Toshiba said Monday, November 29th that it had gained backing from Paramount (owned by Viacom), Universal (owned by General Electric), New Line Cinema and Warner Brothers (both owned by Time Warner). These four studios account for 45% of the country’s prepackaged DVD sales. This gives Toshiba’s HD technology a great edge over Sony’s Blu-Ray technology.
Those studios are expected to begin releasing movies on HD format discs the last quarter of 2005, just in time for the holidays.
The reason for the battle over the next media format is simple; whichever format wins the battle also wins billions of dollars in licensing revenue. For example, if Toshiba does in fact beat out Sony, every HD player manufacturer will pay a royalty fee to Toshiba. The DVD player and recorder market is a $10 billion a year business. (The PC drive business matches this.)
Another reason for studios to jump on the HD bandwagon is the low transitional cost involved. HD discs have a very similar physical structure to DVD discs. The upside to Blu-Ray is that it can hold 25GB instead of HD’s 20GB. Also, Blu-Ray also promises higher capacities in the future, which would give its technology a longer shelf life.
The battle for format supremacy is far from over. Sony still has a year to gain support and make Toshiba’s HD format look like crap.
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7 comments:
This is actually quite interesting. Where are you getting this information?
Two other things: 1) Will movies still be made on regular DVDs, for those poor ass folk who can't go out and by a new HD-DVD player? 2) Why do they need so much memory on the disks? What are they gonna use to fill up the 20+ GBs?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/11/11/spark.dvd/index.html
http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/29/technology/toshiba_dvd.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
HD video takes up approximately 3.5MB per second, which is about 12GB her hour. So each disc will be able to hold about 2 hours of HD video.
Something else kinda interesting, ATI has a PCI video card that can capture HD airwaves via included good old TV "bunny ears" antenna. The cost is $200. I dont have a link for more info right now, but I'll put it up later. Maybe if I can scrounge enough money for Christmas I'll pick one up and do a review, but we'll see.
Also, I am sure movies will still be made on good ol' DVDs, just like movies were still made (up until recently) on VHS when DVDs first came out.
Here's a link to the ATI HDTV All-In-Wonder PCI card.
http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=2546404
ok, seriously: when is the american public going to re-affirm the value and quality of VHS, and re-embrace the format?
i mean, come on. BLU-RAY? HD-DVD? I prefer VHS, which is an acronym for Video Home System
Seriously Fitz, I can tell you are upset by my recent posts, which is why you'll be happy to hear the absolute latest in technology news.
HD DVD and Blu-Ray technology is old hat. VHS is indeed making a comeback, only its going to be called HD VHS. And the tapes are going to be freakin huge, like as big as your television, since HD is much higher quality. Expect Sony to rival HD VHS with HD Beta, which is due out at the beginning of next year.
Its about friggin time.
"Digital information on plastic-metalic disks"=gay
Sega Saturn was cool, though
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