyone who has spend decent money on a sound system probably would appreciate the dolby/DTS HD sound track over DVD quality.
Though that would also add to the dload time (not to mention take up a bit more space)
Spot on. I think it will happen, but it will take 5 years, and during that time BR will provide the best home theater experience.
I don't have a player yet but what I saw in a friend's basement has convinced me. His 5K setup with a HD projector and a 8' screen looked way better than anything I have ever seen in a movie theatre. The quality was simply stunning. Better than anything I have ever seen.
Then again, you need expensive equipment to see the BR quality. On my 32" LCD TV you can't see it at all, DVDs look nearly as good as BR, and 700M torrents look nearly as good as DVDs. Nowhere near a movie theater or my friend's setup of course.
Wasn't Toshiba like the main manufacturer pushing HD-DVD? They really are a Trojan horse.
You can replace the box you have hooked up to your tv, but you still need a tv. toshiba will go blu to have their player sell their tvs. now that it seems like every new br player has streaming on it, it takes away from the physical media sales for the player. This is exactly what the hd camp was saying after br bought their victory, that streaming will conquer the physical media. Netflix isn't hd yet, but it can be in the next 5 years. the expensive fight to win the physical hd format war has pushed streaming to the forefront and onto new devices.
i'm suspicious...something is definitely funny about that horses nose...
I'm suspicious...something is definitely up with that horse's nose.
damn comment system, sorry, low rank away
nope, don't see what they could be sneaking in with that Cell processor. We already have TV's that do streaming, as well as Blu-Ray players and consoles that already stream, what is there left to do for Toshiba?
BR's low adoption rate isn't a result of it not being good, its a result of, for most consumers, DVD being fine. and you know what, even though I have a BR player and a Kuro, I'll concede the difference ain't THAT great
Blu Ray doesn't make an impact unless you have a larger screen or are sitting close.
on my 46" 1080 from 17 feet away on the couch the difference between DVD and 1080 is pretty minor.
But if I sit 4 feet away from the screen - KA POW! 1080 please!
if you have a kuru and a blu ray player and dont notice that much of a different, you must be one of the people that belong in the "i dont care too much about picture quality" boat. which beckons the question on why on earth you spent the money on a kuro. Watching the dark knight on blu ray on my samsung t240HD computer monitor (one of the best ones you could get some years ago) then watching batman begins in dvd is as night and day as it gets.
and this isn't even a tv w/ stellar contrast/brightness and color reproduction like your kuro. When watching the same before and after on my older pro-1130, the difference is breath taking.
Dear Toshiba: It's over. Let it go.
Dear Toshiba: Blu-ray vs. HD DVD may be over, but don't let that stop you from coming up with something better than Blu-ray. Make Blu-ray players if you must, but know there were those of us who thought you had the right idea with HD DVD and can't wait to see what you're working on next.
Dear UnnDunn: Toshiba lost, get over it.
Even Sony's own flagship Blu-Ray leviathan, the PS3 could forseeably forego the disc for the download in its own lifetime. But the infrastructure is just not there for it to be viable commercially; and by that I mean on the global market.
I don't doubt that Sony will themselves jump on downloads when the market for it has matured. But right now they've developed a far reaching, pixel perfect high def. solution that can accommodate the masses now... even with its antiquated and antique-y looking physical presence.
Despite what this article appears to imply, to incinuate that they are in any way 'asleep in the back' is just plain ignorance. As is the thought that just because the likes of iTunes HD streaming exist, the backend is there to support more than a few hundred thousand cine-sofas without your ISP collapsing to the machined sound of corn kernels popping furiously from the kitchen.
The infrastructure isn't there? You can get any, ANY, movie in HD from the piracy community. Even movies that haven't been released on Blu-ray/HD-DVD, if they have been broadcast or otherwise made available on an HD television station, it's likely that you can get them. Hundreds of thousands of people are downloading millions of these movies. They get these very nice looking movies in anywhere from 12 hours down to 30 minutes (depending on their connection).
Don't fool yourself, the reason that this service is not currently available is because the media industry does not want it that way. It has NOTHING to do with the infrastructure, which is currently performing superbly within this underground system. If there was a service like iTunes, that ran right on your television (with easy connect to a wireless network), where you could buy 720p HD movies with no DRM for $3-5 and store them on the 1TB drive in your television, I have absolutely no doubt that the physical distribution format would be dead within one year.
PS3 Video download service does exactly that, doesn't it?
