Toshiba still delusional over HD DVD loss

[rroberts]

Saw this at the cess pool known as highdefforum (aka hddvdloserforum):



of course the losers who are still bitter over HD DVD believe every word Toshiba says without even thinking of the validity of it.

For instance, any rational person knows you don't spend $1B to develop a format and cut a "one time payment" of $150M to Viacom if you think your format will be short lived. Weird that Toshiba saw the writing on the wall and STILL forked over $150M to "secure" Paramount. Weird. One would think they thought they would actually you know, recover that $150M throughout the life of HD DVD. Wherein that life would have had to have been pretty long to recover $150M for one studio. But don't worry about those facts, oh no...

A loser trying to rewrite history is all this is.

Love how he has heard from certain "studio guys", yet they won't fess up and won't return calls to comment. Hey, I heard from some "studio guys" right now. They said Fujii is full of sh*t.

[h0mi]

I saw this.

I found it interesting that blu-ray was described as more revolutionary than HD DVD, considering how much people like to harp on how blu-ray is an evolutionary not revolutionary format.

I also thought that comment about the "ultra capacity hard drives" was inane and made no sense. Few smart phones or tablets are sold with capacities beyond 16gb, and most movies carried around on these devices are 1-2 gb in size, and those hard drives bear little to no relationship with the proliferation of those devices.

[towergrove]

Interesting story. They still seem bitter And acidic after all these years.

[Kosty]

Its not "Toshiba" that's still bitter either, the company makes a lot of money on Blu-ray hardware now and made a business decision.

Everyone I know at Toshiba involved in the format war is happily doing other things. Some have moved on such as Jodi Sally who took a better job at Colby Electronics.

Even reading the article the interviewee has some regrets about a non-unified format not happening but does not personally seem bitter about anything.

For the CE industry the format war kerfluffle was a moment in their careers and hardly had the same emotional involvement that many of the hard core Blu-ray or HD DVD fanboys had at the time. Even most of the participants as consumers and posters have long since moved on even if a few people at some sites seem to be a bit bitter on things or won't let them go.

[rroberts]

...I also thought that comment about the "ultra capacity hard drives" was inane and made no sense. Few smart phones or tablets are sold with capacities beyond 16gb, and most movies carried around on these devices are 1-2 gb in size, and those hard drives bear little to no relationship with the proliferation of those devices.

He is full of it. If storage didn't matter why did they try to beat blurays 50GB with their 51GB discs?

In fact, if Toshiba had the foresight of HD optical being short lived, WHY DID THEY EVEN FIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE? bluray was developed first, HD DVD was made in response to bluray. TOshiba should have just let Sony have it from the get go.

nothing this guy said in the article coincides with what toshiba actually did. he comes off as if they were so wise and pre-cognizant, yet they blew $1B and fought to become the next optical format. weird thing to do if you knew it would be shortlived. this is retrospect BS.

[Brad1963]

IMO There should have only been Blu ray. The 2 formats confused consumers and slowed down the transition from DVD to Blu ray. Some people still seem hesitant and rather just download. The 2 years of both formats gave consumers pause to think if they really wanted another optical disc, so streaming started to build and get stronger.

[h0mi]

At the time I supported HD DVD. The sneering of ps3 fanboys turned me off, and I have to wonder if elements like Penton-man and similar such "crusaders" (for either side) didn't make the format war that much worse with the animus... recall that of all the forums, only AVS closed down for a few days because someone IIRC made death threats to someone else...?

I also have to ask... We know disc replication costs were and are higher for blu-ray but didn't (David?) Vaughn mention quite some time ago that encoding for blu-ray was cheaper/easier? Because of the higher bitrate and capacity, it was easier and thus cheaper to do encodes for blu-ray. I don't know if the cheaper encode costs + higher disc production costs balanced against pricier encode costs + cheaper disc production costs.

[towergrove]

Its not "Toshiba" that's still bitter either, the company makes a lot of money on Blu-ray hardware now and made a business decision.

Everyone I know at Toshiba involved in the format war is happily doing other things. Some have moved on such as Jodi Sally who took a better job at Colby Electronics.

Even reading the article the interviewee has some regrets about a non-unified format not happening but does not personally seem bitter about anything.

For the CE industry the format war kerfluffle was a moment in their careers and hardly had the same emotional involvement that many of the hard core Blu-ray or HD DVD fanboys had at the time. Even most of the participants as consumers and posters have long since moved on even if a few people at some sites seem to be a bit bitter on things or won't let them go.

Ive always liked Jodi, great person and businesswoman.

[towergrove]

At the time I supported HD DVD. The sneering of ps3 fanboys turned me off, and I have to wonder if elements like Penton-man and similar such "crusaders" (for either side) didn't make the format war that much worse with the animus... recall that of all the forums, only AVS closed down for a few days because someone IIRC made death threats to someone else...?

I also have to ask... We know disc replication costs were and are higher for blu-ray but didn't (David?) Vaughn mention quite some time ago that encoding for blu-ray was cheaper/easier? Because of the higher bitrate and capacity, it was easier and thus cheaper to do encodes for blu-ray. I don't know if the cheaper encode costs + higher disc production costs balanced against pricier encode costs + cheaper disc production costs.

