AtsutoshiNishida
Latest
Switched On: Toshiba and the Blu-ray Trojan Horse
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.
Toshiba CEO mentions the possibility of supporting Blu-ray
Though some iffy poll results & a Chinese spinoff may have you thinking HD DVD is just on the cusp of a comeback, Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida suggested today that the company might join the rest of the consumer electronics community and support Blu-ray. In the midst of defeat last year he said it had "no plans" to switch sides, focusing on flash memory and DVD upscaling tech instead, but after a few billion in losses that might have changed, as the prez indicated just losing the format war wasn't enough reason to skip out on the Blu-ray market and that Toshiba "would like to keep our options open." Besides enjoying the good news that our exes have found gainful employment as executive speechwriters, we'll be keeping an eye out for another Cell-based Blu-ray player to join the PS3, if not tomorrow, someday.
Toshiba selects Norio Sasaki as next President and CEO
We needn't tell you that things haven't been going awesome for Toshiba ever since HD DVD hit the skids and slid right into its coffin, but the company has yet to lose hope in its future. As a sign of impending change, Tosh's board of directors has just selected Mr. Norio Sasaki -- who is currently a senior executive VP in the company -- to become the next CEO and President this June. Sasaki will replace Atsutoshi Nishida following an ordinary general meeting of the shareholders, and he'll also succeed Tadashi Okamura in becoming the next chairman of the board at Toshiba Corporation. If you're curious as to whether or not this chap has what it takes, check this: the man is into mountain biking, smooth jazz and golf, and his personal motto is "perseverance will open the way." How dare you doubt that?
Toshiba CEO: HD DVD didn't stand a chance after Warner left
We had an inkling that the format war was soon to be over when Warner announced it was going Blu-ray just before CES and HD DVD canceled its press conference, but we didn't realize how quickly things would come to an abrupt end. It looks like Toshiba CEO Atsutoshi Nishida was decisive in ending the battle, telling the Wall Street Journal that HD DVD didn't stand a chance after Warner left, and that if HD DVD wasn't "going to win then we had to pull out, especially since consumers were already asking for a single standard." That's interesting, especially since Toshiba issued all those jilted-lover press releases as former partners defected and continued to waffle for another month or so and even air a Super Bowl ad, but we suppose PR people can't go running around saying things like "One has to take calculated risks in business, but it's also important to switch gears immediately if you think your decision was wrong," like the CEO can. Of course, the CEO probably shouldn't be saying Toshiba's upconverting DVD players are so good "consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images" either, but give the man a break -- he's still in mourning.[Thanks, ogscorpion]
Toshiba: "no plans" to adopt Blu-ray
In the Q&A session following Toshiba's HD DVD dumping event in Japan, Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation made a bit of a surprise announcement. While it remains committed to standard DVD, they have "no plan at all at this moment" to take up the Blu-ray format. He also stated that Tosh has no plans for a next-next gen format at all. Perhaps they are just licking their wounds until HD downloads become a reality.
Toshiba calls for HD DVD Blu-ray truce
We don't even really know how to approach this one, but we all well remember the talks that went down between Toshiba and Sony (et. al.) before Blu-ray and HD DVD hit the market; they were going to truce, they were going to unify, it was going to be more like DVD, less like Betamax and VHS. And, of course, we all know how that went. And no matter how many times we think talks might still be in the cards, they get shut down for one reason or another, bitter rivals to the end. Except when one of the most powerful men in the Japanese electronics business, Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida, tells investors "We have not given up on a unified format. We would like to seek ways for unifying the standards if opportunities arise." Oh sure, we could take that at face value and all, but it sure does go a long way to assuage stockholders' fears that a format war might yet render Toshiba's technically inferior HD DVD format obsolete and useless, telling them that a unified high definition video format might still be in the cards. Call us pessimists, but we'd love nothing more than for these guys to prove us wrong.