@hexydes
"The infrastructure isn't there? You can get any, ANY, movie in HD from the piracy community."
Yes and - news flash! - you could get movies in 1996 over your dial-up connection, but it took forever and thus DVDs didn't become obsolete. As you said - movies download in 12 hours up to 30 minutes (30 minutes being the extremely rare case) over average broadband. What about when I want to watch a movie NOW and I can walk around the corner rent a BluRay disc and start watching within 10 minutes?
Nobody here is suggesting that downloading HD movies over a period of hours (realistically they average at least several hours) is possible competition for BluRay - the only argument is whether STREAMING can compete (since most consumers aren't going to check-in every ten minutes to see where the download progress bar is).
Right now the market of people streaming HD content is very, very small - and the infrastructure WILL kack if half as many people tried to stream HD content as currently view content via DVD or BD. The QOS simply cannot be provided to all the media providers - isn't enough bandwidth to go around. Hell, 80% of the time I attempt to stream 'HD' content like trailers, etc (and that's not real HD - most of its supposed to be < 1MBs) over my supposed 6MBs connection it buffers for 40 seconds , then plays for 30 seconds, then buffers, etc. Don't believe me? Why do you think the service providers already shape traffic in North America to limit bandwidth to your torrent downloads? Because they are greedy - sure. And all the torrent downloading is small potato geek usage compared to the bandwidth needed for everybody (including your grandmother) to stream solid HD videos whenever they feel like it. Now when fiber rolls out to everybody (or to most) that will change things. In the meantime - enjoy your torrent downloads (I do the same...) but don't be surprised if Sony and others aren't worried about BluRay sales evaporating for at least the next 3 years - it will actually continue to grow in that time.
I have LG 42LH50 and Playstation 3 - Xbox360- Apple TV and I enjoy them all but bluray is killer!! apple is the fastest with very good quality and the consoles do a respectable job upgrading DVDs but their is just nothing that really gets you there like Blu-Ray.
Toshiba might be the only one of the CE prodcuers who had seen the light, when they said in an interview that" Bass went on to defend the company’s decision to side-step Blu-ray and concentrate on developing online products. ‘We're one of the most patented companies in the world,’ said Bass. ‘We're big in storage and semi-conductors, not just electronics. And our strategy to focus on download (of movies) has already paid off. " However they seem to have forgot it again since they are now entering the BDA association, why do Toshiba not buy up a small digital media producer like Syabas and incorporate the software and technology into a sleek looking media player and sell it trough their huge distribution and marketing channels, better spending money on that instead of paying tribute to the BDA club.
Perhaps if the US wasn't so behind the bandwidth curve BluRay would be in more dire straights, but I suspect it will be a minimum of five years before the majority of people will even consider lettings go of their discs. There is something to be said about being able to hold a BluRay disc in your hand that you spent money on and works in 99% of all players.
I would love to forgo physical discs, but so far the streaming/download experience just isn't good enough. I'm as tech savvy as the next guy and even I get frustrated with the technology. I've got a 15 Mbps cable connection (costs $60 a month) and I still get stuttering/pauses when watching Netflix on my PC or PS3. The quality just isn't there either.
I thought Sony and IBM owned the Cell processor.
Use din the PS3 and a modified version the Xbox 360
aha Toshiba is in it too
ell is a microprocessor architecture jointly developed by Sony Computer Entertainment, Toshiba, and IBM, an alliance known as "STI". The architectural design and first implementation were carried out at the STI Design Center in Austin, Texas over a four-year period beginning March 2001 on a budget reported by Sony as approaching US$400 million (WIKI) but htey never used it
@hexydes
Even pirated movies aren't as good as DVD quality and why would the majority of people wait 8 hours illegally downloading a 4 gb movie? I'll answer that. Its called laziness.
Though to say that pirated/legal downloaded content's current quality replaces the quality of blu ray is absurd. Especially when newer movies are using newer technology for their picture (such as James Camerons' Avatar) can you imagine how much space those movies would take for excellent picture quality? Downloadable content (whether legal or not) has been around for a long time (such as video on demand) yet the DVD is still around. I do think streaming content will rule all but not yet. As for now, blu ray is here to stay
sounds cool
on the celll prcoessor and toshiba from cell wiki
Home cinema
Reportedly, Toshiba is considering producing HDTVs using Cell. They have already presented a system to decode 48 standard definition MPEG-2 streams simultaneously on a 1920×1080 screen.[40][41] This can enable a viewer to choose a channel based on dozens of thumbnail videos displayed simultaneously on the screen.