When I look back it all now looks foolish and a waste of time.

[towergrove]

He is full of it. If storage didn't matter why did they try to beat blurays 50GB with their 51GB discs?

In fact, if Toshiba had the foresight of HD optical being short lived, WHY DID THEY EVEN FIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE? bluray was developed first, HD DVD was made in response to bluray. TOshiba should have just let Sony have it from the get go.

nothing this guy said in the article coincides with what toshiba actually did. he comes off as if they were so wise and pre-cognizant, yet they blew $1B and fought to become the next optical format. weird thing to do if you knew it would be shortlived. this is retrospect BS.

I remember reading when DVD first started and the so called experts saying that it was just going to be a "bridge format" and short lived until the High Definition discs were to be released....Really? We know how that turned out.

[towergrove]

IMO There should have only been Blu ray. The 2 formats confused consumers and slowed down the transition from DVD to Blu ray. Some people still seem hesitant and rather just download. The 2 years of both formats gave consumers pause to think if they really wanted another optical disc, so streaming started to build and get stronger.

Not just streaming though we also have downloads. When the Ultraviolet CFF Common File Format is released later this year I may consider that but not streaming. Streaming IMO is for rental (and lower quality).

[Cochise]

At the time I supported HD DVD. The sneering of ps3 fanboys turned me off, and I have to wonder if elements like Penton-man and similar such "crusaders" (for either side) didn't make the format war that much worse with the animus... recall that of all the forums, only AVS closed down for a few days because someone IIRC made death threats to someone else...?

Since we're reliving the format war, Penton-man finally got outed and his Club Penton "Insider" Thread locked down & closed over at blu-ray.com. He never claimed anything but let posters there assume that he worked for Sony. He finally over did it and criticized Sony Pictures VP Crisp over the restoration process of Lawrence of Arabia and Crisp came into his thread and posted that Penton had never worked for Sony or any major studio and that Penton was no "insider". They immediately shut down the thread. It's all gone now, blu-ray.com's server crashed last week and they hadn't done a backup in 7 months, so many of the threads don't have anything after April. I always thought Penton was a phony - I called him "trailer trash" here at the height of the format war and he never got over it, bringing it up time to time, especially when I used to be a Mod here. I thought "why would someone with such an important & busy position be so bothered by what some anonymous poster posted about him?"

As for the OP, a number of HD DVD supporters still have gotten over the format war but Toshiba certainly has. While I had both BD & HD DVD early on I took sides with HD DVD and did my share of skirmishes in the format war. I quickly moved on and got rid of all my HD DVDs & players - I have zero collector mentality and didn't want a format for which there would never be another new release. And now when I look back I think how insane the format war was - movie & home theater enthusiasts heatedly pitted against one another over which Japanese corporate conglomerate was going to get bragging rights for high definition discs during the last years of the life of optical discs for home video entertainment.

[Rich86]

I took a look at the highdefforum and saw numerous categories of discussions and did not notice it being much different than countless other forums. But maybe I missed whatever it is the OP saw that motivated him to cast such inflammatory names at that forum.
It would appear that some folks on BOTH sides of the old and long overwith format war just cannot get past it?
I rather like both formats as they both continue to provide many hours of top quality entertainment in our household. If Toshiba is suffering over this, it is on the way to the bank to deposit their ongoing DVD royalty payments for every player and title sold that supports or includes DVD . . . they seem to be getting along just fine.

[COLD_COBRA_]

At the time I supported HD DVD. The sneering of ps3 fanboys turned me off, and I have to wonder if elements like Penton-man and similar such "crusaders" (for either side) didn't make the format war that much worse with the animus... recall that of all the forums, only AVS closed down for a few days because someone IIRC made death threats to someone else...?

I also have to ask... We know disc replication costs were and are higher for blu-ray but didn't (David?) Vaughn mention quite some time ago that encoding for blu-ray was cheaper/easier? Because of the higher bitrate and capacity, it was easier and thus cheaper to do encodes for blu-ray. I don't know if the cheaper encode costs + higher disc production costs balanced against pricier encode costs + cheaper disc production costs.

The sneering of 360 fanboys turned me off to hd dvd

[AV_Integrated]

I also didn't see anything at HDF that was out of the ordinary. Of course there are bitter fanboys who spent a lot and didn't have it pay out. I always said that I didn't believe HD DVD would succeed, but as a format, the quality was excellent, which is why I owned a player. Movies first!

But, there is no doubt that people have been rewriting history since day one. Most notably are claims that movies cost less on HD DVD, which was almost never the case throughout the format war.

But, I don't get the vitrol. HDF is just another forum for people to talk about HD at if they want to. This specific forum (Smackdown) is one of the most laughable on the Internet since there is basically no smackdown left to be had. I would much rather see discussion of downloads and how that is going to be impacting the future, and much like Toshiba, the goal should be to move on and always improve quality.