Why Toshiba will release a Blu-ray player this year
In a recent post on the News.com blog, David Carnoy opined on the future of Toshiba and its ill-fated decision to back a losing format for so long.
Pointing to a Wall Street Journal interview with Toshiba's CEO, Carnoy extrapolated information from the discussion and concluded that because the company's chief executive said his company would "improve this [upconverting feature] even more, so that consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images", Toshiba has no designs on a move into the Blu-ray player market.
Carnoy asserts that 2008 will not bring a Blu-ray player from Toshiba, but it may "change its tune" in 2009.
And while Carnoy makes a good point in saying Toshiba Blu-ray players will be available next year, I think he's off by one year.
Toshiba will not try to increase the quality of upconverting DVD players, but it will release a Blu-ray player this year. Why you ask? Simple -- it has too much invested in the HD game and now that Sony is no longer the enemy, why would it even consider spending even more cash on upconverting when it can sign an agreement with the Blu-ray backers and release players?
As it stands, Toshiba is on the ropes in the HD business. Just two months ago, the company was still a hearty contender in the space and was sitting at the forefront of HD technology. Since then, the company gave up its bid to become the format of choice going forward. But if Toshiba realizes that HD is the future, why would it forego its stance as one of the leaders to back an outdated format? Surely that won't make sense from a business or PR perspective.
Aside from that, the company's chief executive, Atsutoshi Nishida, may sound averse to jumping on the Blu-ray bandwagon and sympathetic to upconverting, but what is the likelihood that upconverting DVD players will outpace Blu-ray players once the latter's price falls to a more consumer-friendly level? Further, why would Toshiba dump even more cash into something that can't stand up to new technology?
And although Nishida indicated that his company currently has no plans for a Blu-ray player, let's not forget that it's only March and he has the cash and time to release hardware in a matter of months.
Let us also not forget that some of Toshiba's biggest competitors -- LG, Sony, Panasonic and others -- have already signed on to the Blu-ray strategy and offer players. Knowing this, why wouldn't Toshiba get into that market to ensure it's not locked entirely out? And if it does want to eventually get in, wouldn't it want to do it as soon as possible so its competitors don't control too much of the market?
Simply put, the future of Toshiba has everything to do with Blu-ray and regardless of what he spews in a Wall Street Journal article, the company's CEO knows that. A Toshiba Blu-ray player will be released this year and if I had to venture a guess, look for it by the fourth quarter so it can capitalize on the Christmas rush.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Toshiba originally intended to keep this technology on it and Sharp's HDTV sets only as a product differentiator, but Mr. Nishida's interview confirms Super Upconversion is now coming to DVD players in order to combat Blu-Ray and protect Toshiba's almost $1 billion/year DVD royalty.
So no Blu-Ray players from Toshiba, but a bunch of new Super Upconversion DVD players from Toshiba and its Chinese allies.
Toshiba's aiming at 95% of consumers who are already indifferent about Blu-Ray with this tech. By giving super upconversion option that generates 960p native image out of DVD through CELL's computational power, Toshiba's ellminating the mass market consumer's need to go Blu-Ray and contain Blu-Ray as a niche format like LD and SACD were.
As long as Blu-Ray doesn't take off, Toshiba wins.
Having seen demos of Super upconversion in action, I can verify this is an extremely impressive technology, a synthetic HD technology that 95% of consumers cannot tell apart from real HD.
The problem I have with super up conversion is that there are some bad video transfers on DVD. I really need to throw these movies in there and see how the video is handled.
Having seen demos of Super upconversion in action, I can verify this is an extremely impressive technology, a synthetic HD technology that 95% of consumers cannot tell apart from real HD.
- by JCDodge July 7, 2009 1:24 PM PDT
- So.. a year+ later... how certain are you now that there will be a Toshiba Blu-Ray player?
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