After HD DVD, whither Toshiba?

[Fireblade]

There's a very interesting article debating the subject on BetaNews (http://www.betanews.com/article/Dialog_After_HD_DVD_whither_Toshiba/1203723519), in which the avenues which might be open to Toshiba - following the demise of HD-DVD, are discussed (in quite some detail).




When you are a leading-edge consumer electronics company, not everything that you bring to market will stick.

This is the kind of thing that can radically change the DNA of a company, for better or for worse, if they let it.
Certainly there's lessons that Toshiba needs to [take in]: You lost. Suck it up, figure a way out of it, recognize the silver lining in the loss, and move on.

But don't let it force you into a corner for future battles, because you want to make sure you remain a player in this market,
and the only way that you remain a player, is by taking risks.Would it make financial sense, that they try and do something else with/modify all their existing HD-DVD hardware fabrication plants (i.e. manufacturing dual-format players), rather than just cutting their (not unsubstantial) losses, and moving on?

Or should they simply 'bite the bullet', and look to the future?

What say you?

[Tom]

I vote they put their weight behind DRM-free digital HD distribution..

.. Just to get back at the studios. ;)

[digit]

I think a clever move of Toshiba would be to become a BR manufactoring partner for Sony. That way the factories producing HD DVD will not close and toshiba can make up for the HD DVD loss?

[Fireblade]

There's no point in me starting a new thread just for this, since it deals with the same subject.

For anyone [else] interested in reading more on the demise of HD-DVD... there's another good read to be found here (http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/02/21/lessons-from-the-death-of-hd-dvd/).




What the Death of HD-DVD Means:

HD-DVD is dead, and with it dies Microsoft’s aspirations to inject its proprietary software in media development.
This is also a big strike against VC-1; despite being written into the Blu-Ray standard along with the ISO’s H.264, most Blu-Ray developers are moving toward H.264,
which not only allows them to master HD discs, but also deliver mobile and downloadable versions using the same codec for playback on devices such as the PSP and iPod.

The death of HD-DVD also presents further evidence that Microsoft is increasingly incapable of pushing its own proprietary standards using its Windows monopoly.
Building support for HD-DVD into Windows Vista did almost nothing to shore up support for the format, and tying it to the Xbox 360 similarly did little to push things toward the outcome Microsoft wanted.

[Fireblade]

Toshiba's high-definition format HD DVD, which was put to sleep three weeks ago, cost the company a whopping one billion dollars, reports a Japanese source.
After huge marketing campaigns, handful of price drops and lost partners HD DVD was officially buried.
According to Nikkei Business Daily the war cost Toshiba approximately 100 billion yen, or $986 million.

Nikkei claims that as much as $500 million comes from the shutdown of HD DVD production lines.
The rest can be explained by the extensive advertisement campaigns and poor product sales.

Source: AfterDawn (http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/13225.cfm).

[[GPO]Solitaire]

They should release all the specs and software to the open source community, let them make cheap writers and players... Dump all the drm stuff and you have a cheap, high capacity media system that would give blu-ray a good run for there money....