@killafiend & hotbbq
Maybe becasue good enogh is the new great, Remember rmp3 sounded awfull also compared to normal, cd's but people didn't care, they still wanted their mp3 players. Remember the flip camcorder,, compared to the high def camcorder of canon and Sony it is terrible but Pure technologies still sold a whole bunch of them and became the market leader
I agree with that, however there is still a market for those who actually cares about quality.
@Killafiend: Not sure what you're talking about saying that 720p MKV video ripped from a Blu-ray/HD-DVD/HDTV 1080i/p source and encoded at 4-5Mbps using x.264 isn't as good as DVD. If you'd have said Blu-ray, you probably could have supported that on technical merits (though real-world testing on average consumer hardware would likely end in a wash), but not as good as DVD? Please.
What Daskino said is exactly right. Good enough is indeed the new great. The majority of people simply don't care enough about the quality to pay ANYTHING close to a premium (which is why Blu-ray so far hasn't even blipped on the overall radar). Like DVD chapter skipping vs. VHS fast-forward before, quality has an impact, but the real determiner is convenience. If people can press a button, wait 5-10 minutes, and then sit down and watch a video that looks as good as somewhere between DVD and Blu-ray...I'm sorry, but that's going to beat out a 1080p Blu-ray at (lol, what a waste) 40Mbps any day of the week.
I bet they come up with a slick media player / Blu-ray combo.
"You can have your Blu-rays for now, but here's the future."
i like hd dvd better than bluray, but i like bluray for games
lol- I was going to comment 'There are games on Blu-Ray?'
-but then I realized you were talking about the PS3 has games on BluRay... :)
Guess I really need to fire up my PS3 and play some non-PS2 games one day....
Everybody knows the future will be the entire Netflix library, on demand instantly, with most everything streamed in at 1080p. But that future could be 10 years away. You have to have the bandwidth to the house to support that and a massive infrastructure to serve that kind of data-intensive stuff to millions of people at once, cost-effectively.
Right now, your choices are upscaled DVD, low-res streaming (even HD movies from Netflix are highly compressed today), or Blu-Ray.
Upscaled DVD is really not too bad, and streaming is certainly watchable today, but if you care about picture quality and have a big TV, eventually you are going to get a Blu-Ray player rather than waiting 10 years for video nirvana, particularly when the price of Blu Ray players has fallen so much. Blu-Ray will never be as widely adopted as DVDs were, but predictions of its early demise are premature.
Downloading HD videos sounds like a great idea, and my connection is certainly fast enough (14 Mbps).... However, with my ISP's monthly cap of 60GB, I can't download or stream all that many HD videos.
There's my problem with digital distribution.
I'm 23. I ought to be squarely in the target market for "hi-tech" distribution methods. But really... I'm not interested whatsoever in the idea. Is it so wrong to say that I LIKE having an actual physical disc that I can put on a shelf? As opposed to some etheral thing sitting on my hard-drive. For some reason it just doesn't feel as much like it's "mine" in a non-physical digital format... and so much easier to lose.
Agreed. I don't have to worry about if my ISP is having outages, or if it's a high traffic time (thus slowing my download or knocking my streaming performance down a few notches), or anything else. Take disc, insert in player, watch. Done. Streaming is an alright option for movies I really don't care too much about (and at that point, I'll just wishlist 'em on my TiVo), but for movies I actually enjoy, and that (IMO) deserve the best quality, Blu-Ray will still be first choice.
I see absolutely no point in buying plastic disks and keeping them at home. Most movies don't gain much from being HD either.
Haha, what? You're saying that movies like The Dark Knight, Serenity, Taken, the Bourne Trilogy, etc., don't gain anything from a full HD presentation? My XBR8 and 6.1 sound system would beg to differ on that point. I mean, DVDs can look fine (see the LoTR extended edition DVD set), but Blu-Ray still upstages it by a long way.
I mean, tell yourself whatever you want, I guess, but objectively, the quality is just better. If you're sitting 20 feet away from your 32-40" LCD, you may not be able to tell the difference, but if you're using proper viewing distance, properly mastered 1080p HD will blow DVD out of the water.
It's mostly the real tech oriented people who are looking forward to having everything downloaded right to their sets. The majority of people who buy discs want that physical thing they can hold in their hands that represents the money they've spent. Sorry if that makes them behind the times as far as some of you are concerned but that's the facts of the situation. So there will be a market for some kind of disc technology for the foreseeable future.